Networks: Computing in the Cold War Era and its Impact on Society

NetworksA Logic of Elsewhere CHID 370/COM 302 Winter 2007

Where we’ve been Development of Computing during the Cold War Years Military Industrial Complex- Developments in Hardware Developments in Userinterface Developments in Networking

Cybernetics and counterculture • Investigated some of the conceptual advances from Military/Industrial Complex • Saw how they permeated and informed the counterculture during the 1960s and 1970s • Whole Earth Catalogue • If the counterculture must use the tools of the MI complex is there an outside to “the system”?

Hyperreal • If there is no outside, how can we tell what is real? • Hyperreal as a stae where “values” can’t be determined • Too much information • Extension of the computer into our personal lives

This ain’t your father’s reality • How a state of “real virtuality” permeates current life • Network-The genesis of new social “structures” • Identity-The possibility/challenge for new personas • Lives-New ideas about life and creation • Affect-What does it mean “to feel”

Virtually real • Real virtuality significantly different than previous ways of thinking about reality. • We can’t describe it by removing ourselves from it (Descartes) • We must describe it imminently (from the inside) • The rest of the class to build these tools

Manuel Castells • Geographer and Social Theorist • Informational City (1989) • Puts forward the theory of the super city • The Information Age: Economy, Society, Culture (1996-1998, rev. 2000) • Map out the dynamics of the Information Age

Points to build on • Space of Flows • Information develops because of the need to regulate flows • Timeless Time • Specific sense of timelessness and spacelessness associated with this space

Implications • Development and Networks • Need an industrial infrastructure • Information dependent upon industry (but wants to hide it (outsourcing) • Apparent exception cell phones • Concentration of resources within urban areas • Urban areas looking more and more “alike” • Local culture often there for packaging

Non-scalar networks • Developed by social theorists and graph theorists • An emergent complex network containing many highly connected hubs • Not a uniformly distributed network

How do scale free networks emerge? • Nodes are added one at a time • Probability of attachment proportional to attachee’s number of connections • Popular attachments get more popular

Scale free networks • Human social networks • Six degrees • Sexually transmitted diseases • Nomads and genetics • Protein interactions • WWW • Airlines

Networks: Computing in the Cold War Era and its Impact on Society