Kent, Kent M Pitman wrote:
One thing I was thinking about that would be really interesting
would be a talk about Lisp Machines,
You're in the right town for that. But Lisp Machines are a big topic area. That's kind of like a talk on "the C language and things it has been used for". And the communities started off the same and then diverged into different cultures such that everyone's reality was not even the same. But even glossing that, there are issues of operating system, editing environment file system, editing tools, mail reading, patching tools, marketplace, etc.
I think I could take a shot at giving an overview talk about Lisp machines: why they were thought of, how they fit into the context of the time, and a quick overview of the software and enough about the hardware to generally explain why they were "Lisp machines". I can do this without getting into "political" issues of the schisms and such. We could always have future talks focusing on more specific aspects, if people are interested. -- Dan