[SIGCIS-Members] Why is HuffPost publishing another "invention of email" series?

[Hahn, Barbara]

Of course these claims are not peculiar to the history of Computing and Information but are a common misattribution in the larger history of technology of which this group is a part.  I am thinking of my most recent experience with these claims, that "George Mitchell invented fracking."  I have a student working on the topic and his committee member, a petroleum engineer, vociferously disagrees.  Of course that engineer is indicating that *he* invented fracking!

We know too that some people understand how to make such a claim, and make it stick, whether in the courts or the patent office or Wikipedia.  It is fascinating to watch this process unfold in real time

It might do us some good to consider why these stories take hold so much more easily than the history we research and write.
 
+ + + + +
Dr. Barbara Hahn
Associate Editor, Technology and Culture
Associate Professor, History Department, Texas Tech University (on leave 2014-2016)
Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow
School of History, University of Leeds
@behahn
http://ttu.academia.edu/BarbaraHahn

________________________________________
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [members-bounces at sigcis.org] on behalf of Thomas Haigh [thaigh at computer.org]
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2014 11:37 AM
To: 'Andrew Russell'; 'sigcis'
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Why is HuffPost publishing another "invention     of      email" series?

Thanks Andy,

The article series had been brought to my attention, but it's hard to summon
up the enthusiasm to launch an fresh round of engagement. Every aspect of
Ayyadurai's argument up to this point is summarized and evaluated at
http://www.sigcis.org/ayyadurai. So if you come across anyone interested,
please point them in that direction.

It does seem that actual journalists are less frequently being fooled by his
claims since the 2012 debunking, with a couple of exceptions: substantial
coverage in India where his accusations of American racisms appear to be
playing well, and a recent public radio segment on Marketplace where he was
introduced as "one of the creators of email."

However there is a vast world of content farms and bottom feeding
syndication sites where any press release will be picked up and recycled.
The Huffington Post is an interesting hybrid, as its forays into actual
journalism give a spurious legitimacy to the rest of the site which is
mostly unclothed celebrities and public relations hackwork. The epic series
of Huffington Post articles just reuses material from Ayyadurai's book and
website, circling again and again around handful of dubious talking points.

The Techdirt piece Andy linked to hits the key points in response,
particularly the concerted attempt Ayyadurai is making present copyright on
a program code listing as if it was a patent on a technology. Techdirt
misses a few things, for example accepting the new claims 1978 date for the
system whereas Ayyadurai himself had previously dated the first
implementation to 1980. The OED has a 1979 usage of the contraction "e-mail"
whereas I have not seen a documented use by Ayyadurai prior to 1981. So even
the claim that he was the first to contract "electronic mail" to "email" is
so far unsupported. But overall the Techdirt response seems to do the job.

The latest Huffington Post piece, which is credited to an MIT "Professor of
Practice" although it is clearly adapted from material Ayyadurai previously
published on a website and in his book, does mention "an Internet cabal of
SIGCIS 'historians' with ties to Raytheon/BBN."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-j-nightingale/the-history-of-email-fiv
e-myths-about-email_b_5756340.html

Best wishes,

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
Behalf Of Andrew Russell
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2014 9:58 AM
To: sigcis
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Why is HuffPost publishing another "invention of
email" series?

At the risk of (or in hopes of) provoking Tom Haigh and others, I thought I
would share the following:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140901/07280928386/huffpo-publishes-biza
rre-misleading-factually-incorrect-multi-part-series-pretending-guy-invented
-email-even-though-he-didnt.shtml

I'm sure many of you noticed the recent round of HuffPo stories, promoting
the claims of the guy who claimed to invent email in 1978.  Similar to the
"Al Gore invented the Internet" story from several years ago, this
particular "invention of email" story seems to be more compelling through a
media studies lens (i.e., why do media outlets keep publishing nonsense?),
and not at all a case of uncertainty or debate amongst serious historians or
networking engineers.

Andy
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