Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Tla spork

[Tom Lord]

Oh and... since I mention this particular clique fairly frequently:

   From what I read: back the late 60s and early 70s, the hackers [at
   MIT]


If anyone pokes around there's a *lot* of great names passing through
there around that time.  At that time, they were collectively blessed
by one of the hottest computing environments at the world (so they had
a field on which to play) and with a few ideas that have since proven
to be *really* deep (though, not the only deep ideas that have come
along).   There wasn't a lot else going on in academic computing at
that time and so it was like a bunch of smart kids dropped into a
brain-candy store, from what I can tell: a few "bright path" ideas to
explore that were really worth exploring, winding up in the laps of
some playful geeks.

All that's great and all.   You can find an account of them and others
in the book "Hacker's" by Steven Levy.....

But I don't mean to contribute to mythologizing that group of folks at
all.    Reading deeper and wider than just Levy:

Sure, lots of cool stuff --- but also plenty of widely distributed
boneheadedness, personal tragedies, factional strife.   The deeper
reading is a little disillusioning: sure, that set of folks had (and
continues to have) a huge impact --- but the detailed history of their
days as college kids reads a bit like watching sausage being made.

They won the "lambda prize", so to speak, thanks to have John M. help
found the dept. after his lucky discovery and so they got to think
more and more clearly about what matters than some of their
compatriots at other schools --- but other than that, oh and the
timing overall in history, it's just a bunch of folks.

-t