Online society

The feel of the internet has changed a lot since the 1970s. Take the idea of presence. Where is agnes right now, and what's she up to? This is currently implemented through several rival (and incompatible) services run by AOL, MSN etc. Back in the 1970s life was different. Les Earnest explains:

I created Finger around 1971 to meet a local need at the Stanford Artifical [sic] Intelligence Lab. People generally worked long hours there, often with unpredictable schedules. When you wanted to meet with some group, it was important to know who was there and when the others would likely reappear. It also was important to be able to locate potential volleyball players when you wanted to play, Chinese food freaks when you wanted to eat, and antisocial computer users when it appeared that something strange was happening on the system.
Finger was named for the act of pointing. I recall that sometime after it became popular I received a message from a system administrator who thought that it should be renamed so that users would not have to use a "dirty" word. I gave his request all the consideration that it deserved.
The only tool then available for seeing who was running on our DEC-10 computer was a WHO program that showed IDs and terminal line numbers for people who were logged in. There was no information available on people who were not logged in. I frequently saw people running their fingers down the WHO display saying things like "There's Don and that's Pattie but I don't know when Tom was last seen." or "Who in hell is VVK and where does line 63 go?"
I wrote Finger and developed the supporting database to provide this information in traditional human terms - real names and places. Because I preferred to talk face to face rather than through the computer or telephone, I put in the feature that tells how long the terminal had been idle, so that I could assess the likelihood that I would find them there if I walked down the hall.
The program was an instant hit. Some people asked for the Plan file feature so that they could explain their absence or how they could be reached at odd times, so I added it. I found it interesting that this feature evolved into a forum for social commentary and amusing observations. Finger was picked up by a number of other groups with DEC-10 computers that were connected to Arpanet - software flowed in all directions around the net in those days. It later migrated to Un*x, probably via U.C. Berkeley. Somewhere along the line the idea arose to provide a network Finger service. I don't remember who suggested that but it seemed like a good idea at the time so I stuck it in.
We didn't think about commercial development and software protection in those days, but if we had we probably could have made something out of it. On the other hand, I enjoyed the comradery of those gentler times and have no regrets. (Earnest 1990)

In the modern world, practically no computers can be fingered any more for security reasons, and most instant messaging services aren't giving out information about your location, or email address, let alone your current activities. You do get a picture now. Though I'm not so sure that's progress.

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