The world's first social network?I think the following block will suffice to speak for itself. Most of you reading this will have no idea what's going on, and that's a shame, really.
Anyway, when you *'finger'* it out, feel free to finger me at SDF.org or tilde.team ⛵
> From L...@SAIL.Stanford.EDU Mon Feb 19 21:32:35 1990
> Received: from cayuga.cs.rochester.edu by sol.cs.rochester.edu (4.0/q) id AA13568; Mon, 19 Feb 90 21:32:33 EST
> Received: from Sail.Stanford.EDU by cayuga.cs.rochester.edu (5.59/q) id AA20402; Mon, 19 Feb 90 21:32:26 EST
> Message-Id: > [> Kl$B...@SAIL.Stanford.EDU](mailto:Kl$B...@SAIL.Stanford.EDU )
> Date: 19 Feb 90 1831 PST
> From: Les Earnest > [> L...@SAIL.Stanford.EDU](mailto:L...@SAIL.Stanford.EDU )
> Subject: re: Greetings...
> To: col...@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
> Status: R
> [In reply to message sent Mon, 19 Feb 90 16:02:17 EST.]
> I'm glad that you are enjoying the C3 articles. I need to write another
> one soon.
> Here is a response to your conjectures, mostly regurgitated from an
> article that I posted on Human-nets in 1985. Feel free to forward it to
> alt.forklore.computers, or I can post it there if you prefer. I haven't
> been reading that newsgroup, but a quick look indicates that maybe I
> should.
> 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.
> I created Finger around 1971 to meet a local need at the Stanford
> Artifical 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.
> 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. Some other anxious people wanted
> to be able to verify that their mail was delivered to specific addressees,
> so the Mail feature was also added.
> While I was somewhat surprised by the popularity of Finger, it has not
> been as successful as an earlier program that I invented -- the spelling
> checker. It too was created to fill a personal need that many others
> apparently share. 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.
> -Les Earnest (L...@Sail.Stanford.edu)
tl;dr: Yeah, in case you're wondering, and would like to kick the tires and take it for a spin, on Debian it's as simple as:<code># apt update
#apt install finger
</code>
if you want to play with the daemon, that would be available to you by installing either efingerd or cfingerd. For #Slackware users, **[finger is already installed HERE](https://docs.slackware.com/slackbook:basic_networking_utilities#finger )**, and the daemon is just #fingerd; finger listens on port 79.
Enjoy! 👋🤠
#tallship #FOSS #finger #social_networking
