I did some of my graduate computer research on the topic of Multics, and I used some AT&T Bell Laboratory publications and other resources that I found and photocopied at one of the libraries (yes, there were more than one) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT].
This post appears to reference some of the same material I acquired long ago when I was doing my research, so I thought I would share the base reference here; anyone interested can read what’s there and visit some of the references to find out more information.
Wikipedia reference to a lot of that information:
A lot of the concepts we take for granted were first explored decades ago in the Multics operating system.
@andreas thanks for the affirmation. While Linux has now surpassed MULTICS in every possible way, I hope that most of you around here understand that UNIX is a pun - read it the way it sounds and it’s Eunuchs! That means that the original Unix (not the capitalized, branded one) was a castrated version of MULTICS!
When I re-read the article, (let’s face it, I read about MULTICS in the eighties and again right near the turn of the decade), so a LOT has changed.
One of the statements I predicted in one of my graduate papers was that Linux would eventually make it’s mark in computing, and I actually took a shot at where I thought it might pass the others - which proved to be correct - is in mobile-based computing - laptops, tablets, and smart phones - at the time of my article I did not know what the device would LOOK like, but even Microsoft in the late nineties came up with a movie that I watched while I was a Digital UNIX software engineer at 110 Spitbrook Road in Nashua, New Hampshire. Microsoft predicted that we’d have mobile computing, that stuck with me, and they also predicted that “the bad guys” would also use the technology and that it would be a continual battle to stay with, and if possible, anticipate their next move to keep systems safe and secure.
Microsoft did a terrible job of keeping up for a long time, but ever since Steve Ballmer left the company, they’ve improved the pace and they most certainly remember the messages that were undoubtedly inspired by the vision of Bill Gates and his top visionaries way back in the eighties and nineties.
They’ve finally humbled themselves and also use some of the newer technology that was once inspired by the work from MULTICS.
Today, whether people like it or not, Google is doing some of the best work to bring us past where we are at the moment.
I think that is a separate thought entirely, so I’ll just entice you with that here, and maybe I can author another topic soon on what Googlebook is about to do to change what we’re doing today.