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ARPA Does Windows: The Defense Underpinning of the PC Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Glenn R. Fong
Glenn R. Fong*
Affiliation:
Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management
*
Associate Professor of International Studies, Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management, Glendale AZ 85306, USA. Email: fongg@t-bird.edu
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Abstract

The Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) has aggressively and persistently supported technologies key to the personal computer (PC) revolution. Uncovering this political-economic link provides an important corrective to the popular lore surrounding the origins of the PC. In their emphases on private sector initiative and entrepreneurial risk-taking, conventional PC histories conform to orthodox market-based explanations of technological and economic progress. In contradistinction, this article “brings the state back in” to the PC realm of apparent market purity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business and Politics , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , November 2001 , pp. 213 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © V.K. Aggarwal 2001 and published under exclusive license to Cambridge University Press 

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