Working with Pepperdine University’s NetsB4Internet Oral History Research Project

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We are extremely excited to announce our partnership with Pepperdine University’s new oral history research project, NetsB4Internet.

What is oral history, you ask?  Well, oral history is a specific kind of investigation that is important when the phenomena that needs explaining isn’t something that you want to just leave to a paper trail.  For example, if we were to write a history of what makes your workplace tick, would you really be happy if the researchers just stuck to the official memos?  (Didn’t think so!)  Our historical analysis is only as good as our historical data, and oral history is an important data source.

NetsB4Internet was inspired by a crucial deficit in the historical record.  In their words:

Histories of the development of the internet are abundant but focus almost exclusively on the technological developments leading to and fostering its creation.  Attention to and an understanding of the social interconnections of the people who created and facilitated its development are rare.  The histories and activities of the “fathers of the internet,” those pivotal few who, e.g., conceived the idea of interactive computer communication, managed the government funding agency, sent the first message, wrote the key TCP/IP protocol, and structured the world-wide web, are well chronicled and celebrated.  But the stories of those “uncles and aunts” whose support, research, and development activities were crucial to the creation and international expansion of computer networking are largely undocumented.  Initial inquiries reveal that the personal and professional relationships of all of these pioneers have not been studied to assess their effect on the direction and development of the internet technology.  Therefore, inquiry into the nature and evolution of the social network underpinning the development of the early computer networks:

  • will produce an important historical record,
  • could provide a unique perspective on the social underpinnings of the diffusion of this important technology, and
  • may yield new insights into the creation of technological innovations in general.

This exciting new and interdisciplinary project is supported by Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School 2011-2013 Julian Virtue Professorship.  It is directed by Dr. Margaret E. Phillips, Associate Professor of International Business, whose expertise in organizational cultures and ethnography drew her to this topic.  And she’s bringing quite the team:

  • Professor Bob McQuaid at the Graziadio School — information systems analyst with an interest in the tools and technical skills of technology developers and how these impact their inclusion in and contribution toward innovative activities
  • Professor Gerard Rossy at CSU Northridge — strategist and management development specialist with interests in social processes within engineering communities and the international expansion of technological innovation
  • Professor Ana Cristina Siqueira, formerly at the Graziadio School and now at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh — organizational strategist interested in the social drivers of exploration/exploitation in technological innovation and the various roles played by technology developers over time
  • Professor Deone Zell at CSU Northridge — industrial anthropologist with interests in the evolution of technology, diffusion of innovations, and social networks
  • Maria Berenice Carrasco — who holds an M.S, in Computer Engineering with a emphasis on distributed algorithms and wireless networks and is currently pursuing her MBA at the Graziadio School

We look forward to reporting more as this new UCLA-Pepperdine collaboration moves forward.

An Internet History Course at UCLA

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We are excited to announce that the UCLA Department of History will offer a full course on the history of the Internet, from June 25th to August 3rd this summer. That’s HIST180A, tentatively entitled Introduction to Internet History: 1960 to the present. For UCLA students, registration isn’t opened yet, but you can find it here.

This course will not be comprehensive guide to “the” history of the Internet, because there is no fixed definition of what the Internet is, technologically, socially, or otherwise.

Instead, this course will be a series of case studies that include both substantive history (i.e. the historical facts/variables/contexts that we can observe) and historiography (i.e. the models and analytical strategies we employ to understand the data).

We’ll post updates here as the course draws closer.

Networked Modes of Production: Source Code Control as the Post–Fordist Factory

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Discussion and a request for critique: Networked Modes of Production: Source Code Control as the Post–Fordist Factory by Quinn Dupont.

Please join us this Thursday, 27 October 2011, at 4:00pm in 3420 Boelter Hall

ABSTRACT

As the toolbox is to the carpenter, software engineering is to the modern programmer. But, unlike the carpenter, we now live in a post-Fordist and post-Taylorist world, and the modes of production of the last century no longer matter in the world of immaterial bits. Or so the story goes. By examining the history of a single, near-ubiquitous software production tool—the source code control/versioning system—this paper reveals old modes of production in new, distributed configurations.


As computers grew in popularity in the late 1950s, and software became physically removed from computing hardware, the need for trained software programmers expanded, until in 1968 it was declared that an answer to the “software crisis” was urgently required. Simultaneously, agitation and revolt against hierarchical technocracy grew, putting computing technology front and centre in the battle for democratic ways of being. The technocratic reply was to launch the field of software engineering, and within a year the first source code control tools were developed. By 1972, Marc Rochkind developed the Source Code Control system within Bell Labs and the modern mode of software production was practically cemented. The effect of these tools was similar to the effect of factory architecture, conveyor belts, and time studies to mechanical production from earlier in the 20th century. In the late 20th century these tools developed new networked capabilities, and prompted a new distributed and collaborative mode of production—first within local networks, and then globally as the Internet reached yet further beyond these new factory walls.

Quinn Dupontis a University of Toronto iSchool doctoral student and Enhanced MITACS Accelerate PhD Fellow at Algorithmics Inc., an IBM Company.

The IMP Log: October 1969 to April 1970

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UPDATE September 2012: the Flickr account is being removed as we transition these documents to the UCLA Digital Collections over the next couple of months.  These files will be available there and a post will be made noting their new availability.

On the evening of October 29, 1969, the fledgling ARPANET launched its first message, connecting UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute (SRI).  Through years of work, this two node network grew and developed into today’s Internet.

Presented here is the first of three surviving physical log files that chronicle the events at the UCLA node between October 9, 1969, to October 24, 1971.  They are named “IMP Log” in reference to the Interface Message Processor (IMP; see below) used to connect different kinds of computers on the ARPANET.

This file was kept by the graduate students responsible for running and developing the ARPANET at UCLA’s end, working under the project’s Principal Investigator, Leonard Kleinrock.  Even from the vantage point of this single log, it is possible to get a glimpse of the simultaneous work done elsewhere by people at institutions such as BBN and SRI.  The people and institutions that appear in this first log are listed below, as well as a brief guide to some of the terminology.

The transmission that first linked two ARPANET nodes can be seen in this log at 22:30 (10:30pm) on October 29: “Talked to SRI / Host to Host,” signed by Charley Kline.  This linked Charley Kline and Leonard Kleinrock with Bill Duvall at SRI.  Shown below is a sample page from the first of these three logs.

These files are released as archival data pertaining to Internet history, and not as commentary.  We will be swapping out our Flickr images of this log file with color-corrected and higher resolution scans, and will digitize the subsequent two log files when funding permits.  In the meantime, they are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license.  Enjoy!

Jon Postel works with Dan Garigan at the Stanford Research Institute to get things going

People Appearing in the IMP Log, Oct 1969 – April 1970
Barker, Ben
Berman, Ron
Carr, Stephen C (Steve Carr)
Cerf, Vinton (Vint, VGC)
Coley, Anita (Byl, A)
Cornwell, W. Reud (WRC)
Kahn, Robert (Bob Kahn)
Kline, Charley (CSK, Chuck)
Karas, David (Dave, Dave K, DK, Karas)
Ollikainen, Ari (Ari)
Postel, Jon (Jon, JP)
Thach, Truett (T Thach, Truett, TT)
Thrope, Martin (Marty Thrope, MJT)
Walden, Dave (Dave-BBN)
Wingfield, Michael (Wingfield)
Wong, Johnny (John Wong)

Institutions Appearing in the IMP Log, Oct 1969 – April 1970

Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN)
Honeywell (HWell)
Stanford Research Institute (SRI)
Scientific Data Systems (SDS; later XDS / Xerox Data Systems)
Systems Development Corporation (SDC)
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB, Santa Barbara)
University of Utah (Utah)

Terms Appearing in the IMP Log, Oct 1969 – April 1970

GORDO: the operating system of the SDS Sigma 7 computer system otherwise known as the “host” computer (see RFC0011)
Host: the SDS Sigma7 computer system that connected to the ARPANET through the Interface Message Processor (IMP)
Interface Message Processor (IMP): the packet-switch, or router, that connected a diverse set of computers to the ARPANET
IMP TEST (IMPTST): software used to test the Interface Message Processor (IMP) hardware and the physical lines connecting the ARPANET nodes
Operational Program (Op Program) (4 Sept 1969, 15 Nov 1969, and 2 March 1970 versions): software used to run the Interface Message Processor, often referred to by the three parenthetical version dates listed above
punched out: “punching out” to cards was a way for programs or their outputs to be stored or read by the Sigma7 card reader
the reader: a punched card reader, part of the Sigma7 computer system
the tape: a tape drive, part of the Sigma7 computer system
TTY / Teletype: a machine used to enter data into the Sigma7 computer system