IVIV computers, Internet, Aunt Reet & etc.

[Doug Millison]

"The key ideas used in mainstream computers of the standard, von  
Neumann, serial architecture had largely been put forward by the  
md-1960s. Most of these "great ideas in computer design" were first  
explored with considerable government support. When the real explosion  
in commercial computer use took place in the early 1960s, advances  
based on purely commercial developments became more common." (13)

"It is important to observe that the early development of the U.S.  
semiconductor industry was driven by government funding, particularly  
by the military services. The original invention of the transistor at  
the civilian Bell labs built in part on the foundations laid by a  
large government program in semiconductor materials, used in detectors  
for radar, carried out during the war.…all of the early production of  
Western Electric, the Bell system's manufacturing affiliate, went to  
military shipments." (16)

"The forerunner of modern [computer] graphics was the display console  
attached to the MIT Whirlwind computer, built with Navy and Air Force  
funding in the early 1950s. The SAGE air defense system, the large- 
scale follow-up to that early experiment, further developed display  
technology and gave birth to the light pen, which allowed an operator  
to 'draw' electronically on a display tube. These concepts were  
extended with the development of the first digital drawing tablets,  
the Rand tablet, developed with support from the Advanced Research  
Projects Agency (DARPA), in the early 1960s; the invention of the  
mouse, a digital marker whose motion is matched on a graphics display,  
at the Stanford Research Institute (again with DARPA support) in the  
mid-1960s; and the refinement of the idea of interfacing with a  
computer through the manipulation of images on a graphics display,  
icons, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s." (24)

"More than half of IBM's total revenues from domestic electronic data  
processing (EDP) activities in the 1950s came from two large  
government programs: the analog "Bomb-Nav" guidance computer installed  
in the B-52 bomber and contracts for computers used in the SAGE  
program." (87)

"SAGE was essentially the first wide-area computer network, the first  
extensive digital data communications system, the first real-time  
transaction system.…Many of these concepts were consciously into the  
business world a few years later when IBM announced its Semiautomatic  
Business-Research Environment (SABRE) airlines reservation system.  
SABRE, fully operational by 1964, was the first commercial real-time  
transaction system.…Ironically, SAGE's main military objective --  
protecting the United States against a Soviet bomber attack -- was  
irrelevant by the time the system was completed. In the early 1960s,  
the USSR was deploying its first intercontinental ballistic missiles,  
and the bomber threat became a second-order concern." (89-90)

…from a book worth reading:  Creating the Computer:  Government,  
Industry, and High Technology by Kenneth Flamm (1988. The Brookings  
Institution)
preview online at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=p6S9WOniQN4C&dq=Creating+the+Computer&source=gbs_navlinks_s

For a book I co-wrote, Silicon Road, published by Softbank in the  
early 1990s, about the pioneers of the PC industry, I had a chance to  
interview Doug Englebart, inventor of the mouse.   Quite a guy, with a  
clear understanding of the revolution his invention helped to usher in.

Terry Winograd, a Stanford researcher in artificial intelligence and  
robotics, is another key figure I had a chance to interview, for  
Computer Language magazine.  When I met with him, he was excited about  
Xerox PARC.  For the same magazine I interviewed Kemeny and Kurtz,  
developers of BASIC.

I always think of Pynchon's comments on charisma when I think about  
these early PC industry pioneers.  Steve Jobs is just a particularly  
well-known example, with his notorious "reality distortion field".   
But I saw H. Ross Perot suck all the oxygen out of Jobs'  room, at the  
formal introduction of the Next computer - dozens of us reporters  
migrated from Jobs' end of the room to Perot's, such that Jobs wound  
up following along as we all listened to Perot preach about the way  
these desktop computers were going to change enterprise computing.


On Aug 29, 2009, at 11:26 PM, János Székely wrote:

> 2009/8/30 Doug Millison <dougmillison at comcast.net>:
>> "Someday there will be computers for all this"
>
> A fake after-the-fact forecast quite similar to a fake prophecy
> written down around 1970, projected back to 1945:
>
> "Someday it'll all be done by machine. Information machines. You are
> the wave of the future." (GR 258)
>
> Note the mention of waves in IT context, also appearing in the
> mysterious "Heart-to-Heart, Man-to-Man" episode (698-699). It is part
> of Semyavin's lament about information becoming the only real medium
> of exchange, supplanting drugs, sex and luxury items (dope notably in
> the first place).
>
>
> I think the switch from dope subculture to IT with all its
> consequences is a key background story in IV.
>
> János