[ih] Eric Allman giving a public talk on the history of email

[Don Hopkins]

I wish I could make it! 

An insightful quote from Eric’s home page:

"I was happily semi-retired for a while, but then (to my surprise) decided I wanted more social contact. After spending a career wishing that people would just go away and leave you alone so you could get some work done, it's quite a shock when they actually do it, and not nearly as pleasant as you might think.” -Eric Allman

http://www.neophilic.com/~eric/

And of course his classic quote outing sendmail:

"There is some sort of perverse pleasure in knowing that it's basically impossible to send a piece of hate mail through the Internet without its being touched by a gay program. That's kind of funny.” -Eric Allman, The Advocate, 3 March 1998, p. 41.

-Don

> On Oct 4, 2021, at 02:43, Bill Woodcock via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Perhaps of interest…  Eric and Kirk have been very active members of the Berkeley Hillside Club, our neighborhood social club, for the past two decades.  Eric will shortly (this evening) be giving a public talk on the history of email.
> 
>                                -Bill
> 
> 
> October Fireside Meeting — Monday, October 4th, 2021
> 7:30 pm on Zoom
> 
> 
> October Fireside Meeting
> Monday, October 4th, 2021
> 
> <https://hillsideclub.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=42d3e713c28ba5d4d8c2226fd&id=d02885f080&e=78bfa10bd7>
> In Conversation with Eric Allman:  The Evolution of Sendmail and the Internet
> 
> Most Hillside Club members are aware than our new Club President is a wine aficionado, having seen him and his husband Kirk McKusick lead wine tastings, and coordinate the wine pouring at our Club dinners. But you may not realize that he is also an esteemed member of the Internet Hall of Fame, nor know how much you are indebted to Eric if you have ever used email. This conversation will discuss the origins of sendmail, the attitudes of the time, and how the Internet grew and changed over the years.
> 
> Join us on Monday, October 4th as 1st Vice President Arlene Baxter engages Eric Allman in conversation about those early, heady days as electronic communication began to be an essential part of all of our lives.
> 
> A bit of background:  On January 1, 1983, the Internet was born from the ashes of the ARPAnet, and sendmail was already there. Written by Eric Allman as a stopgap measure in the early 1980s, it grew with the Internet, at one point delivering around 90% of all the email on the network.
> The early developers of the Internet believed that "universal communication" would promote democracy and bring people closer together. Things didn't work out that way. Many folks, including Eric, gave away their work for free. That changed too.
> Come learn more about the evolution of these tools we now take for granted on Monday, October 4th at 7:30 pm as part of our Hillside Club Fireside Series on Zoom, free and open to the public.
> 
> 
> Register here: bit.ly/HSC-Firesides2021 <http://bit.ly/HSC-Firesides2021>
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history