{"id":1640,"date":"2011-05-14T14:09:28","date_gmt":"2011-05-14T18:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/?p=1640"},"modified":"2011-05-14T14:11:15","modified_gmt":"2011-05-14T18:11:15","slug":"computer-histories-at-mit7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/2011\/05\/computer-histories-at-mit7\/","title":{"rendered":"Computer Histories at MiT7"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At <a href=\"http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/comm-forum\/mit7\/\">Media in Transition 7<\/a> here at MIT, after a good start in the opening plenary and first break-out session, we had a fascinating session yesterday on &#8220;Computer Histories.&#8221; The papers presented were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Sandra Braman presented &#8220;Designing for Instability: Internet Architecture and Constant Change.&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/comm-forum\/mit7\/subs\/abstracts.html#braman\">[Abstract.]<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Kevin Driscoll spoke on &#8220;Revisiting Bill Gates&#8217; &#8220;Open Letter to Hobbyists.&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/comm-forum\/mit7\/subs\/abstracts.html#driscoll\">[Abstract.]<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Colleen Kaman&#8217;s talk was &#8220;&#8216;Interop,&#8217; Internet Commercialization, and the Early Politics of Global Computer Networks.&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/comm-forum\/mit7\/subs\/abstracts.html#kaman\">[Abstract.]<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/comm-forum\/mit7\/papers\/CKaman_Interop_MIT7.pdf\">[Full paper.]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The individual presentations were very interesting, and it was a fascinating set to hear together. Two were on the development of the Internet: Braman delved deeply into the more than 6000 Requests for Comments (RFCs) used to develop Internet protocols, doing a line-by-line discourse analysis. In these documents, which people might guess would be dry and purely technical, she found a great deal of embedded political and social thought. The complete manuscript on this topic should be done and available in a few weeks. Kaman looked a different forum for communication that was important to the dramatic expansion in Internet connectivity from 1991-1997: a trade show. Following on discussions in 1996, to deal with the Internet&#8217;s rapid growth and the competing European standard for networking, the Interop conference was formulated. It included a demo network, Shownet, where vendors could come to test products and academic and research work could connect to practical experience in a &#8220;negotiation space.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And, there was one presentation on early microcomputing. Discoll began with the image of a book cover featuring a two-tier desk typical of HAM radio operation, declaring: &#8220;Hobby Computers Are Here!&#8221; He showed a response to Bill Gates&#8217; famous &#8220;Open Letter to Hobbyists&#8221; and a clip from <i>Revolution OS<\/i> with an increasingly hysterical reading of the original letter &#8211; the dominant understanding of the letter today, as if it were the beginning of opposition to free software. Hobbyists learned to program on calculators and didn&#8217;t have contact with, for instance, the Internet protocol developers. In <i>Interface,<\/i> Art Childs (the editor) questions what software is and deals with many important issues in free software in replying to Gates&#8217;s letter. He concludes that a service model is best &#8211; just as GNU did later. This antecedent to free software has been overlooked, just as computer culture in much of the country (beyond Boston and Silicon Valley) have been overlooked.<\/p>\n<p>I was fascinated at these two different perspectives on the formation of the Internet (finding surprising non-technical discussion in RFC and surprising technical implications of a trade show) and on the difference between the culture of hobbyist computer builders, programmers, and users and that of those involved with the development and growth of the Internet. Driscoll&#8217;s more sensitive reading of Bill Gates&#8217;s &#8220;open letter,&#8221; Braman&#8217;s deep analysis of RFCs, and Kaman&#8217;s exploration and discussion of Interop provide great models for the understanding of computer histories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At Media in Transition 7 here at MIT, after a good start in the opening plenary and first break-out session, we had a fascinating session yesterday on &#8220;Computer Histories.&#8221; The papers presented were: Sandra Braman presented &#8220;Designing for Instability: Internet Architecture and Constant Change.&#8221; [Abstract.] Kevin Driscoll spoke on &#8220;Revisiting Bill Gates&#8217; &#8220;Open Letter to &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/2011\/05\/computer-histories-at-mit7\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Computer Histories at MiT7&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,23,41,36,88],"class_list":["post-1640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gatherings","tag-hardware","tag-history","tag-mit","tag-networking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1640"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1647,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions\/1647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}