[ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square
Ian Peter
ian.peter at ianpeter.com
Thu Jun 6 21:46:21 PDT 2013
I dont think the Internet was involved in Tiananmen Square, but there was an
interesting use of telecommunications at the time.
The Chinese government set up a "dob in a protestor" hot line for locals to
report people protesting. Western students (I think mainly UK and European
but may be wrong there )got hold of this number and implemented a quite
successful widespread campaign to block the line as long as possible by
jamming it with telephone calls (sort of an analog denial of service
attack?). For an investment of $1 or so a student could at least feel they
had done something.
Ian Peter
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square (Alex McKenzie)
2. Re: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square (Larry Sheldon)
3. Re: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square (Larry Sheldon)
4. Re: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square (Larry Sheldon)
5. Re: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square (Larry Sheldon)
6. Re: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square (Larry Sheldon)
7. Re: "email"-- an opportunity. (Larry Sheldon)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 12:49:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: Alex McKenzie <amckenzie3 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square
To: Internet History <internet-history at postel.org>
Message-ID:
<1370548183.14312.YahooMailNeo at web142406.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
?Ofer Inbar <cos at aaaaa.org> wrote:
??? Coming at it from the other direction, you might look at how the
Chinese dissidents saw it at the time.? If you're interested in
>spending some time on this question, contact Brandeis University
>and see if they have proceedings or recordings of a conference
>held there in the fall of 1989.
>.
>.
>.
>I have a friend who is a librarian at Brandeis and I have asked her to look
>into this.? I'll post whatever info I obtain.? I'm posting this to try to
>avoid a lot of us pinging the people at Brandeis with the same question.
>
>Cheers,
>Alex
>
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 19:58:03 -0500
From: Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at cox.net>
Subject: Re: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square
Cc: "internet-history at postel.org" <internet-history at postel.org>
Message-ID: <51B1301B.9040501 at cox.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
On 6/6/2013 4:14 AM, Joly MacFie wrote:
> I think consensus is that it was the fax machine..
>
> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,957964,00.html
>
> http://www.evolutionshift.com/blog/2009/06/03/tiananmen-square-and-technology/
I don't think I have ever heard that before--or had forgotten it if I have.
Interesting, and it makes a lot of sense.
I'm glad I asked.
Thank you.
--
Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics
of System Administrators:
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to
learn from their mistakes.
(Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:00:00 -0500
From: Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at cox.net>
Subject: Re: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square
Cc: "internet-history at postel.org" <internet-history at postel.org>
Message-ID: <51B13090.60208 at cox.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
On 6/6/2013 5:56 AM, John Day wrote:
> Tien-an-men or Tian-an-men is Westernized from Chinese and is multiple
> characters, not a single word. Since Chinese characters are words, not
> letters there are multiple ways to translate them into Western
> characters. Seldom will any of them cause a Westerner to produce the
> right sounds.
>
> The old Wade-Giles approach produces vastly different Westernizations
> than the official PRC Pinyin. For example, Mao Tse-tung in Wade Giles
> becomes Mao ZeDong in Pinyin, or Chou En-lai vs Zhou Enlai.
>
> And of course, any one Westernization of a character will actually stand
> for multiple characters in Chinese and often not a small number. It is
> interesting that previous Chinese dictionaries were organized by stroke
> count and/or radical. The PRC started the practice of organizing the
> dictionary by the pinyin spelling. It apparently produces a finer
> granularity hash. ;-) There fewer times that 100s of characters end up
> under the same pinyin spelling convention.
>
> But there is really no way to speak of misspellings with Chinese names.
>
> Take care,
> John
>
>
>
> At 2:44 AM -0500 6/6/13, Larry Sheldon wrote:
>> The other day I read a posting someplace about the anniversary of the
>> Tiananmen Square protests.
>>
>> While reading the article I mistakenly took something the author said
>> to mean that he (she) thought the Internet was involved. (I have
>> since found it briefly and the author said nothing of the sort.)
>>
>> I said I thought that the technological enabler in those protests was
>> the PC-connected printer.
>>
>> But now I am worried that I am wrong about that too. I do think I
>> remember reading that somewhere at the time--but I don't have a notion
>> now about how they passed data around. Disks? BBSs?
>>
>> Any of you folks who actually know have an opinion?
>>
>> It is interesting to note that Thunderbird seems to have "Tiananmen"
>> miss-spelt as "Tienanmen"
>> --
>> Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics
>> of System Administrators:
>> Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to
>> learn from their mistakes.
>> (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
>
>
--
Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics
of System Administrators:
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to
learn from their mistakes.
(Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:04:46 -0500
From: Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at cox.net>
Subject: Re: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square
Cc: "internet-history at postel.org" <internet-history at postel.org>
Message-ID: <51B131AE.5070408 at cox.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Sorry about the content-free (even by my standards). Not clear how that
happened.
I'm not even sure yet who it went to--I was trying to fix the addressing.
On 6/6/2013 5:56 AM, John Day wrote:
> Tien-an-men or Tian-an-men is Westernized from Chinese and is
> multiple characters, not a single word. Since Chinese characters are
> words, not letters there are multiple ways to translate them into
> Western characters. Seldom will any of them cause a Westerner to
> produce the right sounds.
I knew that and should have cut T-bird some slack.
> The old Wade-Giles approach produces vastly different Westernizations
> than the official PRC Pinyin. For example, Mao Tse-tung in Wade
> Giles becomes Mao ZeDong in Pinyin, or Chou En-lai vs Zhou Enlai.
Some of that I knew, but forgot I knew it.
> And of course, any one Westernization of a character will actually
> stand for multiple characters in Chinese and often not a small
> number. It is interesting that previous Chinese dictionaries were
> organized by stroke count and/or radical. The PRC started the
> practice of organizing the dictionary by the pinyin spelling. It
> apparently produces a finer granularity hash. ;-) There fewer times
> that 100s of characters end up under the same pinyin spelling
> convention.
>
> But there is really no way to speak of misspellings with Chinese
> names.
It is good to learn or be reminded of what has supposedly been learned.
> Take care, John
Ask questions of learned and therefor interesting people is a hoot--you
never know where you will end up.
Thanks.
--
Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics
of System Administrators:
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to
learn from their mistakes.
(Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:14:10 -0500
From: Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at cox.net>
Subject: Re: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square
To: internet-history at postel.org
Message-ID: <51B133E2.9070302 at cox.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
On 6/6/2013 12:16 PM, Ofer Inbar wrote:
> Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at cox.net> wrote:
>> I said I thought that the technological enabler in those protests was
>> the PC-connected printer.
>>
>> But now I am worried that I am wrong about that too. I do think I
>> remember reading that somewhere at the time--but I don't have a notion
>> now about how they passed data around. Disks? BBSs?
>
> Coming at it from the other direction, you might look at how the
> Chinese dissidents saw it at the time. If you're interested in
> spending some time on this question, contact Brandeis University
> and see if they have proceedings or recordings of a conference
> held there in the fall of 1989. One of the student leaders of
> the protest managed to get out of the country because he had already
> been approved for a visa to study at Brandeis, and he organized this
> conference shortly after he got to the US. IIRC it was a big magnet
> event for anyone involved who'd managed to get out of China, and
> there were likely panels and presentations on the topic of what
> technology they used or how they communicated, among other things.
Wow. I will look into it--I was interested at the time but was in the
process of dumping a near-thirty year career and moving half-way across
the continent--from an arm of what had been the world's largest
corporation to a small mid-western Jesuit university peopled by
Luddites. In any case I did not attend to world politics as I might
have and I'd sort of forgotten about what was going on in the late 80's.
> BTW, Brandeis University didn't even have Internet at the time.
> The first Internet connection came in January 1990, shortly after.
> In the fall of 1989 Brandeis was on CSnet and BITNET.
We didn't even have that except for a few dial-in-diehards until '91 or
'92, I think.
Thanks for the info.
--
Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics
of System Administrators:
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to
learn from their mistakes.
(Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:18:01 -0500
From: Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at cox.net>
Subject: Re: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square
To: internet-history at postel.org
Message-ID: <51B134C9.5080208 at cox.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
On 6/6/2013 2:49 PM, Alex McKenzie wrote:
> Ofer Inbar <cos at aaaaa.org> wrote:
>
> Coming at it from the other direction, you might look at how the
>
> Chinese dissidents saw it at the time. If you're interested in
>> spending some time on this question, contact Brandeis University
>> and see if they have proceedings or recordings of a conference held
>> there in the fall of 1989. . . . I have a friend who is a librarian
>> at Brandeis and I have asked her to look into this. I'll post
>> whatever info I obtain. I'm posting this to try to avoid a lot of
>> us pinging the people at Brandeis with the same question.
>>
>> Cheers, Alex
I was going to see if I was smart enough to figure out how to do that.
I am interested and will await developments.
Thanks.
--
Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics
of System Administrators:
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to
learn from their mistakes.
(Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:32:58 -0500
From: Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at cox.net>
Subject: Re: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity.
To: "internet-history at postel.org" <internet-history at postel.org>
Message-ID: <51B1384A.5030003 at cox.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
On 6/5/2013 5:09 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>> From: Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at cox.net>
>
>> (y'all frightened the post office? that's funny.)
>
> Why? It was not without reason; check out the stats on first-class
> mail volume - it's estimated that it's taken a _huge_ hit from
> email.
I have always, since before I learned the term, thought Luddites were funny.
> On the subject of the term 'email' - I have this vague memory that it
> came from outside 'our' community, which would explain why it doesn't
> appear in archives. I think we just called it 'mail' or 'network
> mail'.
>
> I have some very old business cards from MIT/etc which give my email
> address, and one labels it 'ARPANet Address', another just 'Net'.
In the late 1980's I had a bang path address (I've forgotten the
beginning of it, maybe) ucbvax!well!car54 (seems like the "ucbvax" was
wrapped with a well known site at my employer that I was not supposed to
know about--"pttsomething" in curly braces?)
But I don't remember what I called it.
--
Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics
of System Administrators:
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to
learn from their mistakes.
(Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
------------------------------
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