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

[Thomas Haigh]

Thanks Chris and Marie,

I've received around a dozen other messages off list, so thanks to all of
those as well. If time permits I'll look into posting a draft online which
people can then sign in support prior to publication as Marie suggests.

Couple of updates. Apparently the pieces will run online, with possible
print pickup but not promised. Length around 1,500 words which will allow
for some depth. Deadline is "as long as you need" at this point.

So maybe 4 milestones as Chris suggests with a paragraph on each in the text
and some others just as bullets in a table. The benefit of having more
milestones in bullet form is to sketch some of the space between the 1970s
and email as the readers know it. Also to convey the point that there were
indeed a lot of crucial incremental inventions that fed into the stream of
development, but none of these were made by Ayyadurai.

Re Marie's other point, the job title issue would almost certainly not make
the article, as it would seem very petty to the public. Ayyadurai's
credibility was certainly boosted by many reports describing him as an "MIT
professor. "Faculty Lecturer" was just something that jumped out at me as
the word "faculty" has a very specific meaning within American universities.
Lecturer/visiting lecturer is a non-faculty job category that many
institutions use for a range of academic staff functions, and it can be
dressed up with variant informal titles. On the other hand, being a faculty
member at a place like MIT has some very real privileges and responsibility
and I suspect that the actual faculty members guard them jealously. So you
can't just attach the word "faculty" to a job at whim. Still, MIT is proudly
idiosyncratic in a number of areas which is why I wondered about local
usage. 

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
Behalf Of McDonald, Christopher
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 4:33 PM
To: Marie Hicks; sigcis
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Email inventor: Help me set the record
straight for the WP

I agree with Marie that a simpler account would be better. Maybe

1) CTSS / time-sharing systems

2) ARPANET mail (the @ sign makes a nice anecdote)

3) Commercial e-mail systems

4) MIME or webmail 

I did a quick Google Books search for "email" or "e-mail" in the range
1960-80, and the first few pages of hits were positives - mis-dated or some
kind of transcription error.  
Inconclusive, but it suggests that neither term was in wide use before 1980.


On the other hand, there are many hits on "electronic mail".

Chris

________________________________________
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [members-bounces at sigcis.org] On Behalf Of
Marie Hicks [mhicks1 at iit.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 5:06 PM
To: sigcis
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Email inventor: Help me set the record
straight for the WP

Hi everyone,

Tom, that's great news. For what it's worth (and perhaps others here
can chime in with their thoughts), I'd say that keeping the milestones
to 4 would probably serve our side of the story better. Short and
sweet points of historical information that support an easily
graspable overall thesis will grab the casual reader.

I'd also like to resist the urge to go on a credential hunt--I think
that quibbling with Ayyadurai's formal title at MIT will only detract
from the points we'd like to see the public absorb.

If you'd like a second pair of eyes on the piece, I'd be happy to
help. Indeed, maybe we, as a group, could offer a vetting of the piece
if you're comfortable with making it into a collaborative SIGCIS
endeavor over the list. Not only might it give the resulting piece
more weight (to be signed by the main collective of historians on
computing history) but it would also be a great way to further enhance
the SIGCIS's public exposure.

Best,

Marie
_______________
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 Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 2:57 PM, Thomas Haigh <thaigh at computer.org> wrote:
> 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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