Shiva Ayyadurai, a 14 year old, holds the patent for the computer program we know as EMAIL. But the story doesn’t end there. Many disputed his claim.  Professors, organizations, research outfits all tarred him as an exaggerator and liar. They claimed email existed before Shiva. But did it? Or was an industry threatened by the fact that invention can take place by anyone anywhere….

InventorofEmail.com:

“In 1978, a 14-year-old named V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai developed a computer program, which replicated the features of the interoffice, inter-organizational paper mail system. He named his program “EMAIL”. Shiva filed an application for copyright in his program and in 1982 the United States Copyright Office issued a Certificate of Registration, No. TXu-111-775, to him on the program. As required by the Regulations of the Copyright Office, he deposited portions of the original source code with the program. Prominent in the code is the name “EMAIL” that he gave to the program. He received a second Certificate of Registration, No. TXu-108-715, for the “EMAIL User’s Manual” he had prepared to accompany the program and that taught unsophisticated user’s how to use EMAIL’s features.

Recently however, a substantial controversy has arisen as to who invented email. This controversy has resulted in an unfortunate series of attacks on Shiva. Part of the problem is that different people use to the term to mean somewhat different things.

In the summer of 1978, Shiva had been recruited for programming assignments at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) in Newark, New Jersey. One of his supervisors, Dr. Leslie P. Michelson, recognized his abilities and challenged him to translate the conventional paper-based interoffice and inter-organizational communication system (i.e., paper-based mail and memoranda) to an electronic communication system.

 Systems for communications among widely dispersed computers were in existence at the time, but they were primitive and their usage was largely confined to computer scientists and specialists. Shiva envisioned something simpler, something that everyone, from secretary to CEO, could use to quickly and reliably send and receive digital messages.

 Shiva embraced the project and began by performing a thorough evaluation of UMDNJ’s paper-based mail system, the same as that used in offices and organizations around the world. He determined that the essential features of these systems included functions corresponding to “Inbox”, “Outbox”, “Drafts”, “Memo” (“To:”, “From:”, “Date:”, “Subject:”, “Body:”, “Cc:”, “Bcc:”), “Attachments”, “Folders”, “Compose”, “Forward”, “Reply”, “Address Book”, “Groups”, “Return Receipt”, “Sorting”. These capabilities were all to be provided in a software program having a sufficiently simple interface that needed no expertise in computer systems to use efficiently to “Send” and “Receive” mail electronically. It is these features that make his program “email” and that distinguish “email” from prior electronic communications.

 Shiva went on to be recognized by the Westinghouse Science Talent Search Honors Group for his invention. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology highlighted his invention as one among four, in the incoming Freshman class of 1,040 students. His papers, documenting the invention of EMAIL were accepted by Smithsonian Institution. These are facts based on legal, governmental and institutional recognition and substantiation, and there is no disputing it.

 Standard histories of the Internet, however, are full of claims that certain individuals (and teams) in the ARPAnet environment and other large companies in the 1970s and 1980s “invented email.” For example, the familiar “@” sign, early programs for sending and receiving messages, and technical specifications known as RFCs, are examples of such false claims to “email”. But as some claimants have admitted, even as late as December 1977, none of these innovations were intended to emulate the paper-based mail system – Inbox, Memo, Outbox, Folders, Address Book, etc.

 Sending text messages electronically could be said to date back to the Morse code telegraph of the mid 1800s; or the 1939 World’s Fair where IBM sent a message of congratulations from San Francisco to New York on an IBM radio-type, calling it a “high-speed substitute for mail service in the world of tomorrow.” The original text message, electronic transfer of content or images, ARPANET messaging, and even the “@” sign were used in primitive electronic communication systems. While the technology pioneers who created these systems should be heralded for their efforts, and given credit for their specific accomplishments and contributions, these early computer programs were clearly not email.

 Based on false claims, over the past year (since the acceptance of Shiva’s documents into the Smithsonian), industry insiders have chosen to launch an irrational denial of the invention. There is no direct dispute of the invention Copyright, but rather inaccurate claims, false statements, and personal attacks waged against Shiva. Attackers are attempting to discredit him, andhis life’s work. He has received threatening phone calls, unfair online comments, and his name and work has been maligned. It is but a sad commentary that a vocal minority have elected to hijack his accomplishment, apparently not satisfied with the recognition they have already received for their contributions to the field of text messaging. Following the Smithsonian news, they went into action. They began historical revisionism on their own “History of Electronic Mail” to hide the facts. They enlisted “historians” who started discussions among themselves to redefine the term “email” so as to credit their own work done prior to 1978, as “email”.

[Lila: This was my own experience with the couple of stories I came up with that got hijacked by the national media….it’s why I tend to sympathize with Shiva – although I’ve not researched the story enough to know the details. 

More blatantly, they registered the InternetHallofFame.Org web site, seven (7) days after the Smithsonian news and issued a new award to one of their own as “inventor of email”. Through the PR machine of BBN (a multi-billion dollar company), they were proclaimed as the “king of email”, and “godfather of email”. These actions were taken to protect their false branding and diminish the accolades and just recognition Shiva was beginning to receive.

Shiva’s news likely threatens BBN’s entire brand, which has deliberately juxtaposed “innovation”, with the “@” logo, along with the face of their mascot, the self-proclaimed “inventor of email”. They have removed damaging references to eminent Internet pioneers of the time such as MA Padlipsky who exposed their lies, and showed that BBN’s mascot, was not the “inventor of email”.

 Some industry insiders have even gone to the extent, in the midst of the overwhelming facts, to now attempt to confuse the public that “EMAIL” is not “email”. It is a fact that the term “email”, the juxtaposition of those five characters “e”, “m”, “a”, “i” and “l”, did not exist prior to 1978. The naming of the software program EMAIL in all capitals was because at UMDNJ, the names of software programs, subroutines and variables written in FORTRAN IV used the upper-case naming convention. Moreover, at that time, the use of upper case for the naming of programs, subroutine and variable names, was also a carry over from the days of writing software programs using punch cards. The fact is EMAIL is email, upper case, lower case, any case.

 Sadly, some of these individuals have even gone further, deciding that false allegations are insufficient to make their case and have resorted to character assassination of the most debased nature including removal and destruction of facts on Wikipedia to discredit Shiva as an inventor of any kind. Threatening and racist emails telling him “to hang himself by his dhothi”, blogs referring to him as a “flagrant fraud”, and comments that EMAIL was “not an invention” are beyond disbelief, and reflect a parochial attitude that innovation can only take place in large universities, big companies, and the military. As MIT’s Institute Professor Noam Chomsky reflected:

“The efforts to belittle the innovation of a 14-year-old child should lead to reflection on the larger story of how power is gained, maintained, and expanded, and the need to encourage, not undermine, the capacities for creative inquiry that are widely shared and could flourish, if recognized and given the support they deserve.“

Of course a claim such as “I invented email” will leave anyone open to criticism and doubt, and as some suggest “hatred”. In this case, the victim has not made a “claim”, but rather been recognized by the government and top educational institutions in the world as an inventor. Regardless of the vitriol, animosity and bigotry by a vocal minority, a simple truth stands: email was invented by a 14-year-old working in Newark, NJ in 1978.

This is a fact. Innovation can occur, any place, any time, by anybody.”

As much as I’ve criticized Noam Chomsky for certain aspects of his work and although I tend to believe Dr. Coleman’s view that Chomsky is affiliated in some way with intelligence, I give the man great credit for always standing up for the individual against the establishment.

I’d love to know more about this whole story. To me Shiva’s contention sounds entirely credible, and he has the documentation and the patent to prove it.

From my own experience of  media revisionism, this is one of the many ways in which the establishment “writes out” anyone they don’t want to credit, especially, let me be frank, anything created by  non-whites. 

Even accounts of the history of the internet insist on seeing it as solely the creation of the US defense department, whereas the facts show it to be a complex development involving people from many countries (Belgium and France among them),  and involving private organizations and  lone individuals just as much as the government.

What is the importance of this history and how it is written?

Simply this. By constantly revising the real history of invention, the government, especially the US government, props up a false, supremacist narrative of the world that allows it to claim the net as its special domain, and any freedom on it as only a  grant generously given to the world that can be rescinded at any time. The implication is clear.

If the world doesn’t pay obeisance, the government has a right to clamp down on the net, because it created it.

WallStreetManna, a seasoned observer of the ongoing crime scene that is Wall Street, points out that pretending that Gupta was the only one at Goldman in a chummy relationship with Galleon is eye-wash. Galleon, like Madoff, was turning in returns too good to be true. Everyone had to have known.

Unlike Madoff, of course, Rajaratnam didn’t bilk his investors. They got all their money back, plus profits.

But the point still holds.

Galleon was just one of a number of  “under the table” relationships Goldman cultivated with hedge-funds and other favored operators, like…

…well, like the mysterious “self-made billionaire” Jeffrey Picower,  who died of a heart-attack just as the Madoff ponzi unraveled and just as he went from being a self-proclaimed victim to a suspected accomplice, if not master-mind, whose billions sat in an account managed by none other than Goldman Sachs.

“Now I compared Galleon’s returns to Madoff’s. What did the beneficiary of Madoff, to the tune of $7 billion, Jeffry Picower do, the minute he “found out” Madoff was a fraud?

He closed the Picower Foundation. Even though he could have easily kept it open. After all, didn’t he make $7 billion, that we found out later? He must have wanted it closed!

What did Raj do immediately after he was accused by prosecutors? Isn’t he closing the fund?

Why did Goldman think Madoff’s returns were inconceivable, but Galleon’s weren’t?

And why did Raj pay Goldman so much damn money?

Ask Raj. Or ask Anil.

But don’t ask Goldman. Or the SEC. They just hired a former Goldman cronie [sic] as their new COO before Raj got busted. [Lila: That would be Adam Storch]

You’ll just get “no comment.”
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Now how about the Buffett tip?
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Goldman directors even tipped the Buffett deal.

Anyone remember how Goldman reversed the steep sell-off the day before Buffett invested in Goldman? And how the financials reversed that day from their lows? Did anyone from Justice check out how Goldman traded in the SKF that day? How many shorts that they had laid out in that number?

And did Goldman, ramp and reverse the financials,  the day after the Government announced the shortseller rules, because they knew of Buffett’s investment?

After all, didn’t Byron Trott, Buffett’s broker at Goldman, who put the deal of Buffett’s investment into Goldman together–didn’t he at the end of March 2009, start his own firm?
And didn’t Goldman, change the rules on him alone, allowing Mr. Trott to sell his shares in Goldman, unlike the other executives who were handcuffed to the hip with their Goldman stock, because of Buffett’s investment?

The Sunday before Buffett’s announced investment, the Fed allowed Goldman to become a bank holding company. Then they blocked all short selling of the financials. Then Morgan Stanley announced their deal with the Japanese.

Buffett bought out Constellation Energy, to give confidence in the deal making arena, because that deal was on the ropes, and in the financials, names like State Street went from 30 to 64, Morgan Stanley, went from 12 to 34, and Goldman went from 86 to 144–all in ONE day–from 12:30 in the afternoon, to 8:00 am in the next day’s pre-market!

Is someone going to say that the stocks ramped all because you couldn’t lay out any more shorts, or those who were short, were instead tipped?

Here was the action in Goldman the day that Buffett’s tip to the rest of Wall Street was announced.

Why did you have, instead, the move in the financials, the days before?

How is it, that when a company on Wall Street, reports good numbers, and the stock sells off; that everyonne already knew that news.

Was the street so incestuous, that everyone else knew the news that Gupta had tipped?

How many people did Raj also tip? Who were also dying on the vine in September of 08?

And even with this massive, wonderful tip, Galleon was down 7.23% in September of 2008, and he was down another 5.23% in October. Even though he was getting tipped!

Is it any wonder why he was having crumpets and tea with Gupta, in his private office!

Away from the wires!

So now are we to believe, that it was just Raj, alone, who ramped the financials, or was a better explanation, that Goldman Sachs, decided to deploy their capital, into a massive short squeeze, in the shorted names, because they knew that the PPT, would be behind them, in their effort to prop up the markets, on the backs of the shortsellers, because Trott had already told Goldman that Buffett was in, and the Fed, had already told Goldman, that on Sunday night, they would be a bank holding company, and that, they would then have access to Ben’s billions?

And Ben, and Timmy, and Lloyd, will all suffer memory problems, because the sole rat, in this whole mess, was Raj, just like Goldman’s sole rat, in the Abacus, was a 27 year old kid called Fab!”

Forbes’ Walter Pavlo (May 23, 2012) noted that there were many other people at Goldman who socialized with Rajaratnam and could have been tipping him:

“Eisenberg testified that Gupta was on Raj’s list of names of “important” people that had immediate access to the Galleon co-founder and it was given to her by her predecessor.  Being on that list meant that Raj was to be told immediately and the list includes the names of Rajiv Goel, Anil Kumar and Danielle Chiesi …. all of whom have pled guilty to charges related to insider trading.  This strategy is meant to portray Gupta as being in some ring of co-conspirators when in fact this may not be the case.  Also on the list was Parag Saxena and Stanley Druckenmiller, neither are accused of any crime.  Druckenmiller was one of the top people of billionaire George Soros and headed his own hedge fund, Duquesne Capital Management (closed in 2010).  Saxena is a founding partner and CEO of New Silk Route Partners and, like Raj, graduated from the Wharton School (U Penn).

While Gupta was on Raj’s short list, I am certain he was also on other short lists.  I am confident that executive assistants at a number of firms were told to escalate a call from Rajat Gupta.  Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman might put someone like Gupta on his “short list” since Gupta was on the firms’ Board of Directors.  Billionaire Bill Gates may have Gupta on his list since he was on the board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  But being on those lists do not help the government’s case.

Then there was that phone call Eisenberg testified about, the one from “Gupta’s phone number” that was placed to Rajaratnam moments before the close of trading on September 23, 2008, the day of the announcement of Berkshire Hathaway’s $5 billion investment into Goldman Sachs.   “Raj closed the door,” she testified, after she passed the call to Rajaratnam.  Then what?  Look, it doesn’t look good, but it is not supposed to look good …. but there are two different views of the same event.  There is no tape of that conversation, nor is there anyone that is going to testify about what they heard on that phone call…but there was testimony from a Galleon trader, Ananth Muniyappa, that said he was instructed to purchase 267,000 shares of Goldman stock after that phone call … a phone call which ended, according to Eisenberg, with a big smile from Raj.

Raj knew other people at Goldman Sachs beside Gupta, and this would also cast doubt as to who, if anyone, was providing inside information to Raj on Goldman. Goldman’s president, Gary Cohn, was known to socialize occasionally with Raj….so was David Loeb, head of of Goldman’s Asia equity sales…so was David Heller, co-head of Goldman’s security division … so was Michael Daffey, another Goldman executive.  Those guys have not been accused anything illegal, but oh the trouble that a well-timed call and a smile can get one into these days on Wall Street.”

Nathaniel Burney (Burney Law Firm) argues that the grey areas in the jurisprudence of insider trading leave the area wide open for due process violations when alleged crimes are being investigated and tried.

“On Feb. 3, an SEC press release about yet another expert network case said that “it’s legal to obtain expert advice and analysis through expert networking arrangement.”  So far so good.  But right before that, it said this case was part of “the SEC’s ongoing investigation into the activities of expert networks that purport to provide professional investment research to their clients.”  (Emphasis added.)  That’s a loaded sentence, and reveals a predisposition to think that expert networks are bad.  All this does is increase the fear that the feds are going to see insider trading where none occurred.

Similarly, in a Feb. 8 press conference for the latest roundup of insider trading charges, the SDNY U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara made a prepared statement that expert networks are not “inherently wrong or bad.”  It’s just that these particular defendants had a business practice that was inherently wrong.  But he opted not to discuss what is wrong or right about a situation where an expert network uses an employee of company X, even with company X’s permission.  He acknowledged that it’s still a “gray area.”

So Robert Khuzami spoke up.  Khuzami, the head of enforcement for the SEC, sent a warning that hedge funds dealing with expert networks had better do some serious due diligence, to find out whether the expert network uses employees of company X.  And if so, to make sure no material nonpublic information gets received.

In other words, there’s an affirmative burden to make sure the information you receive is not private.  Which is bizarre when there is no way to know that, in many cases, unless you’re privy to inside information. It’s a Catch-22.

-=-=-=-=-

So there’s a huge “gray area” as to whether expert networks are kosher or criminal, as they currently exist and have existed for the past decade or so.  In theory, they’re lawful, but in practice the government sees them as only “purportedly” lawful.  And if you happen to use them, and you get inside information — info you couldn’t have known was secret if you weren’t an insider — too bad, so sad.  You had a duty to know the unknowable.  Maybe.

There are far too many unknowables here.

Isn’t this a classic due process violation? For the government to be allowed to use its might to deprive individuals of their liberty, property and livelihood, the public had better damn well be on notice that the conduct is something that’s going to get punished. If the public could not have known that certain conduct was unlawful, the government cannot be allowed to punish it.

And if the government itself doesn’t know where to draw the line…?”