Looking through the Bitsavers archive of old computer mags, trying to pin down when programs started to write programs. Ran into a more interesting subject in Sept 1958.
Datamation mag proposed a National Tech Information Service. The article is painfully detailed, Tldr. Two things stand out:
1. We were belatedly responding yet again to Sputnik. Russia already established a tech info service in 1952 to provide abstracts of science around the world for the benefit of Russian scientists.
The Institute publishes 13 “abstract journals” which annually contain over 400,000 abstracts of technical articles from more than 10,000 journals originating in about 80 countries. It systematically translates, indexes, and abstracts about 1400 of the 1800 scientific journals published in the United States.
The author proposed that until we could establish our own Tech Info Service we should simply translate and republish the Russian journals!
2. At that moment ARPA, newly founded by Bezos’s grandpa, was working with NSA to build our own Tech Info Service. It was meant to serve NSA, not to serve our scientists or citizens. You’re** reading these pixels on the resulting system.
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BIG POINT: The Tech Info Service STILL doesn’t serve our citizens. It does not provide technical information to those who need it. SPECIFIC example: the damn ADA mandate affected all colleges, publishers and web developers. When it happened last year there was NO news about it, and the people who NEEDED TO KNOW were not informed. The web STILL solely serves the Bezos family.
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** When I say you I don’t mean a human, since humans no longer read this blog. I mean a Chinese bot which will consume these pixels in 2029.
Polistra's Mill 