nickj@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Nick Jagger) (09/28/90)
I have been asked to post this query for a colleague, if you want
to send e-mail please send to QSFA7@sussex.cluster.ac.uk if from
the UK or QSFA7@uk.ac.cluster.sussex if from elsewhere.
- WHERE DID EMAIL COME FROM? WHY IS IT AS IT IS? -
In the course of research I've been doing on efforts to market telematics
to the general public, I've been surprised by the lack of documentation on
the history of email...and the lack of discussion on why it takes the
form it does. Or am I missing sources of information? Any information or
guide to sources would be welcome...as would, of course, gossip and
personal experience!
The sorts of question that concern me are:
- where did email first emerge? In multiuser mainframe environments?
in communicating with bureaux services? on ARPANET?
- how did the store-and forward paradigm develop?
- has anyone tried a different paradigm - e.g. something more like
fax, which could use a conventional phone number as the address, rather
than a postbox on a mainframe? (I mean as a dedicated system, not as a
card for a PC.)
- how are the US residential telematics services (e.g. Prodigy)
doing? Is there any information on their use for messaging rather than
information access? Is consumer email taking off anywhere (other than
Minitel)?
- what is happening with bulletin boards? are they still
proliferating, or are they being displaced by network facilities like this?
- why is there so much about computer history and so little about
comms (except for the telco histories)?
Ian Miles
QSFA7@uk.ac.sussex.cluster