This class focused more on the informational developments of the American military industrial complex.  During and after World War II, basic mechanical and then later electrical mechanisms were developed to assist in the war effort.  Mechanisms such as the firing solution “computers” on battleships and the advanced bomb sights of American B-29s came about out of a military necessity to develop superior technologies than the opposing forces.  This necessity grew following the war, with the advent of atomic energy (another military development) and contributed greatly to Eisenhower’s theory of the military industrial complex..

As research increased on tools of war, so did the necessity for a network to safeguard the survival of such knowledge in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States.  The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) proposed such a network to connect important hubs of research and ensure research could survive an attack, the ARPANET in the early 1960s.

Over the next two decades this technology expanded and further developed, with the help of organizations such as CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).  Physicist Tim Berners-Lee, while working as a fellow at CERN, developed the World Wide Web system to link the research oriented infrastructure of the internet to allow for common users to access its services.  Later in 1990 he developed the first web browser, and this continued to develop into today.

I feel that this is a perfect example of how military necessity spurred great informational change in worldwide society.  Because of the necessity for military researchers to more easily share information across nations and safeguard against attack, a worldwide information sharing system was created.  Contributing to this, because it was a matter of national defense for all nations developing the technology, this necessity received top billing and staffing.  Although, I do acknowledge that the information systems developed by these necessities were restricted to government personnel and researchers, and therefore could not have led to the informational-societal changes brought on by the internet in the early 1980s.

These changes connected the world, hypothetically allowed someone in France to instantaneously share documents with someone in California, and led to the more globalized society we have today.  While I do assert that the military (the cycle of conflict, necessity, research and development) is the most powerful driving force behind societal change in the 20th century, unfortunately just this alone does not lead to such change in civilian life.  It takes people like Tim Berners-Lee to recognize the potential of a military system such as the early internet, and to make it relevant and accessible to the common public.