The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):

the network
 n.

    1. Historically, the union of all the major noncommercial, academic, and
    hacker-oriented networks, such as Internet, the pre-1990 ARPANET, NSFnet,
    BITNET, and the virtual UUCP and Usenet ?networks?, plus the corporate
    in-house networks and commercial timesharing services (such as CompuServe,
    GEnie and AOL) that gateway to them. A site is generally considered on the
    network if it can be reached through some combination of Internet-style
    (@-sign) and UUCP (bang-path) addresses. See Internet, bang path, 
    network address.

    2. Following the mass-culture discovery of the Internet in 1994 and
    subsequent proliferation of cheap TCP/IP connections, ?the network? is
    increasingly synonymous with the Internet itself (as it was before the
    second wave of wide-area computer networking began around 1980).

    3. A fictional conspiracy of libertarian hacker-subversives and
    anti-authoritarian monkeywrenchers described in Robert Anton Wilson's novel
    Schr?dinger's Cat, to which many hackers have subsequently decided they
    belong (this is an example of ha ha only serious).

    In sense 1, the network is often abbreviated to the net. ?Are you on the
    net?? is a frequent question when hackers first meet face to face, and ?See
    you on the net!? is a frequent goodbye.


The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

network, the
The Network

   1.  (Or "the net") The union of all the
   major noncommercial, academic and hacker-oriented networks,
   such as Internet, the old ARPANET, NSFnet, BITNET, and
   the virtual UUCP and Usenet "networks", plus the corporate
   in-house networks and commercial time-sharing services (such
   as CompuServe) that gateway to them.

   A site was generally considered "on the network" if it could
   be reached by electronic mail through some combination of
   Internet-style (@-sign) and UUCP (bang-path) addresses.
   Since the explosion of the Internet in the mid 1990s, the term
   is now synonymous with the Internet.

   See network address.

   2.  A fictional conspiracy of libertarian
   hacker-subversives and anti-authoritarian monkeywrenchers
   described in Robert Anton Wilson's novel "Schrödinger's Cat",
   to which many hackers have subsequently decided they belong
   (this is an example of ha ha only serious).

   [Jargon File]

   (1999-01-26)