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.

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.

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.

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).