[ih] Review: Yasha Levine's "Surveillance Valley"

[eric.gade at gmail.com (Eric Gade)]

No bait here, just a poor choice of words. I meant only the end of the
period where people who had worked on ARPA projects had easy access to
funding for longer (than present) durations. I meant nothing negative about
the actual people, but was referecing the end of the funding environment in
which they were allowed to work. I suspect (and could be very wrong) that
it's not a coincidence that the sweetheart deal for PARC came soon after
the passage of the Mansfield amendments. In that sense it was something of
a "last gasp" in that computing research would not be funded again in the
same way.

ARPA people have, of course, done interesting and important work since that
time, and I wasn't suggesting otherwise. I do, however, wonder what would
have emerged if the funding culture had persisted.

On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 12:11 PM, Dave Crocker <dhc2 at dcrocker.net> wrote:

> On 7/3/2018 8:47 PM, Eric Gade wrote:
>
>> Regarding PARC, my understanding from reading the historical literature
>> is that it's best to view what happened there as a kind of "last gasp" of
>> the ARPA research community. There were lots of ARPA project alumni there
>> (some two "academic generations" deep in ARPA research) and Bob Taylor
>> helped run the show in its prime.
>>
>
>
> Eric,
>
> With some trepidation that I'm taking the bait, I'll ask for clarification
> about your choice of phrasing with "last gasp".  In several ways it doesn't
> make sense to me.
>
> Yes, there were folk from the Arpanet community who sent to PARC and
> some/much of the PARC work followed-on from Arpanet-related work, but a)
> the PARC work went for quite awhile; b) the PARC work did a wide variety of
> things that had major effects; c) the remaining Arpanet community went on
> for quite awhile -- well, really, is still going; and d) it also did a wide
> variety of things that had major effects.
>
> One thinks of 'last gasp' as constrained in time and effect (and typically
> with limited efficacy.)
>
> Hence my confusion.
>
>
> d/
>
> --
> Dave Crocker
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
>



-- 
Eric
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