[SIGCIS-Members] Email inventor: Help me set the record straight for the WP

[Thomas Haigh]

Hello everyone,

 

Exciting news! If you read the response from the Washington Post ombudsman,
you may remember that it mentioned that the post "has invited Ayyadurai and
MIT to write a response to all the readers who wrote in to denounce the
story. That also is an excellent way to address the dispute, and enhance the
discussion. That will be appearing in coming days."

 

I've just been asked by Emi Kolawole to prepare a piece disputing
Ayyadurai's claim and laying out the actual historical consensus on the
invention of email. This will presumably run alongside his defense of his
position. Not sure about length or format yet.

 

So, who wants to help me get it right? To avoid spamming the list too much,
maybe reply to me directly unless you are confident your post will be of
general interest to the list.

 

Here are a few areas where I'd like to pin things down more and would
welcome assistance.

 

1)      Does anyone have a usage of "email" or "e-mail" prior to 1980? I
haven't looked seriously at this.

2)      If I had space to mention 6 or 8 milestones in the development of
"modern email" what would they be? Say a sentence, a date, and maybe a
person or two for each. I'm thinking something like 

a.       CTSS and other timesharing university systems, 

b.      ARPANET network mail, 

c.       Proprietary commercial email systems

d.      SMTP over TCP/IP, 

e.      desktop clients, 

f.        Notes 

g.       MIME, 

h.      webmail. 

3)      Does anyone know MIT job titles? Ayyadurai claims to be a "Faculty
Lecturer in Biological Engineering" at MIT and this has been widely reported
and even survived recent upheavals on his Wikipedia page. This seemed rather
tautological to me, as lecturer is not  usually a faculty position in the
USA. Googling "Faculty Lecturer" MIT gives no other individuals holding this
title.  One of his personal pages at MIT includes the title,
http://web.mit.edu/be/people/ayyadurai.shtml although he does not appear on
a list of faculty in Biological Engineering
http://web.mit.edu/be/people/alphabetical.shtml. He is listed on another
page http://web.mit.edu/be/people/index.shtml  as "Research/Teaching Staff".
Doing a "people" search from the MIT web page, which pulls official
institutional data, gives him only as a Visiting Lecturer (a job title I do
understand) in Comparative Media Studies. So does the position of "Faculty
Lecturer" even exist at MIT?

 

Tom

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