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Found it!!! The proof that ARPAnet was based on the idea of command and control! Command & Control means a network capable of surviving a nuclear attack. Lickl
by palisade 2y ago
Found it!!! The proof that ARPAnet was based on the idea of command and control! Command & Control means a network capable of surviving a nuclear attack.
Licklider who established the Intergalactic Computer Network memo that started it all. And, who was heavily involved in ARPAnet and bringing in all the people involved including Baran and Davies. Specifically mentions ARPAnet Command and Control in his paper!
"It is necessary to bring this opus to a close because I
have to go catch an airplane. I had intended to review
ARPA’s Command-and-Control interests in improved mancomputer interaction, in time-sharing and in computer
networks. I think, however, that you all understnad [sic.]
the reasons for ARPA’s basic interest in these matters, and
I can, if need be, review them briefly at the meeting. The
fact is, as I see it, that the military greatly needs
solutions to many or most of the problems that will arise
if we tried to make good use of the facilities that are
coming into existence."
https://worrydream.com/refs/Licklider_1963_-_Members_and_Affiliates_of_the_Intergalactic_Computer_Network.pdf https://worrydream.com/refs/Licklider_1963_-_Members_and_Aff...
- throw0101a 2y agoInstead of quoting from the end of that document, perhaps quote from the beginning: > In the first place, it is evident that we have among us a collection of individual (personal and/or organizational) aspirations, efforts, activities, and projects. These have in common, I think, the characteristics that they are in some way connected with advancement of the art or technology of information processing, the advancement of intellectual capability (man, man-machine, or machine), and the approach to a theory of science. The word "military" only exists in the last few paragraphs of the document. Most of it is about workflows and resource sharing: > When the computer operated the programs for me, I suppose that the activity took place in the computer at SDC, which is where we have been assuming I was. However, I would just as soon leave that on the level of inference. With a sophisticated network-control system, I would not decide whether to send the data and have them worked on by programs somewhere else, or bring in programs and have them work on my data. I have no great objection to making that decision, for a while at any rate, but, in principle, it seems better for the computer, or the network, somehow, to do that. At the end of my work, I filed some things away, and tried to do it in such a way that they would be useful to others. That called into play, presumably, some kind of a convention-monitoring system that, in its early stages, must almost surely involve a human criterion as well asmaching [sic.] processing.
- palisade 2y agoListen, mr throwaway account, if we're starting at the top of the document: "The ARPA Command & Control Research office has just been assigned a new task that must be activated immediately, and I must devote the whole of the coming week to it." You know, the line you had to skip a few paragraphs ahead of to find your quotes.
- throw0101a 2y agoFrom Wizards (chapter one): > Licklider was no exception to the rule that people didn’t spend a long time at ARPA. But by the time he left in 1964, he had succeeded in shifting the agency’s emphasis in computing R&D from a command systems laboratory playing out war-game scenarios to advanced research in time-sharing systems, computer graphics, and improved computer languages. The name of the office, Command and Control Research, had changed to reflect that shift, becoming the Information Processing Techniques Office. […] > Taylor told the ARPA director he needed to discuss funding for a networking experiment he had in mind. Herzfeld had talked about networking with Taylor a bit already, so the idea wasn’t new to him. He had also visited Taylor’s office, where he witnessed the annoying exercise of logging on to three different computers. And a few years earlier he had even fallen under the spell of Licklider himself when he attended Lick’s lectures on interactive computing. > Taylor gave his boss a quick briefing: IPTO contractors, most of whom were at research universities, were beginning to request more and more computer resources. Every principal investigator, it seemed, wanted his own computer. Not only was there an obvious duplication of effort across the research community, but it was getting damned expensive. Computers weren’t small and they weren’t cheap. Why not try tying them all together? By building a system of electronic links between machines, researchers doing similar work in different parts of the country could share resources and results more easily. Instead of spreading a half dozen expensive mainframes across the country devoted to supporting advanced graphics research, ARPA could concentrate resources in one or two places and build a way for everyone to get at them. One university might concentrate on one thing, another research center could be funded to concentrate on something else, but regardless of where you were physically located, you would have access to it all. He suggested that ARPA fund a small test network, starting with, say, four nodes and building up to a dozen or so. * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281818.Where_Wizards_Stay_Up_Late https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281818.Where_Wizards_Sta... Also: > Licklider described how he had re-envisioned command and control research as research into interactive computing as follows:[5] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Processing_Techniques_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Processing_Techniq... From chapter two of Wizards: > Roberts also learned from Scantlebury, for the first time, of the work that had been done by Paul Baran at RAND a few years earlier. When Roberts returned to Washington, he found the RAND reports, which had actually been collecting dust in the Information Processing Techniques Office for months, and studied them. Roberts was designing this experimental network not with survivable communications as his main—or even secondary—concern. Nuclear war scenarios, and command and control issues, weren’t high on Roberts’s agenda. But Baran’s insights into data communications intrigued him nonetheless, and in early 1968 he met with Baran. After that, Baran became something of an informal consultant to the group Roberts assembled to design the network. […] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Roberts_(computer_scientist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Roberts_(computer_scient...