The Cyberpunk Genre as Social and Technological Analysis
I once taught a Freshman seminar at New York University in Information System Management (ISM). The course was introductory and only two credits, so I felt we needed a focused yet comprehensive set of analytical concepts to shape our discussions and assignments about ISM in the modern world. I decided to use the “cyberpunk” genre […]
That Remote Look: History of Sensing Satellites
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are […]
GOES-16 Satellite and its Orbital Gaze
“With this kind of resolution, if you were in New York City and you were taking a picture of Wrigley Field in Chicago, you’d be able to see home plate.” So says Eric Webster, vice president and general manager of environmental solutions and space and intelligence systems for the Harris Corp. of Fort Wayne, Indiana […]
“Run to Goshen Regardless of Opposing Train”
When I was growing up, on a summer night, with the bedroom windows open, I could often hear the far off whistle of a train warning of its approach to a nearby road crossing. The trains were leaving or entering my hometown of Goshen, New York; a small community known for its regional government center, […]
CISCO SYSTEMS: FROM CAMPUS TO THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE COMPANY, PART TWO: Starting Up the Tech
Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner left Stanford University in December 1984 to launch Cisco Systems, a California-based company known for innovative networking devices. Packet-switched data communications, the key technology of the Internet was in its infancy and leading companies like IBM were slow to make the major innovations needed for its success. So the recently […]
Xanadu to World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee, a British citizen and a software consultant at CERN, or Centre European pour la Recherche Nucleaire developed what came to be known as the World Wide Web (WWW). Located in Switzerland, CERN was Europe’s largest nuclear research institute, although the name was changed to European Laboratory for Particle Physics to avoid the stigma […]
Cisco Systems: From Campus to the World’s Most Valuable Company, Part One: Stanford University
Cisco Systems emerged from employees and students at Stanford University in the early 1980s to become the major supplier of the Internet’s enigmatic plumbing. In the process, it’s stock value increased dramatically and it became the largest company in the world by market capitalization. Cisco originally produced homemade multi-platform routers to connect campus computers through […]
The NSFNET is the Internet
An important intermediary in the transition of the military’s ARPANET into the commercial Internet was the National Science Foundation’s NSFNET. The NSFNET adopted TCP/IP and required all connecting nodes to use them as well compliant network technology, mainly built by a small California startup company called Cisco. With government funding for advanced scientific and military […]
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