Hello I just read the idea of packets was invented by a British mathematician and brought to ARPANET by a coworker at a conference. Donald Davies (UK): Proposed a national commercial data network and introduced the term "packet". On Sun, Apr 26, 2026, 7:41 p.m. Jacob Johanssen via Air-L < air-l@listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
ELIZA has been "reconstructed" for some time now, see here: https://sites.google.com/view/elizaarchaeology/home
On Sun, 26 Apr 2026, 18:31 Peter Gloviczki via Air-L, < air-l@listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
Thanks Charles for sharing all this.
It reminded me of Licklider & Taylor's seminal paper: https://internetat50.com/references/Licklider_Taylor_The-Computer-As-A-Commu...
Fondly, Peter [image: email graphic] <http://www.wiu.edu/> *Peter Joseph Gloviczki, Ph.D.*Professor School of Communication and Media Western Illinois University 1 University Circle, Macomb, IL 61455 <https://www.google.com/maps/search/1+University+Circle,+Macomb,+IL+61455?entry=gmail&source=g> Schedule a meeting via Calendly: https://calendly.com/pj-gloviczki/30min
On Sun, Apr 26, 2026 at 4:52 AM Charles Melvin Ess via Air-L < air-l@listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
Hi AoIRists,
As I mentioned in an earlier note to Morten Bay, there is an active project to recreate the ARPANET from ca. 1972. You can see the update here:
<https://obsolescence.dev/arpanet_home>
Including the chance to log in yourself to one of the now 35 working nodes.
One of the documents referenced here is titled
SCENARIOS for using the ARPANET at the INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTER COMMUNICATION, Washington, D.C., October 24-26, 1972
and is in fact reproduced in the pages giving further instructions on logging in - along with 2026 scenarios that might also be fun to play with.
One of the available programs from the MIT.AI node is: == DOCTOR is a LISP program written by Joseph Weizenbaum and described in "ELIZA - A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man And Machine" in the Communications of the ACM, January 1966. DOCTOR simulates a psychiatric interview with a Rogerian psychotherapist. == (I'll come back to this below.)
I know that ARPANET is central to the work of e.g.,Janet Abbate's early history, _Inventing the Internet_ (1999). But what I'm asking here, especially of historians who know these domains far better than I: 1) how far did these early exchanges, so far as they could be followed and/or documented - and/or, as at least some study of primary aims, practices, affordances, etc. might have been possible - enter into early research on CMC? 2) Might this reconstruction project, insofar as it grants access to "the rest of us," be of possible use / interest for historical / current research on CMC and its descendants? E.g., I know a great deal has been written about ELIZA - but, to my knowledge at least, not with direct access to the working program itself. I suspect the working program would give researchers a chance to not only become much more familiar with how the program works and "behaves," but also to try out hypotheses as to how different sorts of engagements, expectations, etc. might be dis/confirmed through actually using it?
In any case, to quote the welcome message from the first terminal I tried: Happy Hacking!
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