Just before the NSA web
Facebook and its various branches were apparently down for most of today. I didn't notice until I read about it somewhere, then I tried to access the Spokane News FB. Sure enough, Facebook.com was absent.

Supposedly their "server" failed. Mmmhmm. [Here's a well-informed early analysis, but not a complete explanation.]

If they had been renting from IBM in the '50s, this wouldn't have happened.

We don't really NEED most of the computing power we have today. It only serves to replace and ATROPHY our brains and cultures. And that's not an accident. The pattern is clear by now. Remove all normal senses and normal cultural connections. Remove all DECENTRALIZED machinery and technology. Replace everything with totally centralized and globalized mechanisms. Then cut off the mechanisms.

When everyone depends on ONE electrical grid, the grid WILL break far more often, and each breakdown will affect EVERYONE. When everyone depends on ONE computer, the computer will break far more often and each breakdown will affect EVERYONE.

We didn't have nearly as many power outages before 1970, because each city had its own grid, regulated by law to maintain service. We didn't have nearly as many mainframe failures before the NSA web, because each mainframe was completely separate and maintained by a two-way rental obligation. Overloads were contained within one company or one city.

Cascading failures can't happen when the modules are not connected.

= = = = =

How many mainframes did we have just before the NSA version of the web began?

Here's a 'census' from June 1968. I've chopped and channeled the chart, leaving only the manufacturer, the monthly rental per unit, and the number of installations.



Totals from the big names:

Burroughs 1400
Control Data 2100
DEC 2600
GE 1800
Honeywell 2100
IBM 40000
NCR 3300
RCA 1300
UNIVAC 5500

The total number of mainframes in the country was 63k, and IBM owned 40k of them.

How many do we have now? One. All computing depends on AWS.

All of those 1968 computers were entirely built in America from parts that were entirely built in America. The entire supply chain and service chain was under American control. No hostile country could cut off the supply or turn off the call centers.

Some of them were networked in a VARIETY of privately controlled ways. The Western Union teletype system and the Bell telephone system carried a lot of data between computers. Both of these networks were entirely under national control, and strictly regulated to maintain QUALITY of service.

What's the moral of the story? Libertarians are globalists. The purpose of deregulation is total centralization.

Incidentally, the oft-quoted 'misprediction' by Watson wouldn't have made sense. At the time when he supposedly said that the world couldn't possibly use more than a dozen computers, IBM already had several thousand electronic computers in service. As far back as 1920, IBM had several hundred electromechanical computers under its supervision. Watson must have been talking about one specific type of system, not computers in general.
  ¶ 11:00 PM