The Internet, As It Was - A Story of Dave Farber and the IP List

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

------- Original message -------
From: Jonathan B Spira  <jspira () basex com>
Sent: 1/4/'05,  9:48


Dave, a recent exchange of e-mails following a posting on the IP list resulted in my column this week, which I think 
you and other IPers may find of interest.

If I haven't said it in a while, thanks for the IP list.  It is truly a gift.

/s/ Jonathan


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BASEX:COMMENTARY-OF-THE-WEEK BY JONATHAN B. SPIRA

THE INTERNET, AS IT WAS

For a moment - and it was just a moment in the passage of time - I was transported back to the early days of the 
Internet, when a pioneering spirit of friendlin
ess and cooperation was the norm.

Let me explain how this happened.

The last section to be written for my book, Managing the Knowledge Workforce: Understanding the Information Revolution 
That's Changing the Business World, is a 
timeline on knowledge and information work.  David Goldes (Basex' president) and I had actually started researching 
this in 1990, and we published it that year.
  The original 1990 timeline had 20 entries, starting with the invention of paper (105) and the pencil (1465), 
continuing with the typewriter (1808), the comput
er (ENIAC, 1946), and the floppy disk (1970).  I decided to include it - with additional entries - in the book.  My 
augmented timeline has ca. 70 entries, start
ing with ink (2697 B.C.E.) and continuing with the alphabet (ca. 1600 B.C.E.), including the codex (first century 
C.E.), the wireless telegraph (1792, Chappe Se
maphore), and the graphical user interface (1975).  My criteria for inclusion included its significance to knowledge 
and information work, and whether it qualif
ied as a "first" [e.g. the FIRST fountain pen (1702) made it in, but Lewis Waterman's commercially successful version a 
century later did not].

What I didn't have was a firm fix on the first office telephone system, or Private Branch eXchange (PBX).  I had a 
vague recollection about a Midwestern retirem
ent home having the first PBX but none of my searches proved fruitful.  Not the type to give up, I e-mailed my friend 
Dave Farber, a founding father of the Inte
rnet and proprietor of the IP redistribution and commentary mailing list, asking him to send my enquiry on to the 
30,000 or so IP readers (IP stands for Interes
ting Persons). (Wired magazine once called Dave the "Paul Revere" of the Internet.)

No sooner had I clicked on send, than my in box started to fill up.  First, Katie Hafner, who writes for the New York 
Times, promised to look this up in her cop
y of John Brooks' "Telephone: The First 100 Years" when she got home.  Mark Seiden pointed me to two possible "firsts" 
- one of which was the Old Soldiers' Home
 in Dayton Ohio (1878).  Half a dozen other IPers also e-mailed me, some asking questions to narrow the scope of my 
enquiry; others recommending places to look 
for further info.

Esther Dyson chimed in and introduced me via e-mail to Tom Malone, a professor at MIT who she felt would know the 
answer.

For a moment - and it really was just a moment - I thought of a few mailing lists of the early 1990s where pioneering 
Internet users were doling out their exper
tise left and right.  No banner adverts, no commercialization, just people helping people.  But it was just a moment.

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex.  He can be reached at jspira () basex com





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              Understanding the Information Revolution
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