[SIGCIS-Members] Email was invented by a school boy in 1978 says Washington Post & Time Magazine

[Thomas Haigh]

Thanks Marie,

I had already suggested to our main web content volunteer, Chris McDonald,
that he consider doing this. He agreed.

Meanwhile I'm spending far too much of my afternoon following this story. My
message got forwarded to the "Interesting People" list, and has been picked
up in turn by the techdirt blog.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120222/11132917842/how-guy-who-didnt-inve
nt-email-got-memorialized-press-smithsonian-as-inventor-email.shtml 

There is a Wikipedia page on Shiva Ayyadurai, presumably created by the man
himself. Look at recent edits to the "Talk page" and the section "Email
Claims." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Ayyadurai So the forces of the
web have begun to correct things.

His resume is at http://stuff.mit.edu/people/vashiva/index.html. He claims
to be a "Faculty Lecturer" at MIT in the Biological Engineering division and
director of its "EMAIL LAB" -- however his link for the "lab" goes to
another vanity domain featuring his own take on history.
http://theemaillab.org/home.asp. The MIT people directory lists him merely
as "Visiting Lecturer" in the Comparative Media Studies department. The
Media and Organizationl Biometrics Initiative" he claims to direct has
another very skimpy site, though it is at least hosted at MIT:
http://mdg.mit.edu/home.asp.   

He has also set up a site to promote his claim at
http://www.historyofemail.net/. 

In answer to Jon Lindsay, the exact status of the Smithsonian involvement is
unclear. I did find a Smithsonian blog post that just went up today at
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2012/02/a-piece-of-email-histo
ry-comes-to-the-american-history-museum/. This calls the system "one of the
first to include a number of features we take for granted" which is rather
more nuanced than Ayyadurai's own claim. My guess is that someone agreed to
take a box of papers documenting what is, after all, a system whose code and
design will be of genuine interest to future historians. Ayyadurai then
puffed this up into being "honored by the Smithsonian," endorsement of his
claims, etc.

Tom





-----Original Message-----
From: Marie Hicks [mailto:mhicks1 at iit.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 2:40 PM
To: Thomas Haigh; members at sigcis.org
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Email was invented by a school boy in 1978
says Washington Post & Time Magazine

Hi all,

Tom, would you consider posting a shortened version of your initial
email on the sigcis.org blog? And SIGCIS members, would you consider
going over there and commenting on it? It strikes me that this is a
perfect opportunity to have a public conversation, on our terms, about
the history of computing--one that will hopefully be enlightening for
a broader public.

As you pointed out, the news outlets did a poor job of sourcing these
articles: "Even calling a historian might take an hour or two to
arrange. But are they even incapable of using Wikipedia and Google?"

Let's stack the deck a bit more in our favor. Let's put some high
quality content out there on the SIGCIS blog for folks to read now,
and refer back to in the future.

Best,

Marie
(SIGCIS Vice Chair, Operations)
_______________
Marie Hicks, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of History of Technology
Lewis Department of the Humanities
Illinois Institute of Technology
Chicago, IL
mhicks1 at iit.edu
twitter: @histoftech
www.mariehicks.net



On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 12:07 PM, Dave Walden
<dave.walden.family at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Naturally this was discussed on the exBBN list.  In my view, this "new
>> guy" has described something not quite like what the rest of us
understand
>> when we say "email".  I think there are three useful documents on the
actual
>> history of email as we know it linked to under "Relevant to Chapter 20"
at
>>
>>
>>
<http://walden-family.com/bbn/#ref-email>http://walden-family.com/bbn/#ref-e
mail
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> home address: 12 Linden Rd., E. Sandwich, MA 02537
> home ph=508-888-7655; cell ph = 503-757-3137
> email address:  dave at walden-family.com; website:
> <http://www.walden-family.com/bbn/>http://www.walden-family.com/bbn/
>
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list
of
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