American Technology :: Computers

American Technology In 1957 the USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. In response, the unite States forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology applicable to the military. In 1962 RAND capital of Minnesota Baran, of the RAND Corporation, was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force to do a study on how it could maintain its command and control over its missiles and bombers, after a atomic attack. This was to be a military research network that could survive a nuclear strike, decentralized so that if any locations (cities) in the U.S. were attacked, the military could still hold control of nuclear arms for a counter-attack.In 1968 ARPA awarded the ARPANET contract to BBN. BBN had selected a Honeywell minicomputer as the base on which they would build the switch. The physical network was constructed in 1969, linking foursome nodes University of California at Los Angeles, S RI (in Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. The network was wired together via 50 Kbps circuits.In todays society the cyberspace has greatly cut down the number of sent garners through the US postal service. This is true because if you can station the same information to somebody without wasting paper it is untold better on the environment. Another reason why so many people have switched to using e-mail is that it is just simply faster than postponement for a letter in the mail. One more reason people use e-mail more is that the rate of postage to send a letter is steadily going up. It is currently at 37 cents per letter where sending e-mail is free. Some of the negative effects of this shift of people using e-mail over actually mailing their letters is the postage per letter is increasing more often than ever because more people use the internet to send letters now because it is just faster than mailing a letter which could take u p to a week to get to your house where e-mail is instantaneous.The Internets impact on me personally is good overall. This is true because I surf the Internet when Im bored, the Internet has online games that I can match with other people on the other side of the world if I wanted to. The Internet has all kinds of databases, which helps me on research papers like this one.