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1) Robustness in the face of nuclear disaster was one of the drivers of packet switching. 2) Not the only one, though. 3) It was such a good idea that it grew

1) Robustness in the face of nuclear disaster was one of the drivers of packet switching. 2) Not the only one, though. 3) It was such a good idea that it grew a life of its own, and no one talked about nuclear war anymore.

throw0101a 2y ago
1) Only perhaps for Baran. Didn't enter into the equation for, e.g., Davies in the UK. From the Prologue of Wizards: > Bob Taylor, the director of a corporate research facility in Silicon Valley, had come to the party for old times sake, but he was also on a personal mission to correct an inaccuracy of long standing. Rumors had persisted for years that the ARPANET had been built to protect national security in the face of a nuclear attack. It was a myth that had gone unchallenged long enough to become widely accepted as fact. > Taylor had been the young director of the office within the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency overseeing computer research, and he was the one who had started theARPANET . The project had embodied the most peaceful intentions—to link computers at scientific laboratories across the country so that researchers might share computer resources. Taylor knew theARPANET and its progeny, the Internet, had nothing to do with supporting or surviving war—never did.Yet he felt fairly alone in carrying that knowledge. > Lately, the mainstream press had picked up the grim myth of a nuclear survival scenario and had presented it as an established truth. When Time magazine committed the error, Taylor wrote a letter to the editor, but the magazine didn’t print it. The effort to set the record straight was like chasing the wind; Taylor was beginning to feel like a crank. * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281818.Where_Wizards_Stay_Up_Late https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281818.Where_Wizards_Sta... I would think that Taylor of all people who know: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_(computer_scientist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_(computer_scient... 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...
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  The Wizards book came along 20+ years after everything happened, so all Markoff could do was interview a few people. I said it was ONE of the motivations; not the only one. And Bob Taylor was only one of the people involved; there were lots of others. Why a bureaucracy decides to support something is pretty much impenetrable and lost to history.
  - throw0101a 2y ago
    > The Wizards book came along 20+ years after everything happened, so all Markoff could do was interview a few people. Are there any interviews or documentation from ARPA or the early days of ARPAnet that do say it was about nuclear war survival? Licklider, Taylor, Roberts, Davies in the UK: no one else thinking about things in that way from all the reports and interviews I've seen. The only one that perhaps seems to have had an interest in it seems to have been Baran, and he came in later when the ball was already rolling. > I said it was ONE of the motivations; not the only one. Okay. Where are the documents and/or interviews of those involved in the decision-making and/or implementation process stating it was one of the motivations?
    - AlbertCory 2y ago
      I don't know why you're arguing. Obviously we're talking about a period where documentation is sparse or non-existent, and most of the players are dead. Why is this important to you?
      - allturtles 2y ago
        You're making a historical claim and he's disputing it. Is your counterargument is that it was a long time ago so we can just make up whatever we want?
        AlbertCory 2y ago
        No,the "counter argument" as you put it, is that if you only "know" things that come with a link, you have no value over an LLM

throw0101a 2y ago

1) Only perhaps for Baran. Didn't enter into the equation for, e.g., Davies in the UK. From the Prologue of Wizards: > Bob Taylor, the director of a corporate research facility in Silicon Valley, had come to the party for old times sake, but he was also on a personal mission to correct an inaccuracy of long standing. Rumors had persisted for years that the ARPANET had been built to protect national security in the face of a nuclear attack. It was a myth that had gone unchallenged long enough to become widely accepted as fact. > Taylor had been the young director of the office within the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency overseeing computer research, and he was the one who had started theARPANET . The project had embodied the most peaceful intentions—to link computers at scientific laboratories across the country so that researchers might share computer resources. Taylor knew theARPANET and its progeny, the Internet, had nothing to do with supporting or surviving war—never did.Yet he felt fairly alone in carrying that knowledge. > Lately, the mainstream press had picked up the grim myth of a nuclear survival scenario and had presented it as an established truth. When Time magazine committed the error, Taylor wrote a letter to the editor, but the magazine didn’t print it. The effort to set the record straight was like chasing the wind; Taylor was beginning to feel like a crank. * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281818.Where_Wizards_Stay_Up_Late https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281818.Where_Wizards_Sta... I would think that Taylor of all people who know: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_(computer_scientist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_(computer_scient... 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...

AlbertCory 2y ago
The Wizards book came along 20+ years after everything happened, so all Markoff could do was interview a few people. I said it was ONE of the motivations; not the only one. And Bob Taylor was only one of the people involved; there were lots of others. Why a bureaucracy decides to support something is pretty much impenetrable and lost to history.
- throw0101a 2y ago
  > The Wizards book came along 20+ years after everything happened, so all Markoff could do was interview a few people. Are there any interviews or documentation from ARPA or the early days of ARPAnet that do say it was about nuclear war survival? Licklider, Taylor, Roberts, Davies in the UK: no one else thinking about things in that way from all the reports and interviews I've seen. The only one that perhaps seems to have had an interest in it seems to have been Baran, and he came in later when the ball was already rolling. > I said it was ONE of the motivations; not the only one. Okay. Where are the documents and/or interviews of those involved in the decision-making and/or implementation process stating it was one of the motivations?
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    I don't know why you're arguing. Obviously we're talking about a period where documentation is sparse or non-existent, and most of the players are dead. Why is this important to you?
    - allturtles 2y ago
      You're making a historical claim and he's disputing it. Is your counterargument is that it was a long time ago so we can just make up whatever we want?
      - AlbertCory 2y ago
        No,the "counter argument" as you put it, is that if you only "know" things that come with a link, you have no value over an LLM