From the Computer Utility to Cloud Computing - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 31

DARPA is even better known for the creation of the Advanced Research
Projects Agency Network—ARPANET—the irst wide-area network using
packet-switching technology. Packet switching breaks up data into blocks
or packets, which seek the most eficient network routing. The blocks are
reassembled at the end point and, unless there are major network prob-
lems, appear to an end user as a uniied data, voice, or video transmission.
The network was created to link secure military installations and major
research facilities and became a direct precursor of today's Internet. In
fact, some date the birth of the Internet to January 1, 1983, when for one
day ARPANET completely shut off service to the 400 hosts the system
served in order to replace the NCP protocol with the TCP/IP network
protocol that has deined the Internet ever since (Kerner 2013). The
growth of the Internet released the brake on cloud computing that the
expansion of the irst microcomputers and then personal computers had
applied. In addition to requiring signiicant expansion of distribution
capacity in wireline, wireless, and switching capabilities, the Internet's
accelerating demand for data storage and processing hastened the arrival
of cloud systems.
The precursors of cloud computing demonstrate that what we now
call the cloud came from various places that used computing for different
goals. Videotex systems aimed to link terminals and television receivers
to remote computers that, in practice, provided basic information to
people in a handful of nations. The Soviet Union applied its leading role
in cybernetics to develop a national system of economic planning. Not-
withstanding strong fears in the Kennedy administration, including the
CIA, that the program would enable the Soviet economy to overtake its
competitors in the West, it was at best a partial success. It fell victim to
the limited capacity of computer systems and to the power of the Soviet
military, which resisted investing technology resources to build the domes-
tic economy. Chile's Cybersyn sought to bring about a social-democratic
version of national development planning by connecting central computers
to terminals throughout the country, primarily to establish an interactive
system of economic decision making. The short-lived rule of the Popular
Unity government of Salvador Allende meant that Cybersyn never made it
out of the planning phase. Nevertheless, it demonstrated that cloud com-
puting has historical links to the Global South, where democratic values
existed side-by-side with technical visions. Finally, DARPA made use of