From 99% to 99% SERGIO LOPEZ-PINEIRO Temple University
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
310 THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE/THE SCIENCE OF ARCHITECTURE From 99% to 99% SERGIO LOPEZ-PINEIRO Temple University This work analyzes how the world’s computer net- cific location and at any given moment. The world’s work changed in a 15-year period, from 1977 to computer network has now been commonly ac- 1992. In 1977, 99 percent of the world’s comput- cepted and constitutes a new landscape definitively ing power resided on mainframes. By 1992, the added to our environment. For this reason, our percentages had flipped: 99 percent of computing everyday life is to some extent influenced—in some power sat collectively on the world’s desktop and places more than in others and some times more laptop computers. 1 than others—by the structural qualities defined by this network. As previously mentioned, its influ- At a certain moment in time, between 1977 and ence will be rendered visible by the analyses of 1992, the world’s computer network ‘exploded’, four different aspects: Time Attributes, Spatial shifting from total concentration into complete dis- Qualities, Social Networks, and Control Tactics. persion. This shift from one intensity to another brought along new space-time relationships alter- TIME ATTRIBUTES ing our social networks and their ordering prin- From Time Slots to Time Vectors ciples. By doing so, it defined a new landscape. In picturing it, this paper will map out the above- On June 27th 1962, Ross Perot founded Electronic mentioned shift by analyzing the following aspects Data Systems (EDS). of each of these moments in time: • Time Attributes or how geographically located “EDS began by doing business on other computer-time, back in the 70’s, has been con- people’s computers. From the start, the verted into ubiquitous computer-time by contem- company’s vision was not to make com- porary computer networks. puters but to help customers get the most • Spatial Qualities or how geometric layout design, out of them. Without computers of its own, as the main concern when designing computer EDS first processed customers’ data by networks, made its way for connection bandwidth, using other companies’ mainframes, which or speed connection capability, as the main con- often sat idle during the middle of the night. cern when using computer networks. By exploiting that excess capacity, EDS put • Social Networks or how a cross section of a con- nection between computer network nodes, instead tremendous computing power within the of a plan defining their exact position, can better reach of clients whom otherwise could not describe contemporary social networks. afford it.” 2 • Control Tactics or how regulating has necessarily been given priority over organizing as the main Even though in 1965 EDS acquired its first com- ordering social principle. puter, an IBM 1401, the company continued rent- We simultaneously inhabit different landscapes. ing time on other companies’ mainframes until the Although each of them shows specific and distinct late 60’s. This was done with employees filling up characteristics, they influence each other to the “[…] their car trunks with forms, computer tapes point at which our medium cannot be clearly de- and programs, frequently driving to different loca- fined with a unique set of parameters. Our me- tions to process work in the middle of the night.” 3 dium is defined, in fact, by the local relationships Each employer, therefore, would take with him the occurring between these landscapes at any spe- exact amount of information that could be pro- FROM 99% TO 99% 311 cessed in the slot of time that he had been allo- of Sputnik in particular, President Dwight cated. It is evident, nevertheless, that this amount Eisenhower created both the Interstate of information would very rarely coincide with the Highway System and the Advanced Re- whole amount of work to be done for a certain job. search Projects Agency, or ARPA. One For this reason, packages of information—person- project sponsored by ARPA was a network alizing EDS’s employers—would travel through the of computers that could interact with each Interstate Highway System for being processed on other, even though they were not manu- different mainframes. Back at EDS’s headquarters, factured by the same company. Further, and before it was delivered to the client, the dif- this network must be capable of surviving ferent information packages would have to be or- a nuclear attack and still function in an ef- ganized into their original order. This way of fective manner.” 8 managing information by fragmenting it into pack- ages can be perceived as a precedent of how con- For this, EDS’s information management opera- temporary computer networks work. tions—a distribution of employers traveling in a distributed highway system—can be regarded as Paul Baran, researcher at RAND Corporation in the the ‘real’ version of Paul Baran’s ‘virtual’ commu- 4 1960’s, conceived the ARPANET’s layout design nication network—distributed information packages and its communication system so it would continue traveling in a distributed computer network. It is 5 to function under any kind of attack. In doing so, necessary to note that both versions happened at he established the foundations for the communi- the same moment in time when 99 percent of the cation system of contemporary computer networks. world’s computing power still resided on main- Oddly enough, this communication system uses an frames. identical information management strategy as the one used by EDS. “By dividing each message into In very simple terms, Ross Perot’s company was parts, you could flood the network with what he merely renting slots of computer-time—as we all called“‘message blocks’, all racing over different know, “Time is money”. But this computer-time is paths to their destination. Upon their arrival, a re- a synchronous one. The user’s presence is essen- ceiving computer would reassemble the message tial for the system to work: the user has to be bits into readable form.” 6 present at the right moment for being able to make profit out of the slot of time. For this reason, these It is very interesting to note that ARPANET and the vacant slots of computer-time could be understood Interstate Highway System were conceived at the as a Real Estate value in a computer-time geogra- same moment in time and designed following the phy—in a similar way to how vacant lots are con- 7 same principles. sidered Real Estate values in a spatial geography. “In 1957, while responding to the threat “[…] There are important differences be- of the Soviets in general and the success tween the way people talk to each other Interstate Highway System. Walter Gropius, Diagrams of the various possibilities of subdivision of an area of rectangular shape destined for building construction. 9 312 THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE/THE SCIENCE OF ARCHITECTURE and the way computer converse. In a tele- ARPANET’s most essential aspect, back in 1977, phone conversation, people tend to talk while connection bandwidth began to be the most continuously, or even both at once. For that important aspect of any computer network de- reason, the electronic link between them signed from the 90’s onwards. is reserved exclusively for them and re- mains open for as long as they wish to In 1969, when the first two computers were con- speak. Computer conversation, on the nected, it was already clear what kind of computer other hand, is a rather more staccato af- network ARPANET should be. Not only because of fair. […] Information is bundled up into dis- Paul Baran’s—now very famous—memorandum crete packages and a line is held open just RAND RM-3420-PR written in 1964, On Distributed Communications, but also because there had al- ready been an interest—back at the times of the Second World War—in knowing which would be the Molecular chaos. 11 organizational network model with the highest probabilities of surviving an attack. As a matter of fact, RAND Corporation had been set up in 1946 to preserve the nation’s operations research capabil- ity developed during World War II. 12 Among the several infrastructures that were con- sidered vulnerable, the telecommunications net- work was found to be a very sensitive one. The United States’ telephone network was, at the time, centralized in Omaha: a popular place for long- distance telephone switches just because it lay at long enough for the package to be sent. the nation’s geographic center. Once the message has been received, the connection is closed and the message can be digested ‘off-line’.” 10 “At the time, the nation’s long-distance communications networks were indeed In 1992, when the percentages reversed, computer extremely vulnerable and unable to with- networks had already established a non-synchro- stand a nuclear attack. Yet the president’s nous reliable communication system. For this, the ability to call for, or call off, the launch of geography of computer-time was transformed from American missiles (called ‘minimal essen- a series of vacant and occupiable slots of com- tial communication’), relied heavily on the puter-time into a series of computer-time vectors nation’s vulnerable communications sys- that measured how fast information could reach tems. So Baran felt that working on the its destination. However, and although this com- problem of building a more stable commu- munication system is a non-synchronous one, time nications infrastructure—namely a tougher, is still money. But in this case, money is no longer more robust network—was the most im- 13 a vacant and occupiable slot: money is now a vec- portant work he could be doing.” tor that can be located in the cross section of a computer network cable.