100 words 055

Yesterday I wrote about a tenuous serendipitous connection between Spacewar and the creation of the internet. In the appendix to Stewart Brand’s 1972 Rolling Stone article I spotted a reference to the one and only Bob Kahn.

Except it turns out there is more than one Bob Kahn. A kindly email from Jack Dietz set me straight: there’s Robert Kahn who demoed ARPANET and then there’s Robert Kahn who advocated public access to computers.

This has taught me two important lessons:

Names are not the best unique identifiers, and
The best way to get feedback is to publish.