Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945-2005 (Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation)
By admin • Apr 20th, 2009 • Category: Uncategorized
Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945-2005 (Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation)
by: Paul E. Ceruzzi
Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945-2005 (Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation)
By Paul E. Ceruzzi
Publisher: The MIT Press
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: 2008-04-30
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0262033747
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780262033749
Product Description:
Much of the world’s Internet management and governance takes place in a corridor extending west from Washington, DC, through northern Virginia toward Washington Dulles International Airport. Much of the United States’ military planning and analysis takes place here as well. At the center of that corridor is Tysons Corner鈥攁n unincorporated suburban crossroads once dominated by dairy farms and gravel pits. Today, the government contractors and high- tech firms鈥攃ompanies like DynCorp, CACI, Verisign, and SAIC鈥攖hat now populate this corridor have created an “Internet Alley” off the Washington Beltway. In Internet Alley, Paul Ceruzzi examines this compact area of intense commercial development and describes its transformation into one of the most dynamic and prosperous regions in the country.
Ceruzzi explains how a concentration of military contractors carrying out weapons analysis, systems engineering, operations research, and telecommunications combined with suburban growth patterns to drive the region’s development. The dot-com bubble’s burst was offset here, he points out, by the government’s growing national security-related need for information technology. Ceruzzi looks in detail at the nature of the work carried out by these government contractors and how it can be considered truly innovative in terms of both technology and management.
Today in Tysons Corner, clusters of sleek new office buildings housing high-technology companies stand out against the suburban landscape, and the upscale Tysons Galleria Mall is neighbor to a government-owned radio tower marked by a sign warning visitors not to photograph or sketch it. Ceruzzi finds that a variety of perennially relevant issues intersect here, making it both a literal and figurative crossroads: federal support of scientific research, the shift of government activities to private contractors, local politics of land use, and the postwar movement from central cities to suburbs.
Summary: Excellent Book, Engagingly Written
Rating: 5
I picked up this book with not the highest expectations. There would be so many ways to do it wrong. Concentrate on corporate egomaniacs. Leave out the history and politics of the physical development of Tyson’s corner. Make it so highly technical that only a network engineer could understand it.
Happily, Paul Ceruzzi avoided all these pitfalls and wrote a truly holistic history of Tyson’s Corner and the Dulles corridor. The dairy farmers and gravel pit operators who originally owned most of the land are discussed. The complex origins of the internet are laid out well, including a few enduring mysteries (how *did* Network Solutions get that contract?). The rise and struggles of Tyson Corner’s malls are discussed. And so are the origins of government contracting, which Ceruzzi rightly points out was actually an innovative response to the logistical demands of WW II.
In other hands, this might have been dry stuff indeed, but Ceruzzi writes in an engaging, friendly, conversational style. I picked it up to read for 20 minutes before going to sleep and ended up going through 5 chapters.
While not an expert in this field, I have worked for more than a decade in the IT business in and around “Internet Alley,” know some of the players involved in the pre-web internet world, and live in the Dulles Corridor. The highest compliment I can pay as a reader with some special knowledge is to say that I found no mistakes and learned plenty of stuff that I didn’t know — including the fact that I once unknowingly worked only 100 yards from MAE-East, then the most important internet node in the world. And I finally learned who built that weird radio tower across the street from my office – and why.
This book will be of strong interest to anyone involved in the IT industry — especially if their career has been in on the East coast — but more broadly to anyone living in the DC Metro area or with an interest in urban history. You’ll not only learn a lot, but it’s also a fun read.
Summary: A Superb History
Rating: 5
No question about it, Tyson’s Corner and the Dulles corridor in northern Virginia just outside of Washington, D.C., is a high-technology powerhouse. Living off the federal government, especially the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, several corporations have grown fat on government spending.
“Internet Alley: High Technology in Tyson’s Corner, 1945-2005″ by Paul Ceruzzi, my colleague at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, is an extremely useful and well-crafted account of the many ways in which expanding government requirements, technological developments, growing regional transportation needs, and commerce have come together in the growth of areas surrounding Washington since World War II.
The book clearly has value to readers interested in the history of the federal government, the relationship between technology and society, and those of us that reside inside the beltway. But it is much more; it represents an outstanding case study of the effects which the combinations of these economic, political, and social factors have had on the United States over the past sixty years.
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