Word: research
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...them: the project that they were working out would have to impress people in the Defense Department who didn't expect to be impressed by anything that the behavioral scientists and their ARPA friends could come up with. Specifically that meant John Foster, the Defense Department's top research official. Foster's scientific work has been concerned with thermonuclear bombs (he did his graduate work under Edward Teller), and while Cambridge's behavioral scientists seem to like Foster personally (he is something of a Strangelovian cowboy, with a fondness for zooming around at the controls of his own jet plane...
...proposal that Pool, Licklider and their friends at ARPA were working on last spring was to be an attempt to convince the men who manage the Pentagon's research policies that 1) the behavioral science scould be developed to the status of a "hard" science, and 2' that such development would in turn concretely aid the Defense Department in achieving its goals at home and around the world...
There were three reasons why Harvard was felt to be important to the success of the project. The first was simply the prestige of the Harvard name. A second reason was that Harvard's participation would enable ARPA to simplify and centralize its support of social science research in the Cambridge community...
...third reason is a bit more complicated. In the early sixties, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board invetigated the state of social science research and concluded. among other things, that one development which would help the social scientists along the road to developing a "real" science would be to organize themselvesinto research institutes along the lines of the natural science institutes which are found on many university campuses. Such development, it was felt, would increase interaction between social scientists and thus further the creation of an integrated discipline of "hard" social science. Shortly after this report was released, Licklider joined...
...proposed research program is a university based effort and therefore oriented to advance a major field of science. While it is a basic research effort, it is likely to lead to many applications. The potential applications of the advances made- if the project succeeds- may perhaps be better understood by those in public life who will apply the knowledge than by the scientists themselves. Yet it is clear to us that public policy will be aided by advances in the understanding of human interactions and in the prediction of the performance of social systems...