[ih] questions on arpanet (2)

[rdandi at luiss.it]

Hi all,

Thanks to everybody for the fast replies. I am very excited and thankful also for this opportunity to communicate with the pioneers who were in the Arpanet community!!!
The goal of my research is to find a connection between the social/organizational context of the Arpanet community and the use of email and CMC by those who actually developed these tools for the first time. I would like to get some quantitative data on these issues.

Here are some further explanations of my previous questions and other questions:

1) the study that reports that in 1973 email was composing 75% of all ARPANET traffic is a ghost. Several websites dealing with internet history cite this study, but none of them shows the exact reference. They just say "an Arpa study reports"... For example:

Hobbes' Internet Timeline v5.3
http://oceanpark.com/webmuseum/internet_timeline/

HistoryMole.com
http://www.historymole.com/cgi-bin/main/results.pl?type=theme&theme=Internet

Tom Sheldon's site
http://www.linktionary.com/i/internet_history.html

2) regarding the traffic between specific IMPs.. I want to collect some network data that can show me to what extent there was an exchange of information among which nodes of Arpanet. Given that something on this exists, does anybody has some report on this traffic during the period 1969-1978? Is there something similar concerning email traffic?

3) regarding the file attached. I need to collect some attribute data on the members of the Network Working Group who co-authored RFCs during 1969-1978 (I analyzed the first 735 RFCs and got these 97 names).

Through RFCs themselves I found people affilitiations. However I am interested also in the past affiliations of each member (my guess is that several members knew each other before joining Arpanet or at least had the same backgrounds as they had the same experiences - at same universities, companies, laboratories).

Then I need to know the status (junior or senior) of each member in the list. If someone knows also their title (PhD student or professor, programmer or manager...) it would be great. I have to track also changes in status (so for example Steve Crocker got his PhD in 1971, so he was junior up to 1971, from then on I code him "senior", see the attached file).

4) When RFCs went online? Map Pradlipsky said after November 1974. Why so late? (Arpanet had the tools to share information online).

5) One research questions is: "Did the spread of email increase interorganizational collaboration?" Dave Crocker said yes. I am examining the co-authorship of RFCs to assess the amount of collaboration between different Arpanet research sites. However, I have to compare a pre-email introduction period with a post-email introduction period, when email was widely used. Is December 1972 a right cutoff point?

I know... it's a lot of information... thanks in any case!!
best
Roberto Dandi


--
Roberto Dandi
Ph. D. in Organisational Behaviour
at Università degli Studi del Molise (CB, Italy)
c/o Scuola di Management
LUISS Guido Carli
Via Tommasini 1
00162 Roma, Italy
tel. +39.06.86506555, fax +39.06.86506547
e-mail: rdandi at luiss.it
web-site: http://www.geocities.com/robertodandi

----- Original Message -----
From: Dave Crocker <dhc2 at dcrocker.net>
Date: Thursday, September 23, 2004 2:54 am
Subject: Re: [ih] questions on arpanet

> ***********************
> Your mail has been scanned by InterScan VirusWall.
> ***********-***********
>
>
> On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 19:24:12 +0200, rdandi at luiss.it wrote:
> >particular I am interested in studying how and to what extent CMC
> technologies (email, online RFCs...) impacted on coordination and
> identification within the early arpanet community.
>
> the impact was tremendous.  it quickly became key to multi-
> organization
> collaboration.
>
>
> >  1) Email traffic: is there any statistics on the use of email
> in
> arpanet in the period 1972-1978? In some documents I found
> reference to
> a study according to which in 1973 email traffic was about 75% of
> the
> whole traffic in arpanet. Do you know where can I find this study?
> In
> RFCs I found only traffic statistics (by McKenzie) that do not
> distinguish email traffic.
>
> I do not have numbers, but the reports I remember hearing through
> the
> 70's and even 80's was that Telnet, not email, dominated network
> traffic.
>
>
> d/
>
>
>


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