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This chapter describes the early phases of the evolution of the Internet. More exactly, the focus is on that point of time when computer networking was only an idea. Although there are excellent histories of the Internet, it is necessary to provide enough historical detail to make the origins of the Internet understandable. The chapter describes how electronic communication systems evolved and laid conceptual and material foundations for computer networks. It also introduces leading actors who played key roles in the early phases of computer networking.

The development of the Internet involved the transformation of a computer network that was initially established in the late 1960s by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense, to enable defense industry and university contractors to communicate with each other and with ARPA more effectively. Realization of this objective was demonstrated at the First International Conference on Computer Communication in October 1972. Important advances in hardware, software, and application were required not only to enable communication among individual computers, but to facilitate communication between different computer networks. It was not until the early 1980s, however, that cooperation between ARPA and the National Science Foundation opened up access to the Internet to the wider non-profit and university communities. Although the network was transferred to civilian control in 1983, full privatization of the Internet was not achieved until the early 1990s.

This chapter focuses on the critical lessons that can be derived from the building of the ARPANET in the 1960s to the outburst of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. It notes that the historical production of a given technology shapes its content and uses in ways that last beyond its original inception. It explains that the history of the Internet helps people understand the path of its future history-making. This chapter also provides a summary of events that led to the constitution of the Internet in its current form, that is, as a global network of computer networks made user-friendly by the World Wide Web, an application running on top of the Internet. It then discusses the procedures to ensure communication and coordination functions in the network — the shared protocol development, agreements on standards, and assignment of Internet names and addresses.

This chapter summarizes the early history of the Internet and describes the various technological frames that generated the basic innovations of computer networking. In other words, it puts history in the context of technology and innovation studies. It also discusses resource mobility in the early phases of Internet development. One main claim in the book is that innovation occurs when social practice changes. The mobility of resources, therefore, is a key factor in enabling and constraining innovation.

This chapter defines e-Business as any business activity whose performance of the key operations of management, financing innovation, production, distribution, sales, employee relations, and customer relations predominantly takes place by or on the Internet or other networks of computer networks regardless of the kind of connection between the virtual and the physical dimensions of the firm. It evaluates the transformation of the practice of the firm, the relationship between the Internet and capital markets, the role of work and flexible employment practices in the networking business model, and the specificity of innovation in the economy, at the source of labour productivity growth. It also proposes some hypotheses regarding the characteristics of the new business cycle and of potential crises, prompted by a sharp downturn in the value of technology stocks in financial markets, based on the observation of the period from March 2000 to March 2001.

This chapter examines the interaction between the Internet and processes of socio-political conflict, representation, and management by focusing on four distinct, though related, areas in which this interaction takes place. These areas include the new dynamics of social movements, the computer networking of local communities and their relevance for citizen participation, the uses of the Internet in the practice of informal politics, and the emergence of ‘noopolitik’ and cyberwarfare on the geopolitical stage. It explains that the Internet offers extraordinary potential for the expression of citizen rights, and for the communication of human values. The Internet cannot substitute for social change or political reform; however, it does contribute to democratization.

A network is, in its simplest form, a collection of points joined together in pairs by lines. In the jargon of the field the points are referred to as vertices or nodes and the lines are referred to as edges. Many objects of interest in the physical, biological, and social sciences can be thought of as networks and, as this book aims to show, thinking of them in this way can often lead to new and useful insights. This introductory chapter discusses why we are interested in networks and describes some specific networks of note. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

In a previous study, the authors found a positive and significant relationship between computer networks and labor productivity in U.S. manufacturing, using the first survey data on the presence of computer networks in manufacturing plants, collected in the 1999 Computer Network Use Survey. This chapter extends their previous model to include computer capital as a separate input in the production function. It uses new plant-level data on computer investment from the 2000 Annual Survey of Manufactures to develop a proxy for computer capital input. With available data, a sample of new plants is created with the best proxies possible. Based on this sample, positive and significant relationships were found between labor productivity and both computer networks and computer capital inputs. The findings suggest that understanding the relationship between computers and productivity requires measures of how businesses use computers.

This chapter chronicles the first three aborted proposals to network the Soviet nation, including military engineer Kitov’s short-lived attempt to share a military network with economists, information theorist Kharkevich’s proposal for a unified communication network for all data signals, and Kovalev’s idea to rationally control the economy. Each network design follows hierarchical, rational, and state-unified principals for mid-century computing. Some attention is also paid to the historical concurrence of cold war networks and the military-industrial-academic complex, including the US ARPANET and SAGE. It is argued that historical “first” claims are often misleading given the complex international research networks that precede national computer networks.

This chapter discusses how in the decade following the release of WarGames, computing became a more common activity, which led to more networking. It illustrates how computer networking emerged as a symbol of national economic power and productivity. Throughout the mid- to late 1980s and early 1990s, hopeful views of the Internet and computer corporations began to gain resonance. These (often) corporate visions challenged previously threatening representations—like the anthropomorphized computer capable of overpowering or replacing humans—and helped recast the computer as a friendly co-worker. In recasting the Internet, corporations, advertisers, and news media outlets also re-imagined the Internet user. The out-of-control computer jockeyed by an antiestablishment teenaged hacker shifted to a “user-friendly” computer controlled by a knowledgeable, adult “user.” The chapter also looks at the transformation of the Internet as a political sphere instrumental in helping America retain global economic dominance.

This chapter aims to assist those who seek to apply the weapons law rules outlined in the book to particular weapons systems. It takes those weapons in turn and explains which legal rules would appear to be most relevant. Factors to bear in mind when evaluating the application of those rules are clarified and source materials that may be of assistance in considering a particular class of weapon are referenced. While the discussion will be of particular assistance to weapons reviewers, others whose task is to consider the legality of particular technologies will derive benefit from it. The weapons systems considered include missiles, bombs, artillery; unmanned vehicles including unmanned combat vehicles; blast weapons, lasers and directed energy weapons, computer network attack, herbicides, flechettes, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, and non-lethal weapons.

Chinese cyber espionage constitutes an advanced persistent threat (APT)—an intrusion above and beyond traditional cybercrime—to US national and economic security. Groups operating from PRC territory are believed to be waging a coordinated cyber espionage campaign targeting US government, industrial, media, and think tank computer networks. A dozen of these groups have been identified and linked with the PLA, and others are connected with universities and information security enterprises. The largest and most active of these groups may operate from Beijing and Shanghai. This assessment posits that the General Staff Department, Third Department (3/PLA) manages a complex cyber reconnaissance infrastructure that exploits vulnerable computer networks around the world, while also ensuring the integrity of classified networks within China. Which organization within the PLA has responsibility for computer network attack (vice exploitation) remains an open question.

This chapter examines price and quality change for communications equipment using a newly developed data. The findings reveal that a high pace of quality change in communications equipment, particularly for the components used to create and provide business computer networks. The results are also roughly consistent with several independent sources of information on technological change and price declines. The implications for the results in this chapter are that real investment in certain categories was much higher than actually reported.

This chapter assesses Chinese civil-military integration in the context of operations in the cyber domain, focusing particularly on the development of cyberwarfare capabilities in China’s militia forces. It surveys the major categories of civil-military integration in the network domain, focusing on China’s operational, rather than technical, capabilities. The focus is on Chinese information warfare militia units and network warfare subunits as a component of China’s efforts to utilize civilian capabilities in developing its computer network operations capacity. The chapter describes the characteristics of information warfare militia units and their role in civil-military integration. Then, it discusses and analyzes a fifty-unit sample of information warfare militia units and network warfare subunits throughout China and present two case studies. The remainder of the chapter offers some areas for additional research, identifies some conclusions, and offers several policy implications.

The use of digital computers to facilitate social interaction has not eclipsed the uses for which they were invented, but it often seems that way. That use requires an ability to network computers to one another, a capability that took several decades after the computer's invention to be realized. The Internet, which emerged out of military-sponsored research done in the 1970s, enabled the creation of sophisticated forms of social interaction. But the personal computer phenomenon was evolving in a parallel universe, with little communication between the two camps. This chapter argues that important first steps toward social media were taken in the arena of the personal computer, which also emerged in the 1970s, but from a different direction. Using devices to connect PCs to the telephone network, and developing so-called “bulletin board” software, personal computer enthusiasts created a framework on which the current Internet-based social world resides.

The 1990s saw the emergence of computer networking as a major component of communications and media, with the dominant metaphors for information technology shifting from computing and artificial intelligence to networking and communication. Personal computers with multimedia production and playback capabilities became ubiquitous. Computer networking extended its reach beyond hobbyist, research, and government communities to the broader public. Coinciding with these technological changes came profound shifts in society and culture. The growing engagement with digitally networked media has been accompanied by an interrelated set of social, cultural, and technological developments known collectively as networked publics. This book focuses on networked publics centered around four key trends: accessibility to digital tools and networks, many-to-many and peer-to-peer forms of distribution, value at the edges, and aggregation of culture and information. More specifically, it explores networked publics in the United States in the context of place, culture, infrastructure, and politics.

This chapter examines defensive cyber operations in a fashion similar to kill chain analysis. It presents an outline of how baseline network defense is done, and what technologies and techniques contribute to that mission. This includes memory forensics, penetration testing, and incident response. It shows as well how those efforts are likely to be insufficient, and how advanced states have an incentive to go further and intrude into other states’ networks for defensive reasons—operations that are sometimes called counter-computer network exploitation. It is these intrusions, which are genuinely defensive, that can be misperceived and interpreted as offensive intrusions—leading to a cycle of escalation.