Heralds of Resource Sharing
I was going through my "to do" list today and found this old documentary that I had been meaning to watch for a while now. "Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing" is a 1972 documentary about the beginnings of the ARPAnet. It has vintage nerds in full color describing (very well, I might add) how the network was designed to work, and what they viewed would be the purpose of such a network at that time. It does a very good job of "rationalizing" to a non-technical audience why a computer network would be a good idea.
(One particularly perplexing moment comes when a scientist is explaining why some people might NOT want electronic bank records. He says "a husband might not want his wife to know how much money he makes". What an interesting piece of cultural history - and an interesting intersection of culture and science that will seem foreign to us today.)
Robert Kahn's lecture at 4 minutes into the film is fabulous. IMO, it's 2 great minutes of lecture.
The link below is to google video, so pretty poor quality, and it was made in the 70s, so it's not particularly glitzy in any way....... but I couldn't help but get excited to have this bit of "original footage".
Link here: Google Video
And here is the associated wikipedia entry.
(One particularly perplexing moment comes when a scientist is explaining why some people might NOT want electronic bank records. He says "a husband might not want his wife to know how much money he makes". What an interesting piece of cultural history - and an interesting intersection of culture and science that will seem foreign to us today.)
Robert Kahn's lecture at 4 minutes into the film is fabulous. IMO, it's 2 great minutes of lecture.
The link below is to google video, so pretty poor quality, and it was made in the 70s, so it's not particularly glitzy in any way....... but I couldn't help but get excited to have this bit of "original footage".
Link here: Google Video
And here is the associated wikipedia entry.
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