Spider told by the Roman poet Ovid in his "Metamorphoses", Arachne was a Lydian girl who challenged the goddess Athena to a weaving contest. Arachne won, but Athena destroyed her tapestry out of jealousy, causing Arachne to hang herself. In an act of mercy, Athena brought Arachne back to life as the first spider. Stories about the trickster-spider Anansi are prominent in the folk traditions of the Asante people of Ghana. In some cultures, spiders have symbolized patience due to their hunting technique of setting webs and waiting for prey, as well as mischief and malice due to their venomous bites.
Project Athena and extended it into the university's research and administrative divisions. the MIT campus had more than 1300 Athena workstations, and more than 6000 Athena users logged into the system daily. Athena is still used by many in the MIT community through the computer labs scattered around the campus. It is also now available for installation on personal computers, including laptops. Athena continues in use , providing a ubiquitous computing platform for education at MIT; plans are to continue its use indefinitely. Athena was designed to minimize the use of labor in its operation, in part through the use of (what