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On the Chaotic Evolution of Email?

Posted by Cliff on from the however-it-was-done-at-least-it-still-works dept.

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?"

7 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. The history of any internet protocol by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Can be found by reading the Requests for Comment associated with that protocol. In other words there WAS planning involved- a good deal of planning- it's just that the end-users were completely different than the original audience- the original audience were arpanet researchers, whose system was so good it overtook the competeing FIDONet hackers- which resulted in spammers.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    1. Re:The history of any internet protocol by Anm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's like saying the history of the web is summarized in the W3C spec for HTML. It hints at the history, and each revision signifies an era in its history, but by no means is it really informative on the influences, predecessors, politiics, and competing ideas.

      To really get to that you need to talk to the people who were there (or find the artifacts of them talking to each other: letters, papers, etc.). Luckily, the 70's are recent enough that many are probably still alive, and there comes a point where usenet was an active archive. I'm sure many of those people maintain active email addresses today.

      I'm not sure what depth of research the submitter was intending, but RFCs and Usenet do provide very good jumping points on the topic.

      Anm

    2. Re:The history of any internet protocol by TechDock · · Score: 4, Informative
      Check out RFC 1000 , from 1987. Stephen Crocker used the occasion of reaching 1000 to spell out the history of RFCs, and also the beginning planning stages of Arpanet. Has some interesting history included in it. He also uses it as an index to the first 1000 RFCs, including several dealing with the mail system.

      Of special interest might be RFC 706, "On the Junk Mail Problem." They saw it coming...

      --
      Dreamers, shapers, singers, makers... Elric, the Techno-Mage
  2. Rejected by ArsonSmith · · Score: 4, Funny

    Of course my article gets rejected

    Ask Slashdot: On the Catholic Intelligent Design of Email?

    --
    Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
  3. What evolution? by redelm · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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:

  4. Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Mendy · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/074346837 6/qid=1137543821/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl/202- 4708284-5091803

    Provides a good background to how the internet came about, including a chapter on email.

  5. Bang paths by MarkusQ · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?"

    I think you should count yourself lucky you missed it. Just a few of the many joys:

    • Bang paths. Rather than the mail telling you where it was supposed to go, it gave you a guess of how to get it there. Easy in theory; it's just a concatenation of machines, and you play hot potato with it. In practice...yetch.
    • How many line ending conventions do you suppose there were back in the day? Ever hear of the ASCII characters FS, GS, and RS?
    • UUCP. It bore the same relationship to transport protocols that a bilge pump has to sound ship design. Basically, if you couldn't handle it on one machine, you pumped it over to another one (with shell commands to be executed on more or less blind faith by both parties), and sort of hoped that things would work out.

    Great. Well, now I know what I'm going to be having nightmares about tonight.

    --MarkusQ