Military talk

A lot of the readings we've done up to this point have made the connection between the development of computer technology and the military but Baran's is the first document that really drove this point home for me. Upon my first read I was a little bewildered by his word choice - the words attack, kill, destruction and survival were not words I expected to associate with creating distributed networks and I felt that perhaps the language was a little overdramatic. However, after Prof. Bates put Baran's work into the context of communication between nuclear bases during the Cold War (something I should have realized in the first place from the date of Baran's document), I understood why these violent and militaristic terms were finding their ways into this description of distributed communications networks. I know this is just a visceral response, but I have to say it was a little shocking reading Baran's work knowing the context and the gravity of the situation in which Baran's distributed networks were primarily being put to use. Compared to the readings on Turing which often mentioned his work deciphering codes for the military from the perspective of third person omniscient historical narrative (essentially very removed from Turing's personal investment and the real dangers during those war-time periods), reading Baran puts one directly in the position of a military leader/engineer during the Cold War - understanding the urgency for his distributed communications network in fighting and surviving a nuclear war.