[ih] OSI and alternate reality

[Bill Ricker]

Speaking as the Literary Estate of Michael A Padlipsky (MAP)*

On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 3:00 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> Well, I've always liked sci-fi "alternate reality" stories.

Since MAP — our own Casandra preaching against OSI ISORM from within the
temple of GOSIP (MITRE, where I met him) — wrote the 1st or 2nd
degree-thesis on SciFi as LitCrit,†
he would have had several opinions on this sentence, and the following
introductory paragraph.
(The rest of the analysis I'm not quibbling; from what i remember learning
at MAP's metaphoric knee, the history *sounds* right, and extrapolation
sounds plausible.)

I suspect he'd have said that an "alternate reality" in which OSI was the
basis for a cyberpunk setting was ^science-fiction^ only in the broader
sense in which say elves-with-aluminum-block Vega hot-rods in the hills
surrounding Los Angeles (a real book series, don't ask! Just don't
drag-race an elf on Dead Man's Curve at midnight, ok?) or steam-powered
dirigibles transit from Earth to our Victorian Mars Colonies (ditto only
moreso) are accepted under the greater SciFi&Fantasy rubric.

> IMHO, both the TCP/IP and OSI approaches were similarly incomplete back
> in the 80s and 90s when the marketplace was choosing the Internet
> approach.   Evidence ...

Yes, more was to come from both. However, examining the contemporaneous
testimony we can recall that one had more there there then than the other
then.

MAP's own writing in the 1980s (*Tea Bag Papers*‡ [1982] et seq.) observed
that the ARPA Reference Model had a working prototype, evolved from actual
use, unlike the Other Brand.
His aphorism on the situation went something like this (*I don't have the
right source file ready to hand, alas*; *i looked*):

> when Junior asks to borrow the car tonight for his hot date,
> offering him a tire, a steering wheel, and a Cadillac sales brochure
> is not going to meet his immediate need.
>
(IIRC, his was more elaborate yet of course pithier than i can recreate -
the 4 tires were 4 different sizes?)

In the 1985 collected expansion of the *Tea Bag Papers*, *_Elements of
Networking Style_*,§ MAP wrote of OSI *et al* as
"*oversold, underdesigned, & years from here*."
(Which the elders and historians among us will recognize as a formerly
obvious allusion to the witty derogatory complaint about US GIs (Yanks)
while collecting England in preparation for OPERATION OVERLORD (commonly
mistakenly called D-DAY):
"*oversexed, over-paid, and over here*".)



* https://n1vux.github.io/articles/MAP/
† https://n1vux.github.io/articles/MAP/SciFi/
‡ https://n1vux.github.io/articles/MAP/RFC/#teabag
§ Literary Executor is my penance, since i inadvertently acted as
Author-Agent in that placement. Field Editor that I got deskcopy from and
gave bookstore-placement for a couple dozen Unix how-to books to wanted to
know if i had a manuscript begging to get out. i answered no, but i have a
friend&colleague who does.