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Written by user:LA2 on August 19, 2005.

[edit] Information Warfare and the "Red W"

When people on the foundation-l mailing list were insisting on drawing parallels between the Wikimedia Foundation and the International Red Cross, I wrote this semi-humoristic, semi-serious reply:

The International Red Cross was established in 1863 followed in 1864 by the first Geneva Convention that recognized the red cross symbol in warfare. This happened at the same time as warfare got mechanized, in the decades immediately after the innovations of steam railroads (Stephenson's Rocket, 1829), steam propeller ships (USS Monitor, 1862) and machine guns (Gatling gun, 1861).

Supposedly, a "Red W" (Wikinews: neutral reporting) can be adopted as soon as we have a fully developed information war. The current wars (against terrorism, and in Afghanistan and Iraq) are not of this kind, because of the overwhelming information supremacy of the winning (western) side, which makes the information aspect of the current conflicts look more like a minor colonial uprising. For the nearest decade, it seems unlikely that the Arab world, Africa or communist China would be able to catch up with the western information supremacy. It seems more likely that the first real information wars will be fought within the current area of supremacy.

If we just add 150 years, the Gatling Blog will be invented in 2011, the "Red W" could be adopted in 2013, at the height of the U.S. civil information war, followed in 2021 by the Franco-Prussian information war, and World Information War I would be scheduled to take place in 2064-2068.

It should be clear that I draw the parallel to its extreme. But such analogies can still provide inspiration when we want to imagine what things, such as wikis, that are developing now could become in the future. They probably thought in 1855 that they had pretty good rifles, but did they foresee the machine gun? The ugliness of mechanized warfare prompted for new international law with special exceptions for human relief, such as the red cross symbol. We don't know yet what the particular ugliness of information warfare will be, or which exceptions to our regular powerplay it will allow. Perhaps free software and free information will be part of it.

Let's see how far the 150 year analogy between mechanical engineering and computer networks can go:

Mechanical engineering	Year	Year+150	Computer networks
Early work
Birth of James Watt	1736	1886
	1740	1890	Birth of Vannevar Bush
	1750	1900	Birth of Howard Aiken
	1753	1903	Birth of John von Neumann
	1762	1912	Birth of Alan Turing
Watt patents a condenser chamber for the steam engine	1769	1919
	1775	1925	Birth of Douglas Engelbart
	1776	1926	Birth of Paul Baran
Birth of George Stephenson	1781	1931
Watt invents double-acting engine	1782	1932
	1787	1937	Birth of Ted Nelson
Watt adapts centrifugal governor for steam engines	1788	1938	Birth of Bob Kahn
	1793	1943	Birth of Vint Cerf
	1789-1795	1939-1945	First computers developed during World War II
	1795	1945	Vannevar Bush publishes As We May Think
Birth of the key players
	1800	1950	Birth of Steve Wozniak
Birth of John Ericsson	1803	1953
	1805	1955	Birth of Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
Birth of Isambard Kingdom Brunel	1806	1956
	1810	1960	Ted Nelson founds Project Xanadu
	1812	1962	Paul Baran creates packet-switching theory
	1814	1964	Birth of Jeff Bezos
	1816	1966	Birth of Jimmy Wales
	1815	1965	First e-mail systems on mainframes
Birth of Richard Jordan Gatling	1818	1968	Douglas Engelbart holds The Mother of All Demos
	1819	1969	First ARPANET connection. Birth of Linus Torvalds
	1821	1971	Birth of Marc Andreessen. Intel 4004 is the first microprocessor
Technological breakthroughs
Carnot presents the theory behind steam engines	1824	1974
	1826	1976	Apple I home computer introduced
Stephenson's Rocket wins at Rainhill Trials	1829	1979	Beginning of the Usenet
	1830	1980	Birth of Shawn Fanning
	1831	1981	IBM PC introduced
Great Western Railroad company founded in Bristol	1833	1983	Internet switches to Cerf's TCP/IP (from NCP)
Clapeyron contributes to theory behind steam engines	1834	1984	Cisco Systems is founded. Apple Macintosh is introduced
	1836	1986	NSFNet academic Internet backbone
Brunel's SS Great Western is launched, crossing the Atlantic in 15 days	1838	1988	IRC designed by Jarkko Oikarinen
	1839	1989	Berlin Wall falls
Great Western Railroad London-Bristol opens	1841	1991	World Wide Web invented by Tim Berners-Lee
With John Ericsson's propeller, SS Princeton wins speed competition. Brunel's SS Great Britain is launched	1843	1993	Mosaic, the first graphic web browser, is introduced
	1845	1995	Amazon.com is launched
	1846	1996	ICQ is introduced
	1849	1999	Shawn Fanning launches Napster
	1850	2000	Dot-com stock market crash
	1851	2001	Wikipedia is launched
	1854	2004	Facebook is launched. Google Book Search is announced, including a ten year plan to digitize 15 million books
	1857	2007	Hackers Take Down the Most Wired Country in Europe, article in Wired magazine issue 15.09, describing the botnet attack on Estonia in April 2007
Brunel's en:SS Great Eastern is launched	1858	2008
Things get ugly
Patent for Gatling gun	1861	2011
American Civil War, the first mechanized war	1861-1865	2011-2015
USS Monitor	1862	2012
International Red Cross is founded	1863	2013
The first Geneva Convention	1864	2014
Franco-Prussian War	1870-1871	2020-2021
Stock market crashes in Vienna and New York start the Long Depression	1873	2023
The steam era is over
Wright brothers invent aeroplane	1903	2053
Ford Model T introduced	1908	2058
World War I, fully mechanized global war	1914-1918	2064-2068