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The ARPANET, initiated in 1969 by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the Department of Defense (DoD), was the first wide area packet switching network. In 1984, the ARPANET, which had grown to over 100 nodes, was separated into two parts: an operational component, the MILNET, to serve the operational needs of the DoD, and a research component that retained the ARPANET name. After the network split, the MILNET expanded, and it should reach over 250 nodes within a year. The DARPA Internet was formed in the 1970s in response to a requirement to interconnect different types of packet‐switching networks that were being implemented. It has grown to be very large; it now consists of over 330 networks, hundreds of gateways, and tens of thousands of hosts. Where the ARPANET used to connect hosts that were single computers into a network, many of these hosts now serve as gateways to local campus networks, regional networks, and other national networks, such as the NSFNET. The impact of this growing system of inter‐connected networks on research, communications, and library access will be profound.

A national multi‐gigabit‐per‐second research and education network known as the National Research and Education Network is to be established by 1996, according to the High‐Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102–194) passed in December 1991. Commonly known as the NREN and referred to as the “information highway,” this electronic network is expected to provide scientific, educational, and economic benefits for the United States and to serve as the basis for an all‐encompassing National Information Infrastructure available to all citizens. The idea of the NREN began in the late 1960s in the Department of Defense and its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with the development of ARPANet, the first packet‐switching network. This evolved into the Internet, or Interim NREN, after the National Science Foundation (NSF) linked its national supercomputing centers with the NSFNet. The NSFNet is to be the technological backbone for the NREN, which will continue the networking begun by the Internet. Initially, the NREN is intended to interconnect researchers and resources of research institutions, educational institutions, industry, and government in every state.

The chemistry librarian has been better served by professional literature than any other subject specialist in the library, except perhaps the medical librarian. A new series of papers on chemical substance searching in Online Review continues this tradition. If the first installment of this series is an indication of what is to come, chemistry librarians and online searchers can look forward to a lot of valuable (and readable) literature on this most important topic. The useful column by Buntrock has, I am sure, already made valuable contributions to more efficient and effective online searching in chemistry.

While some libraries have done their best over the years to inform the public as to what they are doing and can do as regards helping readers, others seem to move along without making any special effort to publicise their facilities. In the old days modesty was a virtue, but now it is its own reward. Government departments, which used to shun the limelight, now employ public relations officers in large numbers, and professional bodies and big business houses constantly seek publicity. Times have changed, and the battle is to the strong; and it is unfortunately generally felt that the institution or service that does not speak for itself has little to speak about. It may frankly be said that if a service is in a position to enlarge its sphere of influence and esteem it should do so to the utmost of its endeavour. But it will be granted that if its publicity is not justified by performance, there will likely be an unhappy reaction.

We have not seen an Internet‐based game that can be identified with the arrival of Internet gaming for the masses. Due to the foundational structure of the Internet, there probably will not be one anytime soon. The problem is that the underlying Internet protocol, IPv4, has not had a major update since its introduction in the early 1970s. Fortunately, in the mid‐1990s the standards‐based Internet Engineering Task Force began addressing IPv4’s deficiencies. The result of these efforts is a new version of IPv4 called IPv6. IPv6’s entry will present the Internet gaming community with many opportunities as well as challenges. One of biggest challenges is that the rollout of IPv6 will take years for completion necessitating its coexistence with IPv4 in a number of forms. This paper focuses on issues associated with this coexistence, transition mechanisms that will be used, and what the gaming community can do today to be better positioned as IPv6 becomes the mainstream Internet protocol.

The relationship between capitalism and democracy has been questioned recently by economists and political scientists. In view of this debate, a reappraisal is made of the writings of Richard Henry Tawney, the English economist and social philosopher. Central to his personal, intellectual and socio‐political project was the ideal of the creation of a genuinely democratic community. Capitalism; the principles of a democratic economy; institutions and processes; and the alternative perspectives on political economy are discussed.

This paper explores the economic and social effects of human capital investment in the 20th century. As well as drawing on census data and statistical yearbooks in Australia and Aoteoroa/New Zealand, the paper develops its argument by an intersection of scholarly work in sociology, economics and the history of education to consider the effects of increased human capital investment on economic growth but also on the experiences of childhood, work discipline and the present climate crisis.

This paper considers the implications of what economic historian Claudia Goldin has described as the “human capital century” for the history of school and university education. By reconsidering education in the settler colonies, especially Australia and Aoteoroa/New Zealand, as “stimulus”, this helps explain key aspects of contemporary human capital investment, which the paper argues should be understood as constituted by children's and young people's free labour at school, university and across the economy.

This research argues that children's and young people's free labour, performed in educational institutions, constitutes a large portion of Australia and Aoteoroa/New Zealand's national investment in human capital. At key points, this investment has acted as an economic stimulus, promoting surges of profitability. The effects were not confined to young people. Systematised, educational expansion also became the foundation of environmental degradation, labour market exploitation and a relentless increase in service-sector productivity that is worn on professional bodies. Productivity increases have been associated with reduced professional autonomy as a managerial class coerced professionals into working harder, though often under the guise of working “smarter” – a fiction that encouraged or coerced even greater personal investment in collective human capital. This investment of personal time, effort and selfhood by children and the professionals they grew into can thus be seen, in Marxian terms, as a crucial vector of capitalist exploitation in the 20th century.

The paper concludes by suggesting that a reduction of managerial influence in educational settings would improve learner and professional autonomy with improved labour and environmental conditions.

The paper makes a unique contribution to the history of education by exploring education as stimulus as a key component of education’s role in 20th and 21st century capitalism. It interrogates exploitative aspects of human capital investment, especially in the midst of environmental catastrophe and the recent COVID crisis.