NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] How history warps even in our own lifetimes
This case isn't a big deal, but still perhaps worthy of passing note.
BCS -- The Chartered Institute for IT -- has a series of short videos
posted about "Information Pioneers" -- in this case Ada Lovelace, Alan
Turing, Hedy Lamarr [no, not Hedley!], Sir Clive Sinclair, and Sir Tim
Berners-Lee. (It appears that having a "Sir" prefix on your name
helps gain entrance to this list.)
The videos are aimed at mass audiences, and are a bit too
stylized for my taste.
http://j.mp/hNPN7I (Brain Pickings)
But a line in the video for Sinclair caught my attention. It noted
that by the late 70s, most computers were "the size of a bus and
had 100s of valves [tubes]" ...
That isn't the 70s I remember. Tubes were long gone, and you could
pack a bunch of PDP-11s into the average bus. Even a couple of IBM
360s, as long as you didn't pile in too many peripherals as well.
Point is, the video is stating historical inaccuracies as fact,
an all too common problem not only in the technology sphere but
across the history of mankind generally.
I've always assumed that most of what we think we know about history
is at least partly inaccurate -- due to purposeful manipulation ("by
the victors"), the "telephone" effect, and other reasons.
But to see how much of history -- that I've lived through myself -- is
already becoming distorted is fascinating, and more than a bit
depressing.
How long before texts of the future assert that the Internet was
invented by Mark Zuckerberg to Serve the State?
--Lauren--
NNSquad Moderator