On the Chaotic Evolution of Email?

TheCarlMau asks: "I'm doing research on the origins of email in the 70's and 80's. I'm particularly interested in how this technology was designed and implemented without any planned trajectory (ie: nobody sat down in 1970 and planned to create email as we know it today in 2006). As very little has been written on the history, I'm wondering if the Slashdot community could provide any insights, stories, or first-hand experiences? It seems to me, as a person who did not experience this 'revolution,' that the offspring of the ARPANET technology was hackish and sometimes chaotic. What do you think on this matter?"

Comments

A very small datum

[Otter]

The first person I saw claim that electronic mail was the wave of the future, and the first time I'd ever heard of it was, of all people -- William F. Buckley in his newspaper column. He was referring, if extremely vague memory serves, to MCI Mail, although this was probably before the arrival of such user-friendly super-high-tech as Kermit and Xmodem.

Then when I want to college (this wasn't much before every freshman was issued an email account and web space at orientation -- things snowballed really quickly) someone told me that there was a way to send messages by computers to other schools, for free. I went down to the bowels of the CS building and a moss-covered grad student gave me a Bitnet address that looked like the volume of the earth in cubic centimeters. In hindsight, the whole episode was like something out of Harry Potter.

What evolution?

[redelm]

From my 20+ year perspective, there's been remarkably little evolution in any Internet protocol. Mostly devolution to the masses :)

Email was compelling from day one. The technology has changed, but only in details: bangpaths are gone and the abomination of HTML afflicts us. Popularity and exploits are results of the Metcalfe Effect.

But email is still very much email. `ytalk` has morphed into [G]AIM. WWW similarly unchanged although it has seen more technical changes, including a wholesale shift from gopher:

Re:Email before networks

[WGR]

There were many competing network email services in the 70s and early 80s, based on the timesharing networks for business available then. Each created its own protocol because they all were running private networks. I worked for one comapny and it tried to sell email for commercial use, but since most business was still paper based, FAX was more often seen as the solution for electronic communication.

Even if I created a document with a word processor, it was unlikely that the intended audience also had compatible word processors or even computers. T WIth the ubiquity of TCP/IP today, it is hard to remember that there was a time that most packet networks ran on technology based on the X.25 protocol and were very slow and expensive. Email was seen as only useful within a company and not between companies.

Email was the wave of the future for about 20 years from 1975 to 1995. It was used heaviliy in the research and academic world, but not too much by the corporate world between companies. It was only with the rise of the web, that email also became a commercial reality to exchange data between companies and individuals.

Re:What I'm wondering is...

[feijai]

It's possible this was a dictionary attack. But Occam's razor suggests to me a more likely reason: Comcast had either stupidaly posted the email address in a public location automatically, or Comcast had handed the email address automatically to less savory types. I strongly suspect the former.

email + directory evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

I started a firm in 1985 that specialized in design and implementation of email systems. this usually required linking some existing mail services (PROFS, DISOSS, All-in-One, Wang Office, etc) together with online services (MCI Mail, Compuserve, etc) and LAN based mail (MHS compliant products, VINES Mail, CC:Mail, Quickmail, many others). In addition there were the first generations of Mail-enabled products (group calenders and other groupware) that had their own benefits and requirements.

ISO protocols and design considerations were the most important; UUCP was a joke and sendmail feeble, although we did eventually work with the first Motif/MIME compliant mail app. Interenet protocols did not matter until later on, and then largely because of the failure of the ISO community on one hand and the popularity of browser-enabled Internet on the other.

The largest problem that I saw (but few others at the time agreed with) was directories, directory-integration, and directory-enabled apps. Today this is ubiquitous (not just for mail but for all identity management) and therefore invisible. Thne it was a nightmare that required careful planning and usually lot's of custom coding.

Eventually we had some better tools: X400 backbones, X500 and meta-directory products, content managers, and some additional challenges (wireless particularly, PKI integration, etc) and finally serious Internet apps including the first great LDAP server (Critical Path) and the first scalable Internet mail server (Sun SIMS).

The events of 2001 lead me to shut down my firm early in 2002. I have not thought much about technology since but if you are interested feel free to contact me directly at terrymccarthynyc@yahoo.com for more history. I also may be able to put you in touch with some of the real pioneers.

Regards,
Terry McCarthy