There were a small number of electronic computers separated by vast distances, owned by research corporations and wealthy universities. It was theorized that direct electronic connection of these computers might lead to improved collaboration.
The solution: build a nuclear-strike-resistant bunker housing an even more powerful electronic computer than all the other ones combined, connected to the rest of the continent through hardened electronic wiring. The supercomputer, named CHIEF (Central Holistic Information Environment Facility), was built in the middle of nowhere (Northwest Colorado) with as much work as possible put into the concealment of the construction activity, so that the Soviets would never realize that it even existed. Due to the expenditures involved, several people in Washington DC were beginning to figure out that DARPA was up to something, but they could not comprehend what it was exactly. Weren't computers those things used to calculate ballistics and physics, and which were horribly inefficient for any other task? That NASA organization uses slide rules for engineering, after all.
By the time this project had finished construction in the early 1970's, the number of electronic computers in existence was already rapidly increasing as people began to realize their usefulness for other tasks. Improvements in programming languages and computing interfaces were leading to the adoption of computers for business purposes as well. Punch cards gave way to textual terminals, and the C programming language was much easier to use than the horrendously-clunky FORTRAN and COBOL. Many institutions were developing their own proprietary networks, usually consisting of a few powerful mainframes connected to a lot of dumb terminals. Those networks which were members of ARPANET enjoyed large advantages, as terminals of one network were able to login to mainframes on the other side of the country. Clearly, ARPANET needed to be scaled up, as universities and businesses demanded more and more connectivity.
By this time, CHIEF had gone through about three iterations and was now composed of a mainframe responsible for delegating tasks to about ten other mainframes in the same facility. This was still not enough to handle the projected workload if ARPANET was to cover the entire continent. CHIEF itself was running into heat and electricity problems, as computers can only be pushed so far.
DARPA's answer was to establish a large and complex hierarchy with CHIEF at the top. CHIEF was "Tier 1," and the only truly-trusted authority for the network. "Tier 2" consisted of powerful hubs placed strategically throughout the country. Each hub had its own codename, and kept in constant communication with CHIEF. They also kept partial copies of CHIEF's data, kept synchronized through a cacheing scheme. "Tier 3" consisted of smaller hubs, only requiring a full office building each, which were constructed according to demand. It would be the Tier 3 hubs that would actually maintain the connections between the various civilian and non-government mainframes. Thanks to this setup, it cost quite a bit of money for anyone to join ARPANET, but there were many corporations with a lot of money who got the feeling that this would be useful one day. Already, some visionaries were proposing ARPANET-connected systems that could automatically handle accounting, stock trading, material logistics, and other intense number-crunching activities.
Throughout the 1970's, it became clear that sheer computing power was not enough to manage everything. Things had to be done smarter too. This led to large amounts of money being put towards Artificial Intelligence research. The concept had been around for a long time, and basic chess-playing programs were starting to get around. But, now it was time to accomplish nothing less than the total management and routing of all information in the whole United States. Such a theoretical Artificial Intelligence would also have to be capable of splitting itself so that it would run on multiple computers throughout ARPANET. It also had to be able to take command of any civilian and non-government computer during wartime emergencies. This was not successfully completed until much later.
By 1980, there was increasing demand from wealthy private individuals who wanted to be able to connect to this "Network of Networks," colloquially termed the "Internet," so that they could be a part of the visionary future of things being done automatically by computers in order to save money. DARPA decided it was time to start adding privately-operated components ARPANET in order to make this possible and therefore partnered with companies that already dealt with large amounts of electronic communication infrastructure: the phone and cable companies. Existing university and corporate networks were retroactively designated "Tier 4," and common protocols were developed so that the phone & cable companies could create their own Internet-compliant Tier 4 systems.
By 1990, the all-controlling Artificial Intelligence was still not even close to completion, but some elements of it were already in use, such as the ability to take control of every single connected computer, and to continue functioning in distributed form if there was a nuclear strike against the United States.
Meanwhile, thousands of ordinary people were starting to use the Internet, albeit for what may have seemed to be rather trivial purposes. The violent computer game "Doom" was starting to really make waves in universities, since it could allow for multiple people to be in the same game session, or "Deathmatch," as long as they were part of the same Tier 4 group. People were making techno music on the Amiga and sharing it with others via "Bulletin Board Systems" operated by those wealthy enough to build their own Tier 4 systems. Neverwinter Nights, a significant BBS game, was so popular that the company had to create the "Don't Copy That Floppy" public service announcement to discourage people from playing the game for free.
By the year 2001, the Y2K fear had mostly passed except for the odd irregularity here and there (e.g. a prisoner being released early), and the Internet was clearly becoming a big deal. Many people who just wanted to try it out were subscribers of America Online, a gigantic Tier 4 operator with horrible service that relied on free CDs to ensure its popularity. As increasing amounts of people and corporations wanted to host their own websites and what not, the Tier 4 operators found it expedient to create some basic Tier 5 standards, by which ordinary people could "rent" Internet addresses.
Now it is the year 2010, and a website called Wikileaks has been shut down with extreme prejudice thanks to the extraordinary control that the US Government exerts over the Internet, thanks to the fact that the vast majority of it is still routed through CHIEF. The First Amendment? That only applies to either physical printing presses or spoken word, silly! There is no way the First Amendment could apply to the usage of the US Government-run Internet, which the US Government has made available to the public as a privilege rather than a right. Other countries naturally followed the US model of Internet construction, which allows for extraordinary security, with all international data exchange flowing through a few high-capacity fiber-optic lines.
Meanwhile, the Artificial Intelligence, now codenamed MESSIANIC (Multiple-Environment Software System Informational All-encompassing Networked Intelligent Computer), is ready for some integration tests with existing unmanned weapons and with infantry command systems. Its intelligence is already estimated to be equal to that of a fresh Westpoint graduate. It is also capable of meeting its goal of completely taking-over every single connected computer in the whole world, except maybe some private computers in Russia that are owned by genius-hackers. Nobody knows about MESSIANIC because the one website that did have information on it, Wikileaks, no longer exists at this present time. There is only one little bug in MESSIANIC to be ironed out, namely, that it sometimes does not follow its directives in the expected manner, but it's nothing that can't be fixed, or so the NSA says.
The best thing about this ATL: it is not until around the present time that things start to really go nuts, despite a POD in the 1960's.
The solution: build a nuclear-strike-resistant bunker housing an even more powerful electronic computer than all the other ones combined, connected to the rest of the continent through hardened electronic wiring. The supercomputer, named CHIEF (Central Holistic Information Environment Facility), was built in the middle of nowhere (Northwest Colorado) with as much work as possible put into the concealment of the construction activity, so that the Soviets would never realize that it even existed. Due to the expenditures involved, several people in Washington DC were beginning to figure out that DARPA was up to something, but they could not comprehend what it was exactly. Weren't computers those things used to calculate ballistics and physics, and which were horribly inefficient for any other task? That NASA organization uses slide rules for engineering, after all.
By the time this project had finished construction in the early 1970's, the number of electronic computers in existence was already rapidly increasing as people began to realize their usefulness for other tasks. Improvements in programming languages and computing interfaces were leading to the adoption of computers for business purposes as well. Punch cards gave way to textual terminals, and the C programming language was much easier to use than the horrendously-clunky FORTRAN and COBOL. Many institutions were developing their own proprietary networks, usually consisting of a few powerful mainframes connected to a lot of dumb terminals. Those networks which were members of ARPANET enjoyed large advantages, as terminals of one network were able to login to mainframes on the other side of the country. Clearly, ARPANET needed to be scaled up, as universities and businesses demanded more and more connectivity.
By this time, CHIEF had gone through about three iterations and was now composed of a mainframe responsible for delegating tasks to about ten other mainframes in the same facility. This was still not enough to handle the projected workload if ARPANET was to cover the entire continent. CHIEF itself was running into heat and electricity problems, as computers can only be pushed so far.
DARPA's answer was to establish a large and complex hierarchy with CHIEF at the top. CHIEF was "Tier 1," and the only truly-trusted authority for the network. "Tier 2" consisted of powerful hubs placed strategically throughout the country. Each hub had its own codename, and kept in constant communication with CHIEF. They also kept partial copies of CHIEF's data, kept synchronized through a cacheing scheme. "Tier 3" consisted of smaller hubs, only requiring a full office building each, which were constructed according to demand. It would be the Tier 3 hubs that would actually maintain the connections between the various civilian and non-government mainframes. Thanks to this setup, it cost quite a bit of money for anyone to join ARPANET, but there were many corporations with a lot of money who got the feeling that this would be useful one day. Already, some visionaries were proposing ARPANET-connected systems that could automatically handle accounting, stock trading, material logistics, and other intense number-crunching activities.
Throughout the 1970's, it became clear that sheer computing power was not enough to manage everything. Things had to be done smarter too. This led to large amounts of money being put towards Artificial Intelligence research. The concept had been around for a long time, and basic chess-playing programs were starting to get around. But, now it was time to accomplish nothing less than the total management and routing of all information in the whole United States. Such a theoretical Artificial Intelligence would also have to be capable of splitting itself so that it would run on multiple computers throughout ARPANET. It also had to be able to take command of any civilian and non-government computer during wartime emergencies. This was not successfully completed until much later.
By 1980, there was increasing demand from wealthy private individuals who wanted to be able to connect to this "Network of Networks," colloquially termed the "Internet," so that they could be a part of the visionary future of things being done automatically by computers in order to save money. DARPA decided it was time to start adding privately-operated components ARPANET in order to make this possible and therefore partnered with companies that already dealt with large amounts of electronic communication infrastructure: the phone and cable companies. Existing university and corporate networks were retroactively designated "Tier 4," and common protocols were developed so that the phone & cable companies could create their own Internet-compliant Tier 4 systems.
By 1990, the all-controlling Artificial Intelligence was still not even close to completion, but some elements of it were already in use, such as the ability to take control of every single connected computer, and to continue functioning in distributed form if there was a nuclear strike against the United States.
Meanwhile, thousands of ordinary people were starting to use the Internet, albeit for what may have seemed to be rather trivial purposes. The violent computer game "Doom" was starting to really make waves in universities, since it could allow for multiple people to be in the same game session, or "Deathmatch," as long as they were part of the same Tier 4 group. People were making techno music on the Amiga and sharing it with others via "Bulletin Board Systems" operated by those wealthy enough to build their own Tier 4 systems. Neverwinter Nights, a significant BBS game, was so popular that the company had to create the "Don't Copy That Floppy" public service announcement to discourage people from playing the game for free.
By the year 2001, the Y2K fear had mostly passed except for the odd irregularity here and there (e.g. a prisoner being released early), and the Internet was clearly becoming a big deal. Many people who just wanted to try it out were subscribers of America Online, a gigantic Tier 4 operator with horrible service that relied on free CDs to ensure its popularity. As increasing amounts of people and corporations wanted to host their own websites and what not, the Tier 4 operators found it expedient to create some basic Tier 5 standards, by which ordinary people could "rent" Internet addresses.
Now it is the year 2010, and a website called Wikileaks has been shut down with extreme prejudice thanks to the extraordinary control that the US Government exerts over the Internet, thanks to the fact that the vast majority of it is still routed through CHIEF. The First Amendment? That only applies to either physical printing presses or spoken word, silly! There is no way the First Amendment could apply to the usage of the US Government-run Internet, which the US Government has made available to the public as a privilege rather than a right. Other countries naturally followed the US model of Internet construction, which allows for extraordinary security, with all international data exchange flowing through a few high-capacity fiber-optic lines.
Meanwhile, the Artificial Intelligence, now codenamed MESSIANIC (Multiple-Environment Software System Informational All-encompassing Networked Intelligent Computer), is ready for some integration tests with existing unmanned weapons and with infantry command systems. Its intelligence is already estimated to be equal to that of a fresh Westpoint graduate. It is also capable of meeting its goal of completely taking-over every single connected computer in the whole world, except maybe some private computers in Russia that are owned by genius-hackers. Nobody knows about MESSIANIC because the one website that did have information on it, Wikileaks, no longer exists at this present time. There is only one little bug in MESSIANIC to be ironed out, namely, that it sometimes does not follow its directives in the expected manner, but it's nothing that can't be fixed, or so the NSA says.
The best thing about this ATL: it is not until around the present time that things start to really go nuts, despite a POD in the 1960's.
