Information Trapping and Information Traps

There are information hunters that have only one answer in mind and will torture the databases they interrogate until the correct response comes out. Then there are information farmers who are more interested in seeding potential hotbeds of knowledge through social nets and communities of practice. Then there are information scavengers or what are more diplomatically termed information "trappers."

Trappers are searchers who have seen enough search results to build their queries in advance of probable outcomes -- especially likely scenarios that pack a passing storm of relatable events. A common trigger for such events could be hirings and firings in anticipation of a job search. Another could be more environmentally-charged --say that newly proposed wind farm, toll hike, or carbon tax.

The eruptions of protest over a project approval, bid denial, or decision in the balance is bound to attract two outcomes:

1. News -- defined as consequences (awards, penalties), or, binding changes to policies and the fact base (selectively drawn from each side of the debate)

2. Conjecture -- the opinions of partisan supporters and opponents (typically in much greater page volumes than actual news)

Properly calibrated an information trap can tell you which side is winning the larger PR war -- newscycle by newscycle.

Tara Calishain dedicated her most recent in a series of search guides to setting traps. Her rationale is that you don't have to boil the ocean with ad hoc queries. Instead you can use RSS feeds and page alerts to reduce the fire-hose effects of voluminous results. You get targeted updates. You log off on top of what could otherwise feel like a bottomless situation. Best of all it's prompted by changes to your areas of interest -- not the subjects themselves which threaten to re-introduce you to already familiar themes and topics.

In the past we referred to this as the standing query. Lee Eichelberger, a usability guru with search engine vendor FAST deemed them Taxonomies of Use in this past winter's piece on Information Supply/Demand patterns and the growing requirements for enterprise Knowledge Planners. Whatever your terminology the major value add of setting traps is that they are triggered by events. But if you extend your query builds into the full richness of the aggregate, the wider patterns in your event stream emerge:

* Complaints are up!
* Viruses are leveling off!!
* My momentous press release went out last Tuesday -- yawn!!!

Calishain's effort should be lauded as one of the first efforts to seriously chronicle the notion of news flow as it relates to search returns. She provides serious guidance on which trap to set based on prior volumes of coverage and expected rates of change.

The trap here is that the actual use cases of actual trappers are buried under the details of the products in the toolbox -- the feature function sets of email services, content aggregators, and search engines. Many of these capabilities are susceptible to change by the time any reader would commit these details to their own trapping efforts -- especially the free utilities that most readers would try before investing in ore than the book. It's a time-tested recipe for selling updated editions of technology guides.

To Calishain's credit her task sequencing and engaging style enables her to cover far more ground than any web-based tutorial. It's certainly more hands-on and credible that what any vendor could ghost write through a technology press or research group. That said, it would be even more useful for students and practitioners alike to focus next time on use cases -- the actual trappings.

Information Trapping and Information Traps

There are information hunters that have only one answer in mind and will torture the databases they interrogate until the correct response comes out. Then there are information farmers who are more interested in seeding potential hotbeds of knowledge through social nets and communities of practice. Then there are information scavengers or what are more diplomatically termed information "trappers."

Trappers are searchers who have seen enough search results to build their queries in advance of probable outcomes -- especially likely scenarios that pack a passing storm of relatable events. A common trigger for such events could be hirings and firings in anticipation of a job search. Another could be more environmentally-charged --say that newly proposed wind farm, toll hike, or carbon tax.

The eruptions of protest over a project approval, bid denial, or decision in the balance is bound to attract two outcomes:

1. News -- defined as consequences (awards, penalties), or, binding changes to policies and the fact base (selectively drawn from each side of the debate)

2. Conjecture -- the opinions of partisan supporters and opponents (typically in much greater page volumes than actual news)

Properly calibrated an information trap can tell you which side is winning the larger PR war -- newscycle by newscycle.

Tara Calishain dedicated her most recent in a series of search guides to setting traps. Her rationale is that you don't have to boil the ocean with ad hoc queries. Instead you can use RSS feeds and page alerts to reduce the fire-hose effects of voluminous results. You get targeted updates. You log off on top of what could otherwise feel like a bottomless situation. Best of all it's prompted by changes to your areas of interest -- not the subjects themselves which threaten to re-introduce you to already familiar themes and topics.

In the past we referred to this as the standing query. Lee Eichelberger, a usability guru with search engine vendor FAST deemed them Taxonomies of Use in this past winter's piece on Information Supply/Demand patterns and the growing requirements for enterprise Knowledge Planners. Whatever your terminology the major value add of setting traps is that they are triggered by events. But if you extend your query builds into the full richness of the aggregate, the wider patterns in your event stream emerge:

* Complaints are up!
* Viruses are leveling off!!
* My momentous press release went out last Tuesday -- yawn!!!

Calishain's effort should be lauded as one of the first efforts to seriously chronicle the notion of news flow as it relates to search returns. She provides serious guidance on which trap to set based on prior volumes of coverage and expected rates of change.

The trap here is that the actual use cases of actual trappers are buried under the details of the products in the toolbox -- the feature function sets of email services, content aggregators, and search engines. Many of these capabilities are susceptible to change by the time any reader would commit these details to their own trapping efforts -- especially the free utilities that most readers would try before investing in ore than the book. It's a time-tested recipe for selling updated editions of technology guides.

To Calishain's credit her task sequencing and engaging style enables her to cover far more ground than any web-based tutorial. It's certainly more hands-on and credible that what any vendor could ghost write through a technology press or research group. That said, it would be even more useful for students and practitioners alike to focus next time on use cases -- the actual trappings.

Information is a Verb

I still remember some hectic mid-recession workday during the Bush 41 economy when I read that headline in my cube at FIND/SVP. The author was Cindy Kotler and she was describing in the now defunct Journal of Commerce the unwavering attention that Japanese managers favor on market intelligence. They certainly had a stronger appetite for it than our American clients. But the corollary to fact-gathering was also true: Information devoid of its social, marketing and technical implications is meaningless. In theory few would disagree. In practice we're still at the starting gates.

Today the info as verb mantra is especially applicable to Google's mantra in support of its strategy to organize the world's information. How?

* By buying out major publishers?
* By indexing enough of the web to control its currents and manage its pulses?

Nope. The method writes B. Iyer T. Davenport in the current HBR is...

Informational kudzu, always putting down new roots based on the thoroughly internalized principle that information shall be organized by analyzing users' intentions.

It's not a "what" -- it's a "how." Information by itself ... hangs itself. If it's sticky it's a piece of gum just waiting for a ride on someone's feet. If not it races to the bottom of the search results.

Contrary to Google's colossal search logs it is not a person, place, or thing, nor is it simply a description of static facts.

Stepping back again to the early nineties what would the past say about today's acumen for putting information into action? I don't mean Google's strategy per se but our own ability to interpret information through the lens of intentionality?

Could it be that our ability to test scenarios, consider outcomes, and weigh consequences now rivals the sophistication of our search tools? Could it be that information gathering and dissemination are learned skills possessed by fewer and fewer as access to information increases?

Information is a Verb

I still remember some hectic mid-recession workday during the Bush 41 economy when I read that headline in my cube at FIND/SVP. The author was Cindy Kotler and she was describing in the now defunct Journal of Commerce the unwavering attention that Japanese managers favor on market intelligence. They certainly had a stronger appetite for it than our American clients. But the corollary to fact-gathering was also true: Information devoid of its social, marketing and technical implications is meaningless. In theory few would disagree. In practice we're still at the starting gates.

Today the info as verb mantra is especially applicable to Google's mantra in support of its strategy to organize the world's information. How?

* By buying out major publishers?
* By indexing enough of the web to control its currents and manage its pulses?

Nope. The method writes B. Iyer T. Davenport in the current HBR is...

Informational kudzu, always putting down new roots based on the thoroughly internalized principle that information shall be organized by analyzing users' intentions.

It's not a "what" -- it's a "how." Information by itself ... hangs itself. If it's sticky it's a piece of gum just waiting for a ride on someone's feet. If not it races to the bottom of the search results.

Contrary to Google's colossal search logs it is not a person, place, or thing, nor is it simply a description of static facts.

Stepping back again to the early nineties what would the past say about today's acumen for putting information into action? I don't mean Google's strategy per se but our own ability to interpret information through the lens of intentionality?

Could it be that our ability to test scenarios, consider outcomes, and weigh consequences now rivals the sophistication of our search tools? Could it be that information gathering and dissemination are learned skills possessed by fewer and fewer as access to information increases?

Using Search to Run Your Metadata Through the Wash Cycle

When we are getting our houses of information architecture in order it doesn't hurt to include the search tool in your walking tour. While not an afterthought search engine tuning is sometimes forsaken to the crash test of an overly formal BETA assessment. Your BETA testers can smell wet paint but they can't sense the color scheme. They step around loose nails. But any student of Google's Innovation Machine [see "Reading Google's Mind in HBR's April issue by Bala Iyer and Tom Davenport] knows that the line between testing and marketing has disappeared. When your users hit your new homepage they might not have a shopping list in hand. They might not know exactly what they're looking for. But even if...

1. Your KM store does not stock coffee mugs and t-shirts
2. You are a service provider with intangible assets
3. The text in your documents is not up to building code (READ: metadata structure)

... they might expect KM to help them decide (or at least spark their curiosity!)

What if they want all the white papers detached from the rest of the marketing archive? What if it would be easier to search according to subject experts than actual subjects? How much play do you have in your design choices when the walls and fixtures are already in?

Has this happened to you?

* The site map is a missing item on the search menu
* The site structure is incidental to the results page
* You need to browse one database at a time to get your bearings

The best laid KM plans can't hide the disconnects when we don't hook search up to our metadata schemas, taxonomic mappings, and navigational paths. Reading metadata is not something search tools do in their spare time. They must be customized to render all the pre-BETA code you can cram into the interface. Only then can you flush out the ROT that will ooze to the top of your results pages.

Remember search tools can help you find what you need. But they can be easily trained to help you prevent what your users need least: noise instead of signal.

Using Search to Run Your Metadata Through the Wash Cycle

When we are getting our houses of information architecture in order it doesn't hurt to include the search tool in your walking tour. While not an afterthought search engine tuning is sometimes forsaken to the crash test of an overly formal BETA assessment. Your BETA testers can smell wet paint but they can't sense the color scheme. They step around loose nails. But any student of Google's Innovation Machine [see "Reading Google's Mind in HBR's April issue by Bala Iyer and Tom Davenport] knows that the line between testing and marketing has disappeared. When your users hit your new homepage they might not have a shopping list in hand. They might not know exactly what they're looking for. But even if...

1. Your KM store does not stock coffee mugs and t-shirts
2. You are a service provider with intangible assets
3. The text in your documents is not up to building code (READ: metadata structure)

... they might expect KM to help them decide (or at least spark their curiosity!)

What if they want all the white papers detached from the rest of the marketing archive? What if it would be easier to search according to subject experts than actual subjects? How much play do you have in your design choices when the walls and fixtures are already in?

Has this happened to you?

* The site map is a missing item on the search menu
* The site structure is incidental to the results page
* You need to browse one database at a time to get your bearings

The best laid KM plans can't hide the disconnects when we don't hook search up to our metadata schemas, taxonomic mappings, and navigational paths. Reading metadata is not something search tools do in their spare time. They must be customized to render all the pre-BETA code you can cram into the interface. Only then can you flush out the ROT that will ooze to the top of your results pages.

Remember search tools can help you find what you need. But they can be easily trained to help you prevent what your users need least: noise instead of signal.

The 80:20 Rule of Knowledge Management

The concrete and yet elusive goal to waging a successful KM campaign is the quest to determine two things really:

(1) Who created the content you're identifying; and,
(2) Who was it intended for

If your KM system can solve these two mysteries you are well on your way to getting KM right. Because if your colleagues know this they can reconstruct not only topics, formats, and date ranges but the actual motives of the person or teams that created the work and thus how in-step it is with their own tasks, priorities, and personal investment in the material itself.

The other 20 percent? That falls outside the domain of KM central. That's up to the domain leaders. Ultimately though the remaining 20% answers to the role of knowledge contributor. Most of us are members of the content producing and consuming camps. It's a goal no more abstract than garbage-in, garbage-out. Your keynoter is also part of the clean-up crew. This reciprocal arrangement bodes well for tackling the 80/20 rule.

Under any practical arrangement the reach of the KM team does not extend beyond the 80 percent. Designing an experience is one thing. Endorsing and classifying content is quite another. But how does the designer impress upon their content producers the need for direct engagement in the mechanics of sound KM execution.

I put this question to a panel of intranet managers, information architects, and leading practitioners in a 2005 roundtable in Searcher Magazine entitled: Under Budget, on Time, and in Sync: How to Stage Successful Rollouts. One of the participants, Christie Confetti-Higgins of the internal portal team for SunLibrary within Sun Microsystems focused on the breadth versus depth issue that lies at the core of content production (and producer participation in it). Christie focused on the need to shape an enterprise taxonomy around the routines and priorities of her users -- not around the completeness of a subject or discipline it addresses:

There was a fine balance between how many levels of the taxonomy hierarchy to go down before it was no longer valuable to the user. Do you drill down to 10 levels in a competitive taxonomy or will 5 levels do? Some of the questions we asked ourselves were based on the content. Was there a lot of content around a particular area of [industry] competition that would benefit from further categorization? If so, we then investigated that option. We continually looked at how users would find the information. At some point, it is too detailed and then the return diminishes for us in terms of time to develop and the end user in terms of time to now find that information. There is a thing as too much detail :).

Three years since its publication the excessive detail Christie refers to here could be buried in the long tail of your search log results or the tags too specific to be reused in future business efforts. In an SLA conference last fall she positioned it as embedding a client-centric perspective in your KM system. This is an approach that values timely sharing over exhaustive collecting and shows a direct pay-off to producers -- even when their participation falls outside the scope of their performance reviews.


var addthis_pub = 'attspin';

The 80:20 Rule of Knowledge Management

The concrete and yet elusive goal to waging a successful KM campaign is the quest to determine two things really:

(1) Who created the content you're identifying; and,
(2) Who was it intended for

If your KM system can solve these two mysteries you are well on your way to getting KM right. Because if your colleagues know this they can reconstruct not only topics, formats, and date ranges but the actual motives of the person or teams that created the work and thus how in-step it is with their own tasks, priorities, and personal investment in the material itself.

The other 20 percent? That falls outside the domain of KM central. That's up to the domain leaders. Ultimately though the remaining 20% answers to the role of knowledge contributor. Most of us are members of the content producing and consuming camps. It's a goal no more abstract than garbage-in, garbage-out. Your keynoter is also part of the clean-up crew. This reciprocal arrangement bodes well for tackling the 80/20 rule.

Under any practical arrangement the reach of the KM team does not extend beyond the 80 percent. Designing an experience is one thing. Endorsing and classifying content is quite another. But how does the designer impress upon their content producers the need for direct engagement in the mechanics of sound KM execution.

I put this question to a panel of intranet managers, information architects, and leading practitioners in a 2005 roundtable in Searcher Magazine entitled: Under Budget, on Time, and in Sync: How to Stage Successful Rollouts. One of the participants, Christie Confetti-Higgins of the internal portal team for SunLibrary within Sun Microsystems focused on the breadth versus depth issue that lies at the core of content production (and producer participation in it). Christie focused on the need to shape an enterprise taxonomy around the routines and priorities of her users -- not around the completeness of a subject or discipline it addresses:

There was a fine balance between how many levels of the taxonomy hierarchy to go down before it was no longer valuable to the user. Do you drill down to 10 levels in a competitive taxonomy or will 5 levels do? Some of the questions we asked ourselves were based on the content. Was there a lot of content around a particular area of [industry] competition that would benefit from further categorization? If so, we then investigated that option. We continually looked at how users would find the information. At some point, it is too detailed and then the return diminishes for us in terms of time to develop and the end user in terms of time to now find that information. There is a thing as too much detail :).

Three years since its publication the excessive detail Christie refers to here could be buried in the long tail of your search log results or the tags too specific to be reused in future business efforts. In an SLA conference last fall she positioned it as embedding a client-centric perspective in your KM system. This is an approach that values timely sharing over exhaustive collecting and shows a direct pay-off to producers -- even when their participation falls outside the scope of their performance reviews.

The Biggest Picture

If perception is reality … what’s the reality of the perception?

Perception “may” drive sales but is what attracts reporters, analysts, investors, regulators, and, ultimately … customers.

Thought leaders, gurus, agencies, advertisers and spin-doctors -- all share the role of outsider.

The outsider is imploring their clients to align their insider interests with the outsider world –- the perception ‘out there’. This is the driving force behind all marketing operations – how to best command or diminish market attention.

The only way to answer that question is to understand market perception. Market perception is the way the world looks at you or away at something else.

Whether trying to land an appointment, place an ad, seal a partnership, or, craft a message, we need to know as much as possible about how we’ll be welcomed, dismissed, grouped, labeled or discarded by the big, outside world.

Perception thumbs its nose at the very idea of management or control – what’s the prevailing climate? What’s the reality ‘out there’? In effect – how do we square our internal realities with external markets?

Who’s the authority on that one?

var addthis_pub = 'attspin';

The Biggest Picture

If perception is reality … what’s the reality of the perception?

Perception “may” drive sales but is what attracts reporters, analysts, investors, regulators, and, ultimately … customers.

Thought leaders, gurus, agencies, advertisers and spin-doctors -- all share the role of outsider.

The outsider is imploring their clients to align their insider interests with the outsider world –- the perception ‘out there’. This is the driving force behind all marketing operations – how to best command or diminish market attention.

The only way to answer that question is to understand market perception. Market perception is the way the world looks at you or away at something else.

Whether trying to land an appointment, place an ad, seal a partnership, or, craft a message, we need to know as much as possible about how we’ll be welcomed, dismissed, grouped, labeled or discarded by the big, outside world.

Perception thumbs its nose at the very idea of management or control – what’s the prevailing climate? What’s the reality ‘out there’? In effect – how do we square our internal realities with external markets?

Who’s the authority on that one?

Trapped in the Research Box

In our heads there's a dressing room where our concepts become clothed in words

- Ram Daas

For years national advertisers subscribed to a virtual dialog between themselves and their customers by letting consumers talk back at them through a third party. But the exchange is as contrived as the belief consumers have the time and interest to indulge advertisers with the full extent of their attentions.

The great lament about consumer research is that if you ask people in focus groups or surveys, they’ll tell you one thing and do another. Consumers are not blank slates. They bring a lifetime of associations and experiences to the judgments they pass. Their reactions are not always carefully thought out and consistent as they may feel they should be in a testing situation.

Consumers also discount an ad’s subliminal aspects in a research setting. This is as true for the traditional media they are sampling as it is with the traditional interview techniques they are subjected to -- phone surveys and even focus groups tap conscious verbal thoughts, not the involuntary responses.

We used to set our decision clocks to the study’s completion. The advertiser was handed the daunting choice of relenting to the research findings or going with their impulses. The web mocks the false choices posed by the research industry. What level of control does it really affords ad spenders? If the online findings are not the offline inclinations of the target audience, it’s only natural for clients too to discount the very research they’re funding. Only a visceral decision rings true.

Perception Measurement answers to both numerical validation and the emotions and meanings they stir. Perception Measurement is premised on the belief that respondents are likelier to become sensitized to a product if no one is directly selling it to them. It is their initiation that creates a sense of healthy curiosity and control – the two factors that drive “engagement” – the willing expenditure of attention.

Such factors as ad recall and media spending are routinely monitored and cross-referenced to establish a campaign’s effectiveness. Other market research firms measure the success of a product launch and changes in purchase patterns. But only in the uh-ohs ("00s") are we beginning to gauge their impact...

* on the public imagination,
* the imagery they create, or,
* the behaviors they inspire.



var addthis_pub = 'attspin';

Trapped in the Research Box

In our heads there's a dressing room where our concepts become clothed in words

- Ram Daas

For years national advertisers subscribed to a virtual dialog between themselves and their customers by letting consumers talk back at them through a third party. But the exchange is as contrived as the belief consumers have the time and interest to indulge advertisers with the full extent of their attentions.

The great lament about consumer research is that if you ask people in focus groups or surveys, they’ll tell you one thing and do another. Consumers are not blank slates. They bring a lifetime of associations and experiences to the judgments they pass. Their reactions are not always carefully thought out and consistent as they may feel they should be in a testing situation.

Consumers also discount an ad’s subliminal aspects in a research setting. This is as true for the traditional media they are sampling as it is with the traditional interview techniques they are subjected to -- phone surveys and even focus groups tap conscious verbal thoughts, not the involuntary responses.

We used to set our decision clocks to the study’s completion. The advertiser was handed the daunting choice of relenting to the research findings or going with their impulses. The web mocks the false choices posed by the research industry. What level of control does it really affords ad spenders? If the online findings are not the offline inclinations of the target audience, it’s only natural for clients too to discount the very research they’re funding. Only a visceral decision rings true.

Perception Measurement answers to both numerical validation and the emotions and meanings they stir. Perception Measurement is premised on the belief that respondents are likelier to become sensitized to a product if no one is directly selling it to them. It is their initiation that creates a sense of healthy curiosity and control – the two factors that drive “engagement” – the willing expenditure of attention.

Such factors as ad recall and media spending are routinely monitored and cross-referenced to establish a campaign’s effectiveness. Other market research firms measure the success of a product launch and changes in purchase patterns. But only in the uh-ohs ("00s") are we beginning to gauge their impact...

* on the public imagination,
* the imagery they create, or,
* the behaviors they inspire.

Slaves to Fashion – Tags or Taxonomies

Tagging is based on two units -- the link, which points to any page within the range of your security settings, and the tag, which names or labels the link. Taxonomies on the other hand answer to absolute values. Tags are self-evident and self-organizing. Taxonomies come with instructions, mainly broader, narrower and related terms.

The big draw for tags is that they’re easy to create and even easier to follow: “As the Web has shown us, you can extract a surprising amount of value from big messy data sets,” observes blogger and classification heretic Clay Shirky.

Formal taxonomies are generally better fits for well-entrenched fields of knowledge where a shared vocabulary denotes a set of precise, static meanings. Science, medicine, and law are three examples of disciplines where common tasks, procedures, and topics have a well-defined boundary of unique values and fixed connotations.

The language of the marketplace is a foreign one – even to many business classification systems. Perception-shapers like ad firms, media titans, and management consults aren’t rewarded for following precedents. They are expected to stretch and bend them. The argument runs, here’s where informal or Folksonomies take over. The knowledge economy runs on the fashioning of ideas – not the production of tangible products. A taxonomy doesn’t handle interpretations or what we do with the things it classifies. Show a taxonomist a verb and you may get a cross-reference – or be referred to a different taxonomy.

Folksonomies are in a state of constant re-invention by many would-be inventors. Taxonomies run on exclusive relationships between definitive terms owning consistent properties. Those properties diverge into a set of clear and repeatable patterns. Now visit the website of any ad agency or consulting firm and click on the services or solutions tab. You will be overwhelmed with overlapping associations, the latest market jargon, and speculation about what will replace it. No one controls or maintains a Folksonomy as it lacks the insularity of a standard terminology or classification structure.



var addthis_pub = 'attspin';

Slaves to Fashion – Tags or Taxonomies

Tagging is based on two units -- the link, which points to any page within the range of your security settings, and the tag, which names or labels the link. Taxonomies on the other hand answer to absolute values. Tags are self-evident and self-organizing. Taxonomies come with instructions, mainly broader, narrower and related terms.

The big draw for tags is that they’re easy to create and even easier to follow: “As the Web has shown us, you can extract a surprising amount of value from big messy data sets,” observes blogger and classification heretic Clay Shirky.

Formal taxonomies are generally better fits for well-entrenched fields of knowledge where a shared vocabulary denotes a set of precise, static meanings. Science, medicine, and law are three examples of disciplines where common tasks, procedures, and topics have a well-defined boundary of unique values and fixed connotations.

The language of the marketplace is a foreign one – even to many business classification systems. Perception-shapers like ad firms, media titans, and management consults aren’t rewarded for following precedents. They are expected to stretch and bend them. The argument runs, here’s where informal or Folksonomies take over. The knowledge economy runs on the fashioning of ideas – not the production of tangible products. A taxonomy doesn’t handle interpretations or what we do with the things it classifies. Show a taxonomist a verb and you may get a cross-reference – or be referred to a different taxonomy.

Folksonomies are in a state of constant re-invention by many would-be inventors. Taxonomies run on exclusive relationships between definitive terms owning consistent properties. Those properties diverge into a set of clear and repeatable patterns. Now visit the website of any ad agency or consulting firm and click on the services or solutions tab. You will be overwhelmed with overlapping associations, the latest market jargon, and speculation about what will replace it. No one controls or maintains a Folksonomy as it lacks the insularity of a standard terminology or classification structure.

E-mail inventor: I didn't foresee spam - Times Online

at around 7pm one autumn evening in 1971, the first message using Mr Tomlinson's fledgling software, known then as the 'Send Message Program', travelled the short distance of a metre from one computer to a neighbouring machine, and electronic mail was born.

read more



var addthis_pub = 'attspin';

E-mail inventor: I didn't foresee spam - Times Online

at around 7pm one autumn evening in 1971, the first message using Mr Tomlinson's fledgling software, known then as the 'Send Message Program', travelled the short distance of a metre from one computer to a neighbouring machine, and electronic mail was born.

read more