Since this issue of the Current is dedicated to telecommunications 
and computers, it is a good idea to gain some historical perspective on 
the subject.

	The first computer known to man was made back in 2,000,001 
B.C. on Friday at 4:30 P.M.  Oddly enough, this was also the last time that 
anything got done on a Friday afternoon.  The first computer was built 
by Og, who still teachs Freshman courses at A&M.  The primus computer 
was simple, just a bunch of sticks.  When Og needed to sum a number, 
he just added the proper number of branches to a pile.  To integrate 
over time, he left the stick on its tree and noted how much it grew later.  
This calculation proved time consuming, so Og contented himself with 
counting the sticks (thinking integration was useless anyway).
	Telecomputing was simple in those days.  People just gave the 
sticks to someone else.  No one worryed about formats or speed, 
although very fast sticks caused bruises.
	Also in those days, just as is the case now, some people within the 
telecom scene acted like total jerks.  Whenever someone was behaving 
like an idiot, Og would set some of the sticks on fire, and throw them at 
the offending person.  This was the creation of "flaming" in 
telecommunications, a term still in use today.  Of course, Og occasionally 
hit someone and set them on fire.  And this is how the term "flaming 
idiot" was born.  
	Back then computer breakin was simpler too.  If someone wanted 
to break into Og's computer, they waited until Og was asleep, and 
entered his cave.  Then they grabbed Og's sticks and swallowed them as 
fast as possible.  Naturally, this caused the thief to choke and cough.  
This is where the label of "Hacker" originated from, and has remained 
until this day.  It also woke Og up, which is the last time computer 
security was so simple.  Og, being theft conscious, then took his sticks 
and hid them in the darkest deepest part of his cave where no light fell.  
Computers today are still placed in the deepest, darkest areas possible 
as a tribute to his contributions.
	It was also about this time that the benefits of local area 
networking were discovered.  One of Og's colleagues, Ug, discovered that 
if several of his friends worked a net across the river, they could catch 
more fish than they could with their bare hands.  This was the first 
multi-user platform.  Sadly however, no-one thought to combine the two 
technologies.  Of course, this may be just as well, since the first L.A.N 
only worked at about 1 B.P.M. (Bass per Minute).  This was also the only 
time in computer history that throughput was a bad thing and a net 
collision was a good thing. 
	So, for a very long time, telecommunications were limited to 
voice.  For example, when Ig saw a sabertoothed tiger coming through 
the tall grass, he would warn his buddy Ag by yelling across the field, 
waving his arms to get Ag's attention.  Ag, curious about what Ig was so 
frantic about, usually started across the tall grass in order to hear 
better.  More often than not, Ag ended up as a tiger tasty.  Obviously, 
the system was inefficient.  But as bad as it was, it was policy, so it 
continued to be the norm for many years.
	In ancient Egypt, the pharaohs enbarked on an elaborate 
telecommunications setup.  They decided to use a flag semaphore to 
communicate with many people at once.  Huge stone towers were built 
in the shape of pyramids (for stability), and the flagman stood at the 
top.  And although the flagman could be seen for miles and miles, not 
everyone was interested in what he had to say.  Some people wanted to 
know whether the Romans went to the final four, and others wanted an 
update on the approaching locust swarm.  Therefore, many pyramids 
were built in order to provide everybody with the information they 
desired.  But still, people weren't satisfied with the selection.  This was 
the first time the sentence "There still isn't anything worth watching" 
was uttered.  So the experiment collapsed as the unappreciated flagmen 
quit waving, leaving only the abandoned pyramids as evidence of the 
attempt at telecom.
	More recently, the French did some experimentation in 
telecommunications in the late 1700's.  The invention of the guillotine 
allowed a person's head and mouth to be free of all the extra weight of a 
body, making for a small and portable communications setup.  This is 
also when invention of flying head storage designs were made.  The 
original idea was to keep the person as small as possible, thus making 
transportation cheaper and faster.  As is often the case with new 
technologies, only the rich could afford it.  Unfortunately for the early 
adopters, the design suffered from head crashes and poor portable life 
expectancy.  The production run was limited to a few thousand.  This is 
also the time when "head crashes" began to be called "fatal". 
	Much more recently, digital computers were invented and placed 
on campuses all over the country in the early seventys.  Since each 
computer had a finite capacity, administrators had an agreement among 
them.  Each campus would hold part of all the programs that everyone 
used and shared.  So instead of having to store 500 programs, each 
school only had to store 5.  One computer administrator had several 
assistants, a poor memory, and a penchant for anacronyms.  He 
regularly issued memos to his staff to "find this program" or "find that 
program" among all the computer sites.  After writing "find this 
program" a few hundred times, he began just to write "FTP" as an 
abbreviation, and the term FTP SITE was born.
	Nowdays, we just use and abuse the systems without giving any 
thought to the history and background.  Hopefully, this article will 
remind people of the colorful history computers and telecom have had.  
And everything you have read is true (Since none of it has been 
disproven.)   :{)

Allen Kitchen