[ih] ARPANET and Apollo 11

Miles Fidelman mfidelman at meetinghouse.net
Thu Mar 12 10:00:38 PDT 2015


Then again, if we think beyond just the moon shot, to the space program, 
we have:
- communications satellites
- earth sensing satellites (can you say Google "satellite view?")

And the Apollo program also brought us the famous "blue marble" view of 
the earth from the moon - that had some pretty lasting impact.

Miles Fidelman

Craig Simon wrote:
> Consider how many people now use the Internet versus how many have 
> been to orbit or the moon.  JCR Licklider is far less known than his 
> contemporary Wernher von Braun, but there are far more people 
> interacting every day in the space he pioneered.
> Craig Simon
> craig at rkey.com
> 954-921-2838
> @gitis
>
>
> On Thursday, March 12, 2015 10:54 AM, Noel Chiappa 
> <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>
> So I was sitting here, not really up to working, and idly watching The 
> History
> Channel, and there was a documentary about Apollo 11 on. They had a 
> number of
> people (including Walter Cronkite) talking about what they thought it 
> meant,
> retrospectively.
>
> Several said something about how it was the greatest accomplishment of the
> century, etc (it certainly was an amazing accomplishment - looking 
> back on it,
> it's completely amazing that they managed to do it with 1960s technology -
> although winning WWII was an even greater effort, I'm quite sure), and one
> said that when people look back at the 20th Century, centuries from now,
> that's the thing they are likely to think was the most significant 
> event of
> the century.
>
> It suddenly struck me that something else happened in 1969 - that was 
> the year
> the ARPANET was turned on. Given that the ARPANET gave birth to the 
> Internet,
> and the impact the computer networking has had on the world 
> (admittedly, in
> tandem with the development of the personal computer), I wonder if in 
> the long
> run, landing on the Moon will really be seen as more significant than 
> that?
>
> Odd how two such major things, long-term-historically speaking, 
> happened in
> the same year!
>
>     Noel
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