If you squint hard enough, everything has already been invented. Telegraph
operators had a form of presence if you squint hard enough.
Presence is a continuously updated 'display' of a set of other people's
status. Finger didn't do that. Yeah, you COULD have used the mechanism to
implement a form of presence, but I don't remember anyone ever doing that,
and if they did, it didn't make anyone sit up and take notice like the IM
folk's buddy status systems did. They invented presence, as we know it, and
of course it's not entirely new, but then again, little else is.
Finger had antecedents in various time sharing systems versions of "who is
logged in" mechanisms. They in turn had predecessors in various user id
logging mechanisms on batch systems. I recall being able to determine who
was in the CMU Comp Center by looking at a fairly often posted list of batch
runs made for the 1108, and the G20 graphics systems certainly had
mechanisms to know who was on the other displays way before I got there.
Sending real time messages to users logged in is almost as old. The G20
graphics systems had such facilities. Every time sharing system did, and of
course, the telegraph operators had a similar facility. They aren't IM.
Brian
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Crocker [mailto:dhc2(_at_)dcrocker(_dot_)net]
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 11:01 AM
To: John C Klensin
Cc: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: IM and Presence history
John C Klensin wrote:
Yes. I wanted to keep the note from becoming even longer, but...
ack. figured that, but found myself compelled that the history lesson was
useful for the record.
If I came in through an arpanet dial-up at some random place
on the net, and telneted to my home system, then the finger
for that home system would show me as 'present'. I am not
seeing how today's presence systems are fudamentally different
from that.
Subjectively and from my perspective, the present systems
"feel", and sometimes actually are, much more distributed. But,
yes, from the perspective you describe, we have advanced very
little in terms of basic functionality.
I believe that none of the proprietary IMs is anything other than purely
centralized.
Having to configure multiple IM accounts, to be able to talk to different
people, doesn't feel at all 'distributed' to me, except in the bad sense
of
multiple, disconnected, centralized services.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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