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Title : Transforming Warfare and Society: The Evolution of U.S. Military Communication Technologies from the 20th Century to Today

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Title : Transforming Warfare and Society: The Evolution of U.S. Military Communication Technologies from the 20th Century to Today

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Introduction

This exhibit explores how the growth of the US military changed the social structure, discourse, and power dynamic through the rapid development of innovative communication technology in the war period of the 20th century and how it influenced the 21st century we live in. Technology transformations were not just a success in the US military context. However, they shaped a new pyramid of governance structure and had social impacts on American society until today.

Throughout the 1900s, America was highly involved in many global conflicts - the war. In this exhibition, we will focus on the timeline of World War II, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War, as well as the development of technological systems and the evolution of society of the era. The invention of machines, computers, and technology at that time sparked the beginning of the information age. The main driving force behind the computing inventions of the Americans and British was the military's need for them. Americans are forced to contribute to their country, and it shaped evolutionary changes in all aspects of society. Before the Second World War, most female human computer workers already worked with a range of desktop calculators, creating tables and performing accounting for military use. Simultaneously, increasingly complicated machinery and computer networks were being created. (Hicks, 2017). The birth of the first computer, enigma, was built at this time. The scientific advancement of the war period caused a significant increase in demand for laborers. Laborers, including mathematicians, scientists, their wives, soldiers, and women computers, were actively involved (Dick, 2024). It comes with an increase in women's computers, thereby transforming their self-identification and historically confined existence in the US. Therefore, women's involvement in creating the first computer with programming gives an overview of how computing jobs became more feminine(Light,1999). This identity shift then contributed to the feminist movements during the 20th century.

Following the Cold War, American political and military leaders aspired to address their power to achieve victory against the Soviet Union. In addition, the US's global control by using information and communication(Dick, 2024). The science of communication and cybernetics inspired the imagination of military scientists and engineers. Providing a model for joining humans and machines in a coordinated system, it served as the basis for postwar command and control systems (Rohde, 2017). It resulted in the inventions of SAGE, EWAMS, and the ARPANET. The desire to bring public affairs under scientific experts' knowledge of machines is deeply rooted in American political thought. The US then started to use numbers and statistics to solve political challenges after World War II (Rohde,2017). With the government's support, American technology was striving for information control. This situation resulted in a rising number of human computers operating America's defense and communication network technologies.

In the wake of the previous wartime, technology was developed as a more mature automatic tool for controlling information during the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, America faced factors that had never occurred in its conduct of war, complicating the Vietnam War considerably(Hallin,1986). In history, American military objectives in Vietnam were not met. Even with the establishment of defense systems and "the television war" through media, such as the classification of information to the American society, they were using high technology to command, control, and quantify the war with data assessment, causing the data-driven war (Dick,2024).

As a result of the American failure in this war, societal anti-war feelings were triggered. Unlike the previous communication technology of the US, the applications of the Vietnam War's technological systems in comprehending data and tried to control public opinions by covering the negativity and downside of the soldiers in Vietnam. At that time, the news media in the United States were highly autonomous from direct political control and deeply intertwined with government operations (Hallin,1986,p.6). Information was classified; only the population at the top of the pyramid could have full access to information, and they covered the truth to the public. The situation of the data-driven society of America in the Vietnam War has led to the digital world we live in today. Digital data is the most convenient and powerful tool for spreading information and the most effective means of changing public perceptions and manipulating the public, as has happened in history.

There are three subsections in the exhibition: "The Global Conflicts," "The Technological Systems," and "Societal Change." The artifacts of each section are linked with each other in every section. Colors are used to distinguish the connections between each artifact in the various subsections that follow the timeline during the war. Artifacts represented in red are from WWII, blue are from the Cold War, and green are from the Vietnam War, while artifacts from war and technology help explain societal change, which are the products of them. The history of technology transformations and now are deeply tied together. The old social structures of the US evolved when they started letting women get involved with technology. Further, technology is now the most potent tool, occupying the highest level of the social pyramid. The exhibitions will cover the above topic with significant artifacts that shaped the information age.

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Technology advancements in the 20th century can be attributed to three artifacts listed here: WWII, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War. Americans have developed their technology at a rapid pace due to the conflicts. These conflicts resulted in innovations and technological development in the computing mechanism. Early computers, such as the Enigma and Colossus computers, were first developed for decoding during World War II. In the meantime, global conflicts are the biggest reason for the scientific and technological progress in the United States. Therefore, the conflicts are also the reason that drove the other two sections in this exhibition.

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Through this section, information acquired by the US military during the war can be seen over time. From the first, computers are not automatic to use data to control and dominate public opinions. The fantastic improvement of computers is the turning point of history, which paved the way for the development of the modern technological world. In the exhibit, this development sequence shows a path from the manual, non-automated early computing systems to the multifaceted data-driven systems governing contemporary societal and government functions today.

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The birth of technology sparked, inspired, and changed how people think and act. The impact of it is irreversible in one's society. For example, women's role in computing can help explain the gender categories that still exist in Anglo-American labor markets today (Hicks, 2017,p.20). The rapid development of new technology considerably alters societal norms, industry, and individual mindsets and revolutionizes social structure and industry. Evolution is frequently brought about by innovations that disrupt established beliefs in history and promote new social order and governance methods. These innovations also help to define the modern world in which we live.

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In the period 1939-45, World War II involved virtually every country in the world (Hughes & Royde-Smith, 2024). The period of the US military gave birth to the atomic bomb. It opened the human-computer age, meanwhile beginning America's ambitions during the Cold War with many inspirations.

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The Cold War was one of the most ambitious periods of technological improvement recorded in American history. The goals of America are expressed in restricting Communism's growth and protecting and expanding democratic nations while furthering the ideas of capitalism and democracy in this war(Dick,2024).

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The Department of the US Military created the poster to recruit women for defense industries during World War II. This image has become one of the most iconic representations of working women (Zapata, 2024), encouraging and inspiring women to shift their social identity and being an early symbol of the rise of feminists.

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The Vietnam War was the first to run with full-scale electronic assistance (Harrison,1988). Although it was marked as a failure in US military history, new technologies were developed that helped structure future media manipulation.

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It is a book by Betty Friedan, published in 1963. It is categorized as a contributor to second-wave feminism by challenging the postwar belief that a woman's role is to marry and have children(Second Wave Feminism Primary Sources & History | Gale, n.d.).It contributes to raising the consciousness of many women of the traditional identity given by society.

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The data-driven wars were operated by the ground-breaking early applications of computers to war by American scientists. They were recorded employing early analog analyzers performing mathematical calculations and ultimately to digital computers dealing with military operational data (Harrison,1988,p.20).The calculations and computing are being run in Vietnam as the first in history.

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During the era of human computers' popularity, women were provided with technical careers (Light,1999). Most human computers are women's computers; they perform all forms of calculations to assist the military. However, they are not credited in history in most cases.

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It was apparent from the leaks of the Pentagon Papers that the US government was acting in opposition to its statements. The US government used classified material from the US Department of Defense's archives to conduct the "secret documents" that hide information from the public

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The first "television war," namely, the "living room war," was a period in which the Vietnam War largely converged the media news of America. Meanwhile, television has brought horrors to the masses, leading to controversy about the war in American society.

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The Internet and the World Wide Web have been hailed as revolutionary technologies that will significantly change our lives, society, and the world (Cook,1997,p.68). The Internet greatly impacts modern lives and is also the evolution of the Arpanet.

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The Enigma machine was the first computer created in the world. It was born to decode secret messages used by the US military during World War II. Although it cannot perform computing tasks and requires humans to operate, it started the expansion of computers in the future.

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The ARPANET, developed from 1969 to 1978, was the communication network technology for the US military and the nuclear world during the Cold War. Scientists in the US successfully used Arpent to send messages to other sites, and it became the forerunner of the Internet we all use nowadays (From ARPANET to the Internet | Science Museum, n.d.).

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353 Lecture. (2024, March 5). CMNS 353 Week Nine : Information at war [PowerPoint slides]. Stephanie Dick

353 Lecture. (2024, March 12). CMNS 353 Week Ten : Cold War Information [PowerPoint slides]. Stephanie Dick

353 Lecture. (2024,19). CMNS 353 Week Eleven : Competing Information Regimes [PowerPoint slides]. Stephanie Dick

Daniel Hallin, “Introduction” to The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam (1986)

Jennifer Light, “When Computers Were Women,” in Technology and Culture, Vol. 40, No. 3

(July 1999)(: 455 – 482.

Joy Rohde, “Pax Technologica: Computers, International Affairs, and Human Reason in the

Cold War” in Isis Vol. 108, No. 4 (2017).

Mar Hicks, “War Machines” in Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists

and Lost Its Edge in Computing (Cambridge: MA: The MIT Press, 2017).