I loved this New Yorker story about a Michigan dentist who managed a surprising meteoric rise in marathon performance. Web server IP address analysis plays a role, a detail that I appreciated. The article has become more timely now due to the fact that Paul Ryan apparently claimed to have run a three-hour marathon (story).
It is tough to feel proud of one’s achievements in a country where politicians and government workers claim credit for everything! (e.g., Al Gore invented the Internet, President Obama tells business founders that they owe everything to infrastructure built 100 years ago, and now Ryan turns out to be a running superhero)
Actually, I think Al Gore under-promoted his role in the Internet and he should have gotten more credit. He never claimed to have “invented” it. He said his initiatives helped create it. The wording was perhaps not as precise as it could have been — ARPANET was turned on in 1969 — bit Gore’s 1986 call for funding to create NSFNET, and his 1988 high-performance computer technology act were indeed initiaitives that helped create the internet we have today. As Robert Khan and Vint Cerf said, “Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development. … Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet.”
I have to say that his vision was much clearer than mine. I remember In 1986 we University researchers had a nice cosy arpanet where we could ftp files around and read rec.humor.funny. There was talk about expanding to an nsfnet, and even maybe someday to a commercial network. I didn’t think it would work. But I was wrong, and Al Gore was right.
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200009/msg00052.html
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/799/708
Peter: I don’t think that the idea of a universal Internet with a lot of commercial uses was a novel idea in 1986. In http://philip.greenspun.com/business/internet-software-patents I reference Michael Dertouzos’s “Information Marketplace” paper from 1980, for example, where he predicted commercial uses of “tens of millions” of networked computers by the year 2000. TCP/IP is the real technical basis for Internet and would have been pointless to develop if the goal were only a handful of universities talking to each other. It was fully operational prior to Al Gore’s advocacy of NSFNet [you give the date as 1986, but http://isoc-ny.org/?p=62 says that Gore actually did not start advocating for increased Internet funding until 1988.]
A lot of academics were among the last to see the commercial and societal potential in Internet. Tim Berners-Lee and the Web were derided by the established computer scientists (those that had ever heard of the Web!) that I talked to from 1990 through perhaps mid-1995.
Stepping back a bit I’m not sure that we can say that anyone made a huge contribution to the Internet in the 1980s. The tech stuff of packet-switched communications was more or less sewed up in the 1960s, which was also when Douglas Engelbart showed what could be done by people remotely collaborating (admittedly both were on terminals to a mainframe, but he said that it could be done over a network if necessary). The next big leap was HTTP/HTML in 1990. So the 1970s and 1980s can be celebrated for ABBA, The Love Boat, disco, Menudo, Fantasy Island, Rocky III, New Kids on the Block, and other critical cultural achievements, but not for anything having to do with computer networking.
Paul Ryan says he misstated marathon claim
By Associated Press
Saturday, September 1, 2012
http://bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view/20120901paul_ryan_says_he_misstated_marathon_claim
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/99/s2594
S. 2594 (99th): Supercomputer Network Study Act of 1986
Introduced:Jun 24, 1986
Sponsor:Sen. Albert Gore Jr. [D-TN]
Status: Died (Introduced)
I think Peter’s point is that at 1986, hardly anybody who didn’t own a dot-cs mail address was aware something like computer networks even existed.
Definitely one of the stranger obsessions. Makes you wonder if you’ve hallucinated events of your own. Maybe a relationship was imagined. Maybe I didn’t really run in the Hollywood half marathon, but for many years have really been creating imaginary websites for an imaginary world. It would be a good Twilight Zone episode, if modern audiences were smart enough to enjoy it.
By the end of the article I have to admit I was wondering about the overall sanity of Mark Wells for spending so much time and effort on such an inane story.
An amateur runner cheats in a few events. So what? The guy didn’t steal any money nor gain any fame for it, other than pissing off a group of anonymous runners on an Internet forum. And if he was just doing it for attention, then Mr. Smith simply gave him more of it and on a national stage, to boot.
PS
I couldn’t stop comparing the alleged cheater to the character played by Matt Damon in the movie The Informant! , a film that was loosely based on the ADM price fixing scandal.
Fonzie: I think this is why the article is interesting! It isn’t surprising when someone cheats in order to make millions of dollars (e.g., mortgage brokers and originating banks during the subprime era).
But the story leaves things unfinished, since the would-be cheat is never totally outed nor his secret way of fooling all the technology revealed.
As to why a person would go to such extraordinary lengths to “better” themselves in a rather benign sport, I think it has something to do with ego and even more to do with simply being able to know that they were clever enough to get away with it.
In my opinion, the supposed fraud still gets the last laugh and at Wells’ expense. Think about it, the guy can now claim that he’s such a marvel even the New Yorker did a story about him!
What’s the saying about (for some people) any publicity is good publicity…?
Fonzie: “By the end of the article I have to admit I was wondering…”
It’s an article about a few layered obsessions: Litton, Strode, and Singer.
Fonzie: “An amateur runner cheats in a few events. So what? The guy didn’t steal any money nor gain any fame for it…”
He gained fame (recognition) in the community of amateur runners and, at times, he took finishes from people who legitimately earned them. That you don’t find value in those things doesn’t mean they don’t have value (to other people).
And it’s an interesting story. Lots of stories aren’t “important”.
@davep
The writer characterized the action of the runner who posted allegedly false times as one of the biggest frauds ever perpetuated in amateur sports. (And those were essentially the exact words used).
I found that to be more than a tad on the exaggerative side. Like Phil, I thoroughly enjoyed the story and am facinated in what would make a guy go to such extremes to garner great marathon times. Personally, I’d wager he’s a successful business man as well, since his ability to focus on attaining something has to be far above average. It also reminds me of reading detectives remarks about highly successful criminals and about how they’d probably be very successful legitimate businessmen if they’d just use their IQ on something legal. )))
But I do agree that the author went overboard in his description of the alleged misdeeds of the runner, although since the author also revealed that his sons were runners I think that fact may have had some sway in how the writer characterized the dentist’s actions.