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

[Charles Melvin Ess]

Hi Peter,

many thanks in turn. I'm a huge fan of Licklider and his role with 
colleagues such as Doug Engelbart in articulating and arguing for what 
is sometimes referred to as the augmentation emphasis (contra 
replacement, much less supersession) regarding computing technologies, 
specifically AI (e.g., J.C.R. Licklider, “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” IRE 
Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, 4 (March 1960), 4-11, p.4. 
doi:10.1109/THFE2.1960.4503259).
This builds on the foundational work of Norbert Wiener (who refused to 
work for the US military after WWII because of the dangers he saw in 
their efforts to appropriate his cybernetics approaches and early 
visions of AI - a lesson I wish more people would take on board) and is 
further developed by the likes of Hubert Dreyfus (1973), Joseph 
Weizenbaum (1976) and in more recent times, Virginia Dignum (2019) and 
Katharina Zweig (2019, 2021), for example.
But for whatever reason - I never had this paper in my hands - thanks so 
much!

Of course, the open sentence:
In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through
a machine than face to face.
reads a little differently today ... But save that story for another day.

Again, many thanks indeed and all best,
- c.

On 26/04/2026 17:34, Peter Gloviczki 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 <https://internetat50.com/references/ 
> Licklider_Taylor_The-Computer-As-A-Communications-Device.pdf>
> 
> Fondly, Peter
> 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
> Schedule a meeting via Calendly:
> https://calendly.com/pj-gloviczki/30min <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 <mailto: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 <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 <http://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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