On Tuesday 02 July 2013 12:10 AM, A. Mani wrote: > On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 8:12 PM, Manokaran K <[email protected]> wrote: >> "This week, Chomsky — the professor emeritus of linguistics and philosophy >> at MIT who’s known as much for his criticism of US foreign policy and >> capitalism as much as his academic work —unexpectedly joined the >> debate<http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-invention-of-email-by-a-14-year-old-in-newark-nj-in-1978-noam-chomsky-speaks-to-the-terminology-of-email-158572145.html> >> over > > That is very uninformed of Chomsky or is the reporting all wrong?
Well, Chomsky wasn't defending a random person he believed to be right, he was defending one of his undergraduate students. Just goes to show that everybody is human and that relationships and interactions have a direct effect on how you think and they can colour perspective (Chomsky, of all people should know this :) ). By the looks of it Chomsky seems to have been defending the idea that innovation can happen anywhere even by small kids (a.k.a - it is small student Vs Big Bad Industry ...the student is obviously right). It is unfortunate that the facts mattered less. Note that the controversy reached it's height sometime in early 2012 when the Smithsonian inducted some of Shiva Ayyadurai's work as part of their collection. The above article appears to be from then. In any case, I think the saving grace is that not many people took this non-sense seriously and the matter died due to lack of any more spice in the story. cheers, - steve _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc ILUGC Mailing List Guidelines: http://ilugc.in/mailinglist-guidelines
