Paranoid Prose » old tech http://www.paranoidprose.com reading to keep you up at night Mon, 06 Sep 2010 16:25:18 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 before the internet – the hotline http://www.paranoidprose.com/2009/07/20/before-the-internet-the-hotline/ http://www.paranoidprose.com/2009/07/20/before-the-internet-the-hotline/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 02:06:40 +0000 alberg http://www.paranoidprose.com/?p=20 Back in the good old days, when the US had nation states as enemies (instead of amorphous trans national ‘franchises’ of enemies), we and the other guys had the good sense to set up a state of the art communications link so that we could keep in touch and avoid those annoying little misunderstandings which could lead to global thermonuclear war.

Like any other ‘internet,’ the hot line wasn’t perfect.  According to this account, “A Danish bulldozer operator once cut the line near Copenhagen. A Finnish farmer once plowed it up. A fire in a Baltimore Maryland manhole took it out of service temporarily.”   But in the end, it has kept the world safe since 1963.  Pretty cool.  (via Boing Boing)

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