'Inventor of Email' Gets Support of Noam Chomsky

Ian Lamont writes "Shiva Ayyadurai, who famously claims to have invented email as a teenager in the 1970s, is back. A statement attributed to Noam Chomsky offers support for Ayyadurai's claim while attacking 'industry insiders' for stating otherwise. The statement reads: 'Given the term email was not used prior to 1978, and there was no intention to emulate "...a full-scale, inter-organizational mail system," as late as December 1977, there is no controversy here, except the one created by industry insiders, who have a vested interest to protect a false branding that BBN is the "inventor of email," which the facts obliterate.'"

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Re:Ask a better question

[jmorris42]

Except of course he isn't really known for things he (according to people in his specialty) is actually skilled at. The problem is that he banks on that aclaim from that highly specialized skill to claim a general competence he clearly does not possess. His political writings are of the most dangerous twaddle that only the most vulnerable college student buys into. The sort of thing that leads to revolutions followed closely by mass graves when a critical mass tire of slapping the lies down. So if he is presenting a paper at a conference in his specialty I suppose others in it should probably attend, otherwise it is a good idea to ridicule him.