nettime maillist on Thu, 8 Jul 1999 19:08:58 +0200 (CEST) |
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Ronda Hauben: Computer Science and Government:ARPA/IPTO - Draftfor Comment |
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - <nettime-l-temp@material.net> is the temporary home of the nettime-l list while desk.nl rebuilds its list-serving machine. please continue to send messages to <nettime-l@desk.nl> and your commands to <majordomo@desk.nl>. nettime-l-temp should be active for approximately 2 weeks (11-28 Jun 99). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 23:14:27 -0400 (EDT) From: ronda@umcc.ais.org (Ronda Hauben) To: nettime-l@desk.nl Subject: Computer Science and Government:ARPA/IPTO - Draft for Comment Draft for Comment Preface Computer Science and Government: ARPA/IPTO (1962-1986) Creating the Needed Interface by Ronda Hauben rh120@columbia.edu Mr. McCormack. The important thing about a man in science is that he must have demonstrated ability to think originally, isn't that right. Mr. Marchetti. Yes Mr. McCormack. They are discovering things and looking ahead maybe 10 and 20 years sometimes. Mr. Marchetti. That is right [Riehlman Comm. hearing, pg. 249] During the war there developed a partnership between military men and scientific men. It was not brought about automatically; it is not a thing that occurs readily. These men come from different backgrounds, and it is hard for each group to understand the other....I can say to you that the morale of the scientists today as I meet them is so low, so low that while they will not refuse to serve, they will serve without enthusiasm and without fruitful inspiration. [Vannevar Bush, Riehlman Comm hearing 1954, pg. 454-455] ARPA is considered throughout the field as being the main supporter and perhaps the most important force in the course of U.S. and probably world history in the computer....the country never would have grown in the computer field the way it did if it hadn't been for ARPA." [Ibid., pg. X-22. Discussion with Dr. L. Roberts, April 23, 1974] 1. Preface This paper is a beginning effort to explore the role of the U.S. government in building the Internet. The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) created within the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is the early and most significant institutional form of this role. Working within this institution, scientists provided leadership in creating the new field of computer science and in giving birth to the Internet. Understanding the role of government in the creation and development of the Internet involves exploring the interface between the computer scientists working as part of IPTO and the military officers in the DOD. More fundamentally, this interface is actually an interface between the computer science community and the U.S. government. During much of its 25 year existence, from 1962-1986, the Information Processing Techniques Office funded and provided leadership, not only for the creation of the new field of computer science, but also for a large number of significant accomplishments in this field. Among these accomplishments are the creation of time-sharing and interactive computing, of packet switching networking, VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration), AI (Artificial Intelligence), the ARPANET, and perhaps most sensationally, of the Internet. Also, under its direction and support, interactive computing and the Internet have spread into many aspects of our society and lives. And yet the Office of Information Processing Techniques was ended in 1986. This raises the question of how did it provide the leadership to make such accomplishments possible? And then, if it was successful in doing such important feats, why was it ended? Before the creation of ARPA, and IPTO, there was concern within the scientific community and in the U.S. government about how to fashion an appropriate peacetime institutional form within government to support basic scientific research. ARPA/IPTO succeeded in a significant way in providing such a form, but it also encountered problems that eventually ended its existence. This paper suggests that study of IPTO's birth, development and ending will be helpful in trying to determine what institutional form within the U.S. government is necessary to continue to provide leadership for computer science research and for the continued growth and development of the Internet. The development and problems of the National Science Foundation (NSF) are also relevant research questions to be studied toward determining what form of institution is needed for the future. However, since such important developments in computer science were made under leadership from ARPA/IPTO, it is more important to explore how this happened. Future study is needed, however, to examine the extent to which the NSF contributed to this effort and the problems this agency encountered that prevented any greater contribution. To state the problem more simply, I am proposing that there is a need to study ARPA/IPTO, both its achievements and the problems it encounter, as it presents important experience toward determining how to design a U.S. government institution to support the continued development of basic research in computer science. This study is also important to provide an answer to the question of how to design a government institution to provide the needed continued oversight and support for scaling and other critical functions for the child of computer science and the IPTO, i.e. for the Internet. This paper is intended as a contribution. URL for full paper: http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/arpa_ipto.txt