[Air-L] ARPANET resurrection update and possible significances?

[Peter Timusk]

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 at 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 at 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-Communications-Device.pdf
>>
>> 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 at 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!
>>>
>>> - charles
>>> _______________________________________________
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