[IP] The Internet, As It Was - A Story of Dave Farber and the IP List
------- Original message -------
From: Jonathan B Spira <jspira@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 1/4/'05, 9:48
Dave, a recent exchange of e-mails following a posting on the IP list resulted
in my column this week, which I think you and other IPers may find of interest.
If I haven't said it in a while, thanks for the IP list. It is truly a gift.
/s/ Jonathan
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BASEX:COMMENTARY-OF-THE-WEEK BY JONATHAN B. SPIRA
THE INTERNET, AS IT WAS
For a moment - and it was just a moment in the passage of time - I was
transported back to the early days of the Internet, when a pioneering spirit of
friendlin
ess and cooperation was the norm.
Let me explain how this happened.
The last section to be written for my book, Managing the Knowledge Workforce:
Understanding the Information Revolution That's Changing the Business World, is
a
timeline on knowledge and information work. David Goldes (Basex' president)
and I had actually started researching this in 1990, and we published it that
year.
The original 1990 timeline had 20 entries, starting with the invention of
paper (105) and the pencil (1465), continuing with the typewriter (1808), the
comput
er (ENIAC, 1946), and the floppy disk (1970). I decided to include it - with
additional entries - in the book. My augmented timeline has ca. 70 entries,
start
ing with ink (2697 B.C.E.) and continuing with the alphabet (ca. 1600 B.C.E.),
including the codex (first century C.E.), the wireless telegraph (1792, Chappe
Se
maphore), and the graphical user interface (1975). My criteria for inclusion
included its significance to knowledge and information work, and whether it
qualif
ied as a "first" [e.g. the FIRST fountain pen (1702) made it in, but Lewis
Waterman's commercially successful version a century later did not].
What I didn't have was a firm fix on the first office telephone system, or
Private Branch eXchange (PBX). I had a vague recollection about a Midwestern
retirem
ent home having the first PBX but none of my searches proved fruitful. Not the
type to give up, I e-mailed my friend Dave Farber, a founding father of the Inte
rnet and proprietor of the IP redistribution and commentary mailing list,
asking him to send my enquiry on to the 30,000 or so IP readers (IP stands for
Interes
ting Persons). (Wired magazine once called Dave the "Paul Revere" of the
Internet.)
No sooner had I clicked on send, than my in box started to fill up. First,
Katie Hafner, who writes for the New York Times, promised to look this up in
her cop
y of John Brooks' "Telephone: The First 100 Years" when she got home. Mark
Seiden pointed me to two possible "firsts" - one of which was the Old Soldiers'
Home
in Dayton Ohio (1878). Half a dozen other IPers also e-mailed me, some asking
questions to narrow the scope of my enquiry; others recommending places to look
for further info.
Esther Dyson chimed in and introduced me via e-mail to Tom Malone, a professor
at MIT who she felt would know the answer.
For a moment - and it really was just a moment - I thought of a few mailing
lists of the early 1990s where pioneering Internet users were doling out their
exper
tise left and right. No banner adverts, no commercialization, just people
helping people. But it was just a moment.
Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex. He can be reached at
jspira@xxxxxxxxx
/=================== http://www.basex.com/advance ===================\
"The right book at the right time by the right author" - KMWorld
Managing the Knowledge Workforce
Understanding the Information Revolution
That's Changing the Business World
by Jonathan B. Spira
Preface by Amy D. Wohl
Includes 13 case studies including Britannia Airways, LogicaCMG,
Unisys, IBM, American Management Systems, Reuters, and Duane Morris
Special pre-publication pricing $29.99 including free shipping
Click on http://www.basex.com/advance for a peek inside
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