IP: Wired Article on Paul Baran

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/9.0.2509
> Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 22:25:36 -0600
> Subject: Wired Article on Paul Baran
> From: John Lyon <jelyon () jelyon com>
> To: <farber () cis upenn edu>
>
> Prof. Farber;
>
> I haven't seen this mentioned in IP yet - Wired had an interesting interview
> with Paul Baran in the March 2001 issue (p. 145) that might be of interest
> to the IP list.
>
> It's also available on-line:
>
>      http://www.wired.com:80/wired/archive/9.03/baran.html
>
> I found the following quote of particular interest:  "The question was, 'Do
> we keep is secret?' From the beginning, the answer was no...our whole plan,
> the concept of packet switching and all the details, was wide open. Not only
> did Rand publish it, they sent it to all the repository laboratories in the
> world."
>
> That started me to wondering; how can Microsoft say that Open Source is a
> threat to innovation, when the (arguably) greatest source of innovation of
> the last 10-20 years (the Interenet) is "wide open?"
>
> Anyway, an excerpt:
>
>      Founding Father
>
> Paul Baran conceived the Internet's architecture at the height of the Cold
> War. Forty years later, he says the Net's biggest threat wasn't the USSR -
> it was the phone company.
>
> By Stewart Brand
>
>
> In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, an engineer named Paul Baran sold
> the US Department of Defense on the idea of a failure-resistant
> communications method called packet switching. But because of roadblocks at
> AT&T and the Pentagon, it wasn't until the 1970s that the technology was
> finally adopted as the foundation architecture of the Arpanet - the
> precursor to the Internet.
>
> In April, Baran (pronounced "BEAR-en") will receive the Franklin Institute's
> 2001 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science, his latest in a
> string of prestigious honors from professional organizations including the
> Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the Association for
> Computing Machinery (ACM), and NEC. Over a lifetime of quietly sustained
> achievement as inventor and entrepreneur, Baran cofounded the Institute for
> the Future and created a series of successful companies - Cabledata
> Associates, Packet Technologies, Metricom, Interfax, and Com21 - based on
> technologies he developed. As corporations like Cisco acquired his
> businesses, Baran's inventions went mainstream: His discrete multitone
> technology is at the heart of DSL, and his developments in spread spectrum
> transmission are essential to the ongoing wireless explosion. Yet Baran is
> little known outside his field.



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