Tension between the US and Russia during
the Cold War was skyrocketing. Effective communication between the two
countries was crucial during this time for the aversion of war and prevention
of the first strike. Paul Baran, a researcher from an American think tank
called RAND (short for Research and Development), was becoming progressively
apprehensive about this possible nuclear commencement. Communication between
the nuclear strike force would be vital to avoid any accidental weapon firing.
Baran devised a concept that could drastically yet efficiently change the
national communications network. His idea consisted of “a centrifugal
distribution of central points: a distributed network that had no vulnerable
central point and could rely on redundancy.” The current communications network
at the time had command and control points at the center that stemmed links
that would reach other points of contact. The process of rewiring this system
was going to be a dilemma. Baran’s idea was of several relay stations that a
message could travel around any number of ways. At the time, it was far too
advanced to be able to easily find the right team of people. Baran, along with
Donald Davies, the Superintendent of the Computer Science Division of the UK’s
National Physics Laboratory, both conceived the idea of sending a message in
the form of packets to more efficiently transfer data without harming the
quality of the data sent. Davies had actually devised his idea of a packet
relaying network around the same time as Baran while having been unaware of
Baran’s efforts. While Baran was working on his packet switching network, RAND
was working at levels both above and below the Air Force and with clientele
from outside the military structure.
Discussion Questions:
1. Do you believe the development of Baran's idea was a crucial measure during the time of the Cold War?
2. Ryan mentions that Donald Davies, a computer science superintendent, was devising almost exactly the same
plan about packet switching around the same time as Paul Baran. Do you
think this was just a coincidence or did then current events uprise this
method?
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