Information Warfare: Center for Information Dominance.

Capt. Kevin R. Hooley on Center for Information Dominance, Corry Station, Pensacola Florida:
Information dominance is absolutly critical in the maritime maneuver space. It serves as a potent deterrent to conflict. It is a key tool in controlling crisis escalation, and is a critical factor in mission effectiveness on the battlefield. CID will shape and lead the training of the capabilities required to successfully exploit, attack, defend and operate in the information domain.

360 Degree Branding: Global Advertising ie. Cultural Imperialism.

Every point of contact builds the brand. . .At Ogilvy, we take a holistic look at communication and use what is necessary from each discipline to build a brand.

Vinay Kamath, Vipin V. Nair Branding has moved to the boardroom The Hindu Business Line, February 10 2005. Interview with Shelly Lazarus, O&M Worldwide, Chairman:
. . .Steve Hayden (O&M Vice Chairman) just showed the new work for Dove thats being shown all over the world. Its had a remarkable effect on brand sales; its a campaign for real beauty. Its all about celebrating women as they are rather than the stereotypes, they are portrayed as so often. The campaign goes everywhere. There's a huge PR component too. . .So it goes all the way and they've had a surge in sales. IBM is a huge success when that brand turned around. American Express, Kodak, Motorola. They're all examples of successful branding.

The Government.

Jerry J. Berman, Morton H. Halperin eds., The Abuses of the Intelligence Agencies(1975):
Computerized Incident File, USAINTC, Ft. Holabird. Described by the Senate Subcommittee as "the core of the Intelligence Command's data bank of civil disturbance information," this file consisted of a computerized listing of "spot reports." Created in 1968, the computerized spot report file received as many as 1200 reports a month during 1969 and, according to the Subcommittee, may have been "one of the most extraordinary chronicles of domestic political activity ever compiled." The file possessed coding and cross-references to the subversives file, (p. 56).

The Military.

Robert MacBride,The Automated State(1967):
In looking back over the evolution and development of computer systems, one's attention is repeatedly drawn to the large part that military requirements have played in the process. This is evident not only in a purely technological sense--to the extent that military requirements have tended to dictate the direction of hardware design--but also in the evolution of computer system applications. Again and again, as we trace the growth of computer-based management and analysis techniques, we find direct evidence of, if not a military origin, the military establishment's early support and strong participation,(p.169).

Technological Futurism.

Joseph J. Corn,Imagining Tomorrow(1986):
As an ideology, a powerful system of rhetoric and belief, technological futurism seems to have functioned in American culture over the last hundred years much in the same way that Karl Marx saw religion functioning in Europe at an earlier time: as an opiate of the masses. In this formulation, expectations of a halcyon future brought forth by technology have had an anesthetic effect. The ability to deal with the social and political dimensions of a problem has been dulled by the euphoric solutions proferred by technological utopians, (p.227).

The Technological System.

Norman Balbanian(1980):
The crisis is not a crisis withintechnological society which can be overcome by patching up the system, but a crisis of the technological system itself. The major question is not who is to control the means of production, but what the means of production shall be; and what shall be produced. It is not where to locate the nuclear power plants, but whether to have nuclear power at all. It is not merely a question of possibly limiting growth but of radically altering the very nature of technology.

Silicon Valley.

Annalee Saxenian,The Genesis of Silicon Valley(1985):
The region's most dynamic growth phase was associated with the birth of a revolutionary new industry, the semiconductor industry. In 1955, William Shockley established Santa Clara County's first semiconductor firm. Shockley, one of three original inventors of the transistor, returned to Palo Alto from Bell Laboratories to establish Shockley Transistor Company. He thus established one of the original spin-offs, in an industry that came to be characterized by this defection process. In 1957, eight of Shockley's best scientists in turn broke off themselves and gained financial backing from Fairchild Camera and Instrument to start their own firm. By 1965, ten new Santa Clara County semiconductor firms had spun-off from Fairchild, and the Santa Clara Valley had replaced Boston as the centre of gravity for new electronic firm locations. Between 1959 and 1979, Fairchild Semiconductor spawned an amazing total of fifty new companies in the county, (p. 25).

East Asian Industry.

Jeffrey Henderson,The Globalisation of High Technology Production(1989):
Hong Kong was the first East Asian recipient of Fairchild investment in 1961 when the firm established a plant to assemble transistors and subsequently integrated circuits. From this beginning in Hong Kong the industry diffused out to other locations in East Asia. . .Taiwan was opened up by General Instrument in 1965 and South Korea by Fairchild and Motorola in 1966. By 1968, Texas Instruments, National Semiconductor, and Fairchild had set up plants in Singapore. 1971 saw the emergence of semiconductor production in Malaysia, while by the mid-1970s, the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia had also been incorporated into the division of labour,(pp. 50-51).

Experimental Culture.

Mills ed., Turning Away From Technology(1997):
Chet Bowers. . .The computer also amplifies the current, modern orientation toward a highly experimental culture: The assumption is that as we become more experimental with the foundations of our cultural experience we are more progressive--that is, we are increasingly relying upon untested knowledge, on forms of knowledge that may or may not survive in the long term. This characteristic amplifies a cultural view of temporality that frames experience in terms of immediate problem solving. In other words, the computer reinforces the modern sense of temporality by reducing the awareness that we are connected in time with the past and the future, (pp. 182-183).

Asking Questions about Technology.

Stephanie Mills ed.,Turning Away From Technology(1997):
Jerry Mander. . .Once a technology is upon us, we do not permit ourselves to believe that its negative aspects are more profound than its positive, or that there is really anything we can do to stop it. People lose the ability to imagine doing without the technology, as has already become apparent with computers. Technologies like cars, computers, and TV make profound changes in the world in the end, they have far greater impact than the politicians we elect--yet we remain utterly passive to the process of their introduction, leaving it to the corporations to define the technologies for us. We don't think to address the metaquestions about technology, and we have no training or practice in even knowing what questions to ask. And if we do ask questions, we find we have little process or means or power to reject technologies on the grounds of their social, psychological, political, or ecological consequences, (p.114).

Defense Advanced Research Project Agency(DARPA).

David Halperin, Risking Innovation: DARPA in the Limelight(2003):
The agency has a complex relationship with the private sector and academia: part benefactor, part customer, part collaborator. It rotates its technical experts between projects every three to five years to maintain freshness, and it ensures the transfer of military technology for commercial development.

Nicholas Turse,The Wild Weapons of DARPA(2004):
A plethora of products designed to maim and kill, among them: the m-16 rifle, Hellfire-missile equipped predator drones, stealth fighters and bombers, surface-to-surface artillery rocket systems, Tomahawk cruise missiles. B-52 bomber upgrades, Titan missiles, Javelin portable "fire and forget" guided missiles, cannon-launched Copperhead guided projectiles.

Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator(RNEP).

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has revived a controversial study of a "bunker busting" nuclear warhead by incorporating it into the defense budget as a line item.

Missiles, and More Missiles.

Senator William Proxmire, Report from Wasteland(1970):
The failures of the electronic and avionic systems in the major weapons we have developed are outweighed by the billions of dollars spent for intercontinental and submarine launched ballistic missiles (ICBM's and SLBM's) abandoned in the research and development stage or before they were ever finished. It is a fantastic list of missiles named for Greek Gods, celestial bodies, Indian tribes, ancient weapons, birds, and animals. (Occasionally, a public relations man comes up with a brainstorm and an acronym like GAM is added to the list.) Many, many billions more have been lost on missile systems that were planned, produced, deployed, and then abandoned

Simulations of War.

Andrew Wilson, The Bomb and the Computer(1968):
In the Pentagon archives is a film of a strategic air war game whose scenario involves a nuclear exchange between Russia and America. The whole thing exists on tens of thousands of computer punch cards. As Soviet warheads hit American targets, B-52s of Strategic Air Command, on permanent airborne alert, start moving towards Russia. They rendezvous with aerial tankers, change course to deceive Soviet defenses, activate electronic countermeasures, lose a good part of their number to surface-to-air missiles, and succeed in obliterating Moscow in return for New York. . .Air war games, particularly "strategic" ones involving nuclear exchanges, are more readily computerized than games which simulate land operations with their many untidy human factors, (pp. 128-129).

After Sputnik.

Eugene Rabinowitch,After Missiles and Satellites, What?Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 1957:
In 1946 an American physicist, Louis Ridenour, published in Fortune a whimsical but prophetic piece. He saw the earth surrounded by a swarm of atom bomb carrying satellites owned by various nations. By pressing the proper button one of these death dealing moons could be made to drop on a target anywhere in the world. In well-protected underground operation centers, the military of every nation were keeping day and night watch, with their eyes glued to radar screens, and their fingers on the fateful switches. . .Ten years later, this vision is beginning to look ominously realistic. In a year or two dozens of satellites will be flashing through the skies. . .In straining our energy and inventiveness to draw even with the Soviet Union in the possession of long range missiles and the capacity to place them on target anywhere in the world, we may too easily forget to think what the world will be like after we have succesfully achieved this purpose, (p. 350).

Technological Diffusion, Weapons Proliferation.

The Maritime Strategy(1984):
"The international setting is complicated by the proliferation of modern high technology weaponry."

Ken Flamm(1992):
"We can't control the flows of technology because of the economic system of the late 20th century. Its difficult to decide what is a weapon, because almost all weapons technology is dual use."

William W. Keller, Janne E. Nolan:
"Increasing international flows of technology, investments, communication, trade and labor will continue to exert dramatic and dynamic effect on almost every aspect of proliferation."

In the News: Spam.

"At the current pace spam could reach 95 per cent of all email traffic by mid-2006, when we could see a slow meltdown of email delivery systems caused by overloaded queues and stressed filters."

"Volumes of pornographic spam have tripled during the past month, newly published research has revealed."

"Time wasted deleting junk e-mail cost American business nearly $22 billion a year."

Radio Frequency Identification(RFID).

Erika Morphy, "The Coming RFID Revolution" CIO Today(December 2003):
The bottom line is that between the Department of Defense and Wal-Mart, RFID is about to become an immovable fact of life for the majority of companies in the U.S.--and given Wal-Mart's global reach, for a significant portion of the rest of the world.

Michael Y. Park, "Big Blue Launches RFID Service" CIO Today(September 2003):
IBM today unveiled a corporate radio-frequency identification service--a move that unleashes technology that business experts call a death knell for the bar code. But privacy experts are expressing mounting concerns.

Bill Gates, August 2, 2004:
We need to connect the Office world up to the real world. Things like RFID, we're very excited about the work going on there to bring a wealth of information, let things be done.

In the News: Hewlett-Packard's Crossbar Latch.

We are reinventing the computer at the molecular scale--technology could result in computers that are thousands of times more powerful than those that exist today.

Matthew Maier et al, "The New Military-Industrial Complex" March 2003:
Brand-name technical companies like IBM and Hewlett-Packard have ramped up their defense business to provide electronics for some of military's most sophisticated systems.

September 6, 1999: "Pentagon Speeds Work on Missile Defense System":
Theater High Altitude Area Defense System(THAAD). The system runs on Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems hardware.

Testimony of Gary Millhollin before U.S. China Security Review Commission, October 12, 2001:
Relates to the activities of Huawei Technologies, "recently caught helping Iraq improve its air defense by outfitting them with fibre optic equipment. . .Motorola is only most recent example of American assistance. Other American firms have sold Huawei supercomputers--Digital, IBM, Hewlett-PackardSun Microsystems. . .

Dual Use: Entertain Us or Destroy Us.

Dual Use Technology: A Defense Strategy for Affordable Leading Edge Technology(1995).
Production facilities that produce both commercial and military parts, or dual use facilities, will result from the integration of military and commercial product technologies--Defense leadership advocates the merging of the commercial and defense supplier bases as the primary way to achieve more rapid insertion of advanced commercial IC technology.

One Use for Supercomputers.

Red Storm, Thunder, Lightning--supercomputers currently being installed at nuclear weapons laboratories.

National Nuclear Security Administration(NNSA) established in 2000. Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative--simulation of nuclear detonations.

Late 1999: "first ever three dimensional simulation of a nuclear weapon primary (the first stage of a hydrogen bomb. . .Spring 2001 three dimensional simulation of nuclear weapon secondary.

The Moon, Missiles, and Microelectronics.

Edmund C. Berkeley(1962):
The towering problem of our time, intercontinental ballistic missiles with megaton nuclear warheads guided by computing mechanisms.

George E. Forsythe(1963):
Much of modern engineering, particularly in the fields of atomic energy and space technology, simply could not go on without the detailed simulation of large physical systems on an automatic computer.

Robert N. Noyce(1977):
It is not an exaggeration to say that most of the technical achievements of the past decade have depended on microelectronics. Small and reliable sensing and control devices are the essential elements in the complex systems that have landed men on the Moon and explored Mars, not to speak of the similar role in the intercontinental weapons that dominate world politics.

Paul E. Ceruzzi,A History of Modern Computing(2003):
Minuteman II first flew in September 1964; a year later the trade press reported that "Minuteman is top Semiconductor User," with a production rate of six to seven missiles a week. .The current "revolution" in microelectronics owes a lot to both the Minuteman and Apollo programs. The Minuteman was first: it used integrated circuits in a critical application only a few years after they were invented, (pp. 187-188).

The Future?

Joe Weizenbaum, (1978):
This explosive growth has created a momentum which has conferred on the field another characteristic perhaps unique to it among scientific endeavours: an orientation to the future so pervasive that it swamps all attempts to look back--especially to look back critically--or even to examine itself critically at all.

Ralph Parkman, The Cybernetic Society(1972):
The pace of technological change contributes impartially to the malaise of the older as well as the younger generations. If the number of those who have lost faith in the stability of a system ordered by rational priorities should grow, it is conceivable that the isolated experiments of alienated youth could become a pattern of the future. This could see Western man turning away from the systematic structure of the technological society, and back toward tribalism, accepting some form of transcendental religiosity as a pillar to cling to, (p.377).

Manfred Stanley,The Technological Conscience(1978):
If we fail to distinguish, in our thought and action, among science, technology, and technicism, one of two things will happen. We will eventually demonize science and technology to the point of some great religious convulsion of primitivist simplification. Or we will use science and technology to make of ourselves God, creating our descendants in our image, (p.16).

Capitals of Capital.

Ronald J. Deibert,Altered Worlds: Social Forces in the Hypermedia Environment(1998):
In response to the massive, global 24-hour marketplace, new spaces and flows are arising, and centres and 'hubs' have emerged that may provide a glimpse of the evolving architecture of the post-modern world order. Large cities, such as New York, London, Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong, are assuming more importance as 'command centres' in the global 'finanscape'--what an Economist survey referred to as 'Capitals of capital'. They act not so much as national cities as they do world cities--interfacial nodes in the global hypermedia environment.

Global Distance.

Cynthia J. Alexander and Leslie A. Pal, eds. Digital Democracy(1998):
There is potential for the technology to facilitate communication between individuals dispersed across geographical and temporal boundaries; however, the quality of the dialogue within and between these discussion groups merits serious examination before we can state that the technology exposes individuals to a broad diversity of perspectives, fosters rational, constructive discourse, generates an exchange that stimulates greater understanding, and cultivates consensus between diverse and/or opposing interests. In the 'global village' we may be less--not more--communicatively competent. In the Information Era, we may possess a more impoverished, not a more enhanced, understanding of world issues, events and ideas, (p.7).

Global Village

Julian Hawthorne, in 1893, envisions the world a century later:
Today the inhabitants of this planet are rapidly approximating to the state of a homogenous people, all of whose social, political and commercial interests are identical. Owing to the unlimited facilities of intercommunication, they are almost as closely united as the members of a family.

Jarice Hanson and Uma Narula, New Communication Technologies in Developing Countries(1990):
John Lent (1986) wrote that myths are built around what information technology could actually do, and therefore he reminded us that many of these scenarios are possibilities, rather than definitive predictions. He said that some of the myths prophesy that new information technology will lead to the development of a global village, others portend of new information technologies that will serve international understanding, peace, and brotherhood. Some myths portray information technology that will lead to increased independence and promotion of democratic ideals, yet others promote technology as the salvation of the Third World masses, and therefore, more information made available through bigger communications systems is a goal to be sought,(p.18).

Gigabytes,Terabytes, and Petabytes.

The terabyte is equal to one thousand gigabytes--the petabyte is equal to one thousand terabytes--the exabyte is equal to one thousand petabytes--the zettabyte is equal to one thousand exabytes.

Sears Roebuck & Co. to create a 70 terabyte system; the retailer will hit 1 petabyte threshold by 2006.

Data.

Norman Cousins,The Computer and the Poet(1966):
. . .There may be a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, and intelligence with insight. . .Facts are terrible things if left sprawling and unattended. They are too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic.

C.A.Bowers, Let Them Eat Data(2000):
The failure of the computer proponents is in not asking more probing questions about the forms of knowledge that computers cannot process and in not examining the deep cultural assumptions that give their thinking such an ethnocentric and formulaic quality. At deeper fault is our educational system, which fails to provide computer proponents and their followers with an understanding of the complx relationship between culture and technology,(p.109).

The Digital Divide.

Anthony G. Wilhelm,Digital Nation(2004):
While computers and Internet service are becoming as ubiquitous as television sets in high-income households, this is a far cry from acknowledging that diffusion patterns now resemble a random cross-section of the U.S. population. As with other technologies, there is a saturation of upper and middle-class adopters, and a protracted time period ensues in which adoption rates for poor households increase incrementally. . .The gaps between bottom and top economic quartiles in Internet access are yawning, and they grow over time. Only one in four of America's poorest households was online in late 2001 compared to eight in ten homes earning over $75,000 per year,(pp. 35-36).

African Information Society Initiative(AISI):
No more than 15 countries have full access to the Internet and some remain without any electronic connectivity at all.

the New Partnership for African Development(NEPAD):
It is estimated that no more than 20% and in some countries as little as 5% have access to electricity, the figure falls to 2% in rural areas.