[SIGCIS-Members] Resources on Ayyadurai saga

Tue Jan 24 03:37:59 PST 2017

"Note that, if we apply here the Shiva Ayyadurai logic, this Frenchman can claim to have invented Twitter 45 years ago – with 20 extra signs as a bonus."

Amusingly, I ran into a copy of Amiga World from 1988 with a special feature on "getting online", and the guy on the cover drawing is, literally, "tweeting" - picture here:

https://twitter.com/MinitelResearch/status/626751659310342144/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

I think someone retweeted this to Jack Dorsey, but no lawsuit seems to have been filed against that magazine yet...

Cheers!
Julien

------
Julien Mailland
Assistant Professor of Telecommunications
Indiana University
www.minitel.us

      From: Pierre MOUNIER-KUHN <mounier at msh-paris.fr>
 To: members <members at sigcis.org> 
 Sent: Monday, January 23, 2017 7:59 PM
 Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Resources on Ayyadurai saga

Hi,Just to add footnotes to the chronicle of email, I just asked about early development and use of electronic mail on the list of Bull-GE and CII-Honeywell-Bull veterans. Among the first answers:

• Claude Ducarouge :  "In late 1970-early1971, to integrate GCOS7 [one of the major OS under development within Honeywell Information Systems, ex-GEIS] we used the Boston Multics system with TTY33 consoles ( 2 or 3 consoles). To communicate daily with the developers in Boston and to organize exchanges of files (shipment of  magnetic tapes through Air France pilots, processing in Boston and retrieval of printed results of compilations 24 h later at Orly airport), we exchanged messages between the TTY33s of Paris and Boston. Some texts started to be processed with the Worpro function on Multics to edit documents... And the messages would point at "attachments", to a path toward a file on the system.
• Alain Bron, who worked in the early 1970s at the national champion CII on the large IRIS 80 computer, participated in the development of an OS dedicated to teleprocessing, Stratege, which "offered already multi-windows and a message functionnality of up to 160 characters". Note that, if we apply here the Shiva Ayyadurai logic, this Frenchman can claim to have invented Twitter 45 years ago – with 20 extra signs as a bonus.
Hope this helps – at least to start a bright year,Pierre Mounier-Kuhn
De: "Murray Turoff" <murray.turoff at gmail.com>
À: "Ian S. King" <isking at uw.edu>
Cc: "members" <members at sigcis.org>
Envoyé: Lundi 23 Janvier 2017 05:54:23
Objet: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Resources on Ayyadurai saga

GE had general time sharing internationally using BASIC a number of us internationally used it for "email"  we all had the same account access and an email identified who it was to in the title of the basic program which turned out to be a set of REM(ark) statements with what ever message we want to share internationally.

On Sun, Jan 22, 2017 at 6:09 PM, Ian S. King <isking at uw.edu> wrote:

Another bit of interesting information I found while doing some research for my dissertation, take a look at this oral history on the CHM site: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102658003.  Warner Sinback, in discussing his work with General Electric, talks about creating an email system.  The timeframe is not clearly defined but it is obvious from the text that it is prior to 1979, easily placed in the early 1970s and perhaps as early as the late 1960s.  
The body of 'prior art' accumulates.  It certainly seems that the idea of email was a parallel evolution across the computer industry, not a point event - and certainly not in 1979 (or whatever date Ayyadurai is claiming this week).  -- Ian 
On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 10:42 AM, Glenn Bugos <Glenn at momentllc.com> wrote:

Don’t think this tidbit has appeared on the list...A few years back there was a rock musical in London called Loserville.  It’s now closed, though American high schools are picking it up.  It is set in 1971, focusing on Michael Dork, a nerdy high school student confused by girls, with a tight group of friends, striving to invent email as his “one way ticket out of Loserville."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDUqgUylpVA

Here’s a high school in Oregon, performing the last act of the play, where the brilliant, beautiful and underestimated Holly, blackmailed by the scion of military contractor Arch Systems, enjoys the Eureka moment of putting “@“ in the address (:45) then passes her secret along to her friend Michael (3:30). “After all this time/it seems so obvious/we’re making history/we’ll be notorious/so many sleepless nights/it never came to us/it’s so simple/it’s genius.”  Then “It’s the birth of the digital/God what a miracle/we are really living in the future now.”

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-- 
Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate
The Information School
Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical Narrative Through a Design Lens

Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal Value Sensitive Design Research Lab

University of Washington

There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China." 
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This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org

-- 
please send messages to murray.turoff at gmail.com  do not use @njit.edu address

Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Information Systems, NJIT
homepage: http://is.njit.edu/turoff

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This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org

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