[ih] Where are we preserving these early documents? Re: early networking: "the solution"

[Jack Haverty]

In high school I had a teacher who was very interested in Roman 
history.   So we read a lot of ancient documents, much of it written by 
philosophers or the like.  My favorite author however was Plautus, who 
was a playwright.   We even put on some of his plays, mostly comedies, 
all spoken in Latin of course.   One of Plautus' comedies eventually 
morphed into "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum".

Plautus wrote about Roman life, and his characters included the social 
classes who never wrote a single document.  In the cast and portraying a 
Roman slave or merchant, I got to experience another perspective on 
Roman life quite different from that of philosophers and senators.   
Roman life was quite different, depending on your position as a 
philosopher, politician, merchant, or slave.   Women were, of course, 
irrelevant (don't blame me, I wasn't there!).

Not too many years later, that knowledge of Roman history was still 
quite fresh in my head as we worked on TCP/IP and Internet mechanisms.   
The "Roman Internet" had its set of problems and techniques, which I 
suspect influenced how I thought about and argued for features in the 
Internet architecture.

In Roman times, many of the "perspectives" were not recorded, except in 
artifacts like Plautus' plays.  It's too late to ask a Roman slave about 
their experiences.  But the Internet is not that old yet, so there's 
still opportunity to capture more perspectives on the history of the 
Internet.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile, for example, to interview not only 
"founders" but also users, operators, competitors, and anyone else who 
might have a different perspective on Internet History?   It would have 
been interesting to hear about the Roman experience of the slaves who 
had to run through enemy territory while carrying messages between the 
battlefield and Rome - but, like datagrams today, many didn't survive.

BTW, there is quite a lot of surviving documentation from the Roman 
Empire.   I can't remember where I learned it, but techniques for 
military communications throughout the Empire were written down 
somewhere and have survived the ages.   I've mentioned some of them in 
other posts here about Internet History.  Of course, to read everything 
you probably need to read ancient Latin.   I wonder if any of the AI 
translators can do that yet.

I don't know who the second Pope was.   I guess Plautus didn't think it 
was important or funny.

Jack Haverty



On 4/27/24 14:45, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:
> Indeed, for a while I was considering a new novel set in the Roman Empire
> (who was the *second* Pope? I bet you don't know), but the paucity of
> documents was a deal killer.
>
> On Sat, Apr 27, 2024 at 1:12 PM Craig Partridge<craig at tereschau.net>  wrote:
>
>> Speaking as someone who trained as a historian (as an undergrad), I'd
>> suggest it is more nuanced.
>>
>> Once you get past about the 14th century in western Europe (later in
>> other parts of the world) the central problem is the overwhelming
>> volume of sources, many of which require specialized expertise to
>> interpret.  In many cases, when you have a specific research question,
>> the process feels like dumpster diving -- and figuring out where in
>> the dumpster the information you want might be hiding.  If you find
>> information, great!  if you don't there's the nagging question of did
>> you miss it (look in the wrong place) or is it really an unanswerable
>> question (e.g. the source didn't survive).  This bears on Jack H's
>> point about perspectives -- if you ask the question "what was the
>> experience of social group G in the early days of the Internet", the
>> material may or may not exist, but your first challenge is figuring
>> out where it might be hiding.
>>
>> Even for very modest topics, one sometimes finds that experts develop
>> detailed and often substantial meta-finding aids (across various
>> museums and archives).  Just to mention one example: Randy Schoenberg
>> maintains a finding aid for information on the pre-WWII Jewish
>> communities of Austria and Bohemia (Czech Republic) that, if memory
>> serves, now runs over 100 powerpoint slides.
>>
>> Craig
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 27, 2024 at 1:43 PM John Day via Internet-history
>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>  wrote:
>>> History never has all of it. That is the bane of history.
>>>
>>> See Arcadia by Tom Stoppard.
>>>
>>>> On Apr 27, 2024, at 14:40, Bob Purvy via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>>> Sorry, I disagree.  There's a lot of the history that's not captured
>> in
>>>> artifacts such as "founder's interviews" and documents such as RFCs.
>>>>
>>>> Clearly, but I'd just say, "compared to what?"
>>>>
>>>> Are all the relevant documents for D-Day available in one place? How
>> about
>>>> the WW II docs on Enigma? How about the IBM 360 OS? Sure, we have a
>> lot of
>>>> it, but do we have *all* of it?
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Apr 27, 2024 at 10:49 AM Jack Haverty<jack at 3kitty.org>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 4/22/24 09:31, Bob Purvy wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I think that actually, the early history of the Internet is fairly
>> WELL
>>>>> preserved. Certainly better than a lot of other things.
>>>>> ,
>>>>> The Computer History Museum has a whole bunch of lengthy interviews
>> with
>>>>> founders, all transcribed neatly.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Sorry, I disagree.  There's a lot of the history that's not captured
>> in
>>>>> artifacts such as "founder's interviews" and documents such as RFCs.
>>>>>
>>>>> Everyone involved in a snippet of history, such as the "Early Internet
>>>>> Era" has a different perspective on what they experienced.  The
>> situation
>>>>> is much like that old story about the blind describing an elephant
>> after
>>>>> touching it - one thinks it's a big snake, another concludes it's a
>> big
>>>>> bird, a third thinks it's some kind of tree.  It all depends on which
>> part
>>>>> of the elephant they touched.
>>>>>
>>>>> How did people competing with the Internet perceive it?   The phone
>>>>> companies, the big computer vendors, the startups promoting their own
>>>>> alternatives, and many others all had their views of the Internet as
>> it
>>>>> destroyed them.
>>>>>
>>>>> How did people trying to use the Internet technology experience it?
>> I was
>>>>> amazed at how many corporations in non-computer industries were
>>>>> experimenting with their own internal "intranets" during the 80s and
>> 90s,
>>>>> as they searched for some solution to their IT needs that could
>> actually be
>>>>> deployed.  I recall, for example, helping one of the big investment
>> houses
>>>>> in NYC as they tried to use routers to interconnect London, New York,
>> and
>>>>> Tokyo, encountering lots of surprises and disappointments along the
>> way.
>>>>> Yet industry all abandoned other schemes and adopted TCP/IP for their
>>>>> corporate communications.   Why?  I've never seen any papers,
>> interviews,
>>>>> or other records of any of those early experiences as the technology
>>>>> escaped from the research to the operational worlds.
>>>>>
>>>>> How did mere Users experience the Internet?   From the earliest days
>> of
>>>>> dial-up, and services such as Compuserve, Lotus Notes, to the World
>> Wide
>>>>> Web, what was the Users' experience?
>>>>>
>>>>> IMHO, all of those perspectives, and more, are parts of Internet
>> History,
>>>>> not even captured or well preserved.
>>>>>
>>>>> Jack Haverty
>>>>>
>>>> --
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>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>> --
>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>
>>
>> --
>> *****
>> Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities
>> and mailing lists.
>>

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