[ih] Yasha Levine's Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet -- Some Questions

[Eric Gade]

>
> Lick was my thesis adviser, and
> subsequently my boss when I was a member of the MIT research staff in
> his group.  So there is a lot of overlap between my personal experiences
> in 1969-1977 at MIT and the events and interactions chronicled in "Dream
> Machine".
>

Hi Jack, thanks for writing back. It's great to have a person who worked
with Licklider be a part of this email record.

Also thank you to all the others for responding. I want to clarify a couple
of things, mostly because I don't want to be unfair to the book's author
despite my evaluation of his research. Levine seems to suggest that there
is some connection between counterinsurgency psychological/sociological
research in Vietnam and the origins of Licklider's research group(s) and
work in building the ARPA C&C/IPTO community. That is to say, he believes
there are common intellectual origins if not necessarily applications. What
has been covered by Waldrop and others -- and what is even apparent in the
oral histories recorded by Licklider and others -- is that to the extent
this is true, there was apprehension on the part of the interactive
computing researchers. Either way, this is a bold claim and my own feeling
is that it requires much more evidence to support it.

The NBC reporting is -- to his telling -- evidence of similar tactics being
used on the ARPANET, although the Congressional Record testimony seems
pretty clear that the report confused a bunch of things. Again, it doesn't
seem to me that enough convincing evidence is presented, but these reports
are interesting nonetheless and I'd never heard of them before in my own
research.

One final note about the Cambridge Project. Waldrop also discusses the
Cambridge Project in "Dream Machine" -- he even recounts a story where
Licklider, surrounded by protestors who were attempting to burn copies of
his proposal, showed the youngsters that they needed to fan out the pages
if they wanted to get it to burn properly (and even lit his own report on
fire). At the time, this was a known project. The Harvard Crimson even
reported on it:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/9/26/brass-tacks-
the-cambridge-project-pi/

As I mentioned, I have not been able to get a copy of this proposal. The
MIT archives will almost certainly take their time getting back to me. The
citation Levine uses for the report is:
J.C.R. Licklider, "Establishment and Operation of a Program in Computer
Analysis and Modeling in the Behavioral Sciences" December 5, 1968. MIT
Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Cambridge Project records.

Levine does not seem to quote from this proposal and only cites it once
when he lists the "data banks" that the Cambridge Project would create (and
"make available through ARPANET"):

   - Public opinion polls from all countries
   - Cultural patterns of all the tribes and peoples of the world
   - Archives on comparative communism [...] files on the contemporary
   world communist movements
   - Political participation of various countries [...] This includes such
   variables as voting, membership in associations, activity of political
   parties, etc.
   - Youth movements
   - Mass unrest and political movements under conditions of rapid social
   change
   - Data on national integration, particularly in "plural" societies; the
   integration of ethnic, racial and religious minorities; the merging or
   splitting of present political units
   - International propaganda output
   - Peasant attitudes and behavior
   - International armament expenditures and trends

(It is unclear is Levine is listing these himself or quoting from the
proposal; without seeing a copy we cannot verify)

My understanding is that the project ran for ~5 years. The only documentary
evidence for it that I've been able to find online is the following report,
presumably written near the end of the project:

http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=AD0783626

Without some revelation from people on this list, I don't see enough
evidence to overturn the narrative clearly expounded by Waldrop,
Weinberger, and others that the ARPA computing community as established by
Licklider was a kind of lucky moment where lots of funds could be spent on
risky/open projects and that most of the rest of ARPA had little idea what
these guys were even doing, let alone others within the Pentagon.

On Sat, Apr 14, 2018 at 7:15 AM, Dave Walden <dave.walden.family at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Jack,
>
> My memory is that CCA (Computer Corporation of America -- Tom Merrill's
> company) did the DataComputer.  They might also have been at 545 Tech
> Square at the time but I am unsure of that.  IBM (the "Cambridge
> Scientific" lab?) was also there (as you note) and did other important
> things (my memory is vague, so I am uncertain of the following things
> ... the beginning of CP/CMS operating system, Script text processing
> system, creation of GML, I think they may also have had the other CTSS
> system, etc.) but I don't remember this group being connected to the
> ARPANET (IBM was pushing SNA -- proprietary networking).
>
> Dave
>
> On 4/14/2018 3:36 AM, Jack Haverty wrote:
> > Lick's group was part of Project MAC, aka LCS (Laboratory for Computer
> > Science),  It occupied part of 545 Technology Square, along with the MIT
> > AI Lab.  LCS had many subgroups.  In addition, the building complex
> > housed an IBM research group (that did the DataComputer, which was
> > attached to the ARPANET), and even a stealth office of the CIA (really -
> > but that's another story), which I accidentally "outed" one day while
> > trying to run computer cables up to the roof through the elevator shaft.
> >   Oops.
> >
>
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-- 
Eric
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