[ih] Defamation lawsuit brought by self-proclaimed email "inventor" settles

[Karl Auerbach]

On 5/18/19 6:41 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:

> On 5/18/2019 4:36 PM, Dr Eberhard W Lisse wrote:
>> Does it really, really matter who can lay claim to email?
> Does clarity about the details of history matter?  People tend to think
> it does.  For many reasons.

I agree with Dave's point - clarity does matter.  (And when it comes to 
e-mail I can not think of a greater authority than Dave Crocker.)

However, my thought of how to respond goes in a somewhat different 
direction.

My wife (Chris Wellens) and I set forth some years ago to try to collect 
long (several hour long) interviews with people involved with the 
invention of the internet. We had to take a hiatus, but we will be 
resuming soon.  (Many of you on this list are probably also on our list 
of people we want to talk to.)

Our intention is to publish every second of the raw takes of those 
interviews, the video and the audio, under a non-commercial use Creative 
Commons license (we added the non-commercial part because we fear abuse 
of the material by hack popular history outlets such as History 
Channel.)  (Some of our interviewees have requested that their comments 
be published directly into the public domain.)  We've had an informal 
offer from the Internet Archives that they would be willing to host 
these materials, which is something we hope to do.

We also plan our own focused/edited selections, but as in Roshomon, each 
of us may see things differently; so we want to allow others to re-use 
the base materials to tell other stories and provide other views.

Our goal is not to illuminate specific technologies but, rather, to 
delve into the way that ideas came about, evolved, grew or faded, and 
conflicted.  We are more interested in the process of invention than in 
the technology of the invention.

My wife and I feel like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet - we have 
had the opportunity to play a role among other, larger actors, in a 
great event, the invention of the internet.  While these actors are 
alive we want to give them the opportunity to make a record about their 
roles and, and as important, their interactions with others.

With our compendium and others, those who make specious claims of 
invention will find it difficult to maintain that claim over the decades 
(and probably centuries) as people ask "how did this great thing come to 
be?"

     --karl--