[ih] Larry Roberts & RD the first electronic mail manager software [was written in TECO on TENEX]
Jack Haverty
jack at 3kitty.org
Tue Aug 8 16:10:58 PDT 2023
BBN Planet was an ISP that BBN started sometime in the 90s. I don't
recall if there was another "Planet" project at BBN earlier, but there
certainly could have been.
-----
FYI, Licklider's vision for "Computer Assisted Human Communication" tied
a lot of the pieces together. Electronic mail was the first part, and
actually got implemented. But the vision was that humans could
communicate using a variety of mechanisms that could change as a
discussion progressed.
So two people might start an email chat, then have some exchanges over
some kind of real-time system (linking terminals, sending text or
multimedia messages, whatever), possibly transition into a voice and/or
video call, and freely mix all of these mechanisms as part of one
discussion. At some point they might bring in other participants, and
give them access to the saved history of prior discussions which they
could digest to "come up to speed". A discussion might blossom into a
"forum" where lots of people discuss something (like here), and their
computers can help keep it all organized so its human-friendly.
The archives of all human communications would be kept on the
Datacomputer so it would be accessible to all. (I wrote code to do
that) The computers involved would keep track of all the participants,
how to reach each by each different communications mechanism, who had
seen which interactions and other administrative trivia. Computers are
good at such work. All just part of the Galactic Network services to
help humans communicate amongst themselves.
Sadly, we don't seem to have gotten there. We have lots of mechanisms
for human communications, but they can't talk to each other. If I
remember reading something somewhere it's not easy to find it in the
jumble of my mail program folders, those on various servers, or maybe I
saw it in a text message or Zoom session.
Sure wish my computers could help.
Jack
On 8/8/23 13:38, Steve Crocker wrote:
> Sounds familiar. Might have been the name BBN used for their system,
> but I'm not sure.
>
> On Tue, Aug 8, 2023 at 4:35 PM Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> wrote:
>
> Wasn't there another system called Planet in that early era?
> V
>
> On Tue, Aug 8, 2023, 16:31 Steve Crocker via Internet-history
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> There were multiple conferencing system efforts in those early
> years. BBN
> built one that included video. I moved to ISI in 1974. The
> BBN system was
> built a bit later; I don't remember the exact date. I do
> remember sitting
> in a swivel chair, spinning it around, and then watching
> myself complete
> the swivel, so the latency was definitely noticeable.
>
> The Institute for the Future (IFF) developed a conferencing
> system called
> Forum. It was essentially identical to IRC, except it
> required everyone to
> be logged into the same machine. A user's input was
> considered to be a
> paragraph. Even if the user was working at a
> character-at-a-time terminal,
> which most of us were, output would be suppressed until the
> paragraph of
> input was complete. At that point, any paragraphs from others
> that had
> been queued up were then printed. If you tried to type new
> input, you
> would not see the echoed characters until all the queued up
> paragraphs had
> spewed out.
>
> This was a remarkably effective and usable system. I have a
> vivid memory
> of using it to interview a candidate to replace Larry Roberts
> as head of
> IPTO. On a Sunday afternoon, six of us participated: The
> candidate, Larry
> Roberts, Steve Lukasik, Alex Tachmindji, Bob Kahn, me.
> Tachmindji was
> Lukasik's deputy. Bob and I were program managers under
> Larry. All of us
> except the candidate were based in the DC area. Some of us
> were at home;
> others were in the office. The candidate was at home in
> another part of
> the country,elsewhere, working in his den.
>
> I was the most junior person on the call, so I said little but
> listened a
> lot. Also, Tachmindji had had the least experience with these
> tools, and I
> provided some help to him via a side chat.
>
> I noticed there were sometimes two or even three distinct
> threads in
> progress. It was not only fairly easy to follow them, it was
> actually more
> interesting than if we had all been in the same room. We
> didn't have to
> wait for each person to finish talking, so it seemed more
> efficient than a
> regular face to face meeting.
>
> I've often wondered why this mode of interaction is used more
> frequently.
> I've even tried it out when I had control of the group, but
> the results
> weren't great.
>
> Larry left DARPA in late 1973 or perhaps very early 1974, so
> that pins down
> the date moderately well.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Steve
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 8, 2023 at 3:56 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > Just a few years ago, I stumbled across an Annual Report
> that MIT
> > submitted for one year's work in the early 70s. Since I was
> there at
> > the time, I was curious how history recorded what we were
> doing then.
> > Looking at the section for our group, I found a description of a
> > revolutionary implementation of a teleconferencing system
> that allowed
> > people to interact in real time using the ARPANET which had been
> > completed that year.
> >
> > I didn't remember that we had built any teleconferencing
> system. Of
> > course with age comes memory loss. But I remember lots of
> stuff we did
> > then, but not a "teleconferencing system". A sign of
> encroaching
> > dementia...?
> >
> > With further investigation...
> >
> > A bunch of us at MIT in Licklider's group spent a lot of
> hours getting
> > multi-player MazeWar running on our fancy new Imlac
> minicomputers.
> > Someone added a feature where players could trash-talk each
> other with a
> > shared screen space trying to lure them into an ambush or
> gloat on
> > another kill. MazeWars of course had nothing to do with
> whatever
> > research we were doing. Gettings MazeWar going was just a
> lot of fun.
> > We all thought MazeWars was just a cool hack and extremely
> addictive
> > game. If curious, see
> >
> https://www.digibarn.com/collections/games/xerox-maze-war/index.html
> >
> > But the experience did reveal, to me at least, the importance of
> > latency, and the difficulties of getting a bunch of computers to
> > interact over a network. Imlacs had no I/O except RS232.
> So, our
> > "LAN" was a star-shaped configuration with Imlac
> minicomputers connected
> > via RS232 to our PDP-10 as the center of the star (7 floors
> away), and I
> > had goosed the RS232 hardware well beyond its spec to
> achieve almost 100
> > kb/sec. I tried to convince BBN to upgrade the TIP hardware
> to support
> > higher speed "terminals", but was rebuffed -- "The TIP supports
> > terminals up to the maximum reasonable speed of 9600
> bits/second."
> >
> > MIT's Annual Report touted Maze as a "teleconferencing system".
> >
> > Jack
> >
> >
> > --
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> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >
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