HOW WE GOT HERE 

Jacques Vallee The Network Revolution

Topics computers, history, internet, SRI, arpanet, Jacques Vallee, NSA

Language English

The Network Revolution

Confessions of a Computer Scientist

Berkeley: And/Or Press 1982
published in both hardcover and paperback
Illustrated, 213 pages, bibliography.

HOW WILL THE GROWTH OF COMPUTER NETWORKS CHANGE THE WAY YOU LIVE AND LOVE AND WORK AND PLAY?

WHAT DO THE COMPUTER TECHNOLOGISTS REALLY KNOW ABOUT THE IMPACT OF THEIR CREATIONS ON SOCIETY?

HOW WILL COMPUTER POWER AFFECT YOUR PERSONAL POWER AT THIS CRUCIAL MOMENT IN HUMAN HISTORY- TODAY, AS THE COMPUTERS LINK UP?

The Network Revolution, the personal view of an erudite, compassionate insider who helped shape this technology, penetrates behind the scenes to reveal the human side of computer science as it has never been shown before.

Jacques Vallee writes in nontechnical language. He takes the mystery out of the technology and shows how computer science has suddenly put humanity at a major crossroads. The choices which will shape our future are being made right now. This book and its readers will influence those decisions

The Heart of the Internet

by Jacques Vallee

Topics Jacques Vallee, internet, arpanet, SRI, Stanford Research Institute

Collection opensource

http://www.jacquesvallee.net/heart_of_the_internet.html

The Heart of the Internet

by Jacques Vallee, Ph.D.

An Insider's View of the Origin and

Promise of the On-Line Revolution

Jacques Vallee was among the engineers and visionaries who set up the Internet, hoping to connect people--not control them--through information. For a few years, it seemed that this dream was being realized. But after the dot com crash of 2001, much of the Web's information flowed into the media giants and corporate conglomerates, leaving millions of Net denizens without true freedom of choice. And then there is the threat of government snooping. . . .

All is not lost, but it is time for public and private actions to rebuild the dream and win back our freedom. In The Heart of the Internet, Vallee:

* reconstructs the history of computer technology and destroys a few myths...

* uses first-person recollections and notes to describe the series of breakthroughs that transformed computers from calculating machines to universal platforms for new media;

* describes the internet in today's marketplace, pressured on the one hand by commercial interests seeking to influence not merely our purchases but our thoughts, and on the other by governmental obsession to harness the whole system to its own narrow definitions of security--sacrificing our privacy and possibly our freedom in the process;

* states a set of principles for network citizens and suggests how we can create new standards for Internet usage.