The announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or “Star Wars” as it became popularly known, mobilized important resources that funded a major step in the emergence of the Internet and its World Wide Web. In the early 1980s President Ronald Reagan, a self-professed “big picture guy”, addressed the country on national television introducing SDI as a future plan to protect the US and its Allies from attack by long-range nuclear missiles. The plan was to move away from the “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) policy and towards a “defensive shield” that would stop any incoming offensive attack with some combination of space-based lasers, killer satellites, and guided missiles.

The video below, despite the wrong spelling of the President’s name, captured the SDI announcement on March 23, 1983.

This new defense system would be highly complex and beyond the capabilities of human monitoring and coordination. It would need a computerized and automated type of “artificial intelligence” (AI) to patrol the ground and skies and react accordingly to any perceived threat. The Star Wars research agenda would soon reach into many parts of the US government and the academic research community to lead the development of AI and in the process give a major boost to the development of the Internet.

Although ARPA had been funding computer research since the late 1950s, it was given a major new monetary stimulus and focus by the Strategic Defense Initiative. ARPA had developed the data communications technology known as packet-switching during the late 1960s that is often marked as the beginning of the Internet. A few years later ARPA began to experiment with “internetworking” several computer networks. In particular, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn wanted to connect a computer host at the University of Hawaii to computers at Stanford and BBN in Boston. They came up with the revolutionary internetworking technology and TCP/IP protocols that connected the ARPAnet with other networks. In 1981, the renamed DARPA (Defense) mandated the use of TCP/IP throughout the military’s ARPANET establishing the protocols as future standards.

Skynet and Starwars

After his televised announcement, Reagan signed two National Security Council (NSC) directives (NSDD-85) and (NSSD 6-83) ordering a long-term research-and-development plan and a national security study directive asking the Department of Defense to develop a program to shape the ultimate plan to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons. These directives set in motion several initiatives that began addressing the issues and problems that would be faced in such an endeavor. One of the most prominent was produced by the Defense Technologies Study Team, chaired by a former NASA director Dr. James C. Fletcher. They produced a seven-volume study suggesting the scientific possibility of such a system and laying out a five-year plan for its R&D. [2]

While much of the money was going to sensors, satellites and laser technology, The New York Times discovered that a lot of criticism within the military-industrial complex was being leveled at the state of computer software needed for such an endeavor. Problems with the space shuttle’s computers at the time had shown the difficulties in creating the operational software for managing complex machinery and the Star Wars vision required software coordination and precision that was much more difficult. The prospects for a global space-based defense shield seemed daunting to say the least.

While even the Fetcher Report had indicated that the software problems would be a difficult challenge, a new review started in late 1985 challenged the whole capability of the military and its contractors to produce such a complex array of integrated hardware and code. Many projects were forced to abandon their original expectations for a tightly controlled system of defense nodes and began to moving instead towards a more autonomous set of connected computer capabilities. While the military continued to be involved, the National Science Foundation (NSF) sought to become part of the solution by creating a network to connect supercomputers around the country to conduct research for the SDI complex.

Although Reagan’s SDI was pure simulacra, and continues to be a defense strategy in theory and not in practice, it was a vision with consequences. In this boost given to creating the technologies for a new national defense system, the foundation for the NSFNET, and thus the Internet was created. This funding provided a crucial catalyst in the continued standardization of Internet protocols and routing equipment as the NSF was determined to use the TCP/IP protocols.

The NSFNET was an important step in the transition of Internet from an obscure military network to a network of academic and research facilities and as I’ll demonstrate in my next post on this topic, a system of widespread social communication and e-commerce.

In my next post, I will take a closer look at the Japanese AI threat and the role of Al Gore in shaping the Internet, including his role in writing the High Performance Computing and Communications Act in 1991 that was signed by President Bush.

Notes

[1] Quote on the military putting cyborg theory into practice from The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America by Paul N. Edwards, page 275.

[2] I am indebted to Pulitzer Prize winner (Fire in the Lake) Frances FitzGerald’s Way Out There In the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War for more detailed information on SDI. The national security directives signed after the immediate post-SDI speech outlined a strategy of research-and-development from p. 243.

Citation APA (7th Edition)

Pennings, A.J. (2010, Nov 20). How “STAR WARS” and the Japanese Artificial Intelligence (AI) Threat Led to the Internet. apennings.com https://apennings.com/how-it-came-to-rule-the-world/star-wars-creates-the-internet/

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD has been on the NYU faculty since 2001 teaching digital media, information systems management, and global communications.

Why I’m a Tsaiko: Sports and Social Media

Posted on | October 30, 2010 | No Comments

I don’t have a lot of time for sports these days but I do stay true to my alma mater, the University of Hawaii (UH) despite the fact I live in New York City. Forget professional sports. I may catch a Jets or Giants game now and then while I’m working on my computer. Yankees? Sorry you got to get into the World Series to get my attention. Knicks? Sad, but you lost me a long time ago. I will, however, stay up to 3:30am on a Sunday morning to stream a Hawaii Warriors football game.

Part of why other sports have faded from my attention (aside from my 6 year old daughter) is the access to the games and the information about the team I really care about. I remember after I graduated from UH in the early 1990s and was living in New Zealand. I used to have to go the public library in Wellington and read the scores off a two-week old USA Today. Now, if I don’t see the game on HDTV, I can stream it on my computer from ESPN3 (a benefit of going with FIOS TV) or pay $12 to stream it via Time-Warner’s Oceanic operation in Hawaii. The Internet also allows me to hear the games on 1420ESPN.com with the added benefit of having announcers that are much more knowledgeable than your average sportscasters. In addition to the actual games, a variety of social media has made following the team much easier and also created a sense of community. For example, another blog, uhfanblog.com aggregates information and links from a number of sites, including Youtube videos of the Honolulu evening news. Thus my reference to being a “Tsaiko”, a loose group of UH football fans who congregate electronically on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser‘s Warrior Beat blog run by sports reporter Stephan Tsai.

First, a little about the name “Tsaiko”. Obviously it is drawn from Stephan’s name and his leadership and popularity is largely what makes the blog so popular. It sounds like “psycho”, a often used term for someone who is a bit crazy. The name “fan” comes from “fanatic” so this is a good and expected trait for any sports follower. The name picks up some local flavor becomes the word “saiko” in Japanese means great or outstanding. Those familiar with Hawaii know that the Japanese influence through its immigrants and visitors have a strong cultural influence on the islands and, as you might expect Stephan Tsai is Japanese-American.

Besides writing his daily features for the newspapers sports pages, Tsai also posts inside information and up-to-date information on the blog. Participation from the readers is encouraged and comments range from an average 200-300 a day to almost a 1000 on gamedays. Comments come from the “Tsaikos” but no one has to sign up and posts are anonymous although an email is required. Posts range from encouragements like “Go Warriors” to in-depth personal analyses of game strategy and the economics of college sports. The latter made more interesting by the precarious state of the venerable Western Athletics Conference (WAC) that UH currently resides in.

In social media terms, this is a classic case of “user-generated content” but it also suggests some insights into the role of journalists. The readers/participants provide a wide range of content from heated personal opinion to updates on NCAA statistics (Hawaii tends to be one of the top passing teams in the country) to links to articles coming out in other online newspapers and blogsites. The blogs provide unique perspectives outside of the official conversations between journalists, coaches, ADs, and public relations staff, suggesting new leads and angles on stories.

Following my alma mater’s sports teams, particularly football, provides a close examination of how social media is being used to garner user content and engagement. It also provides insights into how these technologies are changing the field of journalism by stressing the role of community manager and moderator. Perhaps even more consequential, the money involved in college sports forefronts the impact of television, the importance of high definition, and the increasing relevancy of streaming games over the Internet. Besides, it’s a lot of fun.

-NYUH

Gathering for iAMDA’s Mobile Art Conference, NYC

Posted on | October 27, 2010 | No Comments

“Is that a studio in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

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That was the motto/theme of the concluding event of the iAMDA MobileCon 2010 NYMobile Art Conference in New York City that ended in a Soho gallery with wall displays and an interactive exhibition featuring artistic work done on Androids, iPads, iPhones and other mobile devices.

Well, I'm still happy to see you!

Dozens of artists from all over the world had been collaborating and sharing their creations on Facebook, Flickr and other social media in anticipation of the event organized by David Scott Leibowitz and others. This group, that included fine artists, illustrators, and photographers, came together on the weekend ending October 24th, 2010 to explore, share and celebrate the creative capabilities of these new devices.

I was struck by David’s explanation of how important social media was to the organization and success of the conference. Flickr and other photo-sharing sites like Fotki provide a unique environment for creating interaction and building a community. They provide the “long tail” storage and distribution system that makes storing and sharing unique photos economical. Captioning and photo annotation engage other visitors when participants add metatags and comments to each other’s content. Flickr benefits from the user created content and the new visitors and potential subscribers it brings in.

As Amy Shuen explains, Flickr creates user value by opening up content for large numbers of users, by building contexts for user interaction, and through creating better search options through user-generated meta information such as tag clouds and notes. In her Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide, she explains how users gather around common interests that amplify group social network effects and how users bring other users, creating what is known as the viral effect. The conference drew on this collective user value to create a community of shared interest with enough momentum to gather together at New York University for their conference.

Artists do what they always do, they take the newest materials and techniques and stretch the limits of representation and meaning. In the end, while I enjoyed the art that had been transferred from individual devices to the exhibit’s walls and projected displays, I also marveled at the creation of a global community of artists exploring the realms of these new mobile devices with the creative and collaborative technologies of social media.

Anthony J. Pennings, PhD has been on the NYU faculty since 2001 teaching digital media and the political economy of international communications.

Category: mobile technologies, multimedia
Tags: David Scott Leibowitz > iAMDA > long tail > Mobile Art Conference > Sketchbook Mobile

East-West Center Scholarships

Posted on | October 23, 2010 | No Comments

These scholarships are available for NYU students. The deadline is Nov 1.

The top one, EAST-WEST CENTER GRADUATE DEGREE FELLOWSHIP (GDF) is particularly good as it provides a full scholarship including housing and living allowance. I was lucky to get one for my MA and two years for my PhD (four years maximum) so I would be happy to answer any questions.

One of our DCOM students, Shawn Hall, received an ASIA-PACIFIC LEADERSHIP PROGRAM (APLP) scholarship. Shawn recently finished his MBA from NYU Polytechnic.

Barack Obama’s mother and step-father from Indonesia met as degree fellows at the EWC and his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, who got her PhD from NYU, works there now. It will also host the APEC meeting in 2011.

Category: uncategorized

World Statistics Day

Posted on | October 20, 2010 | No Comments

“On this first World Statistics Day I encourage the international community to work with the United Nations to enable all countries to meet their statistical needs.”

– BAN KI-MOON
Secretary-General of the United Nations
Message on World Statistics Day, 20-10-20

Our book Computerization and Development in Southeast Asia, while not specifically about statistics, pointed to the extensive use of this technology for statistical use. Research into the first uses of computers in “developing” countries showed that they were used primarily in census and other population-oriented statistics. Thailand’s very first computers for example, were both second generation IBM 1401s (Second generation signifies the replacement of vacuum tubes with transistors), installed for the International Census Society Programme and the National Statistical Office in 1963. It followed up this project with a nationwide information system called the Population Registration and Information System Improvement Project to emend the registration of vital statistics and modernise the postal delivery system. Another project was intent on developing a personal identification system with identity numbers indicating a range of information from birth dates to fingerprints and occupation.

East-West Center in Honolulu

This study was conducted at the East-West Center in mid-1980s after Syed Rahim initiated a program on National Computerization Policies. Our book focused on the ASEAN countries and was published by AMIC, the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) in Singapore.

Recently I have been exploring the history of statistics and its role in the early development of information technologies with my work on the The Smith Effect II: From Political Arithmetik to “State-istics” to IT

Category: the smith effect
Tags: Anthony Pennings > BAN KI-MOON > Computerization and Development in Asia > IBM 1401 > Secretary-General of the United Nations > state-istics > Syed Rahim > World Statistics Day

Factors Establishing the Feasibility of Global E-Commerce

Posted on | October 19, 2010 | No Comments

The advent of global e-commerce emerged out of a unique combination of economic, political, and technological circumstances during the 1990s. The following is a partial list of influential events that led to its development.

• The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Communist USSR bloc meant the world was no longer significantly divided by Cold War antagonisms and a pan-capitalist condition of free flows of information and money began to spread globally.
• The first Gulf War demonstrated a new found optimism in the US capability to conduct conventional warfare and police “rogue nations” with “smart bombs” and spy satellites, regenerating America’s belief in high technology and the power of the microprocessor.
• Digital monetarism’s global techno-financial regime, led ideologically by the “Washington Consensus”, continued to discipline countries around the world into modernizing their telecommunications and deregulating their political economies to the global flows of capital and news.
• The Internet had emerged by first connecting universities and research centers and then opening up to commercial activities with a series of new “killer apps”: email, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and Gopher.
• Tim Berners Lee at Europe’s largest nuclear research center proposed a communication system with hypertext features to facilitate communication among scientists that he called with World Wide Web. This became the technical foundation for the “click” dynamics of the Internet.
• The multimedia browser was invented by a group of university students that allowed users from a wide spectrum of society to “surf” the World Wide Web. They would go on to form Netscape whose Initial Public Offering (IPO) would start a major investment boom in tech companies while the browser would provide the basic platform to conduct e-commerce.
• The FCC had made distinctions between voice and data during the 1980s that allowed users to log long periods of Internet surfing without paying exorbitant phone bills, although it meant using the relatively slow 28.8 kbps and 56kbps modems of the time.
• A new proactive Democratic government in the US pushed forward new domestic telecommunications legislation in 1996 that spurred widespread interest in the sector while its global activism helped solidify support for a the “global information infrastructure” (GII).
• The World Trade Organization (WTO) was formed in 1995 and resulted in two quick agreements that liberalized telecommunications and sales of information technologies as 60 nation-states agreed to open up their markets.
• Capital markets became enthused about the “tech stocks” and poured money into the notorious “dot-com” and other companies involved in the “new economy” of Internet-based electronic commerce including telecommunications. Financial destabilization increased investment rush to the US as financial shocks in the world financial system resulted in money from Asia and other distressed economies finding “safe haven” in the American stock markets.
• IT and particularly the Internet became a “media event” in itself as television, magazines, newspapers, websites, and particularly the new business channels such as Bloomberg, CNBC, and CNNfn constantly reported on the potential of the “new economy”.
• Search engines made the information on the web much more accessible and began to offer more sophisticated, yet easy to use methods for advertising.
• Software concerns over the new millennium sparked major interest and purchases of new computer systems in order to avoid computer system failure on January 1st, 2000. As businesses gave up their legacy systems they looked to integrate new systems that did more than provide “back-office” capabilities. IT was seen to be able to interface more directly with sales and customer services.

Of course, this list is incomplete, but it’s a start at examining one of the most important trends in human commerce and the future of the web.

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is the Professor of Global Media at Hannam University in South Korea. Previously, he taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas and was on the faculty of New York University from 2002-2012. He also taught at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and was a Fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii in the 1990s.

Category: geopolitical risk, global communications, global e-commerce
Tags: digital monetarism > global information infrastructure (GII) > Gulf War > killer apps > pan-capitalist condition > Washington Consensus

Google: Monetizing the Automatrix

Posted on | October 18, 2010 | No Comments

Google recently announced its work on a driverless car to mixed reviews. While a technical success, with only one mishap in 140,000 miles of testing, many felt that Google was losing its focus. I think this latter view underestimates the Google strategy – to monetize the road.

As we move towards the “Automatrix,” the newly forming digital environment for transportation, Google looks to situate its search/advertising business at its center.

Let’s face it; the car is almost synonymous with shopping and consumerism. Whether going to the mall to buy some new shoes, picking up groceries, or going out to look for a new washing machine – the car transports both our bodies and our booty. Nothing in the fridge? Drive out to nearest Applebee, Dennys, or Olive Garden for some nachos and diet coke. Got kids? Try the drive-in for a Happy Meal or some Chuck E. Cheese’s pizza after a day at the water park. You get the point: have car, will spend. It’s American.

Google, who wants to organize the world’s information, clearly sees your car as a major generator of that data and the car occupants as major traffic generators – the good kind of traffic – on the web, not the road. They want the passenger to focus on the navigation, not the road. They want to provide destinations, stops, places to rest and refresh. The car will provide the movement while “the fingers do the walking,” to draw on a famous Yellow Pages ad. While AC Nielsen, famous for its ratings business, has championed the three screen advertising measurement (TV, PC, mobile phone), you could say is Google is going for a four-screen strategy: PC, mobile, TV, and now the dashboard. Talk about a captured audience! It has the potential to pay off big, adding billions more to Google’s bottom line by tying passengers to the web.

Can driving through downtown Newark, sitting at a light, or leaving a movie theater parking lot, really compete with the latest user-generated video on YouTube? As you drive to the airport, wouldn’t you rather be making dinner reservations or checking out entertainments at your flight destination? No, Route 66 is going to be route66.com because, well, Pops Restaurant bought the ad word and you would rather be enjoying a coke and burger anyway.

Actually, I’m all for computers driving my car, as long as they are doing it for other drivers as well. Yes, I enjoy the occasional thrill of driving and probably more, the relaxing feel from the directed focus of the activity. However, I prefer looking out the window, listening to music, and even reading a book. GPS has already rescued me from the travel maps as I now need reading glasses to see them anyway. Besides, the road is dangerous. It’s really scary passing that zigzagging car because the driver is zoning out in a conversation with his ex-wife or some teenager is texting the girl he has a crush on.

Sure, I have mixed feelings about sliding into the Automatrix. Taking over the steering wheel seems like a bit of a stretch, even for Moore’s Law modern day microprocessors. It will require a whole new framework for car safety testing. However, it has been over 40 years since they guided the Apollo spacecraft to Moon, so it makes sense to replace the current system of haphazard meat grinders we currently use.

Google, you can drive my car.

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea. Before joining SUNY, he taught at Hannam University in South Korea and from 2002-2012 was on the faculty of New York University. Previously, he taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, Marist College in New York, and Victoria University in New Zealand. He has also spent time as a Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Category: automatrix, multimedia
Tags: driverless car > Google > monetization strategy > three screen strategy

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