Page 217 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

1 | Internet and Its Rad cal Potent al

that would be reliably delivered by the opponent’s returned strike. But, owing to
false alarms, technical malfunctions, and deficiencies in the AT&T network that
made fail-safe communications unworkable, MAD was a giant accident wait-
ing to happen. The command and control system needed strong reliability that
could be provided by digital communications networks.

DarPa

The United States created the Advanced Research Projects Agency and the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA and DARPA) in 1958 to
develop responses to the Sputnik satellite launch by the USSR. ARPANET was
the prototype of today’s Internet, and adopted packet switching in 1973 for cre-
ating “interlinking packet networks” (Cerf, n.d.). This project developed TCP
(Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol), the system of basic
protocols for the Internet, around which new protocols are still developed. The
ARPANET and the early electronic data networks bypassed the vulnerabilities
of the circuit-switched, analog AT&T telephone system. “Packet switching”
broke up continuous messages into standardized chunks, and distributed them
through the network in a more efficient way that also provided a more reliable
alternative to circuit-switched telecommunications systems available through
AT&T. The best feature of the ARPANET was that the system could continue to
operate even if a portion of the network was disabled or destroyed. Technically,
today’s Internet is an elaboration of ARPANET—a software protocol and com-
munications convention for passing standardized packets of data across hetero-
geneous and interconnected computer networks.
DARPA’s mission was, and remains, “to assure that the U.S. maintains a lead in
applying state-of-the-art technology for military capabilities and to prevent tech-
nological surprise from her adversaries” (DARPA 2003). DARPA cultivates flat
organization, flexible roles, “autonomy and freedom from bureaucratic impedi-
ments,” technical and scientific expertise, and managers who “have always been
freewheeling zealots in pursuit of their goals” (DARPA 2006). The ARPANET’s
development as an information-sharing system, in addition to being a command-
and-control system, reflects DARPA’s culture of sharing information. J.C.R. Lick-
lider of MIT envisioned a knowledge management project in 1962 that he called
the “Galactic Network” that could be enabled through networking: As Barry
Leiner and colleagues (2006) explain, “He envisioned a globally interconnected
set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and pro-
grams from any site.” Licklider and others contributed to the notion of hypertext
that was already behind Vannevar Bush’s notion of the “memex” machine.

PaCkET swiTChing
Paul Baran, an innovator in packet switching, explains that the ARPANET was
not designed merely to survive a first strike by the USSR, nor just to carry the
launch orders for a retaliatory second strike against the USSR, but to convince
the Soviet military leaders that a reliable and automatic mechanism existed to