[SIGCIS-Members] Data on Bitnet

[ULYSSES PASCAL]

Hello

In the course of my research on the history of international business
information systems I came across this article about the history of BITNET
in Singapore:
http://phyweb.physics.nus.edu.sg/~phytanb/bitnet4.htm
It describes setting up BITNET at the National University of Singapore in
1987
And it even provides a copy of the first message sent with BITNET to the
National University of Singapore:
http://phyweb.physics.nus.edu.sg/~phytanb/email2.htm
Unfortunately it is not immediately useful for my research (to my knowledge
BITNET was not used for business communication?) but I hope you and your
colleagues find it interesting.

Best,
Ulysses Pascal
PhD Candidate
Information Studies, UCLA
automatedfutures.net


On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 9:22 AM David Grier <grier at email.gwu.edu> wrote:

> Kathrin
> Bitnet had an early variant of the of the listserve program developed by a
> student at the Ecole Politechnique in Paris.  The program ran on IBM
> mainframes.  It spread rapidly across the net though only a couple of dozen
> sites had large number of lists.  Most of the lists dealt with network
> management.  A number deal with with the usual techie hobbies.  A few took
> the Apranet lists and redistributed them.  (And you might want to look
> there in terms of chasing patent ideas.  Arpanet/CSnet/NSFNet were far more
> technically inclined than the Bitnet community.  In fact they advertised
> themselves as" the network for everybody else.”).
>
> A few of the list serves have been archived but they tended to be
> abandoned as schools switched their primary servers from 370 architecture
> machines  ro unix machines.  It is attached
>
> I did an article on bitnet and the list serves in the Annals 20 years
> ago.  It is attached if it may be of use.
>
> David
>
>
> On Aug 25, 2020, at 12:07 PM, Wernsdorf Kathrin <
> kathrin.wernsdorf at ip.mpg.de> wrote:
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> My coauthors and I are currently working on a project measuring the impact
> of Bitnet on academic patenting. After the adoption of Bitnet by a
> university between 1981 and 1990, we find a substantial increase in
> patenting by university-affiliated researchers. We are now wondering why
> this is the case.
>
> Reading about Bitnet, we came across the fact that email lists were an
> especially popular item. We think it would be fascinating to know the
> content of these email lists. Do you happen to know whether data on these
> email lists exists and is available somewhere? Also, do you know whether
> some archives of listserves or discussion groups exist where users
> discussed for what they used Bitnet and what challenges they faced?
>
> Any thoughts and hints are highly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.
>
> Kathrin
>
> _________________________________
>
> Kathrin Wernsdorf
>
> Doctoral Student and Junior Research Fellow
>
>
> Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
>
> Marstallplatz 1
>
> 80539 München
>
> kathrin.wernsdorf at ip.mpg.de
>
> www.ip.mpg.de
>
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