Mike Hoye's Citation Needed is ostensibly about the origins of zero-based array indexing in programming languages. But that's not really what it's about once Mike Hoye gets going; it's really about our field's attitude towards history, the consequences of that attitude, and the forces that drive it, including inaccessible papers. Even if you're indifferent to where zero-based array indexing comes from, that portion of the article is well worth reading and thinking about.

(I'm not going to quote any of it. Read the whole thing, as they say; it's not that long.)

PS: This is from 2013, so you might have read it already. If you aren't sure and don't remember it, read it again.