Category Archives: Evolution

Fungal symbiosis with early land plants

Hundreds of millions of years ago, evolved descendants of aquatic plants began showing up on dry land. These newly terrestrialized species had to deal with increased ultraviolet light exposure, desiccation, and less accessible nutrients. Rich et al. show how mutualist fungi may have helped these nascent plant lineages with adaptation to their newly challenging environment (see the Perspective by Bouwmeester). Genetic and metabolic analysis of a liverwort as a representative of such plants suggests that the mutually beneficial exchange of nutrients with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi may have been a feature of these most early land plants.

Science, abg0929, this issue p. 864; see also abi8016, p. 789

Symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) improves plant nutrition in most land plants, and its contribution to the colonization of land by plants has been hypothesized. Here, we identify a conserved transcriptomic response to AMF among land plants, including the activation of lipid metabolism. Using gain of function, we show the transfer of lipids from the liverwort Marchantia paleacea to AMF and its direct regulation by the transcription factor WRINKLED (WRI). Arbuscules, the nutrient-exchange structures, were not formed in loss-of-function wri mutants in M. paleacea, leading to aborted mutualism. Our results show the orthology of the symbiotic transfer of lipids across land plants and demonstrate that mutualism with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi was present in the most recent ancestor of land plants 450 million years ago.

Link:

Lipid exchanges drove the evolution of mutualism during plant terrestrialization - Science Magazine

There is a mystery in human evolution. As we progressed from knuckle-walking to striding, from swinging from branches to throwing rocks and then spears, surely our tools developed in parallel. Right?

Put backwards, many assume that inferences can be made about our evolutionary state going by our industry. Right?

Well, theres a snag. What does it mean that stone choppers, among the earliest tools, persisted for around two million years, and stone Acheulean hand axes for over a million years? The upscale Levallois-style tools were also used for hundreds of thousands of years. Did our evolution stagnate in that time?

It did not. Evolution is the nature of all things, but in thrall to neophilia (love of the new), and we tend to view human evolution through the prism of physical and mental change. Leaving the trees for the savanna necessitated physical and mental changes. Among other things, we grew: were about a third bigger than our australopithecine predecessors. Now, Dr. Meir Finkel and Prof. Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University offer a paradigm-changing interpretation, published in Science Direct (Anthropology) of the stasis in these basic tools in the context of our continuing development.

As long as the animal environment remained stable, so did the tools we used to obtain these animals (to eat). If anything, this stability provided safe ground for technological and behavioral innovations, Barkai and Finkel write.

After Gaza, an Israeli-Palestinian struggle for identity: Aluf Benn, Noa Landau and Anshel Pfeffer

The paradigm says these are problems in innovation, that the hominids didnt innovate [during that time], for whatever reasons. For instance, that Homo erectus didnt have sufficiently developed cognition, or that there were difficulties in innovation relating to social aspects. We say the opposite! Finkel explains to Haaretz. There wasnt a problem with innovation: it was conservatism by choice. Innovation has a price.

The myxozoan and the mosaic

Thinking on evolution in general has been changing. For example, we tended to simplistically perceive evolution as a roughly linear procession from primitive to complex. But evolution is broader than that. Take the delight that is myxozoans: microscopic parasitic jellyfish that evolved backwards, from sublime to slime. They evolved from proper multicellular animals to single-celled ones, or a few cells; and one went so far backwards as to even lose its genes for breathing.

Yet these tiny parasites are remarkably successful, infesting what seems to be all species of fish and seafood, in all the oceans except possibly the Antarctic. They even made it onto land, alone among the cnidarians. Myxozoans thrive in the duck and the frog and a strictly land animal: the shrew.

Also, the rationale of evolution may be fairly clear but scientists are still arguing over the process fits and starts? Huge leaps? Other? All the above? Either way, paleontology has helped to enrich the debate with the concept of mosaic evolution (aka modular evolution), which posits that some body parts will change without simultaneous changes in other parts.

Mosaic evolution is key to the theory Barkai and Finkel propound: that technological persistency like the hand ax remaining unchanged over a million years was because their hominin users enjoyed stability of their prey, namely mega-fauna (big animals). As in, specific technologies were associated with specific animal types. It wasnt broke so they didnt fix it.

In the interim, while the hand ax persisted, we made great strides. Vast strides. The stability of mega-fauna and of the toolkit used to hunt them over a vast stretch of time gave early humans space to innovate, Finkel and Barkai explain.

We could depend on our trusty hand ax and chopper to predate on elephants and other mega-fauna, and meanwhile could monkey around with developing other technologies and tools which came in handy when the mega-fauna disappeared. At which point, in turn, we didnt need the trusty hand ax any more.

As humans shifted to smaller animals, new toolkits had to be adopted in order to better catch and process them. Once another change occurred in animal availability, a corresponding transformation took shape in the technological repertoire, and so on and so forth.

This approach could explain technological changes such as the replacement of hand axes by Levallois, to be replaced later by systematic blade production, Barkai and Finkel explain.

And absolutely, during those million-plus years of hand ax persistency, the very type of human being changed, starting with Homo erectus and ending with Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals in Europe. During those million-plus years, archaic humans learned how to use, and ultimately to sort of tame, fire. In that time they developed all sorts of hunting technologies, including maybe its hard to say when spear technology.

All that was within the period of the hand ax, Finkel says. There were vast advances, yet the hand ax remained stable. We realized its an anchor: a stable basis on top of which we can innovate. Conservatism by choice gives you energy security, caloric security, enabling innovation and invention in other areas.

Thus, the technological persistency itself can be seen as an adaptive strategy, Barkai and Finkel argue.

Enter the megalodon

In separate work, Miki Ben-Dor and Barkai have argued that hominins took a turn to carnivory with Homo erectus over two million years ago. Our bodies did evolve to handle a high-protein diet, but only so far. Eat too much lean meat and protein poisoning will ensue. So the other chief source of calories was fat, which we came to crave. Large animals have abundant avoirdupois, while small ones dont (as a rule).

Thus, we evolved to eat mega-fauna and ate them until they were no more. Only then did we have to adapt our tools to obtaining smaller, fleeter animals.

Drawing a parallel between technological and morphological persistency, Finkel and Barkai note that in animals, body design tends to persist as long as their food supply is stable. Morphological stasis over eons indicates that the animal has the wherewithal to survive in the changes of its environment but that doesnt mean its evolution ground to a halt.

Take sharks. Or horseshoe crabs, or the coelacanth living fossils one and all. They seem unchanged over hundreds of millions of years, suggesting that they didnt need to.

The great megalodon, the biggest of all sharks (as far as we know), seem to have dominated the seas from about 16 million to 2.6 million years ago shame we missed them. Their remarkable size remained static in that time, dear reader: possibly up to 25 meters (82 feet) in length. It has been posited that megalodons went extinct because the oceans cooled and/or because their favorite meal small- to medium-size baleen whales half their size vanished and were supplanted by gigantic baleen whales, too big for even the great and terrible Meg to cope with. Yet the discovery of megalodon mouth marks on fossil seal remains suggests that while basking in the security conferred by their morphological persistency, they may have expanded to new prey types. Namely, pinnipeds. They do say the starving will eat anything.

Take the humble lungfish, which evolved over about 75 million years, then seems to have remained in morphological stasis for 250 million years. Lungfish were old before dinosaurs were even a gleam in the eye of the Creator. Yet to this day the lungfish feeding mechanism has remained largely primitive, which Finkel and Barkai argue enabled them to amble on through the eons while evolving advanced abilities to survive in variable conditions.

Here is a video of what African lungfish do when their river turns into mud.

Turning to another fish, in February a team revealed that the coelacanth, which didnt go extinct 66 million years ago after all, gained 62 new genes in the last 10 million years ago. How? From other fish, via transposons, aka jumping genes.It looks pretty much the same, though. Morphological stasis did not mean genetic stasis, evidently. It is possible that over the eons, the coelacanth exploited its morphological stability to expand its feeding options.

Haaretz is not suggesting that archaic humans exchanged genes with fish or did anything untoward with fish. But the apparently unchanged exterior of the shark and coelecanth can be misleading. Obviously they did change, statistics obliges it; and even if they look like their primordial predecessors, they cant be the same.

The bottom line of the beasts is that morphological persistency, including body size and shape, is quite common in nature, Barkai and Finkel explain. This enables the animal to depend on a specific prey type, or habitat, while expanding its trophic horizons, and when the fecal matter hits the fan, they are prepared to adapt find a new prey, nocturnal feeding instead of diurnal, etc.

This piscine stasis brings us to the analogy drawn by Finkel and Barkai: that the lithic stasis, the unchanged appearance of tools, doesnt mean the humans didnt change in other ways. Their theory of mosaic evolution suggests that the early humans were happily and confidently hunting with their old-time tools while developing new behaviors and making other advances, which enabled them to cope when the mega-fauna disappeared and rendered their long-standing toolkit obsolete.

For further support, they go to the archaeological record to find examples of faunal stability matched with technological persistency; fish, even the great megalodon, will only take us so far.

The tale of the hand ax and the herbivore

The Olorgesailie Basin prehistoric site in the Kenyan section of the Rift Valley boasts the gamut of the Acheulean from 1.2 million to 500,000 years ago, and the Middle Stone Age span from about 322,000 to 300,000 years ago.

A separate paper showed a massive shift in the animals populating the Olorgesailie basin from the Acheulean to the Middle Stone Age. The change in fauna likely caused by the climate change associated with a period of heightened aridity starting 575,000 years ago is associated with a shift in technology.

Hand ax persistency during the Acheulean, in this case, is directly correlated with faunal stability, as mega-herbivores, and in particular elephants, are present throughout the pre-500,000 sequence alongside hand axes, Finkel and Barkai write. But both the hand axes and giant herbivores disappeared there following the environmental and climatic conditions that prevailed in the region from 400,000 years onward.

In the Levant, meanwhile, elephants also disappeared about 400,000 years ago, forcing the local hominins to find some other source of meat and fat. They went for fallow deer, it seems, resulting in technological persistency of the tools needed to hunt, skin and butcher deer: blades and flakes. In fact, as Barkai and Finkel point out, the blades and flake technologies were developed while hand axes were still in broad use: Hand axes might have served as an anchor, allowing early humans to test and practice new technological developments that would later play a crucial role in their adaptation to dependency on smaller game, they explain.

They also bring examples of much more recent technological persistency as a function of game persistency from Sri Lanka and Brazil.

And thus, Meir Finkel and Ran Barkai propose a unifying theory of biological and human evolution, in which a biological or technological trait will persist as long as the main caloric source persists. If theres an elephant, we need the appropriate tools to hunt the elephant. And when the elephant is gone, we need the tools appropriate to hunting a deer, and when theyre gone, to catching the rabbit and so on. Safe in this stable zone, we had the opportunity to innovate without risking our lives in the process, producing a mosaic evolution pattern.

For Finkel, who came to archaeology after a military career, its obvious. In both early humanity and the army, one doesnt innovate for no reason, he explains. You could starve or lose the war. You innovate cautiously. Conservatism is a very successful strategy neophiliacs ignore the fact that conservatism works.

Link:

Israeli archaeologists resolve ages-old evolutionary conundrum: Enter the elephant and the hand ax - Haaretz

KIRKLAND, Wash., May 26, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- RightBound, the technology company that created the first autonomous sales prospecting engine, announced today that it has raised $12 million in funding, led by Innovation Endeavors with participation from IBI Tech Fund and Operator Collective. RightBound brings a new paradigm for B2B sales, addressing what has become an impossible complexity in the prospecting process, transforming manual routines such as company research, prospect selection and multi-channel outreach into a data-driven, AI-based autonomous process.

RightBound is the start of a whole new evolution and category of sales development, said Aravind Avi Bharadwaj at Innovation Endeavors, who led the Series A round. Other solutions in this space are more like guidance or workflow tools; RightBound actually drives the prospecting process for you. It takes the power of AI to a whole new level of optimization and results. Its like the difference between a navigation system and an autonomous vehicle. RightBound has the potential to fuel the sales efforts of every B2B business, from traditional industries to high-growth startups.

Todays outbound sales teams are forced to invest significant time on repetitive prospecting routines - including account research, list building, and outreach orchestration - instead of focusing on 1:1 interactions with relevant prospects. RightBound automatically completes the manual account research on the reps behalf, conducts personalized outreach to prospects across multiple channels, and connects teams with relevant, engaged buyers. With continuous optimization per every target account and individual prospect, RightBound helps to increase their average conversions from target account to qualified meeting from the industry standard of 0.5% - 1% to 1.9%, a notable improvement. Within 1-4 months of implementing RightBound, customers see between 100% and 300% ROI in terms of deals closed from leads sourced and engaged by the RightBound machine. See customer video here.

During the months of widespread work-from-home during the COVID-19 pandemic, sales development reps have discovered that most common practices for engaging prospects no longer apply. Office phones became obsolete, traditional work hours shifted and sending gifts to their office is no longer an option. Since RightBound is constantly learning their prospects behavior, and adjusts the playbook on the fly, it was a game changer for many sales development representative (SDR) teams and enabled them to recover and grow their performance during these times.

RightBound is bringing a completely new approach to sales prospecting that provides autonomous optimization for outbound sales for the first time, said Ran Oelgiesser, co-founder and CEO of RightBound. No machine could or should replace humans in B2B sales conversations. But its time for sales teams to step up and benefit from AI to its full extent when it comes to automation and optimization of research, targeting and customized outreach beyond whats humanly possible.

RightBound boosts the performance of sales teams in multiple ways. The RightBound machine connects with Salesforce, SalesLoft, Outreach.io and Hubspot. Sales teams still work on their prospects in those platforms, but they no longer do the heavy lifting and manual work, and instead can focus on building relationships with personalized effort for fewer, warmer, engaged prospects. Over time, the RightBound machine learns and gets better to continuously optimize its targeting and outreach.

Along with lead investor Innovation Endeavors, the financing round included new investments from Operator Collective, and additional investments from lead seed investor IBI Tech Fund, existing angel investors Zach Weinberg, Nat Turner, and Gil Shklarski.

Founded by Ran Oelgiesser and Rotem Dafni, RightBound currently has 20 full-time employees on the team and intends to double its headcount by 2022, hiring for new positions in the U.S. and Israel. With offices in Kirkland, Washington, Tel Aviv, Israel, and employees in Arizona, Massachusetts, Virginia and North Carolina, the company has been growing its revenues 100% per quarter for the past year.

About RightBound RightBound is the next evolution of outbound sales development. With the power of AI and machine learning, RightBounds technology helps automate and optimize the sales development process, engaging in cold outreach, collecting data on prospects, eliminating time-consuming manual cadences, and freeing up the sales development team to do more of what people do best. RightBound customers have achieved 20-40% increases in outbound sales results and 100% ROI within 3 months of implementation. To learn more visit RightBound.com

Media Contact for RightBound:

Carolyn Adams, BlueRun PR847-867-3005carolyn@bluerunpr.com

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RightBound Raises $12M to Drive Next Evolution of Sales - GlobeNewswire

70% of Employees Have Experienced Discrimination in the Workplace which has Impacted Their Productivity, Engagement, or Performance

Black Lives Matter, Womens Rights, and Mental Health Awareness Are the Top Issues Companies Have Supported & Taken Action on in the Past Year

56% of Respondents Think Using a Workplace Engagement Platform Could Help Improve Company Culture, Employee Communications, and Training & Development Efforts

NEW YORK, May 26, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ten Spot, the workforce engagement platform that keeps your employees connected, today announced the results of a nationwide survey, Company Culture, Behavior, and Social Issues in Todays Workplace. The findings provide insight into how company culture will evolve as members of Generation Z continue to join the workforce and influence everything from social activism at work to the adoption of workplace engagement platforms. Additionally, the results reveal a pointed look at how todays workforce defines their companys culture, their experiences with workplace discrimination, and ways its impacted their productivity, and why a companys involvement and support of sociopolitical issues is important to employees. Some key highlights are:

Through this survey, weve learned company culture no longer just means employees view a company as a great place to work. Over the past several years weve seen workplace culture evolve from perks and competitive salaries, to how companies treat their employees and make decisions on todays significant social issues, said Sammy Courtright, co-founder and Chief Brand Officer of Ten Spot. Today, companies need to be a triple threat if they want to attract and retain the most talented, productive, and engaged employees that are now entering the workforce.

Company Culture + Socio-Political Issues = More Engaged EmployeesWhile politicians have recently criticized companies for getting involved in politics, 49% of the survey responses reflected company involvement in, or support of, five key socio-political issues. Additionally, 76% of respondents say they know what their company stands for when it comes to company culture and social issues.

There was a three-way tie for the top that respondents say their companies have supported or taken other action on over the past year - Black Lives Matter (40%), Womens Rights (40%), and Mental Health Awareness/Programs/Initiatives (40%). The second pressing issue was local food banks (31%), followed by Voting Rights (30%) as third, and LGBTQ Rights (29%) as fourth.

Why does this matter? How a company responds to social, political, and humanitarian issues that are happening has a significant impact on company culture and working for a purpose-driven company plays a central role in determining an employees engagement and productivity levels.

Putting a New Lens on Employee Engagement and ProductivityOverall, 56% of respondents say they would be more engaged and productive at work if their company was actively involved in addressing todays critical social issues, with Men (62%), Gen Z (61%), and BIPOC (60%) as the top three groups of respondents.

However, employee engagement is a complex issue and what happens inside a company is just as important. When respondents were asked what issues they have experienced in the workplace - either directly or indirectly - that have impacted their productivity, engagement, or performance, overall, 70% of them have experienced some discriminatory issue or abusive behavior in the workplace. Its not just one issue but several issues that impact many different people. The top results include:

Gen Z - The Rising Force Set to Transform the Future WorkplaceWhen it comes to everything happening around them - whether in the workplace or out in the world - Gen Z may quickly become the eyes wide open generation. The newest generation joining the workforce is observant, sensitive to both whats happening in the world around them as well as whats happening to them at work. Additionally, they are more apt to be motivated and engaged by workplaces, managers, and people who take a stand on todays important social issues.

Based on Gen Zs early experiences in the workplace, they are more critical of their company HR departments, but they are also more likely to see ways that company issues could be solved, and communication improved, through technology.

While critical of their companies and HR departments on these fronts, Gen Z does appear to recognize that there are solutions. Overall 56% of respondents think that using an employee engagement and productivity platform could help their company improve the companys culture, employee communications, and training and development efforts. However, the number jumps to 63% with Gen Z. Both numbers, however, show a significant jump up from the fact that only 20% of respondents said that their company uses a workforce engagement platform for these purposes, today.

Additionally, Gen Z (62%) was the most enthusiastic generation regarding the positive impact virtual events had on their company culture during the pandemic, followed by every other generation in descending order - Millennial (59%), GenX (57%), Boomers (52%).

Looking across the workforce today, there is a stark generational difference between the generation that will soon leave the workforce, Boomers, and the generation that has just entered the workforce, Gen Z, said Courtright. The difference will undoubtedly have a significant impact on todays workplace as we know it - from how we use technology, think about company culture, ways we communicate to addressing issues regarding workplace discrimination and dealing with the most pressing social and political issues.

Survey MethodologyTen Spot conducted its Company Culture, Behavior, and Social Issues in Todays Workplace survey with 2,000 people who are currently employed between April 19 and April 20, 2021. The margin of error is +/- 2.08%.

About Ten SpotTen Spot is the workforce engagement platform that keeps your employees connected to each other - wherever they are. Its innovative software combines live and on-demand content with sophisticated tools that help companies measure employee engagement and sentiment. Ten Spot helps employees bond, chat, and connect with each other.

Companies that use Ten Spot have a dedicated space for socializing, sparking relationships, enhancing teamwork, and building and maintaining strong company cultures, helping improve productivity and reduce employee burnout. Ten Spot is designed to give every employee the same experience, no matter where theyre based, to more easily build team cohesion across multiple locations, time zones, and work styles. For more information visit http://www.tenspot.com

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New Survey Reveals Gen Z Holds the Key to the Evolution of - GlobeNewswire

Author note: Thanks is due to Vint Cerf, who provided additional detail and comment, although not necessarily joining all the views presented. More than any other person, he deserves credit for the IETF's formation and early success. Bob Kahn should also receive praise for the success of the IETF.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a collaborative body that has developed internetworking specifications for more than five decades, successfully shaping the global marketplace of digital network equipment and services. Beginning as a kind of distributed think tank among network researchers in 1969, it evolved to become one of the world's most influential standards bodies.

This article describes, through an analysis of the IETF's own meeting records, a history of the evolution of the participants in the organization that reflects adaptation to the ever-changing technologies, marketplace, and diversity of participants. It attempts to explore key questions like who were the IETF constituents the parties who expended the considerable money and resources to participate in the meetings and reflected in the participant registration pattern in the graph below.

These participatory patterns reflect the perceived usefulness of the IETF to its constituents in a continually changing technology and marketplace ecosystem where the costs of supporting someone to participate meaningfully are both significant and increasingly competitive vis-a-vis other standards bodies. As the IETF continues to evolve to accommodate change, understanding the past constituent adaptive history is helpful in providing increased diversity and effective inclusivity of new sectors and participants as it faces these new developments.

The intent here is not to provide an authoritative history of the IETF which is unusually complex and highly dependent on observer perspective. Links to the source IETF proceedings and RFCs are provided throughout to allow readers to access original material. The objective is rather to encourage further analysis and understanding of the IETF's constituents; how those constituents have evolved; and encourage a dialogue on how its organizational attributes and processes might evolve going forward to best serve those constituents and the global marketplace.

What is now known as the IETF began its existence as an informal group among ARPA network researchers with a document known as Request for Comments (RFC 1) distributed on 7 April 1969. RFCs evolved over the past 50 years to become the IETF's principal product consisting of specifications for a broad variety of network protocols, applications for what it describes as a "the Internet [as a] pervasive global construct." The loose ensemble led by Steve Crocker called themselves the "Network Working Group" (NWG) that included researchers at two private companies and two universities plus the head of ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) Program Manager.

The NWG meetings continued to grow. By March 1971, they consisted of DARPA researchers at seven private companies and seven university researcher ensembles. As time went on, subgroups emerged for treating data management, network graphics, mail, and various new protocols. However, for the next fifteen years, the NWG continued to exist as a relatively small and confined group for DARPA researchers to exchange ideas and announce specifications for DARPA's own closed research network that were published as RFCs.

Notable contractors were BBN (Bolt, Beranek & Newman), which operated the ARPANET network), SRI (Stanford Research Institute), which operated the ARPANET Network Information Center, and ISI (Information Science Institute), which provided protocol specification support. Pursuant to a 1982 directive from the U.S. Undersecretary of Defense, the Defense Communications Agency (DCA) was responsible for management, policy, and service of the network that was detailed Internet Protocol Transition Workbook and supplemented with the Internet Protocol Implementation Guide.

Over the period, several important new bodies emerged. The Internet Configuration Control Board (ICCB) was established around 1980 by the ARPANET Program Manager Vint Cerf which became responsible for ARPA Internet Protocol policy. The ICCB was subsequently replaced by the Internet Advisory Board (IAB), which spawned 10 task forces, one of which was the IETF in 1986. The Internet Advisory Board then became the Internet Activities Board which subsequently became the Internet Architecture Board. The histories of the IAB and the IETF are closely entwined and complex.

In 1986, the NWG began to acquire definitive structure and significantly enhanced support. The change was initiated with the proposed creation of an Internet Engineering Task Force at the 4th meeting of the DARPA Gateway Algorithms and Data Structures Task Force in San Diego in January 1986 (referred to as IETF#1). The purpose of the IETF under its charter was "to identify and resolve engineering issues in the near-term planning and operation of the DoD Internet" with the agenda set by "the operational agencies and their contractors." The new organization's meetings, published proceedings, and participants were to be supported by U.S. government agencies and their contractors. The meeting was attended by 21 people from 13 different U.S. government agencies and contractors from private companies and academia. The top participant organisations at the IETF#1 meeting reflected its mission:

The newly formed DARPA Internet Engineering Task Force met in April 1986 (referred to as the IETF#2 meeting) at the U.S. Ballistics Research Laboratory (BRL). It consisted of largely the same 21 people from 15 different organizations DOD contractors from private companies and academia, plus government agencies. The top participant organizations were:

The IETF immediately found itself in a whirlwind of multiple major developments and changes. Ultimately, the most important of these during the 1986-1994 period was the allocation of $ 2.5 billion by the U.S. Congress through the National Science Foundation (NSF) to a vast array of companies and academic institutions for networking research, specification development, and demonstration networks and application demonstrations that included and were facilitated by the IETF. NSF, NASA, and DoE committed to the TCP/IP protocol and applications.

Additionally, the DOD, together with most commercial network companies and Europe, had committed to Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) internet protocols and standards which NIST initially published as the U.S. Government OSI Profile (GOSIP) and submitted jointly to the ISO and CCITT (now ITU-T). At the time, multiple major network communities and companies had also developed and championed their own internet protocols and applications. Even the banking community had developed its own internet and trademarked the term. The pursuit of internetworking platforms was elevated to strategically important levels by companies and national governments alike. All of these developments and the related parties and technical challenges began appearing at IETF meetings.

During 1986, The Internet Activities Board also held the first TCP/IP Vendors Workshop in Monterey, California, in cooperation with DARPA. The event later became the Interop trade show. Similar to the ITU Telecom and the GSMA Mobile World Congress, the Interop provided a close binding among respective industry communities and their standards making activities.

What was especially notable about the IETF#2 meeting was the report on gateways to the DOD internet and papers on the use of it as a common bridge among the many other existing internets at the time. The ability to accommodate technical and institutional diversity would ultimately prove a key to the subsequent success of the IETF and market acceptance of its work.

By the time of the IETF#6 meeting in July 1987, efforts to expand the role of IETF beyond its original DOD internet mission were seen in the expanding commercial company participants, additional government agencies, as well as the engagement with other internet standards bodies. Especially significant were the presence of U.S. ISO standards body X3S3.3 participants who were advancing the OSI internet protocol known as CLNP, security and management capabilities, and applications in international standards bodies. The meeting was dedicated to presentations of ongoing work by multiple other bodies about their work. Also notable was a 1987 workshop of the NSF Federal Coordinating Council, which controlled project funding. Its seven subgroups several months earlier treated such key subjects as Internet Concepts, Networking Requirements and Future Alternatives, Future Standards and Services Requirements, Security Issues, and the Government Role in Networking. The attendees at IETF#6 consisted of 80 people from 46 different organizations. The top participant organizations reflected the rapidly changing IETF constituent diversity:

Among the many other organizations present were significant internetworking platform stakeholders, including Bellcore, ACC, Cisco, H-P, IBM, and NASA. Bellcore was both the principal U.S. telecom provider research organization at the time, as well as the secretariat for telecom industry's standards domestic and international. ACC, Cisco, H-P, and IBM had entered the growing internet network equipment marketplace. NASA became a major user and developer of internetworking capabilities.

After the IETF#6 meeting in July 1987, the internetworking market sector continued to grow rapidly. Especially significant was the buildout of the U.S. National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) TCP/IP internet backbone across the country with major hubs on the East and West coasts that were used for international connections. Most of the parties involved used the IETF meetings to collaborate on technology, operations, new applications, and ways to make all the current and emerging network protocols interoperate. The backbone, international connections, research, and IETF activity were all funded by the $2.5 billion NSF Congressional allocation approved the year before.

Thus, a year later, at the IETF#10 meeting in Annapolis in June 1988, all the government, academic, and commercial parties engaged in operating, developing and using NSFNET and ARPANET, including new protocols and products, were active participants. Dedicated working groups created at earlier meetings expanded and began tackling key needs related to network management, authentication, security, DNS domains, ISO internet protocol integration, host requirements, and routing. The growth of working groups was noted at IETF#9 and led to established IETF internal structures and processes. The meeting was also marked by the IETF Secretariat responsibilities being assumed the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (NRI/CNRI) that was created by the former DARPA networking chief Bob Kahn and funded by NSF. The meeting was attended by 112 participants from 58 different organizations. The attendees at IETF#9 in March 1988 included a participant from Canada and Germany (the DFVLR) the first recorded non-North American participant. MITRE, as a major network security research and development arm of the U.S. government, had a significant presence and multiple roles, including the IETF at this time. The top 25 participant organizations at IETF#10 were:

The IETF#13 meeting at Cocoa Beach in April 1989 was the occasion for announcing the decommissioning of the ARPANET. It was also notable for the introduction of the far-reaching NSA SDNS (Secure Data Network System) initiative for network security which had been announced publicly in August 1986 and been undertaken by a number of agencies and private sector contractors who participated at IETF. SDNS was subsequently treated at the 17th meeting in 1990, the 23rd and 24th meetings in 1992. It was intended to be a core part of the public internet infrastructure but ultimately implemented only as components.

The year 1990 placed the IETF on the world standards-making stage. In February 1990, the world's principal network standards bodies convened an international summit at Fredericksburg, Virginia, known as ITSC#1. The purpose was to consider a rapidly changing technology and market ecosystem and the inadequacies of the major industry standards bodies. The ITU Secretary-General's representative chaired the policy panel, and Vint Cerf as Chair of the Internet Activities Board was asked to describe the IETF and its processes. The timing coincided with the IAB developing a new standards process at the IETF#16 meeting, including the relationships with the U.S. Government OSI Profile (GOSIP) standards. The IETF was portrayed as a model of participant openness, process transparency, and document availability. Several months later, prominent IETF participants implemented a project known as "Bruno to make all ITU technical standards publicly accessible via FTP on the TCP/IP internet.

The following year in September 1991, the IETF again at ITSG#2 in Sophia Antipolis was even more prominent as a model for other bodies especially in light of the Bruno project. In subsequent years, the ITSG Conference grew to become the Global Standards Collaboration (GSC) organisation. Its annual meetings focused on improving working relationships among the many constituent standards bodies, as well as common problems relating to transparency, diversity, IPR, and anticompetitive behaviour. Although it attended some of its early meetings, the IETF became more insular and discontinued engagement.

In many ways, the year 1992 was a point of inflection for the IETF in much the same way as 1986. A new U.S. Administration had been elected that championed the NSFNET together with the TCP/IP internet protocols and applications developed in U.S.-funded academic centers. The providers of commercial public data services were also offering NSFNET gateways. Perhaps most notably, the efforts by DOD, public telecom providers, and Europe to employ the IETF to implement OSI internet protocols and applications began to fail. Much of the turmoil played out at rancorous meetings of the IETF and its management activities. A new foundational IETF document - "The Internet Standards Process - was adopted. It articulated what constituted Internet Standards - together with the IETF structure, bodies, powers and procedures.

The IETF#23 meeting held in early 1992 in San Diego was the occasion of announcement of fundamental change in the IETF described at length at the beginning of the meeting proceedings. It describes the origins as a forum for DARPA and then NSFNET contractor coordination, but noting that it "has grown into a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet protocol architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet." A new mission statement was articulated with extensive structure and a designated secretariat with support staff. Special mention was given to the increase of attendees from 360 to 529, with 46 working groups and internationalization that included 43 non-U.S. attendees from 14 other countries. The rapidly increased involvement of major providers of computer and telecommunication systems and services was also evident.

The IETF#25 meeting was intended as a celebratory occasion held in late 1992 in Washington DC and reflected a significant shifting to major private sector participation in the U.S. The event was hosted by Sprint, which provided international connections to the NSFNET backbone from other countries and U.S. government agencies at the time. There were 633 participants from 266 different organizations. The first European IETF meeting was announced. The 652-page proceedings covered nine different areas, including 73 different groups, and introduced SIP (Session Internet Protocol) work. Presentations included both U.S. and nineteen participants attended from 14 other countries. The increasing engagement of commercial vendors is apparent. Noteworthy was participation of the Corporation for Open Systems International that was a major consortium established at the time to work with the U.S. government and industry to bring about global OSI internet standards and undertake performance testing.

IETF#25 was especially notable as a fundamental point of inflection in the role and scope of the IETF organization. Although the work at the meeting still included the "OSI Integration Area," the POISED (Process for Organisation of Internet Standards) report was presented. The report culminated months of turmoil resulting from the efforts to transition to the OSI protocols a previous principal mission of the IETF established by the U.S. government. The result was a change of leadership, control, and process of their IETF under the aegis of the Internet Society.

The year 1992 was also notable for Cerf and Kahn forming the Internet Society "to facilitate and support the technical evolution of the Internet as a research and education infrastructure, and to stimulate the involvement of the scientific community, industry, government and others in the evolution of the Internet." The Society's role subsequently expanded quickly and resulted in a change of leadership, control, and process of the IETF under the aegis of the Internet Society. As Cerf notes, "the IETF resisted being drawn into ISOC and only after considerable debate did it recognize the need to be part of a formally constituted body with protection from potential standards-making risks."

The POISED changes were ultimately captured in fundamental changes to the IETF's core document two years later in 1994 The Internet Standards Process Revision 2. It still included the statement that "the Internet has been evolving towards the support of multiple protocol suites, especially the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) suite." Two years later, in 1996, The Internet Standards Process Revision 3 eliminated the statement entirely and applied the process to all protocols "in the Internet context." With some updates, it remains the core IETF document today.

The continuously evolving IETF constituency was reflected in the top 40 participants in the years following IETF#25. In 1994, the IETF#31 meeting drew 1079 participants from 441 different organisations in 18 different countries. The top 40 participants still included U.S. government contractors and organizations pursuing OSI protocols. As the OSI protocol integration work came to an end over the next four years, the associated constituency disappeared.

The year 1994 also ended with a document that, more than any other, came to characterize the IETF's new existence The Tao of IETF." The organization is defined as "a loosely self-organized group of people who make technical and other contributions to the engineering and evolution of the Internet and its technologies." Over the years, the Tao evolved. In 2001, the definition was changed to simply "Internet technologies." In 2006, it was further evolved to "a loosely self-organized group of people who contribute to the engineering and evolution of Internet technologies," and since 2012 published and evolved as a web page.

It was also near the end of the 1990-1998 period that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) came into existence through the efforts of the U.S. Dept of Commerce. ICANN assumed the secretariat role for IETF standards identifiers and ultimately funding an array of IETF-related activities through the imposition of charges for those identifiers.

The period between 1998 and 2007 represented peak years for the IETF in terms of participants, industry engagement and development of new marketplace platforms. It coincided with the growth of TCP/IP-based platforms and revenue opportunities especially for public voice telephony. The most significant intervening market development during the period was the "dot-com and telecom bubbles which ended the viability of many companies and their IETF participation, as well as enormous growth in the TCP/IP Domain Name System marketplace and new uses that included telephone number resolution.

The year 1999 was also notable for the IETF as an ancillary party to a landmark Intellectual Property agreement signed by the Internet Society and CNRI to end a long-running legal controversy with Internet, Inc. over use of the term "internet." In July 1999, in a proceeding before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Trial and Appeal Board, the parties reached a settlement on all versions of the use of the term "Internet." They were obligated to recognize that the term was "generic," and that it represented "a large and growing global information system which is used by government agencies, communities, commercial organizations, professional associations and individuals for commercial and non-commercial services."

In 1998 approaching the peak of the industry bubbles, the IETF#43 meeting drew 1551 participants from 546 different organisations in 27 countries. The IETF only needed to hold meetings, and participants came. Commercial equipment vendors and service providers increased significantly especially those who were prominent in the TCP/IP internet marketplace. U.S. government agency contractors and participants were significantly diminished. The prospective use of TCP/IP to support public telephone services also brought many more telecom providers into the meetings.

In early 2001 as the dot-com and telecom bubbles were occurring, the IETF#50 meeting drew nearly 2100 people from 794 different organisations. That year reflected the zenith of IETF involvement as the communications network industry was at peak turmoil. The growing focus on IP telephony is reflected in the substantial involvement of that industry sector and the network equipment vendors who leveraged IETF standards. The meeting also began to reflect a divergence in view between providers and academicians concerning widespread use of "middle boxes" and their effects on legacy host-to-host architecture assumptions that arose in the 1980s and remains as one of the principal areas of technical contention.

In 2006 after the 2001 peak - the IETF#65 meeting drew 1258 people from 437 different organisations. The IETF proceedings during this period provided no country-related information, but it was apparent that the non-U.S. attendance was also rapidly increasing and ultimately leveled off at about 70%. The increasing internationalization at the end of this timeframe is also marked by the engagement of Chinese companies and organizations in the IETF work as they became more active in all standards bodies in the sector as a strategic investment similar to North American and European countries and expanded their global market share.

The 1998 to 2007 period is also marked by the onset of a kind of self-asserted political activism in the form of an IETF Mission Statement adopted in 2004 that remains as a fundamental continuing constraint on the IETF's work and evolution.

The IETF mission further states that the Internet isn't value-neutral, and neither is the IETF. The IETF wants the Internet to be useful for communities that share our commitment to openness and fairness. The IETF embraces technical concepts such as decentralized control, edge-user empowerment, and sharing of resources because those concepts resonate with the core values of the IETF community.

The same Mission Statement also adopted a second foundational constraint the IETF is only constituted by individual participants. Both of the constraints subsequently became included in The Tao of IETF.

From 2007 onwards, after two decades of turmoil and growth, the IETF participation continued in a kind of stable mode that evolved to accommodate different organizations who leveraged it as a venue to advance their TCP/IP internet products and services in the marketplace. Cisco was joined by Huawei as the dominant attendee organization, followed by a relatively stable, small set of other commercial marketplace participants.

Globally, during this period, the engagement by participants from China increased significantly to constitute the largest country participant in the IETF, as described in the international section below. In 2010, IETF#79 was hosted in Beijing the only meeting to date occurring in China.

As the public internet infrastructure began to shift significantly toward personalized content delivery and social media services, new and rapidly growing companies like Google became active in the IETF. Both the Internet Society, which was provided revenue by ICANN as well as ICANN itself, began global outreach efforts to make the IETF more globally inclusive. A structured legal aegis in the form of the IETF Trust was finally created in December 2005 to assume ownership of the IPR and the informal institutional roles of the Internet Society and CNRI.

However, as the mobile communications market expanded exponentially during the same period, the preponderance of the industry participants carried that work out in 3GPP which grew to become the largest and most active of the network communications industry body with its own internet implementations. The 3GPP participant and contribution exponential growth and an enormous number of work items accelerated even further after 2015 when the global planning for 5G emerged. Specialized TCP/IP internet standards tasks were outsourced to the IETF.

In 2011, the IETF#80 meeting drew 1307 people from 446 different organisations in 62 different countries. The top 40 participants are shown below.

In 2014, the IETF#91 meeting drew 1396 people from 441 different organisations in 67 different countries. The period was also one of significant IETF turmoil over material released by Snowden reflected in the IETF mission and work and the adverse effects on network protection and constituent participants. Those pursuing passionate causes found a home in the IETF which did not exist elsewhere. The top 40 participants are shown below.

In 2017, the IETF#100 meeting drew 1525 people (526 remote) from 526 different organisations in 88 different countries. The top 40 participants are shown below.

In 2019, the IETF#106 meeting drew 1634 people (611 remote) from 561 different organisations in 88 different countries. The top 40 participants are shown below.

In 2021, the IETF#110e meeting drew 1329 people (all remote) from 498 different organisations in 68 different countries. The top 40 participants are shown below. The #110 meeting metrics are especially useful to understand the effects of a fully virtual IETF. It appears that neither the top participant nor international metrics changed significantly using virtual rather than physical meetings. As noted below, however, virtual meetings may result in participant organizations having multiple employees attending IETF meetings likely because of the significantly lower travel costs.

While the Top-40 participant metrics discussed above are useful in understanding the IETF's most engaged participant organizations, it is also especially useful to examine the metrics for all the individual actor attendees. After migrating away from the DOD and NSF in the 1990s, the IETF rather uniquely among industry standards bodies, enabled individual actors to exercise significant influence and power.

Although viewed as a desirable attribute by many within the IETF and part of its Tao adopted in 1994, individual actors often have with vague institutional affiliation and unknown funding or motive. It creates significant transparency and antitrust challenges within a standards body that controls what can be deployed as a product or service in the multi-billion dollar internet marketplace. This rather large and constantly churning group is typically diverse: computer scientists and individual consultants who are often funded to be present to gain intelligence or influence outcomes, academic researchers introducing their ideas or job searching, and deserving individuals in remote world locations who are provided stipends to attend a meeting that would otherwise be unattainable. The IETF also attracts what an Oxford Internet Institute research paper described as self-styled technical policy advocates.

The individual actor attendance in the graph includes all those who were either the only person from a participant group or otherwise independent. The numbers were relatively low until the millennium and then increased significantly over nearly the next two decades to reach 50 percent, i.e., half the attendees. As noted below, there is also considerable churn among individual attendees.

Over the past two years, however, the percentage has decreased especially with recent fully virtual meetings. As noted above, a plausible explanation may be the effects of travel costs. With virtual meetings, two people from the same organization can attend without incurring significant costs and away time.

Because the IETF continues to rely on the actions of individual participants over substantial time periods to introduce and advance standards or attain decision-making positions, it is useful to examine the patterns of individual participant recurrence at meetings over a period of time. For example, an examination of eight meetings over the three-year period between 2017 and 2019 shows that nearly two-thirds of the participants only attended one meeting and that only 5 percent continued over the entire set of meetings.

There appears to be considerable churn in the IETF attendance that suggests fewer organizations today willing to invest the resources in allocating and funding an employee to participate continuously in the IETF. The recurrence metrics also explain the individual participant metrics where one person attends only a single meeting. By contrast, in all other standards bodies, a participant organization can obtain one or even several annual memberships and send multiple different employees as required.

Prior to the changes that were instituted in 1992, the IETF fulfilled its original DOD mission. To the extent people and organizations outside the U.S. participated, it was limited to a few institutions in other countries connected to the DARPA and NSF network backbones. After 1992, the non-U.S. participation increased significantly. The most rapid increase occurred between 1995 and 2010 when the percentage of non-U.S. participants increased to a steady state of around 40 percent, as shown in the above graph for the top 20 countries.

Most of the non-U.S. participation consisted of those from a number of European countries plus Japan. After 2010, Chinese participants became the largest non-U.S. percentage maintaining a steady rate of around 9%. In general, the small percentages from non-U.S. countries over the past two decades have remained very steady at levels of a few percent, notwithstanding attempts to expand the diversity and inclusivity such as holding meetings in different world regions and subsidies.

The large U.S. percentages follow in considerable measure the IETF's provenance as well as perceived incentives or disincentives of participation by those in other countries which is also driven by the Top 40 participating organizations who consistently send large numbers of employees to meetings to further their marketplace interests.

Over the years, the motivations of IETF internationalization evolved. During the 1980s, the academic network researchers some funded by companies like IBM who created Bitnet collaborated and sought ways to establish gateways. When the rather massive NSFNET funding was instituted in 1986, substantial money was made available for non-U.S. connections directly through to the U.S. backbone directly or through protocol converter gateways.

Multiple organisations for both operations and standards development existed, and the academic communities met globally at INET Conferences. As the years progressed, the INETs became associated with the Internet Society and included operational workshops, and helped bring non-U.S. participants to IETF meetings.

In the 1990s, as the TCP/IP internet began transitioning from a U.S. government activity to a public commercial offering, and as alternative internet implementations subsided, commercial vendors and equipment providers worldwide as well as government-sponsored communities in Asia began appearing in large numbers. Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea were among the first, followed by China. IETF's also became an opportunity for the operational community to gather. Internationalization also became significant as the IETF sought to establish itself as a peer international standards organization and give their standards recognition.

The motivations over the past quarter-century have changed little - which explains the surprising consistency in the country metrics despite considerable efforts by different parties to increase the numbers. There is also a cultural barrier, as the IETF's emphasis on individual actors and prevalence of aggressive behavior in groups and lists are not tolerated in many cultures.

Most collaborative organizations attempt to examine their constituent participants from time to time and attempt to improve the organization's practices and mission. Indeed, this recently occurred in the IETF's Internet Architecture Board initiative Fifty Years of RFCs. In addition, the IETF Director recently undertook a consultation process to solicit views concerning the efficacy of the organization and needed adjustments.

The kind of analysis here is useful for that purpose and should be institutionalized by the IETF. The internetworking architectures, services, and markets are undergoing changes today that equal or exceed any over the past fifty years. In addition, the venues for the work have increased in number and become in some measure competitive. All organizations have their own virtues, but inevitably, participating commercial organizations expend their money where there is perceived benefit, and nation-states engage where there is strategic value.

The IETF participant metrics clearly show a maximum that occurred twenty years ago, followed by a drop a few years later to a steady state of half that number. The principal participating organizations also remain a consistently small number of dominant vendor product providers combined with large numbers of academics and individual actors that make the IETF complex and challenging to manage.

The IETF's reliance on an "individual" actor paradigm that necessitates a person's participation over many meetings may also today represent a significant, critical organization liability in today's ecosystem array of global standards bodies. A commercial company that has devoted enormous resources to the development of IPR in the products and services, may not be willing to risk the investment participating in a standards body: 1) that rests on the behavior and actions of individual participants who are interpreting and acting to implement legacy IETF Mission Statement mandates with which the company does not agree, or 2) may restrain their products in the marketplace, or 3) where important work item decisions occur with limited transparency, or 4) producing a specification can take years to achieve even marginally useful specifications. Even a conversation about these matters is difficult to pursue within the IETF, and although it may be regarded as disparaging, it needs to occur for the IETF's own good.

To the extent the IETF, as a collaborative standards body competing with other bodies, wishes to adapt to evolve its mission and viability, it seems helpful to examine past the successes. What adaptations brought about an increase in the number and diversity of participants? Or did not. What kinds of cultural behavior and stridency especially in discussion lists and creating new working groups enhanced diversity and dialogue? Or not. What changes in mission can bring about a perceived value proposition? Or not. What makes the IETF open and welcome to the broadest array of valued participants? What turns them away? What kind of organization does the IETF want to be in the standards ecosystem? What is viable? What avoids the antitrust "alligators" or standards that are untenable for service providers in the real world where content delivery architectures prevail and for whom "end-user empowerment" is not a sine qua non?

The metrics of organizational affiliations and trends are uniquely important within the IETF for other essential reasons, namely transparency and anticompetitive considerations. Without any explicit membership and a reliance on vague judgemental decision-making and unfettered list-based work item shaping activity, the IETF becomes potentially vulnerable to subtle takeover or manipulation of its activities to further aims and strategies, including unfair competition. The significant number of participants with vague or unknown affiliations exacerbates the challenge. The only way to mitigate these vulnerabilities is to enhance the transparency of affiliations and provide continuing analytical metrics directed at showing proportions and patterns of affiliations. It is due diligence and encouraged by recent antitrust enforcement actions.

Three decades ago, when the IETF was young, welcomed change, and sought recognition by older standards bodies, it engaged in common collaborative activity with those bodies via mechanisms like the ITSC/GSC to address common challenges. Now that the IETF is itself older, it is facing an enhanced need today shared by all bodies to avoid institutional ossification, better serve the constituents, improve transparency and mitigate anticompetitive behavior. It may be time to again proactively collaborate among the bodies to achieve these common goals.

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The IETF Evolution - CircleID

The tenth edition of Extra Shot focuses on some of the talking points that emerged from the recent DSP Leaders 5G Evolution Summit.

Three special guests, as well as the TelecomTV duo of Guy Daniels and Ray Le Maistre plus industry expert Chris Lewis, delve further into some of the key topics discussed throughout the Summit, including: The potential business impact of 5G core platform deployments; the role of cloud native in 5G strategies; the role of fixed wireless access (FWA) in the 5G services sector and the relationship between 5G and Wi-Fi; and the role of 5G in the private wireless networks sector, where network operators are hoping to play a key role. And as ever, we asked our special guests about their hot drink preferences and added them to our new-look Containerized Beverage Function (CBF) leader board, which has finally received some CI/CD love

Featuring special guests:

Filmed with TelecomTVs Smart Studio service

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Extra Shot: The Evolution of 5G - TelecomTV

I kind of de-bitched myself, exclaims Chelsea Handler about the process leading to her latest stand-up special, Evolution. For our recent webchat, she continues, I basically went to therapy and tried to take a lot of the bitch out. I found out a lot about myself. A lot of introspection. Deep diving and digging. Watch the exclusive video interview above.

Now streaming on HBO Max, the program marks Handlers first special in more than six years. The comic confesses, I had that experience in therapy and wanted to share it because it was a huge evolution for me. Its a huge growth spurt at 40, which is a little bit of a late bloomer, but thats what a mid-life crisis is all about. My therapist really pushed me to the limit. I did not want to do stand-up again until I had something important to say.

SEEover 150 video interviews with 2021 Emmy contenders

In the special Handler talks about her therapy. The set culminates in the revelation that her anger in life comes from the personal tragedy of her brothers death. She says, My childhood trauma was something that I always laughed off or explained away. I kind of stuffed it away until it became untenable. I had a lot of anger and I did not know why I was angry. Usually anger is hurt. Its hard to be vulnerable. Angers a good cover up for hurt; as well as acting out, deflecting and being funny. That worked for a long time for me and then it didnt.

She reflects, I started to consider the notion of having something traumatic, like your brother dying at nine years old. I started to contemplate if my whole life was a reaction to that. This special was about allowing myself to be vulnerable. Its very hard to be a stand-up and go more than a minute without hearing that laughter and committing to telling a story. The hardest part was accepting the quiet and sitting still with the feeling. I was just trying to be as present as possible to tell a story. It wasnt unveiling; it was allowing myself to be vulnerable in a moment where I learnt that vulnerability is strength. And set that example that theres no shame in trying to change.

PREDICTthe 2021 Emmy nominees through July 13

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Chelsea Handler (Evolution): I did not want to do stand-up again until I had something important to say [EXCLUSIVE VIDEO INTERVIEW] - Gold Derby

There's a 300-year-old row of townhouses in London where they know all about how "the home" has changed over the years. Today, this building is the Museum of the Home, where they're just getting ready to reopen after a three-year refurbishment and just in time.

Correspondent Mark Phillips asked, "Could there have been a better time for a Museum of the Home to reopen?"

"It's a brilliant time for us to be talking about home," said Sonia Solicari, the museum's director, "because, you know, around the world people have been in lockdown, which means that people have been thinking more intensely about their domestic spaces than ever before."

This is a drawing room from a 1915 suburban family home.

Solicari oversees the exhibits that recreate the spaces we've lived in over time, going back to the 1600s.

And they continue through the technological and social changes that have brought us to today, from the arrival of the knife and fork, to electricity, to television, to the home computer.

Sometimes that journey has been more a circle than a straight line. Back to the future.

Phillips said, "We like to think, you know, that we've invented everything. And now, we think this whole idea of working from home, the home office, is a brand new thing. Is it?"

"No," Solicari replied. "If you look back at the home, certainly in the U.K., in the 1600s in an urban environment, you were very likely to be living above the shop, or conducting business from your hall space."

The home office today, of course, wouldn't be possible without the connectivity that started with the phone. "The telephone obviously started to come into the home from the 1870s," Solicari said.

And if you think our lockdown lifestyle was a new thing, look at what's next to it: a restaurant menu. "When takeaway started to come in in the 1970s, you know, people could call out for their food, something which we absolutely take for granted now," said Solicari.

And that shopping-from-home thing? That's not new, either. Remember the mail-order catalogue? "That started to really blossom in the 19th century," Solicari said. "Huge mail-order market started very much in the States, came over to the U.K. very quickly."

The museum traces how we lived, and how we cleaned, including the "pain and pleasure of housework."

"Well, it's partly about what you use, the machinery and the stuff, but it's also partly about who did it, I suppose, as well?" asked Phillips.

"Yeah, that's one of the stories that we tell," Solicari replied. "Definitely the gender division within housework, that's a debate which is still ongoing."

"Unresolved here!"

The rooms tell our history. The suburban living room:

The bachelor pad:

The loft apartment, part of the trend for converting industrial buildings. "It happened a lot in New York and it happened in London," said Solicari.

Phillips asked, "Does a place like this give you a sense of perspective, a sense of history? It's always changed."

Solicari said, "Yeah, I think it's always changed. There's always been challenges. And the home is evolving, not just through time, but week to week, day to day. I mean how you might think about your home in the morning might be different to how you think about it in the evening. So, 'home' is constantly evolving."

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Story produced by Jane Whitfield. Editor: Mark Ludlow.

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Showcasing the evolution of the home - CBS News

Nashvilles new National Museum of African American Music celebrates the history of gospel, jazz, blues, hip-hop, rap, and more.

James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, looms larger than life in the Rivers of Rhythm Pathways, the central gallery at Nashvilles new National Museum of African American Music (615-301-8724, nmaam.org). His glitzy, perfectly pompadoured image is projected onto a panorama of screens as he belts out his 60s hit Out of Sight and performs his trademark smooth-gliding footwork.

The 1964 footage is one of several highlights of the 56,000-square-foot museum that opened in January in the heart of the tourist district. An orientation film in the Roots Theater chronicles the 400-year evolution of Black music in America and documents how it branched off into dozens of genres that include jazz, blues, hip-hop, rap, and more.

Seven galleries of exhibits shuffle between super-fun and serious. Gospel lovers can don a choir robe and join the Nashville Super Choir in the uplifting gospel classic Oh Happy Day, then see their image projected onto a screen that integrates them into the choir. Think you could be the next big record producer in the music biz? Try mixing your own beats in the One Nation Under a Groove gallery. The Wade in the Water gallery examines African-American religious music, much of it rooted in slavery. The Message gallery, with its graffiti and streetwear fashion, re-creates the South Bronx of the 1970s, the birthplace of hip-hop and rap, when Black kids from the blighted borough used music to rail against social injustices. More than 1,500 artifacts include Louis Armstrongs trumpet and Ella Fitzgeralds Grammy.

NMAAM may be new, but it has an old soul. The music that rose from centuries of African-American struggle, oppression, joy, and triumph is now the soundtrack of the nation. Turn it up.

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The Nashville Museum That Traces The Evolution of Black Music Indianapolis Monthly - Indianapolis Monthly

If you're anything like us, it's fair to assume you spend at least a little bit of your spare time scouring the web for cool cars up for sale. In our perusing today we've come across a 1989 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.5-16 Evolution on Bring a Trailer, a homologation special built to directly compete with the E30 BMW M3 Sport Evolution for touring-car supremacy. In total, only 502 of the 190E Evo were produced, making them an extremely hot commodity. So farwith the auction ending on May 26bidding is still at $31,000.

Powered by a longitudinally mounted Cosworth-built 2.5-liter inline-four, the Evolution sends a respectable 202 horsepower to the rear wheels via a five-speed dogleg manual transmission and limited-slip differential; it also revs to a healthy 7200 rpm. The Evolution also featured a self-leveling suspension with a selector switch that would lower the car for track use. Apart from its race-built engine and trick suspension, the Evolution sported a larger wing, flared fenders, and revised front and rear fascias to add to both its looks and downforce.

In a gorgeous hue of blue-black metallic, the 190E Evolution essentially looks like the Batmobile had a love affair with a DTM touring car, and who wouldn't want that? Even the 16-inch alloy wheels suit the car's looks perfectly. Move inside and appreciate the bolstered black leather seats, tartan cloth inserts on the seats and door panels, and wood surrounding the shifter. Maybe its just us, but looking at this interior makes us wish manufacturers would be a bit more adventurous with interior design these days. With around 43,000 miles on the clock and a slew of parts replaced recently, including an overhaul of the self-leveling suspension, we're sure the current bid of $31,000 won't hold for long.

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Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.5-16 Evolution up for Auction on Bring a Trailer - Car and Driver