How Did My Father’s “Mass Information Utility” Turn Into Facebook?

I can’t say that I invented the Internet

Jacket for Mass Information Utilities and Social Excellence — design by Saul Lambert, photo by Author from his private collection.

But I was there, playing tic-tac-toe on computers possibly connected to the Strategic Air Command. My Father, Dr. Harold Sackman, was a researcher for the RAND Corporation and its spinoff, Systems Development Corporation (SDC). His specialty was what was then known as “Man-Machine Interface.” What is now known as the “world-wide-web” he called the “Mass Information Utility.” The very name embodies his perhaps-naïve hope for this emerging technology to spread the power of knowledge to all the people.

So, how did my Father’s dream of information for the masses become the misinformation super-spreader of Facebook, et. al.?

In the beginning — What we now know as the Internet started with BUIC — Back Up Interceptor Control. As a dispersed and decentralized system, BUIC was designed so that, in the event a nuclear attack knocked out some of the computer centers, the surviving centers would remain connected. As the system expanded to include academia, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the US Department of Defense developed a packet-switching technology for the growing network, known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). ARPANET became the “Internet,” named after the Internet protocol…