Information to users

Communications Daily (Online: Warren Publishing Co.), 17 June 1999, (Lexis-Nexis, accessed Sept. 1, 1999).
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For example, when the United States entered World War
II, US companies diverted much of their efforts to
supporting it. 'Most IBM plants . . . were directed to speed production of data processing equipment on overtime
schedules. Machine production was increased and thousands of IBM data processing machines were conscripted from normal business operations for wartime recordkeeping and control. . . . Even at the front itself, IBM machines brought up in
mobile units followed US troops in the field to help
minimize the paperwork problem."13
Because companies such as IBM were encouraged to
support the war effort, the commercial potential of the technology was great after the war. 'These machines went everywhere our fighting men went. They landed on the
beaches, they operated in the jungles and snow-covered huts of the Arctic." And, Fishman points out that the thousands of fighting men who landed with the machines on the beaches and operated them in the jungles and snow-covered huts later became businessmen, already convinced of the merits of the technology. Despite the fact that the company took only 1H
13 Katherine Davis Fishman. The Computer Establishment
(Harper & Row. Publishers, New York, 1981), pp. 35-36. A roomful of IBM tabulators in the basement of a building in the Navy Yard at Pearl Harbor helped break Japanese code before the Battle of Midway. Code-breaking has been a spur to advance development in computer and encryption technology both in the United States and in Great Britain.
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percent net profit on its war production contracts, and used the money to set up a fund for war widows and children of company employees, IBM had entered the war a $4 0 million company and came out a $140 million company; its factory space tripled and its work force doubled.
Though there had been an unspoken tradition of industry input into the policy making process for many years, this time period solidified the relationships in the information and communications industries. In more recent years, some believe open influence by industry leaders on policy has become more accepted.14
In general, *the Second World War tremendously
increased the importance of . . . technology . . ."15 for the US government. During the war, the significance of fast, clear information flows was accentuated by the need for solid, secure communication links between US military
personnel around the world.16 Though most of the research on these technologies had taken place in the private sector before the war, in wartime the US military took the lead. As a result, the US government was instrumental in the
14 Hedrick Smith, PBS Program. 'The Media and Interest
Groups," October 1996, South Carolina Public Television.
15 Jack Ruina, 'Techno-bonds," Mature 363, no. 6430 (June 17,
1993): 592.
16 Secure communications were so vital to the US military
that one anecdote circulated during the war was that, in the South Pacific, the US military had used Navajo Indians as communicators between ships because, though enemies had been able to decode other important communications, they could not 'decode" Navajo.
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development of improved communications systems such as radar and sonar.
In the immediate post-World War II era the US
government continued its interest in the development of new technologies. *[0]f particular importance was investment in new communications technology. Initially funded by the armed forces, the investment boosted the growth of the
telecommunications industry and of television."17
Another relevant situation in which the United States
found itself after World War II was the environment of the Cold War. Much of the innovation in information and
communications technology at this time was motivated by the bipolar rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Advanced methods of surveillance in the form of
satellites, storage and retrieval of information, and an increasing ability to interpret that information was
absolutely necessary to 'win" battles in the Cold War. 'The primary weapons of the Cold War were ideologies, alliances, advisors, foreign aid, national prestige - and above and behind them all, the juggernaut of high technology. . . . Of all the technologies built to fight the Cold War, digital computers have become its most ubiquitous, and perhaps it
11 Richard Holt, The Reluctant Superpower: A History of