when you realize, you just have to go through your own archive to find the answer. back at funding.

When the Defense Department issued a $19,800 contract on December 6, 1967, for the purpose of studying the "design and specification of a computer network," the world didn't take notice. But it should have. (fcc history project)

arpa report: history of arpanet, first decade, completion report, 1978

the future of computer science research in the us, 2005. statement of anthony j. tether, director of darpa.

President Kennedy would not have been as bullish when we said we are going to the Moon in 1969 if he didn't already know that the Saturn Rocket was there to have that possibility. That was DARPA's fifth project when it started ...

Mundane things during the Vietnam War like the M–16 rifle was a DARPA program all of the way to Global Hawk, Predator.

projects: putting atomic clock on a chip, laser diodes, getting titanium down to less than $2 a pound, building prosthetic that is controlled by the mind, a new high performance computing systems (HPCS), cognitive processing, ...

Now when Bill Gates a couple years ago was out on the stump trying to gin up support for computer science and kids were asking him questions, and they said, ''What's in it?'' What is the next biggest thing that we could be in this business? He said that if we can show how to have a computer that learns, that will be worth more than 10 Microsofts. (tether) ...

Okay. Upcoming key events. For those of you that really want to hear about DARPA, we have a symposium in August. It is in Anaheim. It is open to the world, foreigners. Why Anaheim? It is Disneyland. Where else would you have a DARPA conference, right?

to take just a few examples: formalisms that can represent complicated systems by building them up in a sequence of layers; algorithms as step-by-step procedures for solving problems; the dichotomy between centralized and decentralized sytems; and the emerging role of massive datasets together with techniques to extract structure from them. (interview with kleinberg)

creating datasets, face the challenge:

how to make sense of data at this resolution, and how to ensure people's privacy in a world where this kind of data exists. But if we can overcome these challenges, we'll have much better insight into how to make on-line tools better conform to the ways in which people read, write, search, and communicate --- and more generally how to design on-line tools for a world in which people are increasingly dependent on them.

if you wanna understand a piece of information on the web you need to understand its position within the network ... similar thoughts discussed at different corners. small world, indeed.

...he expects the growing volume, complexity, and variegation of information to force people to either create tools to more effectively handle the data or devise new management styles.(acm concludes)

did the call it "interface message processor"?