[ih] ARPANET and Apollo 11

[Dave Crocker]

On 3/12/2015 11:56 AM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> but the fact that they were approximately the same year isn't at all.
> They both needed the stored-program computer and micro-electronics to
> have been invented, and they both needed the impetus of competition
> with the USSR - don't forget that DARPA and NASA were both created


Although 'technology' development has an infinite history along with
human development, World War I marked a quantum change in the use and
development of technology as for very large-scale systems and very
large-scale effects.

World War II promoted the scale and complexity some number of quantum
increments.

The Cold War gave us an identical, continuing impetus for these tech
efforts, along various lines, including both flight and communications
(and computation, of course.)

So I agree that it was very large historical forces that drove these two
major accomplishments towards their major milestone around the same time.

Considering how 'important' a milestone is  can be useful.  However
trying to decide among milestones that each massively changed the world,
assessing one as more important than another, is probably  a fool's errand.

Quantum/paradigm levels of change affect whatever is being measured in
percentage by orders of magnitude.  Judging between them probably
affects percentages by single digits.

d/
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net