[ih] MAP & BBN

[John Day]

;-)  I am afraid that Alex is right!  ;-)  I 
mentioned Ritual for Catharsis #1 in an earlier 
message.

All about the Big Bad Neighbor who delivered coal one lump at a time.

Gee, I wonder what *that* referred to!?  ;-)

If you don't have a copy, you should!


At 14:55 -0700 2012/05/11, Alex McKenzie wrote:
>Bill,
>
>I know MAP was perpetually annoyed by BBN and 
>always felt BBN claimed to have invented 
>everything.  I was at BBN the entire time and I 
>always felt most of Mike's criticism was 
>unjustified.  BBN wrote a lot of papers, with 
>ARPAs strong encouragement, about what we did 
>do, and BBN did a lot.  We didn't write about 
>what others did- that was up to them.  So if 
>others didn't write so much, the written history 
>got kind of BBN-centric.
>
>One notable exception:  Ray Tomlinson was 
>credited by a lot of non-BBN people with 
>"inventing email" and Mike was justifiably upset 
>every time he heard that claim.  Mike seems to 
>have blamed BBN for making that claim.  However, 
>I think you can look as carefully as you want at 
>BBN publications and you will not find that 
>claim made by BBN.
>
>Sincerely,
>Alex
>
>
>
>From: Bill Ricker <bill.n1vux at gmail.com>
>To: David Elliott Bell <bell1945 at offthisweek.com>
>Cc: "internet-history at postel.org" <internet-history at postel.org>
>Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 10:59 PM
>Subject: Re: [ih] Hesitating to disagree with 
>one of the fathers of the InternetŠ..
>
>
>On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 5:34 PM, David Elliott 
>Bell 
><<mailto:bell1945 at offthisweek.com>bell1945 at offthisweek.com> 
>wrote:
>
>the need for layers (3 will do if you know what 
>you're going; if you don't, 11 won't help you);
>
>
>Correction, it is canonically '17 won't help you' .
>The ironic allusion to the hol(e)y 7 of the 
>Other Reference Model ("ISORM") makes this 
>MAPhorism much funnier than mere exaggeration.
>
>a world view about which layers and the rigidity 
>required to enforce layers; proposing alternate 
>protocols for achieving a desired goal; things 
>like that are part of design-ARPANET.
>
>
>Mike having come to protocol design and 
>programming via poetry rather than prosaic 
>electrical engineering, yes, he viewed layering 
>as the design, as the essense. The fact that 
>both the IMPs and NCP have been retired but the 
>network that  (D)ARPA wrought lives on as "the 
>Internet", over a hybrid hodgepodge of physical 
>subnets, militates that his logical view of The 
>Net has won out over the physical, just as the 
>pragmatic, good-enough ARM has won out of the 
>overly baroque OSI ISORM .
>
>However ...
>
>The Popular History of the Net has largely been 
>told from the BBN POV. As an editorial/authorial 
>decision, this is understandably so, much though 
>it may annoy those who worked on upper layers. 
>Having a for-profit's PR office on the case 
>doesn't hurt, but that is not solely 
>responsible. It's easier to follow BBN'S 
> IMP/TIP narrative than a narrative spread over 
>several campuses and multiple OS's no one uses 
>anymore, and far easier to explain challenges of 
>hardware than challenges of software to a 
>general audience. I have corroboration on that 
>bald assertion -- Tracey Kidder interviewed the 
>DG 'Eagle' operating system team manager while 
>researching 'Soul of the New Machine', and 
>couldn't figure out how to explain it, so went 
>back to focusing on hardware and microcode 
>teams. Networking may be easier to make metaphor 
>than an OS, but not compared to modems.
>
>[I worked for said DG manager at his next gig, 
>and volunteered with a 'microkid' a few years 
>later. The microkid taught me to drink cognac at 
>ACM committee meetings; Mike's whisky lessons 
>cured me of that quickly.] 
>
>
>--
>Bill
>@n1vux <mailto:bill.n1vux at gmail.com>bill.n1vux at gmail.com
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