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

[Charles Melvin Ess]

Thanks in turn for the tip, Carl. I haven't touched emacs in years, but 
will now give it a try.

BTW: do you happen to know which version of ELIZA it might be - likely 
the 1966 Cosell version, but there appear to be many versions / clones 
"out there" ...

I was recently reminded in a most helpful note from Jeff Shrager (one of 
the co-authors, along with David Berry, in the Lane, et. al 2026 paper) 
of another source that may be of interest: <elizagen.org>

I had poked at it last year (and, of course, forgot entirely about it 
until poking some more in my email this morning) and (re-)discovered a 
good overview of the various versions / clones:
<https://sites.google.com/view/elizagen-org/eliza-clones>

They also link to a PDF: ORIGINAL_ELIZA_IN_MAD_SLIP_CC0
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DkdV2o-36mm3x2nURjhKiCaFcjZtMIoI/view>

Thanks again and happy spelunking!
- c.

On 29/04/2026 09:30, Carl Vogel wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> Thank you for these notes.
> 
>> Even better - especially for those of us not within reasonable travel
>> distance to Mountain View, CA - as Jacob Johanssen helpfully pointed
>> out, it has been possible for some time to interact with a version of
>> ELIZA at <https://sites.google.com/view/elizaarchaeology/home>.
> 
> Of course, long before Google made this available, and still now, ELIZA is  available within the (mainly Lisp implemented) text editor, emacs:  "esc-x" and then, in the minibuffer, "doctor".
> 
> All my best,
> Carl
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Air-L <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of Charles Melvin Ess via Air-L <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> Sent: Wednesday 29 April 2026 07:12
> To: Ulf-Dietrich Reips; air-l
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] ARPANET resurrection update and possible significances?
> 
> [External Email] This email originated outside of Trinity College Dublin. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognise the sender and know the content is safe.
> 
> Hi Ulf,
> 
> And many thanks in turn for the pointer to the CHM. I can only imagine
> how valuable and enjoyable those live demos must have been for you and
> your students - lucky you!
> 
> Even better - especially for those of us not within reasonable travel
> distance to Mountain View, CA - as Jacob Johanssen helpfully pointed
> out, it has been possible for some time to interact with a version of
> ELIZA at <https://sites.google.com/view/elizaarchaeology/home>.
> 
> In retrospect, moreover, I see that I may not have been as clear as to
> why I called attention to the possibility of running a version of ELIZA
> on the reconstructed ARPANET. I meant to highlight ELIZA as a test
> scenario for getting acquainted with the reconstructed ARPANET project
> was that interacting with the program gives a new user some experience
> with the, um, leisurely pace of the communication across the network,
> along with the (quickly irritating) sounds of the teletype at work, etc.
> I haven't spent enough time there to see how far / easy it might be to
> strike up a conversation with someone else online to go still further:
> so I thought this might be as good a place as any to start with.
> 
> Clearly: this is the golden opportunity to start up the Association of
> ARPANET Researchers... ;-)
> 
> In the meantime: I'm further grateful for these pointers as they
> prompted me to check further into a particular curiosity I've had for
> quite some time regarding the ELIZA / DOCTOR programs themselves.
> As a start, I'm not sure which version of the program is on offer at the
> elizaarcheology site.
> Not that it matters much to most of us - but as the terrific paper by
> Lane et al (including our colleague David M. Berry) explains,
> Weizenbaum's original 1963 version was written in MAD-LISP - whereas the
> version that became "the lingua franca of AI" was a clone written in
> 1966 by Bernie Cosell in LISP (Lane et al, 2025:
> <10.1109/MAHC.2025.3564095>)
> 
> The latter version has also been available for some time for those of us
> lucky enough to have a PiDP-10 sitting on our desk - a Raspberry-Pi
> driven emulator / replica of the DEC PDP-10 that was used at MIT, among
> other places, in those days.
> This also appears to be the version available to the rest of us now via
> the ARPANET reconstruction project I mentioned:
> <https://obsolescence.dev/arpanet_home#>
> when following their first 2026 scenario:
> SCENARIO 1: MIT-AI DOCTOR === HOST #134
> Engaging the latter opens up the same ITS operating system at work in
> the PiDP-10 instantiation of ELIZA; both invoke LISP alone, etc.
> 
> So I wonder if the version on elizaarcheology is the Cosell version
> rather than the more recently discovered (2025) and only very recently
> reconstructed (2026) Weizenbaum version in MAD-LISP?
> Perhaps Jacob Johanssen and/or David Berry will know off the tops of
> their very capacious heads?
> 
> In any case, kudos to David Berry and his colleagues who further made
> the Weizenbaum MAD-LISP version available to anyone working in a
> UNIX-like environment:
> <https://github.com/rupertl/eliza-ctss?tab=readme-ov-file#readme>
> (Lane et al, 2025, p. 76)
> 
> David was also interviewed on the reconstruction of this earliest
> version here:
> <https://www.livescience.com/technology/eliza-the-worlds-1st-chatbot-was-just-resurrected-from-60-year-old-computer-code?utm_term=8DDEC852-88AE-4919-AD0B-90BD6C9ADF42&lrh=3bdc5f1f89a97990a9d08608f0f21ea9c0780388e06c7978eb76754af35fa781&utm_campaign=368B3745-DDE0-4A69-A2E8-62503D85375D&utm_medium=email&utm_content=081CB850-2969-4326-93EB-7FF1B59A73E7&utm_source=SmartBrief>
> 
> Again, many thanks all around - and happy hacking!
> - c.
> 
> 
> On 26/04/2026 15:33, Ulf-Dietrich Reips wrote:
>> Hello Charles, all:
>> thank you for the pointer to the wonderful ARPANET recreation project.
>>
>> The computer history musuem (https://computerhistory.org) used to have a
>> live demo of the original ELIZA, which for us in psychology and
>> psychotherapy research became very important in both showing how
>> simulation could inform us about effective ingredients of psychotherapy
>> and how computers could contribute to mental health. I visited the
>> museum first in Boston at its original location and some years ago also
>> in Mountain View.
>>
>> The museum provides both very insightful explanations AND the hands-on
>> experience needed to at least partly make young people understand what
>> it was like to experience software on pre-Internet computers and the
>> beginning Internet. The exhibition was very nicely done, I highly
>> recommend a visit.
>>
>> Best wishes from Europe,
>> ulf
>>
>> At 11:12 Uhr +0200 26.04.2026, Charles Melvin Ess via Air-L 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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>>
>>
> 
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