By James Zheng

The birth of the ARPANET is attributed to the start of the Cold War. The original purpose of ARPANET (the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was military. Computers were the intended intermediary for military communication. 

One of the most important figures in computer science, J.C.R. Licklider, formulated the earliest ideas of a global computer network in August 1962 in a series of memos discussing the “Intergalactic Computer Network” concept. These ideas contained almost everything that the Internet is today, including cloud computing.

When J.C.R. Licklider left office, he handed over the baton to Bob Taylor. Taylor graduated from the University of Texas, majoring in experimental psychology, and his adoration of Licklider reached a point of no return. 

One day in 1966, when Taylor walked into the Charles Herzfeld’s office, who was the Head of the ARPA, he proposed his idea of the Internet to Herzfeld. The blueprint of ARPANET was formally established.

Here came another guy who was a genius from MIT, Larry Roberts. Taylor put his whole expectation on Roberts, and Roberts rapidly constructed the fundamental structure for the ARPANET. In not even a year, Roberts put the goal forward: a multi-computer network with communication between computers.

But, the first two things Roberts and Taylor planned were 1) arrange at least sixteen work groups participating in this research and use at least thirty-five computers, and, 2) make these computers deliver messages to each other every day, and the amount of messages has to be at least five hundred thousand. 

With the objective out there, Roberts submitted another report called “the network which could share the information.” The report mainly advocated utilizing the four trending computer prototypes to set up the experimental nodes. These prototypes were Sigma-7, IBM360, PDP-10 and XDS-940, but the question came again: how do you enable these computers to communicate with each other?

At this moment, another savior arrived named Wesley Clark. Clark told Taylor and Roberts that they didn’t need to connect all the computers to the network. They just needed to install an intermediary computer between the host providing the resources and the network. The task of this intermediary computer only involved three things: to receive the remote information, to convert it to the format that could be used by the local computer, and to make sure computers are always connected. Do you feel you know this intermediary computer? You should; it was the predecessor of the router!

When the four computer prototypes finished setting up, the first ARPANET link was established between the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Stanford Research Institute at 22:30 on October 29, 1969.

“We set up a telephone connection between us and the guys at SRI,” researcher Kleinrock said in an interview: “We typed the L and we asked on the phone, ‘Do you see the L?’

’Yes, we see the L,’ came the response.

We typed the O, and we asked, ‘Do you see the O.’

‘Yes, we see the O.’

Then we typed the G, and the system crashed …

Yet a revolution had begun.”

By December 5, 1969, a 4-node network was connected by adding the University of Utah and the University of California at Santa Barbara. ARPANET grew rapidly. By 1981, the number of hosts had grown to 213, with a new host being added approximately every twenty days.

ARPANET became the technical core of what would become the Internet, and a primary tool in developing the technologies used today.

Source:

1960s Editor: Quintus Ni

By James Zheng

For Editor Hannah’s Conspiracy Week Theme, James speaks on common misconceptions.

There is plenty of common knowledge–whether taught by our parents or heard from media–that we generally choose to believe because it is widespread. But, sometimes, due to our lack of cognitive and discriminating capabilities, and the misleading information around us, we cannot identify if the information taught is factual.

Electronic devices are everywhere. The thing that most people are concerned about is the harm electronic devices bring them. Here comes the question of whether or not electronic devices, such as cell phones, computers, and even routers, have radiant effects on us. While I was thinking about this, an article written by Chinese blogger Dao Dao  gave me a simple answer.

Dao Dao paraphrases common misconceptions regarding our smart phones:

“Mobile phones have radiation, so do not put [them] near you when you are sleeping! The router has radiation, which should be unplugged when you are sleeping! After using the computer for a while, wash your face carefully!”

But, he counters with . . .

1. Radiation is only a form of energy, just like light is also a kind of radiation. All radiation does not have the same property as nuclear radiation.

2. What is harmful to the human body is radiation with higher energy than light, which is called ionizing radiation, such as gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet rays, etc. Nuclear radiation belongs to ionizing radiation. This is the radiation that may harm the human body.

3. The usual electromagnetic radiation emitted by electrical appliances is generally called electromagnetic waves. . . . Its energy is lower than the light. As long as the power is not big enough to burn something, you don’t have to worry about its harm. This has already been confirmed by WHO (World Health Organization).

4. Sunlight itself is a type of intense radiation. In terms of its power alone, it radiates much more than any electrical apparatus around you, plus ultraviolet radiation within the sunlight, which can directly harm the human body, but you should not be afraid of sunlight.

In conclusion, if you are still afraid of the so-called radiation of those electrical appliances, you might as well find a cellar to seal yourself up and not touch the sun.

Adding on to what this blogger has said so far, I found some other facts showing that cell phones do not harm humans.

From a Danish study:

How the study was done: “This cohort study, conducted in Denmark, linked billing information from more than 358,000 cell phone subscribers with brain tumor incidence data from the Danish Cancer Registry.”

What the study showed: “No association was observed between cell phone use and the incidence of glioma, meningioma, or acoustic neuroma, even among people who had been cell phone subscribers for 13 or more years.”

From a Million Women Study:

How the study was done: “This prospective cohort study conducted in the United Kingdom used data obtained from questionnaires that were completed by study participants.”

What the study showed: “Self-reported cell phone use was not associated with an increased risk of glioma, meningioma, or non-central nervous system tumors. Although the original published findings reported an association with an increased risk of acoustic neuroma, this association disappeared after additional years of follow-up of the cohort.”

Although I have seen the experiments and articles proving the popular misunderstanding on the radiation that electronic devices brought, I do not totally think electronic devices are harmless. All the evidence might just be saying the risk is low. The research essentially eliminates the concern within public thoughts and debunks the rumors on the internet. However, I say, the risk could possibly be accumulative, and we should avoid careless exposure . . . over time.

Conspiracy Editor: Hannah Hall

By Dayton Kennard

If you haven’t heard of Oola, it’s basically a website that posts articles on restaurants, food, and houseware. However, if you found out about it through its ads on apps such as Snapchat, you’d expect something a bit different.

In its ads on Snapchat, it links you to an article similar to a “top-ten” article, such as “People Share The Stories Behind Why They Left A Terrible Tip Or No Tip At All While Dining Out*” and “Servers Share The Most Outlandish, Idiotic Thing A Customer Has Ever Done**” to name a few. After reading one, you may be enticed to click on one of the tabs on the Oola website to read more articles like this, but to your surprise, you’ll find nothing of the sort. Instead, the website is full of articles with food recipes for special occasions, everyday dinners, and other recipe-related articles. You may try all of the tabs on the top of their website, but you won’t be able to find the article you just read.

“What’s happening?” you may ask yourself. The truth is, these articles are often hidden in categories that are not listed in plain sight, such as “Stories” and “Restaurants,” which are sub-categories of “Life in Flavor.” Some articles, however, are listed in easily accessible categories such as “Social Life,” but even if you look through the articles in that category you won’t be able to find anything like what you’ve just read. Why is this? It’s likely something similar to YouTube’s “Unlisted” videos, where you won’t see the content when looking at a general page/tab that you’d expect them to be in and that you can only access if the creator of that content gives you a direct link to it.

Let’s talk about the Oola articles themselves now. They’re formatted as multiple brief paragraphs telling stories related to the article’s overall main point, and each has an image that’s somewhat related to the story. These paragraphs are encased in quotation marks, indicating that they are from different people. If we look harder at these posts, though, there will only be one author attributed for the post (such as Brianna Morton), and all of the pictures will be from a stock photo company (such as Shutterstock or Flicker). The photos will have the username of the person who originally uploaded it, and if you click on the name of the author you will see more articles with this same style. Furthermore, these articles will almost never use the actual name of the restaurants, with the acception of a few references such as “owl-themed restaurant” and “subway-themed restaurant.”

While these articles may be entertaining, they are most certainly click-bait articles intended for the purpose of advertisement and popularity. If you’re interested in reading a few of them, there are links to two of the stories at the bottom of this post.

Editor: Leo Milmet

*https://www.oola.com/social-life/2298681/people-share-the-stories-behind-why-they-left-a-terrible-tip-or-no-tip-at-all-while-dining-out/**https://www.oola.com/restaurants/2297741/servers-share-the-most-outlandish-idiotic-thing-a-customer-has-ever-done/