done. There would be no central hubs. Information would sail over linked lines in the way radio signals moved in the air. Military communications, in Baran’s system, would bounce from point to point on this tapestry, at each stop being re-directed towards their intended destination. The resulting network

rgy of open creativity that belied the dangerous, nuclear-tipped problems sitting inside its locked safes and eager minds. Shortly after settling in, Baran was given one of the most troubling, deeply secret of these puzzles. The Cold War was then in its early days. The debate over how to manage an age w

the task of each of us to discover it. Topologies linger everywhere there is connection. Networks can be designed in countless ways: The fishnets of Baran, the hub and spoke of a data center, the ever- changing mesh of a trading system. But what they all share is connective topologies of one sort or ano