In our second episode of Are We Doing Tech Right?, we continue our look at the early days of the internet as a way to understand where we are today. Christine Haughney Dare-Bryan, host of the podcast “Computer Freaks,” tells us about her dad’s role in shaping the ARPANET.
Christine’s dad, Major Joseph Haughney, was network manager for the ARPANET from 1979 through 1981. He was concerned about harms, even in the early days. “He had fears about the ARPANET getting into the wrong hands and being misused and fears of online harm that he was talking about, like in 1981. So the computer freaks are people who were getting onto his network and not using it for the purposes that it was intended for.”
She also shares that relationships were different in those early days. “One thing that I saw a lot…was that the belief was that they would treat this like an academic conference,” she says. “And if you were a professor and I were a professor, we would not want to disparage each other because of the professional harm it would cause us if we didn’t conduct ourselves in an appropriate manner.”
Join us for this short-form episode to find out more about Major Joseph Haughney.