TWICS (Two Way Information Communication System) was a Japanese

Internet Service Provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

and

online community An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members engage in computer-mediated communication primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, on ...

. It was started in 1982 as a part of the non-profit International Education Center in

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

. Between 1982 and 1993, TWICS focused on their online community.

Howard Rheingold Howard Rheingold (born 1947) is an American critic, writer, and teacher, known for his specialties on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities. B ...

wrote about their diverse international online community in his book, The Virtual Community.

Joi Ito is a Japanese entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is the president of Chiba Institute of Technology. He is on the Board of Directors for the Gelephu Mindfulness City in Bhutan where he is also the Chairman of the Gelephu Investment Developm ...

contributed ideas that led to the growth of the community, both as a teenager and later as president of PSINet Japan. Prior to TWICS offering public access Internet, Jeff Shapard led the company and developed the foundation for the community . Until the mid-1990s, TWICS based their community on the Participate conferencing system running on a

VAX VAX (an acronym for virtual address extension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The V ...

computer from

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

. In 1993 TWICS became the first organization in Japan to offer public access Internet services by leasing a line from a US-owned company called InterCon International KK (a subsidiary of TCP/IP software maker, InterCon Systems Corporation). After Jeff Shapard left TWICS, Tim Burress took over as president, leading the company through the complex regulatory process in Japan, and was chief engineer that led the project to successful connection to the public Internet. This achievement made them a target of intense rivalry from older more established companies who had already spent a year unsuccessfully trying to obtain licenses to provide similar services.

TWICS and Linux in Japan

Starting from 1995, TWICS started to move their systems to HPUX under the technical leadership of Paul Gampe. Under Paul's leadership, TWICS also started to move edge systems to Linux. Paul later became VP of global engineering services and operations at Red Hat after leaving TWICS. Kevin Baker, another senior engineer at TWICS, worked at Red Hat as an engineering manager for 8 years. The Tokyo Linux Users Group (TLUG) was formed in the TWICS forum. Craig Oda, who was president of TWICS at the time was also president of the TLUG and co-authored an O'Reilly Japan book on Japanese support of Linux. Craig went on to become VP of product marketing and management at

Turbolinux Turbolinux is a discontinued Japanese Linux distribution targeting Asian users. Linux distribution The Turbolinux distribution was created as a rebranded Red Hat distribution by (then) Pacific HiTech employee Scott Stone. Scott was the lead rele ...

Acquisition by PSINet

In 1998,

PSINet PSINet, formerly Performance Systems International, was an American internet service provider based in Northern Virginia. As one of the first commercial Internet service providers (ISPs), it was involved in the commercialization of the Internet ...

acquired TWICS as part of their expansion into Japan. Rimnet was acquired at the same time. After the dot-com bubble popped, Cable & Wireless IDC acquired PSINet Japan along with TWICS in December 2001. ."Cable & Wireless acquires PSINet Japan"
(January 28, 2002) Lightwave. In 2003, TWICS was taken over by Inter.net Global Inc.

External links

The controversial start-up of Internet services in Japan
TWICS.com
at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine

Chapter from Howard Rheingold's book, The Virtual Community

Computing Japan

References

{{Reflist Defunct Internet service providers Defunct companies of Japan Internet service providers of Japan