First Internet message and ...

[Jim Manley]

Don't spoil the spirit of excitement over this sort of thing, even if they
get every detail wrong.  You weren't present for this event, and even
"expert" historians routinely also get a _lot_ of things wrong.  I lived
through this era, and have spent the last two decades conveying the
importance of such things to current-day scientific and engineering
researchers, as well as the public, as a volunteer senior docent and
restoration engineer at the Computer History Museum, as well as a STEM
teacher.

I'd commit some high crimes and misdemeanors if I could get any of my high
school and college students to exhibit even one percent of this level of
excitement about the stupendous things that happened just in 1969.  Beyond
the first successful remote login between heterogeneous computers via a
standard interface (not the first time a "message" was sent over the
"Internet"), that included the Apollo 11 Moon landing, the first Concorde
test flight, the debut of the Boeing 747, the first version of UNIX being
developed, the first microprocessor being produced, etc., etc., etc.

It's not just about fawning over the past accomplishments for nostalgic
reasons, but, to also learn from the mistakes that led to the advancements,
and there are many more errors than there are successes.  It has to be that
way, but, we don't celebrate the goof-ups and we absolutely should - let
those who have never failed cast the first stone, as it were.

One of my special tours at the CHM is "Mistakes That Kept Getting Repeated"
because, as we now know, those who don't learn the lessons of history are
doomed to repeat them.  It's not so simple though, because history doesn't
exactly repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and we have to be observant and
clever enough to recognize the meter as well as the lyrics.  Complaining
about the small stuff doesn't contribute to that and should be avoided so
that we don't scare off the enthusiastic newcomers and others not so
steeped in the details as we are.

All the Best,
Jim


On Sun, Nov 24, 2019 at 5:11 PM allison via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:

>
> OK, this is gibberish, word salad, English words mangled meaning.
> Pick a topic and get concise.
>
> Gah,
>