The image you see above is the map that changed the world. It was the birth of the Internet, the fall of the Soviet Union and the beginning of an age of prosperity no one seems to be willing to talk about.The technical hierarchy - the node map represents three universities participating in a Department of Defense Advanced Research Project (ARPNET) project. The four universities represented in the chart are nodes developed from , University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), Stanford Research Institute (SRI), the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB),University of Utah (Utah). The nodes of the Internet were developed in that order.
The birth of the network promised Stalin's successors could not bomb us with a single nuclear weapon. It was and remains the perfect defense against totalitarianism . It is the ultimate network - a network without a central point of failure.
If even the Bay Area and Los Angeles simultaneously ceased to exist, Santa Barbara could communicate with Utah. The Russians could no longer destroy us, any two of us alive could reach each other on the network.
Massive Department of Defense funding throughout the Reagan Era kept Defense Advanced Research Projects alive with 150 billion dollars promising America security limited only by the imaginations of the scientific elite.
The prosperity of the 90's and the downward motion of the economy of recent years is directly related to how we handle the network. In some instances it's sent jobs overseas - something we're seeing more and more - beyond the sweatshop laborer to economies of third world countries with technocrats willing to work for a 10th of American skilled labor. This was a few years ago.
Today it's different, the payment ratio of a third world white collar laborer is nearing the same as an American - creating a dependence on overseas offices able to carry the economic burden of additional support staff. Today a stock broker preparing documents about an (Initial Public Offering) IPO, a medical doctor needing someone to look over an x-ray and a silicon valley tech firm are likely to have lackeys overseas doing much of the footwork.
For America, we face great danger. We have to ask ourselves, are we willing to accept the consequences of a worldwide democracy? Are we willing to participate in an international free-market and accept the consequences of the balancing affect it may cause. By balancing, I'm speaking of the economies of third world labor markets.
To be continued.....
