[LINK] Happy 20th Birthday WWW

[Roger Clarke]

At 21:12 +1100 15/3/09, Carl Makin wrote:
>I had a slip account at the ANU in 93/94 and was using it to demo the
>"World Wide Web" to anyone who would listen where I worked in the
>systems admin area at the Department of Health.  Unfortunately
>management had decided that the future was GOSIP and this Internet
>thing was a fad so they were only interested in X.400 messaging using
>Telecom's Telememo service via Austpac (X.25) at $0.60/page received.

The *real* case-study would be:

how long did it take them to work out they were backing the wrong horse?

[That's not a nasty comment.  For a brief period of time, maybe 2 
years in normally glacial public service time, there were real doubts 
about the longevity of that engineered (i.e. sloppy, unscientific) 
IETF stuff, in comparison with the elegance of ISO OSI.  I wuz there, 
and I weren't sure.]

[Maybe I should build that mini-drama into my Internet history.  I 
omitted it, partly because the Internet was centre-stage, and partly 
because ISO OSI became a relic far faster than other archetypal 
elegant solution did.]

I was doing some work for Purchasing Australia at the time, on EDI, 
but also on related matters.  PA was part of the (politically 
ill-fated) Dept of Admin Services (DAS - the one that actually had 
the gall to say 'no, Minister, I'm sorry, but that's actually against 
the law').  And DAS was struggling with the multiple (think maybe 6 
or 7) X.400 islands they had.


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW