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Email invention humor from FunnyOrDie
by Thomas Haigh 10 Sep '14

10 Sep '14

"The Inventor of Email Proposes to Fran Drescher Via Email <http://www.funnyordie.com/articles/27907efedb/the-inventor-of-email-propose s-to-fran-drescher-via-email> " by Pat O'Brien. http://www.funnyordie.com/articles/27907efedb/the-inventor-of-email-proposes -to-fran-drescher-via-email Reasonably funny, even if it does go for the most obvious characteristic of each member of the happy couple. Tom

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Fwd: [Humanist] 28.299 events: Software as Scholarship cfp
by Willard McCarty 10 Sep '14

10 Sep '14

Perhaps the following will be of interest? Yours, WM -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Humanist] 28.299 events: Software as Scholarship cfp Resent-From: <willard.mccarty(a)kcl.ac.uk> Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 07:09:01 +0000 From: Humanist Discussion Group <willard.mccarty(a)mccarty.org.uk> Reply-To: Online seminar for digital humanities <humanist(a)lists.digitalhumanities.org> To: humanist(a)lists.digitalhumanities.org <humanist(a)lists.digitalhumanities.org> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 28, No. 299. Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist Submit to: humanist(a)lists.digitalhumanities.org Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 10:03:09 +0000 From: <tara.andrews(a)kps.unibe.ch> Subject: Call for papers 'Software as Scholarship', Bern, 29-30 January 2015 Abstracts are now invited for a two-day workshop, jointly organised by Digital Humanities @ Uni Bern and Infoclio.ch http://Infoclio.ch , to be held 29-30 January 2015. The full call for participation is now online: http://www.dh.unibe.ch/en/2014/08/software-scholarship/ https://infoclio.ch/en/node/135615 Deadline for abstract submission: 11 October 2014. With best wishes, Tara Andrews -- Prof. Dr. Tara L Andrews Digital Humanities, Universität Bern http://www.dh.unibe.ch/ Scholarship in Software, Software as Scholarship: From Genesis to Peer Review ‘Expressions’, 29 January 2015: Workshop on Software-based Scholarship Organizer: Digital Humanities, Universität Bern Computation and software analysis have entered nearly every imaginable field of scholarship in the last decades, in a variety of forms from digital publication of results to computational modelling embedded in experimental work. In each of these digital outputs – be it an interactive publication with mapping of relevant geo-referenced data, or perhaps a statistical program for the categorization of millions of books according to their literary genre – there is some manifestation directly in the computer code of the scholarly thought that underlies the project, of the intellectual argument around which the outcome is based. The fact that scholarly software includes scholarly content is reasonably well-accepted. What remains controversial is the attempt at identification, in any particular instance, of what scholarly contribution has been made by a piece of software. Its makers tend to express the scholarship in writing separate from the software itself, if they even make explicit at all the scholarly reasoning that went into the code; its reviewers and users tend either to treat the software as a ‘black box’, opaque to informed scrutiny and therefore to be looked on with grave suspicion, or to deny that this particular software has any scholarship inherent to the source code. Given that our mechanisms for identifying and evaluating the scholarship within computer code are nearly nonexistent, we must ask: how do intellectual arguments — how does scholarship — come to be expressed in the software of digital humanities? How does this scholarship, so evident in theory but so elusive in practice, fit into the scientific process of advancement of knowledge? ‘Evaluation’, 30 January 2015: Round table on Peer Review for Digital Scholarly Work Organizer: Infoclio.ch Related to the question of the expression of scholarship in software, and in other forms of digital publication as well, is the question of how to evaluate it. This topic will be the focus of a half-day roundtable, Peer Review for Digital Scholarly Work, to be held on 30 January 2015. Digital scholarly works such as Digital Editions, Digital Libraries, Digital Exhibitions, Data Visualization, Geographical Information Systems and the like are increasingly frequent in the Humanities, as main or secondary output of research projects; the question of how best to evaluate them takes on ever greater importance. At the moment, researchers doing digital scholarly work are usually unable to obtain academic credit for their work—in order to obtain scholarly recognition, they must additionally publish a “normal” article in a print-based journal about their digital work. As universities and national research funding agencies across the world move toward encouraging more digital scholarship in the humanities, there is an urgent need to discuss the criteria and benchmarks that should be in place for evaluating digital scholarly work. We welcome contributions about existing initiatives in this domain as well as more theoretical contributions that treat the topic of peer review of digital scholarly work. _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe at: http://www.dhhumanist.org/Restricted/listmember_interface.php List posts to: humanist(a)lists.digitalhumanities.org List info and archives at at: http://digitalhumanities.org/humanist Listmember interface at: http://digitalhumanities.org/humanist/Restricted/listmember_interface.php Subscribe at: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist/membership_form.php

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] First instructional videos for Macintosh?
by Mike Willegal 09 Sep '14

09 Sep '14

Luisa, The audio tapes that played in sync with the guided tour disk on the Mac 128K would quite an impression on someone in 1984. There are some u-tube videos of these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pwammW5syw regards, Mike Willegal > > > > On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 10:28 PM, Luisa Emmi Beck <emmi.beck(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi SIGCIS members, > > I'm working on a radio story about the history of personal computing. > > I would like to find instructional videos for the first Macintosh or other personal computers. The goal is to give listeners a sense for how new and incredible the idea of personal computing was in the 1970s. Does anyone on this list know of where I could find such videos? I haven't been able to find anything on YouTube but I'm hoping to be able to track down a few instructional videos (or at least the audio portion of the videos). > > Thanks! > Luisa > > (510) 856.7475 > http://luisabeck.com/ > > _______________________________________________ > This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members > > > > > From: Luisa Emmi Beck <emmi.beck(a)gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] First instructional videos for Macintosh? > Date: September 9, 2014 at 3:59:04 PM EDT > To: Paul McJones <paul(a)mcjones.org> > Cc: "members(a)sigcis.org" <members(a)sigcis.org> > > > Thanks Paul! Do you happen to have Donald Wallace's contact information? It would be neat to ask him more about using the keyset (why he decided to learn and use it, etc. ). Thanks! > > On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 11:53 AM, Paul McJones <paul(a)mcjones.org> wrote: > On Sep 9, 2014, at 10:26 AM, Luisa Emmi Beck <emmi.beck(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> I'm fascinated by Doug Engelbart's early three-button mouse and chorded keyset system. Some people I've talked to say that Doug used it for almost all tasks except for when he was typing long texts- which is when he switched to using the QWERTY keyboard). When Steve Jobs commissioned IDEO to design the mouse for Lisa, he told David Kelley to only include one button. And the keyset was entirely lost. >> >> The reason most people mention is that the keyset and three-button mouse were difficult to learn. .... >> >> So my key questions are: >> What happened to the chorded keyset? Why didn't it become popular? > I can give first-hand information from Xerox from late 1976 through early 1981: I worked at Xerox SDD organization in Palo Alto, designing the Pilot operating system that was part of the Xerox Star 8010 office system. We used Altos for software development (until we’d bootstrapped to the new Star hardware), for document editing, and for electronic mail(!). During that time, I knew of only one or two people at SDD or down the street at PARC who used the five-finger keyset. Learning the mouse was fast and intuitive, but learning the keyset took more time than most people were willing to devote to it. I’m pretty sure most Altos still came with a keyset, but they were unused. The one person I remember using the keyset was Donald “Smokey” Wallace, who came to Xerox from Eglebart’s NLS project. He used an editor named UGH that ran on the Alto and mimicked the functionality of NLS. The rest of us enjoyed his demonstrations, but went back to using Bravo and other editors that didn’t take advantage of the keyset. (Bill Duvall of PARC wrote UGH, so I assume he used the keyset too, but I didn’t witness that.) > > > Paul McJones > > > > > -- > Luisa > > (510) 856.7475 > http://luisabeck.com/ > > > > From: Luisa Emmi Beck <emmi.beck(a)gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] First instructional videos for Macintosh? > Date: September 9, 2014 at 3:56:41 PM EDT > To: Marc Weber <marc(a)webhistory.org>, "members(a)sigcis.org" <members(a)sigcis.org> > > > Hi Marc, > > Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Could I ask a few follow-up questions? > > Nothing much like Engelbart's NLS has ever reached the mass market, and if it suddenly did today it would need to overcome 30 years of habit. > > Can you say more about that? What parts of Engelbart's NLS do you think are still missing? And have they not reached the mass market because of a learning curve? Or what other potential reasons? > > Incidentally, Doug did have quite a bit of contact with Apple in the '80s and there were people there who had huge respect for him. But there weren't many direct results. > > Do you mean that people didn't carry on his ideas at other companies like Apple? What ideas do you think were lost and why? > > If you want to learn more about Engelbart and the mouse, there are a lot of resources I can point you to. The bulk of the archives of his group at SRI as well as his personal papers are with us or at Stanford Libraries, and we collaborate extensively. > > We did an event in Doug's memory last December, here's a writeup and several links: http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/chm-fellow-douglas-c-engelbart/ > > This writeup is wonderful. Thank you! Ted Nelson's Eulogy is also quite moving. > > Here are some searches related to Engelbart and the mouse within our "Revolution" exhibition: http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/search?q=engelbart, http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/search?q=mouse&x=0&y=0, > > We also have extensive video footage of Doug in our collection, as well as a "show and tell" interview with Bill English, co-inventor of the mouse > > If you're telling the story of the mouse the 20 years between its invention in 1964 and its popularization with the Mac is heavily focused around Xerox PARC; I can also point you to resources for that part of the history. You might also want to mention the Logitech story (they funded Engelbart's offices out of gratitude, starting in the '80s). > > Best, Marc > > Marc Weber | marc(a)webhistory.org | +1 415 282 6868 > Internet History Program Founder and Curator, Computer History Museum > 1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043 computerhistory.org/nethistory > Co-founder, Web History Center and Project, webhistory.org > > > > On Sep 9, 2014, at 10:26 AM, Luisa Emmi Beck wrote: > >> Thank you everyone! On a related note- I'm wondering whether anyone on the list has thoughts about the angle of my story (whether it is historically accurate and whether the design tension I'm raising is relevant and interesting to you): >> >> I'm fascinated by Doug Engelbart's early three-button mouse and chorded keyset system. Some people I've talked to say that Doug used it for almost all tasks except for when he was typing long texts- which is when he switched to using the QWERTY keyboard). When Steve Jobs commissioned IDEO to design the mouse for Lisa, he told David Kelley to only include one button. And the keyset was entirely lost. >> >> The reason most people mention is that the keyset and three-button mouse were difficult to learn. They required recall whereas the simple on-button mouse relied on drop-down menus and that the user recognize the relevant icons. But people who saw Doug use the keyset and three-button mouse said that he was much more efficient with it than anyone who relied solely on the one-button mouse and keyboard. Doug taught everyone (even secretaries, his children, etc. how to use the keyset and three-button mouse). Generally, when designing systems, Doug seems to be more focused on making devices that are learnable and high performance as opposed to simple (which is what Steve Jobs focused on to make Lisa with it's one-button mouse marketable). >> >> So my key questions are: >> What happened to the chorded keyset? Why didn't it become popular? >> What are the key differences between Doug Engelbart's and Steve Jobs design philosophy? >> What (if anything) do we lose by designing systems that focus so much on simplicity and usability instead of learnability >> What might Doug think of the Apple products that so many of us use today? Did Apple trade high-performance systems for the sake of "usability"? >> Apple products and Apple's design philosophy are everywhere today. Is there anything we’ve lost with the Apple design philosophy? Or that Doug might think we’ve lost? >> I would be curious to hear your thoughts about any of these points. >> Thanks! >> Luisa >> >> >> On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 9:32 AM, Paul McJones <paul(a)mcjones.org> wrote: >> Here’s a 15 minute promotional/instructional video from 1983, of Apple’s Lisa computer that was soon eclipsed by the Macintosh: >> >> http://www.guidebookgallery.org/videos/lisa1983 >> >> By the way, this website, GUIdebook "a website dedicated to preserving and showcasing Graphical User Interfaces, as well as various materials related to them”, is filled with interesting artifacts, including a transcript of the previously-discussed 1984 Macintosh Guided Tour, a similar one for Lisa, and much, much more. The website was created by Marcin Wichary. >> >> On Sep 8, 2014, at 8:28 PM, Luisa Emmi Beck <emmi.beck(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Hi SIGCIS members, >>> >>> I'm working on a radio story about the history of personal computing. >>> >>> I would like to find instructional videos for the first Macintosh or other personal computers. The goal is to give listeners a sense for how new and incredible the idea of personal computing was in the 1970s. Does anyone on this list know of where I could find such videos? I haven't been able to find anything on YouTube but I'm hoping to be able to track down a few instructional videos (or at least the audio portion of the videos). >>> >>> Thanks! >>> Luisa >>> >>> (510) 856.7475 >>> http://luisabeck.com/ >>> _______________________________________________ >>> This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members >> >> >> >> >> -- >> Luisa >> >> (510) 856.7475 >> http://luisabeck.com/ >> _______________________________________________ >> This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members > > Marc Weber | marc(a)webhistory.org | +1 415 282 6868 > Internet History Program Founder and Curator, Computer History Museum > 1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043 computerhistory.org/nethistory > Co-founder, Web History Center and Project, webhistory.org > > > > > -- > Luisa > > (510) 856.7475 > http://luisabeck.com/ > > > _______________________________________________ > Members mailing list > Members(a)sigcis.org > http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members

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Possible "Invention of Email" resources for teaching or writing use
by Thomas Haigh 09 Sep '14

09 Sep '14

Thanks Laine, Barbara, Jean-François & others, I wrote about the implications for this case for a specialized public audience (100,000 computer scientists) in Communications of the ACM back in 2012. So that could be a starting point, but I must admit I see this as a story with considerable potential for something like Slate or The Atlantic. Even This American Life or the New Yorker, though only career journalists can contribute to those outlets. There is also a great STS or Media Studies dissertation to be written. Most immediately, several people mentioned its potential for classroom use. If anyone wanted to pull together resources to use this as a teaching case I would suggest looking at * Thomas Haigh, "Seven Lessons from Bad History: Journalists, Historians, and the Invention of Email," Communications of the ACM 55:9 (Sept 2012):26-29. (online at ACM) <http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2330676> . (online locally) <http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/CACM-SevenLessons.pdf> . [Focuses on the media handling, not the claims themselves]. * Thomas Haigh, "Did V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai Invent Email?", SIGCIS web article, March 2012 onward. www.sigcis.org/ayyadurai [Comprehensive debunking of the claims, updated several times. Full of links to primary sources]. * “’The Most Neglected Element’: Users Transform the ARPANET,” chapter three of Janet Abbate’s Inventing the Internet (MIT Press, 1999). [The standard view of email history, unchallenged until 2011]. * Janelle Nanos, “Return to Sender,” Boston Magazine, June 2012. http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2012/05/shiva-ayyaduri-email-us-postal-servic… [Gives a sense of the human side of the story]. * Ayyadurai’s website www.inventorofemail.com [Strangely captivating, would be a good source for “information literacy” exercises] * Deborah J. Nightingale’s now deleted Huffington Post contribution, https://web.archive.org/web/20140905024145/http:/www.huffingtonpost.com/deb…. [The best of the series for this purpose, as showcases Ayyadurai’s efforts to persuade the world that nothing pre-1980 was electronic mail. Also some apparent academic honesty issues.]. * The talk page <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Email> and revision history <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Email&action=history> of the Wikipedia entry on Email. Tom From: members-bounces(a)sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Laine Nooney Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2014 8:18 AM To: sigcis Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Apparent plagiarism in Nightingale's deleted Huffingon Post article To second Barbara's sentiments, an academic essay yes, but I'd also love to see a good piece of public scholarship on this; this is a great opportunity to make the benefits of historical thinking engaging to a broad audience. The Altantic, Wired and Medium.com have a great standard of op-eds and essays from media studies and games academics. It would be nice for SIGCIS to be represented in some other capacity than our mysterious status as CABAL.... Laine Nooney Research Fellow with the Intel Science & Technology Center for Social Computing <http://socialcomputing.uci.edu/> Department of Media, Culture and Communication <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> @ New York University www.lainenooney.com <http://www.lainenooney.com/> On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 5:14 AM, Marie Hicks <mhicks1(a)iit.edu> wrote: I'm guessing most here will be unhappy to see what Google currently thinks on this matter: http://oi60.tinypic.com/20rjvnp.jpg Marie ______________________ Marie Hicks, Ph.D. Asst. Professor, History of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL USA mhicks1(a)iit.edu | mariehicks.net <http://www.mariehicks.net> | @histoftech <http://twitter.com/histoftech> On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 3:37 AM, Hahn, Barbara <barbara.hahn(a)ttu.edu> wrote: Hi all: I was just myself thinking what a fantastic article this would make. Since Tom's earlier response to me explaining what makes this case unique, I think such an article would be a splendid introduction to a few other (more classic) examples of technological myth-making. Comparing the usual story (various court battles over patents for, say, Eli Whitney's cotton gin; or market competition, as in the cases of lightbulbs or safety bicycles) would provide a really wonderful hook, and a great introduction to what historians of technology do. Though it doesn't seem particularly difficult to do, I don't have the time to write such a thing, but frankly someone should. Alternatively, it could be an class assignment for an upper-division undergraduate or postgraduate student, or a research exercise, or something. What fun. + + + + + 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(a)sigcis.org [members-bounces(a)sigcis.org] on behalf of Jean-François Blanchette [blanchette(a)ucla.edu] Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2014 2:53 AM To: sigcis Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Apparent plagiarism in Nightingale's deleted Huffingon Post article Dear Thomas and all, This is such a fabulous story on so many levels, it truly boggles the mind —— the inclusion of a Hollywood celebrity into the cake batter had been so far the only ommission and that has now been thankfully corrected. I’d really love to introduce more people to it, especially students ——— is there an up-to-date guide to the story available somewhere, or lacking that, what’s the best place to start? Thank you! Jean-François On Sep 9, 2014, at 5:44, Thomas Haigh <thaigh(a)computer.org> wrote: > Thanks Andy, > > Yes, I noticed the similarities myself in a comment posted on the now deleted Nightingale article. The same chunks of text also appear in Ayyadurai's 2013 book, again without mention of her name. So leaving aside the issue of factual accuracy this would appear to be a clear cut case of plagiarism: chunks of previous published text pasted and/or paraphrased without attribution to the original authors. > > In fact all the articles in the now deleted Huffington Post series had significant overlap with each other, Ayyadurai’s website, and his book in terms of the quotations used, the talking points repeated, the evidence presented, the pictures used, and as we see in this case the actual words used. The 5 “myths” she claimed to rebut were all found on a longer list of 12 “myths” on Ayyadurai’s own website. Ayyadurai has rather distinctive prose style and it is echoed in phrases all over the HP articles, which some commentators noted read as if they have a common author. For example, he always puts “historians” in quotes when talking about us. > > Nightingale’s is a literally incredible article, and if you haven’t yet taken the time to marvel I urge you to go tohttps://web.archive.org/web/20140905024145/http:/www.huffingtonpost.com/d… before reading on. Did you know, for example, that “Popular sites such as Wikipedia, unfortunately, continue to promulgate the myths of email's history. Industry insiders dominate and monopolize such forums, and immediately remove even documented citations and facts, which expose and counter their false claims on email's origin.” > > That article states that “As an MIT professor who led MIT's Sociotechnical Systems Research Center for nearly half a decade and served on the faculty in MIT's Engineering Systems Division for over 17 years…..” You might ask, why would an MIT faculty member allow plagiarized (or, in the kindest interpretation, ghostwritten) and blatantly inaccurate material to appear under her name? Surely she would have too much to lose? > > Well, she is actually referred to on her own bio page and in other sources as a “Professor of the Practice” which at MIT is another name for “Adjunct Professor.” http://web.mit.edu/policies/2/2.3.html states that “Appointments to the rank of "Adjunct Professor of _____" and "Professor of the Practice of _____" are equivalent…” Also that “An appointment as an adjunct professor or professor of the practice carries no implication of academic tenure or of membership on the Faculty.” So a Professor of the Practice is not actually a faculty member. > > Nightingale still has a bio up on an MIT personal page (which also calls her a faculty member), but is not listed, for example, on the “People” directory of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center which she used to direct (!) and her Linked In page says that she left her MIT jobs in June 2014. So she appears to be a former adjunct rather than a current faculty member. > > Having said that, she is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, so you might expect some kind of baseline professional responsibility from her. http://www.nae.edu/29986.aspx Also, according to Linked In, “Past-President and Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers.” Not someone you would expect to sign her name to a factually deficient, plagiarized and/or ghosted piece of badly written propaganda. But, apparently, she did. > > An odd aspect of all this is that, like Ayyadurai himself, she gains a great deal of apparent credibility from her former association with MIT. Both have frequently been called “MIT professors” in reports, and I am sure the association helped to convince reporters to repeat Ayyadurai’s claims. Yet they are going to great lengths in a quixotic attempt to undermine MIT’s actual historical accomplishments in email, including CTSS mail and the work of the many MIT graduates and faculty who founded and worked at BBN. Ayyadurai has also been deploying a lot of populist rhetoric against the idea that elite institutions like MIT are essential to innovation. > > Best wishes, > > Tom > > > From: members-bounces(a)sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Russell > Sent: Monday, September 08, 2014 2:05 PM > To: sigcis > Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Fwd: Re HuffPo article on Ayyadurai > > Hi everyone - > > I’m reposting below an email from Dave Farber's list - it's another interesting turn in this bizarre tale. > > Andy > > > Begin forwarded message: > > > From: "Dave Farber via ip" <ip(a)listbox.com> > Subject: [IP] Re HuffPo article on Ayyadurai > Date: September 8, 2014 at 11:25:26 AM EDT > To: "ip" <ip(a)listbox.com> > Reply-To: dave(a)farber.net > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: "Declan McCullagh" <declan(a)well.com> > Date: Sep 8, 2014 1:49 AM > Subject: Re: [IP] HuffPo article on Ayyadurai > To: <jpgs(a)ittc.ku.edu>, <jpgs(a)comp.lancs.ac.uk> > Cc: <dave(a)farber.net>, <dnight(a)mit.edu>, <news(a)the-tech.mit.edu> > > [Dave, for IP if you like] > > Prof. James P.G. Sterbenz wrote to MIT prof Deborah Nightingale: > Do you plan to make a statement on your > Web page to protect your reputation, or do we assume that you are > (figuratively) in bed with Ayyadurai? If you do make such a statement > I would like a pointer and will include in with the other materials I > maintain on this case along with your original blog entry. > > I just noticed something unusual about the now-deleted Huffington Post article published under the name of MIT professor Deborah Nightingale. > > What's unusual is that paragraphs of that now-deleted article defending "email inventor" Shiva Ayyadurai are word-for-word identical to a web page called InventorOfEmail.com. It looks like Mr. Ayyadurai created that page himself, though I haven't checked. > > You can see this unexpected bit of synchronicity for yourself. Prof Nightingale's article is archived here: > https://web.archive.org/web/20140905024145/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/de… > "Those who promoted MAIL as "email," when the term "email" did not even exist in 1965, were attempting to redefine "email" as a command-driven program that transferred BCD-encoded text files, written in an external editor, among timesharing system users, to be reviewed serially in a flat-file." > "One would be hard-pressed to draw a historical straight line from MAIL to today’s email systems. MAIL was not "email", but a text messaging command line system, at best." > > The InventorOfEmail.com page, which Archive.org says predates Prof. Nightingale's HuffPo blog, is here: > http://www.inventorofemail.com/claims_about_email.asp > "Those who promoted MAIL was "email" when the term "email" did not even exist in 1965 are attempting to redefine "email" to be a command-driven program that transferred BCD-encoded text files, written in an external editor, among timesharing system users, to be reviewed serially in a flat-file." > "One would be hard-pressed to draw a historical straight line from MAIL to today’s email systems. MAIL was not "email", but a text messaging command line system, at best." > > Also it looks like about 10 paragraphs in Prof. Nightingale's now-deleted HuffPo blog, published September 2, appear in a Google+ comment posted under the name "Jason Rebule" a week earlier. That comment appeared in a KQED thread attacking critics of Ayyadurai. You can see the thread here: > https://plus.google.com/+KQEDSCIENCE/posts/emYcPo9ZjVw > > Similarly, another now-deleted HuffPo blog post in the series was published under the name of Rutgers technologist Robert Field. It uses this sentence: > https://web.archive.org/web/20140904233350/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ro… > "Standard histories of the Internet are full of claims that certain individuals (and teams) in the ARPAnet environment in the 1970s and 1980s "invented email." " > > That sentence also, according to Archive.org, had previously appeared on the InventorOfEmail.com site: > http://www.inventorofemail.com/claims_about_email.asp > > I don't see either Prof. Nightingale or Robert Field credited on the InventorOfEmail.com site. > > I presume there's a good reason why a Huffington Post guest blog published under the name of a well-known MIT engineering professor would be assembled in such a manner, but I confess I haven't yet been able to think of one. > > -Declan > > PS: I recall a CNET article written by some enterprising journalist who revealed the provenance of an anti-Net-neutrality op-ed published under the name of an MIT adjunct professor. The op-ed was actually written in part or in whole by a "secretive lobbying organization in Washington, D.C. called the LawMedia Group" that counted Comcast as a client. I would not dare to suggest, of course, that such a thing could be happening here. http://www.cnet.com/news/wanted-writers-for-d-c-tech-lobby-group-secrecy-ma… > Archives | > > _______________________________________________ > This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are athttp://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members -- Jean-François Blanchette, Associate Professeur Dept. of Information Studies, UCLA http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/blanchette _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] First instructional videos for Macintosh?
by Peter Sachs Collopy 09 Sep '14

09 Sep '14

On Sep 9, 2014, at 11:04 AM, Luisa Emmi Beck <emmi.beck(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Thank you all for helping me with this quest!! This is all fascinating! Yes, I was just wondering why the first video that includes the tutorial "Mousing Around" doesn't have any audio. The first radio story that I'm producing on this topic is about the computer mouse, so I'm hoping to find audio of those tutorials. Do you know where I might be able to find the audio cassette for that particular video? Or have those audio recordings been digitized somewhere and are available to download? Just from listening to the YouTube recording right before that (from about 2:00), it sounds to me like the audio directs you to pause the tape recorder and try the mouse tutorial—so there isn’t any audio for that section. It might be interesting to use that bit of audio starting around 2:00 in your radio piece, though, just to communicate that using a mouse was something one was expected to learn and practice and not an assumed skill. As far as the Apple II, keep in mind that it didn’t have a mouse until after the Mac was released in 1984, so you won’t find material there about the origins of the mouse. And since the Apple II could record data on an audiocassette, there’s a lot of material online about audiotape and the Apple II that doesn’t actually deal with audio recordings—or at least not with any that one was actually meant to listen to. The first Apple machine to have a mouse was the Lisa in 1983, and there’s a nice bit in a marketing video for it (at 2:57 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt5q0oedi_c) introducing the mouse. Going back a bit, there is actual video of Douglas Engelbart’s 1968 demonstration of NLS, including the mouse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY, http://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/extra4/sloan/MouseSite/1968Demo.ht… Peter

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Apparent plagiarism in Nightingale's deleted Huffingon Post article
by Thomas Haigh 09 Sep '14

09 Sep '14

Thanks Andy, Yes, I noticed the similarities myself in a comment posted on the now deleted Nightingale article. The same chunks of text also appear in Ayyadurai's 2013 book, again without mention of her name. So leaving aside the issue of factual accuracy this would appear to be a clear cut case of plagiarism: chunks of previous published text pasted and/or paraphrased without attribution to the original authors. In fact all the articles in the now deleted Huffington Post series had significant overlap with each other, Ayyadurai's website, and his book in terms of the quotations used, the talking points repeated, the evidence presented, the pictures used, and as we see in this case the actual words used. The 5 "myths" she claimed to rebut were all found on a longer list of 12 "myths" on Ayyadurai's own website. Ayyadurai has rather distinctive prose style and it is echoed in phrases all over the HP articles, which some commentators noted read as if they have a common author. For example, he always puts "historians" in quotes when talking about us. Nightingale's is a literally incredible article, and if you haven't yet taken the time to marvel I urge you to go to https://web.archive.org/web/20140905024145/http:/www.huffingtonpost.com/debo rah-j-nightingale/the-history-of-email-five-myths-about-email_b_5756340.html before reading on. Did you know, for example, that "Popular sites such as Wikipedia, unfortunately, continue to promulgate the myths of email's history. Industry insiders dominate and monopolize such forums, and immediately remove even documented citations and facts, which expose and counter their false claims on email's origin." That article states that "As an MIT professor who led MIT's Sociotechnical Systems Research Center for nearly half a decade and served on the faculty in MIT's Engineering Systems Division for over 17 years..." You might ask, why would an MIT faculty member allow plagiarized (or, in the kindest interpretation, ghostwritten) and blatantly inaccurate material to appear under her name? Surely she would have too much to lose? Well, she is actually referred to on her own bio page and in other sources as a "Professor of the Practice" which at MIT is another name for "Adjunct Professor." http://web.mit.edu/policies/2/2.3.html states that "Appointments to the rank of "Adjunct Professor of _____" and "Professor of the Practice of _____" are equivalent." Also that "An appointment as an adjunct professor or professor of the practice carries no implication of academic tenure or of membership on the Faculty." So a Professor of the Practice is not actually a faculty member. Nightingale still has a bio up on an MIT personal page <https://esd.mit.edu/Faculty_Pages/nightingale/nightingale.htm> (which also calls her a faculty member), but is not listed, for example, on the <http://ssrc.mit.edu/people> "People" directory of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center which she used to direct (!) and her Linked In page <https://www.linkedin.com/pub/deborah-nightingale/5/313/619> says that she left her MIT jobs in June 2014. So she appears to be a former adjunct rather than a current faculty member. Having said that, she is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, so you might expect some kind of baseline professional responsibility from her. http://www.nae.edu/29986.aspx Also, according to Linked In, "Past-President and Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers." Not someone you would expect to sign her name to a factually deficient, plagiarized and/or ghosted piece of badly written propaganda. But, apparently, she did. An odd aspect of all this is that, like Ayyadurai himself, she gains a great deal of apparent credibility from her former association with MIT. Both have frequently been called "MIT professors" in reports, and I am sure the association helped to convince reporters to repeat Ayyadurai's claims. Yet they are going to great lengths in a quixotic attempt to undermine MIT's actual historical accomplishments in email, including CTSS mail and the work of the many MIT graduates and faculty who founded and worked at BBN. Ayyadurai has also been deploying a lot of populist rhetoric against the idea that elite institutions like MIT are essential to innovation. Best wishes, Tom From: members-bounces(a)sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Russell Sent: Monday, September 08, 2014 2:05 PM To: sigcis Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Fwd: Re HuffPo article on Ayyadurai Hi everyone - I'm reposting below an email from Dave Farber's list - it's another interesting turn in this bizarre tale. Andy Begin forwarded message: From: "Dave Farber via ip" <ip(a)listbox.com> Subject: [IP] Re HuffPo article on Ayyadurai Date: September 8, 2014 at 11:25:26 AM EDT To: "ip" <ip(a)listbox.com> Reply-To: dave(a)farber.net ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Declan McCullagh" <declan(a)well.com> Date: Sep 8, 2014 1:49 AM Subject: Re: [IP] HuffPo article on Ayyadurai To: <jpgs(a)ittc.ku.edu>, <jpgs(a)comp.lancs.ac.uk> Cc: <dave(a)farber.net>, <dnight(a)mit.edu>, <news(a)the-tech.mit.edu> [Dave, for IP if you like] Prof. James P.G. Sterbenz wrote to MIT prof Deborah Nightingale: Do you plan to make a statement on your Web page to protect your reputation, or do we assume that you are (figuratively) in bed with Ayyadurai? If you do make such a statement I would like a pointer and will include in with the other materials I maintain on this case along with your original blog entry. I just noticed something unusual about the now-deleted Huffington Post article published under the name of MIT professor Deborah Nightingale. What's unusual is that paragraphs of that now-deleted article defending "email inventor" Shiva Ayyadurai are word-for-word identical to a web page called InventorOfEmail.com. It looks like Mr. Ayyadurai created that page himself, though I haven't checked. You can see this unexpected bit of synchronicity for yourself. Prof Nightingale's article is archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20140905024145/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deb orah-j-nightingale/the-history-of-email-five-myths-about-email_b_5756340.htm l <https://web.archive.org/web/20140905024145/http:/www.huffingtonpost.com/deb orah-j-nightingale/the-history-of-email-five-myths-about-email_b_5756340.htm l> "Those who promoted MAIL as "email," when the term "email" did not even exist in 1965, were attempting to redefine "email" as a command-driven program that transferred BCD-encoded text files, written in an external editor, among timesharing system users, to be reviewed serially in a flat-file." "One would be hard-pressed to draw a historical straight line from MAIL to today's email systems. MAIL was not "email", but a text messaging command line system, at best." The InventorOfEmail.com page, which Archive.org says predates Prof. Nightingale's HuffPo blog, is here: http://www.inventorofemail.com/claims_about_email.asp "Those who promoted MAIL was "email" when the term "email" did not even exist in 1965 are attempting to redefine "email" to be a command-driven program that transferred BCD-encoded text files, written in an external editor, among timesharing system users, to be reviewed serially in a flat-file." "One would be hard-pressed to draw a historical straight line from MAIL to today's email systems. MAIL was not "email", but a text messaging command line system, at best." Also it looks like about 10 paragraphs in Prof. Nightingale's now-deleted HuffPo blog, published September 2, appear in a Google+ comment posted under the name "Jason Rebule" a week earlier. That comment appeared in a KQED thread attacking critics of Ayyadurai. You can see the thread here: https://plus.google.com/+KQEDSCIENCE/posts/emYcPo9ZjVw Similarly, another now-deleted HuffPo blog post in the series was published under the name of Rutgers technologist Robert Field. It uses this sentence: https://web.archive.org/web/20140904233350/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob ert-field/history-of-email-first-email-system_b_5722000.html <https://web.archive.org/web/20140904233350/http:/www.huffingtonpost.com/rob ert-field/history-of-email-first-email-system_b_5722000.html> "Standard histories of the Internet are full of claims that certain individuals (and teams) in the ARPAnet environment in the 1970s and 1980s "invented email." " That sentence also, according to Archive.org, had previously appeared on the InventorOfEmail.com site: http://www.inventorofemail.com/claims_about_email.asp I don't see either Prof. Nightingale or Robert Field credited on the InventorOfEmail.com site. I presume there's a good reason why a Huffington Post guest blog published under the name of a well-known MIT engineering professor would be assembled in such a manner, but I confess I haven't yet been able to think of one. -Declan PS: I recall a CNET article written by some enterprising journalist who revealed the provenance of an anti-Net-neutrality op-ed published under the name of an MIT adjunct professor. The op-ed was actually written in part or in whole by a "secretive lobbying organization in Washington, D.C. called the LawMedia Group" that counted Comcast as a client. I would not dare to suggest, of course, that such a thing could be happening here. http://www.cnet.com/news/wanted-writers-for-d-c-tech-lobby-group-secrecy-man datory/ <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now> Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/123955-4ecfd750> |

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Mac instructional videos
by David C. Brock 09 Sep '14

09 Sep '14

Dear Luisa, Maybe Henry Lowood can tell you if they have anything in their Apple Collection in the Stanford Archives? Best, David +++++++++++++++ David C. Brock dcb(a)dcbrock.net Senior Research Fellow Chemical Heritage Foundation www.chemheritage.org Principal, D.C. Brock Consulting www.dcbrock.net 40 Russell Street, Greenfield, MA 01301 Mobile: 413-522-3578 Fax: 866-549-8597 Skype: dcbrock Twitter: @dcbrock

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Surprise!
by Dag Spicer 09 Sep '14

09 Sep '14

Wow. Just wow. http://www.nbcnewyork.com/entertainment/entertainment-news/Fran-Drescher-Ma… Dag

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Tenure-track position in Social Informatics, Indiana University
by Nathan Ensmenger 08 Sep '14

08 Sep '14

The School of Informatics and Computing is hiring this year, and the position in social informatics might be a good fit for some of our SIGCIS members or their students. Our social informatics faculty currently includes two historians of computing, as well as a number of other STS-trained or -oriented scholars. -Nathan ================ Indiana University- School of Informatics and Computing Faculty Position in Social Informatics The School of Informatics and Computing (SoIC) at Indiana University Bloomington invites applications for an asst/assoc/full professor position in social informatics (SI), in the informatics division, to begin in August 2015. Our intent is to hire the candidate, either senior or junior, best able to help our SI Group lead the development of Social Informatics, an opportunity greatly enabled by the recent merger into the SoIC of the IUB Department of Information and Library Science (ILS). Candidates with interests in ethnography, social and political values in computing, economic and policy perspectives on information technology, and internet and media studies are especially encouraged to apply. Applicantsrelevant area or (junior level) expected before August 2015. The SI Group in the Informatics Division currently has six members whose work is grounded in The SoIC is the first of its kind and among the largest in the country, with unsurpassed Its mission is to excel and lead in education, research, and outreach spanning and integrating the full breadth of computing and information technology. It includes Computer Science, Informatics, and Library and Information Science, with over 85 tenure-line faculty, 900 graduate students, and 1100 undergraduate majors. Its degrees include B.A. and B.S. in Computer Science, B.S. in Informatics, Master’s in Computer Science, Security Informatics, Bioinformatics, Human Computer Interaction Design, Information Science, and Library Science, and Ph.D.s in Computer Science, Informatics, and Information Science. Located in the wooded rolling hills of southern Indiana, Bloomington is a culturally Applicants http://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/972 (Social Informatics) or by mail to Faculty Search, SoIC, 919th St, Bloomington, IN 47408. Questions may be sent to hiring(a)soic.indiana.edu. For full consideration applications are due by December 1, 2014. Review of applications will begin on October 15, 2014. Indiana University is an equal employment and affirmative All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ethnicity, color, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or identity, national origin, disability status or protected veteran status.

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Huffington Post pulls 6 Ayyadurai articles, video
by Thomas Haigh 06 Sep '14

06 Sep '14

Dear Cabal Members, I am pleased to say that our blatantly racist conspiracy, underwritten by huge amounts of money from Raytheon, has successfully thwarted the efforts of V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, former 14 year old boy, to alert the world to the truth of email history. Earlier today the Huffington Post, perhaps America's most reputable news organization, pulled its entire "History of Email Series" and replaced each part with a note that "The post that previously appeared in this space -- part of a blogger-generated series on the history of email -- is no longer available. Readers and media commentators alerted us to factual and sourcing issues in the series and, after an internal review, we removed it from the site." The one media outlet brave enough to stand against the cabal has fallen. Even the Huffington Post's hard-hitting news video, in which Ayyadurai was repeatedly asked how it felt to be so awesome and how he planned to celebrate his accomplishments while Fran Descher waved from the background and petted a small dog, has vanished from the internet. Ayyadurai, who is universally recognized by those not in our thrall as "one of the great minds on our planet," and the "world's foremost authority on integrating systems of medicine," recently tweeted that "There is NO 'Controversy' on who invented email except the one created by a bunch of 'old white men' " and inspiringly noted that "Sharing the truth of #email is not abt me or email but abt defying #racism & classism that denies the infinite nature of the human Spirit." The slogan on his website "Know the truth, be the light, find your way" captures his humble and spiritual nature. As Noam Chomsky, email history expert, noted "there is no 'controversy' here, except the one created by industry insiders, who have a vested interest." Fortunately our success in suppressing the truths briefly glimpsed in former MIT Adjunct Professor Deborah J. Nightingale's well researched and entirely balanced article "The Five Myths About Email's History and the 'Controversy' Fabricated by Industry Insiders to Hijack the Invention of Email" means that Huffington Post readers will no longer realize that scrupulous journalists celebrating Ayyadurai's accomplishment "were attacked and barraged by this coterie of industry insiders including consultants, employees, alumni and an Internet cabal of SIGCIS 'historians' with ties to Raytheon/BBN." Her brave voice, warning that bloggers in league with the our evil plot "did little primary research, rather simply parroting and escalating the vitriol, defamation and character assassination of Shiva, while attacking and bullying journalists, including technology editors" has been silenced. Now the people of earth will go about their business blissfully unaware that a "a group of industry insiders, public relations experts and "historians" loyal to Raytheon/BBN, a multi-billion dollar company which had predicated its entire brand on the claim it had "invented email," began purposely misusing the term "email" to refer to its developments in text messaging, done prior to 1978 as 'email,' in order to hijack credit for the invention from the 14-year-old boy." Only Depak Chopra's article and video, "The Boy Who Invented Email" is left on the Huffington Post to speak truth to power. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/one-world-with-deepak-chopra/the-boy-who-inve nted-emai_b_5021127.html) Aside from that nothing stands between the Cabal and total world domination. At our next meeting I will be drinking a toast to the triumph of evil, probably in human blood from the Holy Grail if I can remember where we stashed it. Sanctified with the great seal of the SIGCIS Cabal, in the year of our Lord two thousand and fourteen. by Grand Master Thomas Haigh, inquisitor of the great conspiracy.

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