Computer Science and the Role of Government in Creating the Internet: ARPA/IPTO (1962-1986) Creating the Needed Interface by Ronda Hauben rh120@columbia.edu Part I Mr. McCormack. The important thing about a man in science is that he must have demonstrated ability to think originally, isn't that right. Mr. Marchetti. Yes Mr. McCormack. They are discovering things and looking ahead maybe 10 and 20 years sometimes. Mr. Marchetti. That is right [Riehlman Comm. hearing, pg. 249] During the war there developed a partnership between military men and scientific men. It was not brought about automatically; it is not a thing that occurs readily. These men come from different backgrounds, and it is hard for each group to understand the other....I can say to you that the morale of the scientists today as I meet them is so low, so low that while they will not refuse to serve, they will serve without enthusiasm and without fruitful inspiration. [Vannevar Bush, Riehlman Comm hearing 1954, pg. 454-455] ARPA is considered throughout the field as being the main supporter and perhaps the most important force in the course of U.S. and probably world history in the computer....the country never would have grown in the computer field the way it did if it hadn't been for ARPA." [Ibid., pg. X-22. Discussion with Dr. L. Roberts, April 23, 1974] 1. Preface This paper is a beginning effort to explore the role of the U.S. government in building the Internet. The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) created within the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is the early and most significant institutional form of this role. Working within this institution, scientists provided leadership in creating the new field of computer science and in giving birth to the Internet. Understanding the role of government in the creation and development of the Internet involves exploring the interface between the computer scientists working as part of IPTO and the military officers in the DOD. More fundamentally, this interface is actually an interface between the computer science community and the U.S. government. During much of its 25 year existence, from 1962-1986, the Information Processing Techniques Office funded and provided leadership, not only for the creation of the new field of computer science, but also for a large number of significant accomplishments in this field. Among these accomplishments are the creation of time-sharing and interactive computing, of packet switching networking, VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration), AI (Artificial Intelligence), the ARPANET, and perhaps most sensationally, of the Internet. Also, under its direction and support, interactive computing and the Internet have spread into many aspects of our society and lives. And yet the Office of Information Processing Techniques was ended in 1986. This raises the question of how did it provide the leadership to make such accomplishments possible? And then, if it was successful in doing such important feats, why was it ended? Before the creation of ARPA, and IPTO, there was concern within the scientific community and in the U.S. government about how to fashion an appropriate peacetime institutional form within government to support basic scientific research. ARPA/IPTO succeeded in a significant way in providing such a form, but it also encountered problems that eventually ended its existence. This paper suggests that study of IPTO's birth, development and ending will be helpful in trying to determine what institutional form within the U.S. government is necessary to continue to provide leadership for computer science research and for the continued growth and development of the Internet. The development and problems of the National Science Foundation (NSF) are also a relevant research questions to be studied toward determining what form of institution is needed for the future. However, since such important developments in computer science were made under leadership from ARPA/IPTO, it is more important to explore how this happened. Future study is needed, however, to examine the extent to which the NSF contributed to this effort and the problems this agency encountered that prevented any greater contribution. To state the problem more simply, I am proposing that there is a need to study ARPA/IPTO, both its achievements and the problems it encounter, as it presents important experience toward determining how to design a U.S. government institution to support the continued development of basic research in computer science. This study is also important to provide an answer to the question of how to design a government institution to provide the needed continued oversight and support for scaling and other critical functions for the child of computer science and the IPTO, i.e. for the Internet. This paper is intended as a contribution. 2. Creating an Institutional Form in Government for Science During WWII, the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was created to bring scientists into the U.S. government to do research in support of the war effort. The OSRD was an independent agency within the Executive Branch of the U.S. government. The agency was situated so that the head of this agency, Vannevar Bush, could go directly to the President on issues involving scientists in the war effort. Commenting on the importance of this direct line of authority, Don K. Price in his book "Government and Science", (New York, 1954, pg. 45) explains that the purpose of such authority was not to have conversations with the President, "It was much more important to give him (Bush-ed) the leverage he needed in dealing with the vast network of administrative relationships on which the success of a government agency depends." What is the leverage Price is referring to? This is a question that is at the crux of the interface between government and science. It is crucial to examine the political placement of the OSRD if one is trying to understand the modern problem of placing computer scientists into the U.S. government structure. Price traces the role that scientists and scientific studies have played in the development of government institutional forms and functions from the earliest days of the U.S. Republic through the end of WWII. Such scientific contributions include the creation of the National Bureau of Standards, the Census Bureau, helping to create various kinds of legislation including anti trust, labor, and health and safety laws and the machinery within government to enforce them. Thus he is placing the issue of the creation of an appropriate institutional form within the context of how institutions connected with scientific functions have evolved within the U.S. government and how scientific regulation has been developed. Price documents how the interface of the scientific community and government is constantly evolving throughout the history of the U.S. Therefore there is a challenge to determine what the new institutional forms are that are needed and how to fashion them appropriately. Price refers to the creation of land grant colleges to provide for the development and spread of agricultural science as an example of a successful institutional form interfacing science and government to solve a significant problem. To win WWII, it was necessary to enlist the active participation of the scientific community in contributing technical and scientific knowledge to the war effort. The OSRD provided the institutional form to make the needed scientist- government interface. As the war was winding down, several in the scientific community and in government recognized the need to continue an appropriate scientist-government interface for peacetime purposes. They realized that once the wartime mobilization was over, the ability to involve civilian scientists in the U.S. government in general, and in working with the Department of Defense in particular, would become more difficult. With the devastation of Europe during the war, which country would assume leadership in science and technology, especially in basic research, became a burning question in the quest for postwar world leadership. The contest was between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Science and technology were thus to become much more important in post war America, and several in the scientific community realized the need to examine the wartime experience to see how the lessons from it could be applied to peacetime conditions. Writing during the early 1950s, Price proposes that the OSRD was fashioned in a particularly skillful way. Its structure provided the means for scientists to remain autonomous with respect to the military but to still be able to contribute to the war effort and cooperate with the Department of Defense. Similarly, in a hearing of the Subcommittee on Military Operations of the Committee on Government Operations of the U.S. House of Representatives, convened by Congressman R. Walter Riehlman from New York [hereafter Riehlman hearings], in 1954, John von Neumann, the computer pioneer, described the problem that civilian scientists working with the military presented. He explains ("Organization and Administration of the Military and Development Programs: Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations," House of Representatives, 83rd Congress, pg. 373-374) : There are all sorts of difficulties in marrying the civilian function of research and development with the military and those things deserve careful study in each case. Among the issues that Von Neumann was referring to were the differences in function and nature of the scientist and the military officer. While the scientist needed to maintain his independence and his ability to search for the new and underlying laws of nature, the military officer was trained to have an unusual respect for authority and tradition.(Ibid, pg. 255, pg 32). The Riehlman hearings were held to explore this clash of temperaments and to make recommendations for accommodating it in the institutional forms that were being proposed to bring scientists into postwar research work in government. Explaining the problem that had been previously encountered in trying to create a partnership between scientists and the military, Assistant Secretary of Defense Donald Quarles explains there were, "A lot of Military people...(who) have a very adequate understanding of technology but not in the sense of being scientists." (Ibid., pg 25) While the scientists, according to Quarles, resented that the military officer was "trying to regiment them too much in an area that he is not competent to dictate in." (Ibid.) Quarles explains that in doing basic research in science there is a need for "latitude," not "regimentation." But once particular applications are being developed, those in the military can participate to specify the requirements they have. Proposing his view of the problem, Congressman Frank Ikard observed (Ibid., pg 129-130) : [T]he very nature of the animal involved -- one is a man that is a nonconformist and a man who rebels against the accepted, or he would not be a scientist; he is searching new fields and explaining new avenues, and the military man is pretty much on the opposite side. It seems to me there could conceivably be just through the human element, considerable conflict between the two. Responding to him, Quarles agreed (Ibid., pg 30): If there were not breadth of vision in their problems and a very deliberate effort to get both sides to understand what it is, and to work it out, surely we would have the kind of conflict that you speak of. The hearings raise the institutional question (Ibid. pg 32): Does the military organization have a research and development program to create conditions which retard the work of scientists or make it difficult to retain the services of highly qualified civilian scientific and technical personnel? Also testifying was J.W. Marchetti, who had been employed as a civilian scientist administering a laboratory that was under military control. He describes how in fact the conditions he had worked in within the U.S. government did retard scientific work and deter qualified civilian scientists from working with government. He explains (Ibid.): If the scientific laboratory is healthy it is ever reaching for something new and to officers trained in military organization this seems chaotic. They feel it is their duty to put the house in order. When they do, they stifle the enterprise and effectively kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Price also considers how the diversity in the roles and temperaments of these two different kinds of professionals could be accommodated. He describes how the design of the OSRD was based on the model of the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Science (NAS). This design provided scientists with support for the independence they need to pursue their scientific activity. Price proposes that with scientists working as part of government for the U.S. military, there must be recognition of the pressures on these scientists. Along with the difference between role and function of the scientist and the military officer, there are also institutional pressures that must be taken into account when fashioning an institutional form within government. In particular, the pressure that the OSRD had to recognize was the pressure from the different branches of the military services (hereafter Services) to maintain and extend their jurisdictional boundaries and powers. Those scientists who were to work in such a situation needed a means of protection from becoming the victim of the fierce competition among the Services. Believing that this problem had been solved in the creation of the OSRD, Price describes the mechanism of this solution. Giving the OSRD a direct line of authority to the President, it had the Presidential support necessary for Bush to protect the independence of the scientific community working with government. Furthermore, the political protection provided by the OSRD made it possible for the decisions within the OSRD to be made on the basis of scientific rather than political criteria. In his book, "Science and the Navy", Harvey Sapolsky describes a confrontation between Bush and Rear Admiral Harold G. Bowen of the Navy. Bowen had rejected a proposal for the NRC to work with the Navy. Bush believed that this action had to be treated seriously. Bowen was penalized and a notation put into his file. Also Bush penalized the Navy in an upcoming contract award, and assigned the role of building the atom bomb to the Army rather than the Navy. Bush later explained that the reason was that the Navy had not demonstrated "sufficient respect for and an ability to work with civilian scientists." (Sapolsky, pgs 15-18) 3. Basic Research in the Post War Period Toward the end of WWII, there were several proposals about how to utilize the important forces of domestic scientific research and development to serve postwar society. One of the most influential was the report presented at the request of President Roosevelt by Vannevar Bush "Science: The Endless Frontier". This report was the result of reports Bush gathered from several committees, each composed of prominent scientists. Bush's report describes the need for scientific research in postwar America. Before the war, European countries had provided the basic research, Bush explains, upon which many of the wartime inventions and new scientific applications had been built. Also much of the basic research that had been done before the war had been used to provide the basis for the new wartime technologies and scientific discoveries that made it possible to win the war. The end of the war brought the need to replenish the pipeline of basic research. Bush's report argues why the U.S. government would need to provide funds for a substantial increase in basic research in science and technology after the war was over (Bush, pg 5): New products and processes are not born full-grown. They are founded on new principles and new conceptions which in turn result from basic scientific research. Bush believes that the U.S. government has the authority to support such research under its constitutional duty to provide for the general welfare and the security of its citizens (Ibid. pg 8): Advances in science when put to practical use mean more jobs, higher wages, shorter hours, more abundant crops, more leisure for recreation, for study, for learning how to live without the deadening drudgery which has been the burden of the common man for ages past. Advances in science will also bring higher standards of living, will lead to the prevention or the cure of diseases...and assure means of defense against aggression. Bush advocates that support for basic research go to the universities as that is the environment he felt where it was most likely that the independent nature of basic research could be supported. For in order to be fruitful, Bush's report explains, "scientific research must be free -- free from the influence of pressure groups, free from the necessity of producing immediate practical results, free from dictation by any central board." (Bush2, pg. 78) The report warns that this task can not be left to researchers working within government even though scientists working with agencies of government might not be as concerned with immediate practical ends as those working for industry. Nevertheless, he asks, "are they as free to explore any natural phenomena, without regard to possible economic applications as are the educational and private research institutions?" (Bush, pg 9) His answer was that they weren't. Bush explains that scientists working with government are under pressure to produce applications aimed toward the purposes of the government agency employing them, and thus they do not have the needed support to pursue basic research. Discussing why it was not possible to rely on industry to do basic research, Bush writes: "Industry, is generally inhibited by preconceived goals, by its own clearly defined standards, and by the constant pressure of commercial necessity." (Bush2, pg 17) He advises against funding for university research if the research was under contract with industry, and especially "if the resulting discoveries were to become the exclusive property of the industrial donor." (Ibid.) Bush's conclusions were as follows: 1. Support for basic research was fundamental and this support needed to be from government. 2. This required supporting researchers as opposed to funding individual projects. 3. An environment of support for free enquiry was needed for basic research to flourish. 4. Since the university environment was likely to be the place where free enquiry could thrive, university researchers had to be supported. 5. There was a need to support the development of researchers. This required supporting students to study science regardless of their background and financial resources. 6. Scholarships and fellowships were necessary for those who showed promise in science and technology. 7. This required funding a large number of students so they could support each other's development and out of that leadership could develop. 8. Inside of government those scientists doing research would be under pressure to provide applications for government and thus could not be relied upon to do the kind of research that produces the new concepts and new methodologies that resulted from basic research. That is why a government structure was needed to support researchers in Universities. 9. Scientific research should be centralized in one civilian agency including the basic research needed by the Department of Defense, but that weapons research should be done by the Services, not by this agency. 10. Industry is under pressure to be product oriented and thus cannot be expected to support basic research. 4. The Battle to Implement Bush's Report Bush's report proposed that a scientific foundation, the National Research Foundation, be set up. Roosevelt died, however, and Bush's report ran into political opposition in Congress. It wasn't funded and several years later a competing report led to the creation of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fill some of the needs Bush had outlined, but not the requirement to support basic research. Also the funds for the NSF were quickly reduced by Congress, demonstrating the difficulty the NSF would have getting funds from Congress to provide the needed program in scientific research or in scholarships to train future scientific leadership. Shortly after Roosevelt died, however, a research agency was created within the Navy, called the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Though originally formed with a different purpose in mind, this agency took up the task of funding basic research in science and technology in a number of U.S. universities. Describing how this agency gave its grants out, Sapolsky writes (pg 7): For a few years, in the late 1940s, ONR functioned as the federal government's only general science agency. Sapolsky documents the ONR's support for the independence of scientists and scientific inquiry. Among the innovations of the ONR was the appointment of scientists as program managers who would choose the projects and the scientists they funded [Sapolsky, pg 7.]: ONR's unique contribution to the management of research, rarely appreciated within the Navy, was its ability to attract program specialists who did what no management system has been able to do -- bridge the large gap that exists between the worlds of the Navy and of academic science. However, several vocal spokespeople for the scientific community continued to challenge what they believed to be an inadequacy of support for basic research in science and technology in the U.S. There were investigations into the reasons that the Services were reluctant to support modern technological and scientific research. Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner who played an important role in the Lincoln Project Study funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, on this issue. J.C.R. Licklider, who would later be the first head of a new basic research office for computer science, was part of this study. The study criticized the Air Force for its policy of relying on strategic bombing as a defensive strategy. The Lincoln Project Study recommended that there was a need for an effective system of air defense based on support for research and technological breakthroughs (Price, pg 142). However, the Air Force rejected this recommendation. Despite his concern that he would be penalized by the Air Force for public criticism of their policy, Berkner continued to challenge their decision. Presenting his views in a speech at the University of Minnesota, he criticized the plan for strategic bombing and argued instead for an effective system of air defense based on technological breakthroughs. In various committee hearings before the U.S. Congress, like the Riehlman Committee hearings (June 1954), the Symington Air Power Hearings in June 1956 and in a report by the Rand Corporation, there were analyses of the nature and reasons for the technical and scientific weakness of U.S. research and development. An article written by James Killian of MIT was quoted at a Riehlman Committee hearing as a warning of the (Barber, pg. I- 24): tendency for the military to keep R and D at arm's length and to ignore it in defense planning, largely because they failed to understand it. Killian proposed the need for a serious basic research program supported by the U.S. government: I'm talking about research that in general is directed toward new concepts, new principles, rather than producing a piece of hardware. It is the yet unanticipated unconceived discoveries which may determine our military strength tomorrow.... Those interested in the problem of scientific research for military developments were also wary of the possible loss of scientific independence by the science community. They were wary of the "hazards in the 'closed politics' of scientific advice not subject to political checks and balances," and were reluctant to become embroiled in a situation where they were responsible for upholding a "party line". [Barber, pg I-22, See also C.P. Snow's talk at MIT in 1961, described in Greenberger, pg 3-13] 5. Soviet Union Launches Sputnik On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. And in May 1958, Sputnik III was launched, weighing 7000 pounds. To the scientific community concerned with these events, this situation "demonstrated that the Soviet Union had both the booster and the guidance capability to send ICBM's to the U.S." [Barber, pg. I-22] Advocates for scientific research like MIT's Killian utilized this opportunity to stress that the only way to counter the danger posed to national security was to develop a program of support for basic research in science and technology. In a speech given on February 23, 1959 to the Economic Club of Detroit, Killian warned [Barber, pg. I-26]: The future of the United States, to an extraordinary degree, is in the hands of those who probe the mysteries of the atom, the cell and the stars. Especially is this true of that tiny part of our creative effort which we inadequately term basic research....Such a serious inbalance is a hazard to the economy, the safety, and the health of this country. If we are to continue to maintain an overall defense strength second to none, if we are to prevent Sputnik surprises in the future, we must augment this effort. The Soviet Union's apparent technological superiority created a serious concern at the highest levels of the U.S. government. A report prepared under Henry Kissinger's direction was published on January 6, 1958, stating [Ibid.]: Mankind...is faced by two somber threats: the Communist thrust to achieve world domination that seeks to exploit all dissatisfactions and to magnify all tensions; and the new weapons technology capable of obliterating civilization....A new technology of unprecedented power and destructiveness has placed all nations of the world in dire peril.... Even Eisenhower himself went on public record, a month after the Sputnik launch, in a radio broadcast, exclaiming [Barber, pg I-19]: The world will witness future discoveries even more startling than that of nuclear fission. The question is: Will we be the ones to make them? And Nelson Rockefeller, special assistant to Eisenhower, delivered a report by Deputy Secretary of Defense Charles Quarles to the National Security Council (NSC), explaining [Barber, pg. I-20]: I am impressed by the costly consequences of allowing the Russian initiative to out run ours through an achievement that will symbolize scientific and technological advancement to people everywhere. The stake of prestige that is involved makes this a race that we cannot afford to lose. The report recognized that people around the world respected science and technology and looked to it as the promise of a better life. The postwar challenge of whether the U.S. or the Soviet Union would replace Europe for world leadership in science and technology became an urgent problem requiring some form of immediate action. The barriers within the U.S. government to support for basic research in science and to the development of technology had to be overcome if the U.S. government didn't want to cede eminence as the leader in science and technology to the Soviet Union. 6. U.S. Government Begins Measures to Meet Challenge Outwardly, this problem was met with a calm veneer in the White House, but in reality there was an urgent atmosphere that required immediate steps be taken. Those steps soon included the appointment of a science advisor to the President, James R. Killian Jr., and the appointment of a Presidential Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). Also within the U.S. Department of Defense, a new agency was set up to fund and support basic research. The new agency was called the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The original proposed research had to do with research in science and technology related to space. 7. ARPA Is Created Discussing the vested interests within the DOD, Price presents the competition between the Services as a problem to be solved. Price proposes that "the department of defense would be stronger if it contained a small, flexible and enterprising experimental organization entirely independent of the military services and reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense." (Ibid.) Also he gives as a model the "Few Quick" agency that was a subdivision of the OSRD and made it possible to have scientists turning out experimental models of inventions which demonstrated novel or unconventional ideas. Price suggests that this political problem in the Services during the postwar period was the result of the fact that "they are forced to compete for their respective `roles and missions' because Congress has not been willing to delegate authority to determine roles and missions to the responsible civilian executives or to permit a civilian executive to develop the stability or the staff necessary to do the job." (Price, pg 155) A similar proposal for a design of an agency within the Department of Defense was suggested by Von Neumann at the Riehlman hearings. Congressman Baldwin asks Von Neumann (Riehlman, pg 373): There is another possibility here which might exist. I understand that you are speaking of a civilian organization outside of the military department, but you want it to be understood that there might be a research and development organization within the Department of Defense, but still on civilian lines, in which the military support functions are distinct and separate from the organization itself. Von Neumann responds: Very much so, and I argued against complete separation. That is, separation to the degree to which the OSRD was separated or the degree to which the British Ministry of Supply is separate. In the plan to create ARPA, an institutional structure was designed to prevent its being taken over by vested interests. There was also an effort to create an agency that would be able to support basic research in science and technology. That is why when ARPA was created in early 1958, its design provided for it to be directly under the Secretary of Defense to protect its autonomy. The impetus and the documents creating ARPA are instructive. There was recognition that there were conservative forces acting within the military that would impede the development of new technology and new scientific concepts and methods. This included competition among the different branches of the Services for new powers and the expansion of their jurisdictional boundaries which might become a political battleground as a result of new developments or weaponry. The authorization to create ARPA was contained within Public Law 85-325 of February 12, 1958. Included in the purpose of the Act was to confer authority on the Secretary of Defense, to (Barber, Figure II-1): engage in such advanced projects essential to the Defense Department's responsibilities in the field of basic and applied research and development.... The directive of February 7, 1958 establishing ARPA stated (Barber, Figure II-2): The purpose of this directive is to provide within the Department of Defense an agency for the direction and performance of certain advanced research and development projects....The Director of Advanced Projects shall report to the Secretary of Defense. The evolving design for ARPA included the following: That the director could be a civilian scientist. That the director report directly to the Secretary of Defense. That the budget be assigned directly by the Director and in direct contact with the Secretary of Defense. That program managers could be scientists. That there be an expedited contract signing and implementation process. As could be expected, the Services vigorously objected. Their objection brought about a change in ARPA's organizational structure. A Defense Director of Research and Engineering (DDR&E) was appointed below the Secretary of Defense and the head of ARPA reported instead to the DDR&E. By 1960 most of the space related research had been moved out of ARPA into a civilian agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In its place were programs involving Ballistic Missile Systems (BMS), like the Defender Program, and radar development. There was also a recognition that the computer was important, but there had been difficulty understanding how to realize its potential. 8. Problems with Computers in DOD Les Earnest describes the problems he observed in how the DOD tried to utilize computers during this early postwar period. He writes [Community Memory Mailing List, April 2, 1999] : I also spent some time working on Air Force intelligence systems. One that was built at Strategic Air Command (SAC) Headquarters collected information world-wide and compiled it into a database on a batch processing computer, which could then be queried. Trouble was, by the time the data was key-punched, error-checked, corrected, error-checked again and inserted into the data base it was about three days old. However, much of this data had a useful life of only a few hours. Not surprisingly, the intelligence officers continued to use paper and grease-pencil displays backed up by enlisted personnel with filing cabinets full of information and with desk calculators. They queried the computer only when directed to do so. In order to ensure that the multi-million dollar computer system was adequately utilized, the General in charge at Strategic Air Command Headquarters directed that each watch officer would submit at least two queries to the computer staff on each shift. After several months, we checked the logs and found that the number of queries had been exactly twice the number of intervening shifts, no more. Earnest explains why computers couldn't just be substituted for the way things were done in the past, but required a significant change in how things would be done. He writes (Ibid.): A few months before the Hot Springs (1962-ed) conference I was loaned to the Central Intelligence Agency to join a team working on a year-long project at their headquarters whose goal was to "integrate" a number of intelligence files. After one month I concluded that the stated goal was impossible -- you can't take disparate files collected by various people with different and unknown selection and screening criteria and with different coding standards, then crunch them all together in a computer and come up with an integrated data base. I wrote a report saying that it would be necessary to first find out how the information was collected, then develop uniform standards that would encompass all the types of information that were being gathered. After that it would be possible to begin building a new, integrated database, but the historical files would have to remain separate. The head of my group said "Interesting idea, but it is not in our charter." Just when I eventually left the project, he remarked, "You know, you were right." A short time later they terminated the group. As I recall, this politically-savvy leader later became the head of CIA. Does that adequately explain why I was frustrated? Similarly, the Defender Program needed the capability to have real time computing. Explaining the nature of the computer systems needed, Herbert York, appointed Director of Defense Research and Engineering in January 1959, wrote (Barber, pg. III-55-56): One of the next things we have to try to do is to design a computer system which is a big set of electronic hardware that does mathematics at a faster rate than it can be done any other way. We have to design some kind of a system that will notice that some of these are slowing down faster than others and automatically tell us that they are not the warhead. That means that there has to be designed a big piece of what is referred to as a logical machinery. In principle, if you have all of this data, afterward, in the next couple of weeks, you could look it over and decide which is what, but all of it has to be done in that one minute, and no human reaction could be fast enough. All of this has to be done by a machine which is designed, not only to observe these things and observe all of the tracks that they are making, and so on, but a machine which can actually decide that some of them are going too slow and are not the warhead, and therefore, shoot at this other one over here. 9. A New Form of Computing is Being Explored During this period, there was research work going on in the Cambridge community trying to create a new form of computing, a form of interactive computing. Rejecting the batch processing form of companies like IBM, which was a leader in the computer industry and also a defense contractor supplying computers used by the DOD, scientists and engineers in the Cambridge community were excited by the prospect of a new form of computer architecture that computer scientist John McCarthy had proposed, called time- sharing. The new concept made it possible for several individuals to interact with a computer directly, and at the same time, effectively sharing the CPU time. This was as opposed to the batch processing method used in computers made by IBM and others in the computer industry where the computer was kept running continuously by an operator, but the user was not able to interact with the computer. Instead an individual would put a program on punch cards, bring the cards to a computer center and leave it there to be run by the operator. The person would return later in the day or days later to get a printout of the program. There were those in the Cambridge computer science community who recognized the need then and in the future for humans to be able to increasingly interact with the computer (Interview with Licklider, Charles Babbage Institute) : (...)the community here in Cambridge and Boston -- was thinking of computing in a way essentially quite different, maybe even new, from people in other parts of the academic community...certainly different from people in industry. In this context, J.C.R. Licklider, a psychologist, did a study of the human computer relationship and determined that for the present and the future it was crucial to develop a rapport, a symbiotic relationship between the human and the computer. He wrote a paper about a study he did of his own research, examining his own actions and found that much of his time was spent doing tasks to get him in a position to think, with only a small percentage of his time being used to actually think about the problems of his research. He felt that a computer could do many of the tasks he was doing and that there was a need to have a partnership between the human and the computer to facilitate scientific thinking. Also he outlined the kinds of computer research needed to make the new form of computing possible. Published in 1960, his paper "Human Computer Symbiosis" became a major part of the program for basic research in computer science in the U.S. throughout the 1960s. In 1961 there was a series of lectures at MIT about the future of the computer. One of the lectures was by John McCarthy, the young MIT Professor who described how time-sharing would make it possible for several people to utilize a computer at the same time and to be able to interact with the computer directly. At the final lecture, John Pierce, a researcher at Bell Labs, described how there were two streams in computer science research. He proposed the importance of the human-computer rapport as the crucial research topic. The other stream was how the computer could automate intelligent activity. Pierce proposed that at the current state of computer development, the first was the primary research task. This area of research required exploring the human-computer relationship as its prime function. Its objective was to identify which tasks in the relationship were most appropriate for each of the participants. J.C.R. Licklider was also a participant in this lecture series. He contributed to the discussion by supporting McCarthy's observation that computers for the first time give us the tools to "come to grips in a serious ways with intellectual processes. We have never had them before," he adds, "and we have made more progress since getting them than in decades past, despite the flowering of mathematics in the early part of the century." [Greenberger, pg 319] His vision was that the human and the computer would function together in a partnership which would greatly enhance human intellectual capacity. Vannevar Bush was the moderator at this lecture. Others who contributed included Claude Shannon, Walter Rosenblith, and Marvin Minsky. 10. J.C.R. Licklider Invited to ARPA Shortly after this lecture, J.C.R. Licklider was invited to join ARPA as the director of two newly created offices, the Command and Control office and the Behavioral Science Office. Describing Licklider's invitation to join ARPA, Jack Ruina, the head of ARPA during the 1961-1963 period, writes that he realized the need for a new form of computing, a form of computing that would be different from number crunching and he invited Licklider who had a vision of developing this form of computing, to join ARPA. The description of the Command and Control program read [Barber, V-49]: CCR was assigned to ARPA in June 1961. It's primary purpose is to support research on the conceptual aspects of command and control and to provide a better understanding of organizational, informational, and man-machine relationships. However, Ruina was not happy with the Command and Control conception of computing. He writes [Ruina Interview, Babbage Institute]: It was not my idea that ARPA should be working with computers, but somehow when the idea came to me from the staff (I was a director and it was a large staff), saying, well why don't we start a program along these line, I was impressed....To my mind, the issue at the time was how to explore the potential power that was growing in hardware for applications other than straight number crunching. Ruina realized that there was an important potential in the computer but that it wasn't understood [Ruina, May 9, 1975, pg V- 52]: And so in many applications it was rather clear that (...) the hardware was there but what to do with it clearly was lacking --- what to do with this tremendous power. So people came around and talked about this whole question of the organization and use of computers for other than purely numerical scientific calculations. It impressed me as being something that was important. Licklider confirms Ruina's interest in the potential power of the computer. He writes that he was invited to create new uses of the computer "different from number crunching." Licklider was interested in exploring how to create the new form of computing that would enable those using computers to interact with them [Barber, quoting Licklider, V-51] There was the belief in the heads of a number of people -- a small number -- that people could really become very much more effective in their thinking and decision making if they had the support of a computer system, good displays and so forth, good data bases, computation at your command. It was kind of an image that we were working toward the realization of....It really wasn't a command and control research program. It was an interactive computing program. And my belief was, and still is, you can't really do command and control outside the framework of such a thing....Of course, that wasn't believed by people in the command and control field. He proposed that the problems that had been identified under the category of "Command and Control" were really problems that would be solved by research to develop "interactive computing" [Licklider Interview, Charles Babbage Institute]: [The]...problems of command and control were essentially problems of man computer interaction....Every time I had the chance to talk, I said the mission is interactive computing....But I had pretty well wrapped up in me all of the topics that it would take to put interactive computing together. I deliberately talked about the intergalactic network, but deliberately did not try to do anything about netting them together because it was becoming very difficult just to get them to run. This was a time at ARPA when there was the recognition and support for basic research. Licklider was starting a new area of scientific research at ARPA. Licklider describes how he had two years to demonstrate progress in this new form of computing. In a way consistent with what Vannevar Bush had proposed, Licklider proceeded to fund university researchers encouraging them to develop programs. Licklider funded Robert Fano at MIT to develop what came to be known as Project MAC. He funded a University of California Berkeley program in time sharing because he felt the elements were there to make the research fruitful. He funded John McCarthy at Stanford University and Marvin Minsky at MIT to develop a research program in artificial intelligence (AI) and he funded Herb Simon and Alan Newell at CMU in their AI studies. Licklider's vision for the development of computer research included the goal of making it possible for researchers and diverse machines with diverse operating systems to collaborate and share their problems and to find what questions their research had in common. Thus they would be able to identify the generic issues to be considered in computer science rather than being bogged down in the particularities of their individual software or hardware. But to do such study, a new kind of computer and human communication was needed, and research in computer networking and packet switching would need to be supported. Discussing Licklider's vision, Ruina says the need to understand the computer as a communication device was at the essence of Licklider's basic research program, and that Licklider's work at ARPA and the identification of basic research in computer science led to changing the name of the ARPA office that Licklider headed from Command and Control to Information Processing Techniques Office. Ruina explains (Barber, V-53): The ARPA program had thus quickly developed from an expedient solution to an embarrassing Departmental problem involving a specific piece of hardware to a far-reaching basic research program in advanced computer technology in many ways similar and complementary to the materials science program. By the beginning of 1964 this change was reflected in renaming the office Information Processing Techniques, a title that continued into the 1970s. In a similar way, Licklider compliments the heads of ARPA during his first turn there. He writes: "I was also fortunate in that my two immediate superiors in the chain of command, Ruina and Sproull, did me the great favor of listening intently long enough to decide that they were fundamentally in support of what was going on. After that they spent little time heckling me. I thought of both of them as absolutely ideal bosses in providing support beyond what I would have been strong enough to supply had I been in their shoes. I was very happy with both of them." (Bartee, p. 222) 11. Computer Science As Exploring Human-Computer Interaction In this context, it is important to understand that there was no field of computer science at the time that Licklider went to join ARPA. But there was a notion of computer science in the air at the time. Licklider's research led him to want to understand the theoretical underpinnings of human communication. And he felt the computer would be helpful. Others like Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener were part of the scientific community that Licklider had found very stimulating and instructive during the late 1940s and 1950s in the Cambridge area. (See for example "Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet", Los Alamitos, pg. 76-95) As a graduate student under Vannevar Bush, Claude Shannon studied the "laws underlying the communication of messages in man-made systems." An MIT faculty member, a colleague of Bush, Norbert Wiener had maintained that there were a set of common laws of signals in humans and machines. Combining these questions, research in computer science in the 1960s could be formulated as exploring the laws of communication in machines (i.e. computers) and humans and the rapport between them. A research program to create interactive computing therefore is a program exploring the relationship between the human and the computer and their interaction. (See for example Howard Rheingold, "Tools for Thought", New York, 1985, pgs. 115-151.) Thus the research framework for computer science as outlined by these scientists concerned the laws of communication in humans and computers and their interrelationship. And the methodology was similar to that of the early Royal Society scientists in Great Britain; involve oneself directly experimenting with the development of the new idea or technology. 12. Creating a New Field and Community of Computer Scientists While at ARPA/IPTO Licklider worked to create a community of the researchers he supported. He describes how he would encourage the different researchers to visit each other, and to gather at computer society meetings. "We would get our gang together," he explains, "and there would be lots of discussion, and we would stay up late at night, and maybe drink a little alcohol and such." [Interview, Babbage Institute, pg. 28] Licklider's aim was to identify the bright people he could find who were interested in the research area and give those people support. "I was just deliberately trying to get the best people I could find, those who were interested in this area, into it." [Licklider Interview, pg. 33] In summing up what he felt the unique nature of ARPA/IPTO was, Licklider stressed the emphasis on "good" people, as opposed to specific projects. "I think the main thing ARPA had is a series of good people running an office and a fantastic community." [Ibid.] From his efforts to encourage interaction among those who were part of the computer science community supported by ARPA/IPTO, Licklider noted that the interactions between people helped them to organize themselves into a community, and then into a field. He explains [Ibid.] It was more than just a collection of bright people working in the field. It was a thing that organized itself a little bit into a community, so that there was some competition and some cooperation, and it resulted in the emergence of a field. Professor Alan Newell describing Licklider's contribution to computer science (Newell Interview, pg 102): I believe the guiding principle (IPTO) started out to be the creation of computer science, called information processing, not computer science. That Lick saw clearly the whole development of this field and set out to do that with the standard justification of the 1960s that out of that would grow good things, really good things for the country and the military. Those did not have to be separated in those days. When Licklider left ARPA/IPTO in 1964 (He planned to stay for one year, but remained for eighteen months.), he chose Ivan Sutherland to replace him. Though only 26 years old when he took over the directorship of ARPA/IPTO from Licklider, Sutherland had been a student of Shannon and was already recognized for his forefronts work in computer graphics. The ARPA process provided for a director to choose his replacements. When Sutherland left, he chose Robert Taylor, a psychologist like Licklider. Taylor brought Larry Roberts and he began funding the ARPANET packet switching research which set the foundation for the Internet. 13. Licklider Returns to ARPA In January 1974, Licklider returned to ARPA to replace Larry Roberts who had left at the end of September, 1973 to join Telenet, a newly formed commercial packet switching company. Describing the changed environment at ARPA when he arrived for this second turn, Licklider notes the increased pressures. He writes: "The second time that I was director of IPTO there was really much less opportunity to initiate things....At that time Lukasik (the director at ARPA in 1974-ed) had a fixed idea that a proposal is not a proposal unless its got milestones. I think that he believed that the more milestones, the better the proposal. This led to a cause celebre. There was a proposal from Stanford which was great from an ideational point of view but did not comply with the needs and wishes of DARPA at that time. That turned out to be a slightly embarrassing situation for all concerned. Milestones had to be written into the proposal and it was completely restructured."(Bartee, p. 225) Commenting on the problem of setting milestones for basic research contracts, Les Earnest explains that "there's no way to schedule discoveries."(Personal communication, June 10, 1999) During his second turn at ARPA/IPTO, Licklider found the emphasis on relevance of the research and on product development rather than basic research. Licklider proposed to set up a research program to explore management information science but the program didn't get approved for funding in the changed climate with Congress. (Interview with Robert Kahn, pg 29) Lukasik's successor, Dr. George H. Heilmeier, was appointed in January 1975. Heilmeier continued the change from the emphasis on basic research to more product oriented research that had begun during Lukasik's directorship. He put pressure on Licklider to justify the relevance of the AI research to the Department of Defense. Writing about this period, Licklider sent an email to the researchers he was supporting in 1975 saying (Licklider, "Easter Message," 2 Apr. 1975, email message): a development in ARPA that concerns me greatly -- and will, I think, also concern you. It is the continued and accelerating (as I perceive it) tendency on the part of the ARPA front office, to devalue basic research and the effort to build an advanced science/technology base in favor of applied research and development aimed at directly solving on an ad hoc basis some of the pressing problems of the DOD. Reviewing the difficulty he had with Heilmeier in an interview several years later, Licklider attributes the problem to the different way of looking at AI research that characterized his outlook and Heilmeier's. Licklider explains (Bartee, pg. 225- 226): George Heilmeier...was, it seemed to me, initially dead against AI but as I look back, I wish I had been more determined and more patient about educating him because he certainly was educatable. He's now a big promoter of AI at Texas Instruments, so I think that it may have been just a wrong perception on my part....Heilmeier was a consummate device physicist. He wanted to understand AI the way he understood liquid crystal displays, for instance (which I think he invented). I think it was impossible to understand AI at that time, or probably even now, in quite the same way, but if I had been able to give a physicist's presentation on it, it would have been better. The budget for basic research was cut during Heilmeier's directorship as the speech understanding project was terminated even though it had met the milestones that had been set for it. Licklider had had great hope for this project and was disappointed by its termination. He writes (Bartee, pg 227): Anyway, I was sorry not to see that project continue....I had, at one time, the hunch that speech understanding might be the first problem to be understood by a computer 'before' it was understood by people. It might turn out that so much has to be known about how sounds are represented and how they're filtered out of noise that the technology would be too complex, made of so many little pieces that it might require a kind of epistemological machine to solve it. And even the owner of the machine won't understand it. Describing the serious impact of cutting this speech program, M. Denicoff, who worked with the ONR and supported computer science research and IPTO programs in whatever ways he could, wrote (Bartee, pg. 280): The gun got pointed at speech, and George Heilmeier's concern, focusing on speech, was validation of the total AI approach. He was absolutely not sold. He asked the Jasons Committee to look into the field of AI and the politics (that I won't go into) were as bloody as they could ever be, culminating in his backing off of the larger goal of eliminating AI and settling for just one pound of flesh rather than the whole corpus....That was to get rid of the speech program. 14. The Change at ARPA Describing the changed environment, Alan Blue an administrative officer who worked at ARPA/IPTO over a period of time, explained (Interview Alan Blue, Babbage Institute): From the time I arrived until the time I left, it's objective changed, and the political and budget climate changed. These changes in IPTO were influenced by pressures from Congress and changes within the Department of Defense during the early 1970s which had led to a change of emphasis in ARPA. Congress introduced the Mansfield Amendment in 1969 and it was incorporated into the Defense Procurement Authorization Act of 1970. The Mansfield Amendment required that the DOD only support basic research with "a direct and apparent relationship to a specific military function or operation." (Barber VIII-19-20) The problem of this requirement was that it failed to recognize that basic research cannot be directed at any application or it is no longer basic research. Thus even though the language of the Mansfield Amendment was softened and even repealed in subsequent years, it had a harmful effect on the environment at ARPA. The emphasis shifted from basic research to pressure for application oriented research. (See discussion of the introduction of the Mansfield Amendment into 1970 Congressional Legislation in Barber and also changes in Department of Defense organization during this period, Barber VIII-19-27) Instead of Licklider getting to choose his replacement, as had been the practice, Heilmeier chose David Russell, a Colonel with whom he felt he would be able to work, as the new director of ARPA/IPTO. In ARPA/IPTO after Licklider left, concern with command and control was substituted back for interactive computing, university funding became less a part of the ARPA budget, and therefore there was less seeding of new leadership in computer science. During this period in the 1970's, the director of ARPA withdrew the autonomy the director of IPTO had been provided with to develop and support basic research programs. The autonomy was replaced by the pressure to create an application oriented program which would serve the particular needs of the Services. Efforts to start programs that would support basic research were discouraged. As Robert Kahn, head of IPTO from 1979-1985 remembers: "We started a program to develop some centers of excellence in computer science, and that program was phased out because of a decision to not work on centers but to work on specific ideas." (Kahn Interview, Babbage Institute, pg 42) Such pressures were accompanied by and also in response to the pressure on the DOD and ARPA by Congress and the President during this period in the 1970s. But they began a course of events that led to the ending of the IPTO in 1986, when its functions were merged into other offices at ARPA which were not focused on basic research in computer science. Blue, describing the change, noted: "It is just a question of doing undirected research at the start and supposedly totally relevant research at the end." [Blue Interview, Babbage Institute] Describing the change at ARPA/IPTO, Newell proposes that (Newell Interview): There have been two antagonistic participators....with the ARPA community...with the ARPA office. Newell explains that one group within ARPA saw the thrust to product oriented research as a tactic to get enough funds to also continue the basic research that was needed to advance computer science. Another set of people, however, he noted, were only interested in getting the good things that scientists could produce. Newell refers to ARPA Director Heilmeier saying that (Newell Interview, pg 102-103): "We have spent $35 million getting this started. Now, what have you done for me lately? Now it's time to deliver. Newell adds that this is the kind of statement that says, "You have had your vacation; now it's time. The palmy days are over." But he also describes those in the ARPA office (Ibid.): whose vision is really related to the original vision, although it shifts, because when Lick starts it there is no such computer science thing, and then, in the 1980s, it exists already. The issue is fundamentally one of this same long-term growth of information technology and the application stuff is all tactics. The environment forces you to do this. Like the justification for quoting that thing in the Congressional stuff, you wouldn't put it in there unless you had to, but that's what it takes to get the 250 million, so it's playing the game. And both these kinds of characters have existed throughout ARPA's later history. 15. Licklider's Contribution to Computing Describing Licklider's achievement at ARPA, Herzfeld, the ARPA director who followed Sproull in the mid 1960's, noted (Herzfeld Interview, Babbage Institute): They predicted the future of computing in America remarkably well, number one. I mean, they said "We clearly can do the following. It makes sense and we ought to do it, so let's go do it." And indeed, it happened. Networking, interactive graphics, time-sharing, and all these things that are now commonplace were in the air, and we saw to it that they would happen. Herzfeld describes lectures Licklider gave at ARPA about the new form of computing that he envisioned. Herzfeld says that Licklider's vision was [Ibid]: to make computing accessible, to make it more efficient to really use the powers of the computer that were available which he contended -- and I believe was quite right -- were used in a very inefficient manner [before Lick's work-ed] Continuing his description of Licklider's contribution to revolutionizing the field of computer science and the form of computing available to people, Herzfeld explains: The idea of networking many computers, the ideal that you would not know on which computer your problem was being solved, nor in which computer's databank did the data reside that you needed for solving your problem, that the whole system became transparent, and you just did what you wanted to do and all the rest was taken care of by the system. 16. ARPA/IPTO's Contribution to Computing and to an Organizational Form for a Government-Science Interface ARPA/IPTO continued to function for 11 years after Licklider left in 1975. Some of the most important research continued to be done and supported during this 1975-1986 period in IPTO's history. But the environment at ARPA/IPTO was changed in fundamental ways. In 1986, its functions were merged into other ARPA offices, including the Information Science and Technology Office (ISTO), the Tactical Technology Office (TTO) and Strategic Technology Office (STO). Research done at IPTO (1962-1986) made possible important new concepts and systems like the Internet. Licklider and other leaders of the computer science community like Ivan Sutherland, Robert Taylor, Larry Roberts and Bob Kahn who worked at ARPA/IPTO have left an important legacy and a foundation to be built on. During the course of IPTO's development, the principles of how to build a community of computer science researchers and have that community provide the continuous and needed input for those directing the IPTO office were identified and applied during a substantial period of time. The successful interface also provided for the support and protection of the IPTO research community so that it could contribute a number of important breakthroughs in computer science, such as interactive computing, time-sharing, packet switching, internetworking, AI, VLSI. (See Uncapher Interview, pg. 19-20) Even more importantly, a new institutional form was created and functioned effectively within government and connecting government with the computer science research community. That institutional form was the Information Processing Techniques Office. Describing the development of IPTO at ARPA, Newell proposes that it was something special and not necessarily reproduced at other ARPA offices. He attributes the uniqueness to the fact that top computer scientists like J.C.R. Licklider, Ivan Sutherland, Larry Roberts, and Robert Kahn headed the office during various periods in its existence. Newell compares other ARPA offices that he knew about with the IPTO leadership (Newell, pg 58): I did not see those (other-ed) offices as run by people who were viewed as first class scientists in their field. It's always been part of the IPTO mystic, which we failed on a couple of times, but with much notice among ourselves, that the guys who ran IPTO were ourselves. Newell explains that the IPTO scientists were "not bureaucrats" and that they were among the best in the field so that they were able to "argue with you at a level where it is absolutely even field."(Ibid.) Kahn adds that while a director while IPTO would not know all areas of computer science, good managers knew who to go to for advice. And that sometimes this would prove a superior way to deal with a problem as one was not limited by fixed ideas in an area of expertise. (Kahn Interview, pg. 25) Though there were other offices at ARPA like the Materials Science Office run by top scientists which also had distinguished achievements, Newell maintains that it is important to distinguish that "ARPA Style is not IPTO style. It's different...its history of working on missiles....So ARPA is not, my view is that ARPA is not characterized by IPTO." (Ibid.) 17. Changing the Institutional Forms Supporting Basic Research Newell also describes the tradition of the community choosing who would be the head of IPTO. When leading computer scientists were at the head of IPTO, they were able to provide respected leadership to the computer science community. Newell describes how the ending of IPTO meant the ending of such leadership. He writes (Ibid.) : So the idea that IPTO in the form of Larry Roberts and Bob Kahn would go and simply create a research project called the ARPANET (or the Internet -ed) and simply do it themselves, meaning not sit around and wait, (made-ed) perfectly good sense. No eyebrows were even raised about that, because they're just guys like us. Now my belief is that none of the other characters floating around in TTO (Tactical Technology Office-ed) and so forth, have that character now. Like, in fact, none of the people in ARPA have much of that character now. Also certain institutional forms were needed to support basic research, such as office directors getting support from the head of ARPA and the head of ARPA getting support from the Director of Defense Research and Engineering to be strong directors. And they in turn providing support to their program managers to make their decisions based on their best scientific instincts. These institutional forms were harder to continue when Congress was pressuring the DOD to be more product oriented in its research. The loss of ARPA's ability to continue to support IPTO and the basic research that was at the heart of its work has had consequences. Support for basic research maintains a pipeline of new concepts and principles. The pipeline is broken if the support for basic research is stopped. Also research questions that could be answered by the collaboration of the research community and the IPTO in the past no longer have that important resource. One such important and unanswered research question concerns problems of scaling the Internet. Robert Braden notes how it has been difficult to have this research problem treated seriously. He writes (RFC 1336): For some years now we have been painfully aware of the scaling problems of the Internet, and since 1982 have lived through a series of mini-disasters as various limits have been exceeded. We have been saying that "getting big" is probably a more urgent (and perhaps more difficult) research problem than "getting fast", but it seems difficult to persuade people of the importance of launching the kind of research program we think is necessary to learn how to deal with Internet growth. A weakness of the emphasis on product development and the pressure to transition the products to industry is that the products used are more likely to be improved old forms but not new forms or concepts. What is lost is the new that basic research brings forward. Robert Kahn, a designer of the ARPANET, a co-inventor of TCP/IP and one of founding fathers of the Internet, was ARPA/IPTO director during the 1979-1985 period. Commenting on the problem of focusing on product development and how that affects the basic research pipeline, he explains (Kahn Interview, pg 36) : It is one thing if you know you are going to buy this micro from Intel and plug it in here, and buy the memory chip and then hook them together. But it is another thing when you are going to create something here, and you are not quite sure what it is or when it is going to be done, or what it is going to look like, or how it interfaces to anything. In fact, the applications got changed by virtue of this process, because it forced them to look at what they could get their hands on now, versus what might show up in the future. This product-focused orientation leads to emphasis on the product currently conceived and fails to recognize how the new concept will bring forward new products that can't now be imagined. Vannevar Bush had warned against getting basic research tangled up with industry to avoid confounding basic research with product development. He wrote scientists should be wary of government constraints on their freedom of speech and intellectual pursuits, and that it was also crucial to be wary of the constraints from industry on scientists and scientific exploration. Bush proposed that government refuse to fund scientific work at a university if it had industry funding, especially if the results were to be proprietary. That warning should help to clarify the independence that scientific pursuits must have in order for the scientist to be able to discover the new and create that of which we can't yet conceive. These cautions were directed at the danger of focusing on product development as the orientation, as it is contrary to focusing on and supporting basic research. 18. Science-Government Partnership Bush also emphasized that since science creates the new, it is in battle against the old. Thus it brings forth many enemies. Science and scientists need to be protected from those enemies and that is a function for government. During Licklider's second term at ARPA/IPTO and after he left, there was a hard fight to protect computer science and scientists funded by ARPA. Also during this period important work was done in developing the Internet. This is an important period to study in the stormy partnership of government and computer science. 19. Conclusion Studying the birth, development and end of IPTO (1962-1986), its achievements and the problems it encountered, leads to the discovery that an important new institutional form was created by the development of the IPTO. A number of books and authors recognize the important achievements and computer science breakthroughs that occurred during or as a result of IPTO's period of existence. However, there seems to be no real recognition of the importance of the institutional form that made these achievements possible. An institutional form of significant merit was created and developed. And it is this institutional form that it is important to study and learn from, if one hopes to be able to build on the kinds of achievements made possible by IPTO. To build on the new developments that have come forth as a result of the work done by ARPA/IPTO, there is a need to explore whether an institutional form to support basic research in computer science that is modeled on IPTO needs to be created at the appropriate place within the U.S. government. In addition, an important achievement like the Internet needs such an institution within the U.S. government to provide the needed continued oversight and research work to make possible the scaling and continued development of the Internet. This requires understanding the lessons of how to create the appropriate interface between the scientific community of research computer scientists and the U.S. government structures that was achieved by IPTO. Lessons need to be drawn from both a study of the experience of those who directed IPTO and from those who were part of the IPTO research community. Lessons also can fruitfully be drawn from the experience of OSRD. To design such an institutional form, the problems that led to the ending of IPTO would have to be identified and the new government institution has to be created in a way that will make it possible to counter their influence. The lesson of both the OSRD and of IPTO is that in the interface between the scientific community and government, there needs to be protection for the autonomy of the scientists who are working with government so that they can pursue their research. Moreover basic research in computer science requires active support and direction in ways pioneered by J.C.R. Licklider and other directors of IPTO who were leaders in the scientific community. Some of these requirements were outlined by Vannevar Bush in the report "Science: the Endless Frontier". But there has also been additional experience to build on from the practice of those directing the IPTO. Some of these lessons include: Identifying good researchers and providing them with long term support. Making available ample scholarships for students and graduate students so that students from all economic strata will be able to enter the field if they have the talent and interest and there can be interaction and collaboration among a large enough number of students that leadership can emerge. Providing the means for collaboration and interaction among those in the computer science research community so that they can build on each others work, and recognize the generic as well as the particular of their research, Protection against pressure for product oriented results. There are other criteria that emerge out of a study of IPTO's evolution and the evolution of the research community it supported. However, the most important lesson is the need for an institution within government, staffed by the best computer scientists from the computer science community who learn from the community and who provide direction back to the community. The importance of the Internet in helping to make this possible is essential. Other agencies can collaborate in work with this new government institution, just as the ONR and the NSF supported the work in computer science done by IPTO. However, neither of these other two agencies were able to achieve the results that IPTO was able to achieve when it had the needed protection for its work. The continued development of the new science of computer science and of the child it has given birth to, the Internet, require the proper environment that will support their continued growth and flourishing. This suggests that serious consideration be given to the need for the creation of a new institution within the U.S. government that will build on the important legacy of Bush's report, the experience of the OSRD, but mostly on the experience of IPTO. Bibliography Richard J. Barber Associates, The Advanced Research Projects Agency:1958-1974, (Washington, D.C.: Barber Associates, 1975). Bartee, Thomas C. ed, Expert Systems and Artificial Intelligence, Indianapolis, 1988. Bush, Vannevar, Science the Endless Frontier, Washington, 1945. Bush2, version from online. Greenberger, Martin ed, Computers and the World of the Future, Cambridge, 1962. Hauben, Michael and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet Los Alamitos, 1997. J.C.R. Licklider, "Easter Message," 2 Apr. 1975, sent by e-mail, University archives, Hunt Library, CMU, quoted in Norberg and O'Neill, Transforming Computer Technology: Information Processing for the Pentagon, Baltimore, 1996, p. 48. Price, Don K., Government and Science, New York, 1954. Rheingold, Howard, Tools for Thought, New York, 1985. Sapolsky, Harvey, Science and the Navy, Princeton, 1990. U.S. House of Representatives, Reihlman Committee Hearing. "Organization and Administration of the Military Research and Development Programs", Hearings before a Subcommittee on Government Operations, 83 Congress, 2nd Session, Washington, D.C., 1954. Interviews conducted by Charles Babbage Institute with J.C.R. Licklider Jack Ruina Robert Kahn 22 March 1989 Alan Newell Alan G. Blue Larry Roberts Keith Uncapher Charles Herzfeld Community Memory Mailing List, April 2, 1999. Last Updated: January 23, 2000 part I http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/arpa_ipto.txt part II http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/basicresearch.txt part III http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/centers-excellence.txt part IV http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/computer-communications.txt