Media Studies Essay

the internet: from military technology to networked utopia

Sutter’s Mill -Coloma, California. -site where gold was initially discovered, which subsequently set off the California Gold Rush in 1848.

Sutter’s Mill -Coloma, California. -site where gold was initially discovered, which subsequently set off the California Gold Rush in 1848.

-estimated population of San Francisco in 1848: 800

-estimated population of San Francisco in 1850: 21,000

-during James K. Polk’s presidency, the concept of Manifest Destiny became popular. in 1845, the New York Democratic Review wrote:

“our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”

-during James K. Polk’s presidency, the concept of Manifest Destiny became popular. in 1845, the New York Democratic Review wrote:

“our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”

-in 1846, Senator Thomas Hart Benton said:

“it would seem that the White race alone received the divine command, to subdue and replenish the earth, for it is the only race that has obeyed it—the only race that hunts out new and distant lands, and even a New World, to subdue and replenish.”

-the concept of California itself is still centered on the ideas of those original “49ers”: new wealth, western expansion, and unlimited potentiality—a type of utopia.

Mark Cuban: early investor in broadcast.com, which broadcast the first livestream of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show in 1999. the company was sold to Yahoo! later that year for $5.7 billion in stock.

-the people who made the most money during the California Gold Rush weren’t the prospectors, but instead where the people providing the supplies, housing, and food to the prospectors.

-the migration out to the Gold Rush provoked deadly confrontations with Native Americans that led to the Apache Wars, which lasted from 1849 to 1886. these conflicts led to thousands of deaths.

-in 1850 California passed the Foreign Miners’ Tax, which burdened all non-native born Americans (mostly Chinese and Japanese) with a $20 ($600 in 2019) monthly tax for each foreigner engaged in mining.

ARPANET technology (1970)

Apollo 11, America’s (and the world’s) first moon landing (1969).

Apollo 11, America’s (and the world’s) first moon landing (1969).

Apollo 11, America’s (and the world’s) first moon landing (1969).

the “Space Race” between the communist USSR and the capitalist United States was set off by the USSR’s success in launching Sputnik, the first artificial Earth Satellite in 1957.

IBM 360 mainframe computer, 1964

mainframe computers work to transfer desired data in real time.

-mainframes don’t render or originate new data like a supercomputer does.

U.S. Department of Defense’s, Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1958-1972.

-responsibility: “the agency shall be responsible for the direction or performance of such advanced projects in the field of research and development as the Secretary of Defense shall, from time to time, designate by individual project or category.”

-the vagueness of the mission masks the simplicity of the task: which is to do whatever you need to do to ensure that a surprise like Sputnik never happens again!

U.S. Department of Defense’s, Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1958-1972.

U.S. Department of Defense’s, Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1958-1972.

-the Department of Defense contracted other organizations to fulfill their ARPA missions. however, each organization’s mainframe computers were incompatible with each other. they needed to find a way to allow each of there various mainframes to “speak” to each other.

U.S. Department of Defense’s, Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1958-1972.

-a sub-network operating through an interface message processor (IMP) would link these various mainframe computers.

circuit switching: vulnerable

packet switching: more reliable

-first accessible version of ARPANET, also the first internet service provider (1974).

-first accessible version of ARPANET, also the first internet service provider (1974).

-first commercial internet service provider that broke off from the government network and needed permission from the National Science Foundation to provide internet access in 1989.

Tim Berners-Lee -inventor of the world-wide web (1989)

-recreation of first webpage

Tim Berners-Lee -inventor of the world-wide web (1989)

-document declaring the world-wide web exists in the public domain.

Bill Gates & Paul Allen

-Gates’ father was a partner in a powerful law firm in Seattle, where he made over $500,000 a year. Gates’ grandfather was the CEO of Seattle’s National City Bank.

Jeff Bezos

-after becoming the vice-president of a hedge fund, his parents lent him $250,000 to start selling books on the internet.

Larry Page & Sergey Brin (Google)

-after being accepted into the University of Michigan as a legacy admission, and studying in the same department as his father, Page was introduced to Brin while at Stanford where they were introduced to Sun Microsystems billionaire Andy Bechtolsheim. Bechtolsheim wrote them a $100,000 check after a professor vouched for them.

1957-1972

1957-1972

1957-1972

-ARPANET budget from 1966 to 1994: 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 (AKA: unquantifiable!)

-years spent developing the internet: roughly 30 years.

Mariana Mazzucato, economist

“all the technologies that make the iPhone so smart were indeed pioneered by a well- funded US government: the internet, GPS, touch-screen display, and even the latest Siri voice-activated personal assistant. all of these came out of agencies that were driven by missions, mainly around security—and funding not only the upstream ‘public good’ research but also applied research and early-stage funding for companies. new missions today should be expanded around problems posed by climate change, ageing, inequality and youth unemployment. but while it's great that Steve Jobs had the genius to put those government technologies into a well-designed gadget, and great, more generally, for entrepreneurs to surf this publicly funded wave, who will fund the next wave with starved public budgets and a financialized and tax-avoiding private sector?”

Stewart Brand

-publisher of the While Earth Catalog from 1968 to 1998.

-associated with the Merry Pranksters—a commune community centered around LSD, rock music, and cross-country trips.

-vehemently anti-communinst—he worried that: “my mind would no longer be my own, but a tool carefully shaped by the descendants of Pavlov,…if there’s a fight, then, i will fight. and fight with a purpose. i will not fight for America, nor for home, nor for president Eisenhower, nor for capitalism, nor even for democracy. i will fight for individualism and personal liberty. if i must be a fool, i want to be my own particular brand of fool—utterly unlike other fools. i will fight to avoid becoming a number—to others and to myself.”

“Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums” (1972)

“ready or not, computers are coming to the people.

that’s good news, maybe the best since psychedelics. it’s way off the track of the ‘computers—threat or menace?’ school of liberal criticism but surprisingly in line with the romantic fantasies of the forefathers of the science such as Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, J.C.R. Licklider, John von Neumann and Vannevar Bush.

the trend owes its health to an odd array of influences: the youthful fervor and firm dis-establishmentarianism of the freaks who design computer science; an astonishingly enlightened research program from the very top of the Defense Department; an unexpected market-banking movement by the manufacturers of small calculating machines, and an irrepressible midnight phenomenon known as Spacewar.”

“the hackers are the technicians of this science— ‘it’s a term of derision and also the ultimate compliment.’ they are the ones who translate human demands into code that the machines can understand and act on. they are legion. fanatics with a potent new toy. a mobile new-found elite, with its own apparat, language and character, its own legends and humor. those magnificent men with their flying machines, scouting a leading edge of technology which has an odd softness to it; outlaw country, where rules are not decree or routine so much as the starker demands of what’s possible.”

“the letters stand for Advanced Research Projects Agency, one of the rare success stories of government action…

the beauty was, that being at the very top of the Defense Establishment, the agency had little congressional scrutiny had little bureaucratic responsibility, able to take creative chances and protect long-term deep-goal projects. Alan Kay: ‘90 percent of all good things that i can think of that have been done in computer science have been done funded by that agency. chances that they would have been funded elsewhere are very low. the basic ARPA idea is that you find good people and you give them a lot of money and then you step back. if they don't do good things in three years they get dropped—where ‘good’ is very much related to new or interesting.’

legends abound from early ARPA days, full of freedom and weirdness.”

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water I like to think touching clear sky. (right now, please!)

of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics

where deer stroll peacefully I like to think past computers (it has to be!) as if they were flowers of a cybernetic ecology with spinning blossoms. where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace. (1967)

Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) -poet and novelist

-published in paper form from 1969-1974. published sporadically and in various formats until 1998.

Steve Jobs: “it was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along…it was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions.”

Louis Rossetto (founder of WIRED): compared computer engineers to Prometheus, they brought gifts of the gods to us mortals that spurred “social changes so profound their only parallel is probably the discovery of fire.”

Kevin Kelly (WIRED editor): “no one can escape the transforming fire of machines. technology, which once progressed at the periphery of culture, now engulfs our minds as well as our lives. as each realm is overtaken by complex techniques, the usual order is inverted, and new rules established. the mighty tumble, the once confident are left desperate for guidance, and the nimble are given a chance to prevail.”

Fred Turner: media historian

“if mainstream America had become a culture of conflict, with riots at home and war abroad, the commune world would be one of harmony. if the American state deployed massive weapons systems in order to destroy faraway peoples, the New Communalists would deploy small-scale technologies— ranging from axes and hoes to amplifiers, strobe lights, slide projectors, and LSD—to bring people together and allow them to experience their common humanity.”