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June 10, 2013

Noted in 1985

I live in the future. As a graduate student in Artificial Intelligence at Yale University, I am now using computer equipment that will be commonplace five years from now.
I have a powerful workstation on my desk, connected in a high-speed network to more than one hundred other such machines, and, through other networks, to thousands of other computers and their users. I use these machines not only for research, but to keep my schedule, to write letters and articles, to read nationwide electronic “bulletin boards,” to send electronic mail, and sometimes just to play games. I make constant use of fancy graphics, text formatters, laser printers — you name it. My gadgets are both my desk and my window on the world. I’m quite lucky to have access to all these machines. Predictions for Privacy in the Age of Facebook (from 1985!) | Paleofuture

Posted by gerardvanderleun at June 10, 2013 3:07 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

I sent my first email on a main frame in 1978 or so.
I was using Fidonet BBSes and other networked BBSes which had email capability in the late 1980s. I do remember some email with dial-up took a few days to get a response, it had to leave the system you dialed into and get transferred to a hub which then waited for the other system to retrieve it. Once it was retrieved you had to wait for the other user to respond and then the process happened in reverse. If the dial-up systems contacted the hub more that once a day you might get a response that day.

Posted by: Todd E Oh at June 10, 2013 4:14 PM

From the article:
"Without any conspiratorial snooping or Big Brother antics, we may find our actions, our lifestyles, and even our beliefs under increasing public scrutiny as we move into the information age."

And we have. We have tip toed into this situation because it makes our lives more efficient and pleasurable. We have done it because we hoped and trusted that no one would use that information for ill purposes. We were wrong. Now what?

Posted by: Jimmy J. at June 10, 2013 7:46 PM

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