Muxway posted a link to the Arpanet Collection at the Internet Archive.
It's a nifty collection, though I've only skimmed through a couple documents. It's an important part of computing history (and this collection comes from the files of Katie Hafner, when she was preparing her book on the origins of the Internet), as well as tying back into my interest in the work of Doug Engelbart.
What it also makes me think of is all the old BACS documents that I read with an odd fervor while I was first really using computers, back in the late 70s/80s. All the docs had this same look - the courier font, the sometimes terse descriptions. Man pages on paper, almost. And they provide little to no tolerance for the untutored reader - you're either in, or you're going to be confused.
Another project in a similar area, the BBS Documentary project, brings similar memories. But there the docs take on an aura of odd chest pounding, the authors usually younger and more filled with a need to instantiate their desired personality.
Both recommended....
Posted by esinclai at June 22, 2002 12:27 PM |