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@denningARPANETTwentyYears1991

Title: [@denningARPANETTwentyYears1991] date: 2023-04-01 type: reference project: Memex3

tags:: Memex3, APARNET, network, trust, communications

Reference

Denning, PJ. 1991 The ARPANET after twenty years. In:. Denning, PJ (ed.). Computers under attack: intruders, worms, and viruses. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 11–19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/102616.102618.

Summary & Key Take Aways

Denning's article narrates the "fundamental shifts in human practices" that was caused by the emergence of the ARPANET (Denning, 1991, 533). The ARPANET emerged as a social necessity following concerns about nuclear war and the effect on communication networks (Denning, 1991, 530). It was then concluded that "the strongest communication system would be a distributed network of computers" (Denning, 1991, 530). The first step was to break down messages into packets for a packet-switched network; this network started operating in 1970 (Denning, 1991, 530). In the following years, the ARPANET had an exponential growth and the traffic had developed to be primarily electronic mails and therefore, the network needed to accomodate this by reworking the "end-to-end" protocol and introducing transport control protocol and internet protocol (Denning, 1991, 530). The explosion of the ARPANET then caused other "community networks" to appear such as BITNET with IBMs or CSNET (Denning, 1991, 530). Denning states that although the ARPANET was disbanded in 1990, its legacy changed the way human communicated (Denning, 1991, 532). In his analysis about the network, he concludes with potential concerns around the network such as "network vulnerabilities" and conflicts of trust (Denning, 534). As the network expanded, developers needed to consider the threat of intruders, worms, and viruses, which means that a "network immune system" was needed (Denning, 1991, 534). Finally, Denning argues about the conflict of trust and how the government's fear for employees abusing their privileges caused them to introduced complicated access controls and increased monitoring. (Denning, 1991, 534).

How does it relate to class?

I think this source could not be more relevant to the content of module 3 for this class. The ARPANET, with its exponential node expansion, shifted human practices to the digital world, accomodating digital_communities through services like mails. While Denning offers a very useful look into the emergeance of the ARPANET, he also offers valuable insight into how exactly the network changed the way humans communicated. His three examples of anticipated conflicts critically analyzes the legacy of the ARPANET in a broader perspective, trackling subjects such as Control and Agency.

Digital_communities