Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945–2005

by Paul E. Ceruzzi

How government military contractors and high-tech firms transformed an unincorporated suburban crossroads into the center of the world's Internet management and governance.

Much of the world's Internet management and governance takes place in a corridor extending west from Washington, DC, through northern Virginia toward Washington Dulles International Airport. Much of the United States' military planning and analysis takes place here as well. At the center of that corridor is Tysons Corner—an unincorporated suburban crossroads once dominated by dairy farms and gravel pits. Today, the government contractors and high- tech firms—companies like DynCorp, CACI, Verisign, and SAIC—that now populate this corridor have created an “Internet Alley” off the Washington Beltway. In From Tysons Corner to Internet Alley, Paul Ceruzzi examines this compact area of intense commercial development and describes its transformation into one of the most dynamic and prosperous regions in the country.

Ceruzzi explains how a concentration of military contractors carrying out weapons analysis, systems engineering, operations research, and telecommunications combined with suburban growth patterns to drive the region's development. The dot-com bubble's burst was offset here, he points out, by the government's growing national security-related need for information technology. Ceruzzi looks in detail at the nature of the work carried out by these government contractors and how it can be considered truly innovative in terms of both technology and management.

Today in Tysons Corner, clusters of sleek new office buildings housing high-technology companies stand out against the suburban landscape, and the upscale Tysons Galleria Mall is neighbor to a government-owned radio tower marked by a sign warning visitors not to photograph or sketch it. Ceruzzi finds that a variety of perennially relevant issues intersect here, making it both a literal and figurative crossroads: federal support of scientific research, the shift of government activities to private contractors, local politics of land use, and the postwar movement from central cities to suburbs.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

242 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2008

About the author

Paul E. Ceruzzi is Curator at the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution. He is the author of Computing: A Concise History, A History of Modern Computing, and Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945–2005, all published by the MIT Press, and other books.

Reviews

[Benjamin Sigrist · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat interesting but I had hoped to read more about the nerdy details of how it actually became a crucial Internet Exchange point.

[DW Rowlands · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is both a history of Tysons Corner, Virginia and of the defense and internet companies that have been the core of its economy for the past three quarters of a century. I'm primarily interested in it because Tysons is an important part of the DC area that I don't feel like I understand well enough. I'll probably buy a copy for my local history collection, though.

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this is apparently just a bunch of essays slammed together with little in the way of an organizing principle, they're good essays.

These vignettes present the best kind of local history, one that connects the area studied to broader trends in the country and in the world. Admittedly for Tysons Corner that is somewhat easy because it thrived off the ever-expanding Cold War military apparatus and the Federal government's thirst for contracting. Ceruzzi relates how Vannevar Bush's call for public-private partnerships in science after World War II led to the formation of a range of semi-official defense research groups (FFRDCs) who used mathematical tools to engineer everything from bombing patterns to logistics schedules. He discusses how the area was affected by the everything from the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984 to the fall of the Soviet Union, all while emphasizing the importance of the zoning battles and real estate consortiums that built up this quintessential "Edge City." (He also challenges the validity of that now universal buzzword.)

After working in Tysons Corner for the good part of year, it's nice to know a little bit about those strange acronyms that graced all of Tysons' non-descript office parks (SAIC, CAIC, PRC, CES, etc.) and its nice to know what that big top-secret radio tower does (it communicates with bunkers that are prepared for nuclear war).

Overall, this is a great introduction to anyone curious about the surprisingly relevant history of Northern Virginia.

[Noah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ceruzzi has an absolutely fantastic story here, and he knows it. You get to see the intersection of changes in defense spending, of suburbanization, of cultural change in the South, and of technological change. There are the relationships between defense and civilian tech firms, the relationships between D.C., Maryland, Northern Virginia and the rest of the state. The kind of infrastructure we normally think of (roads and sewers) with the kind we rarely do (the hardware backbone of the internet). He identifies all these things and gets that they all fit together.

Unfortunately, Ceruzzi just isn't the person to write the book -- he's not able to really keep his eye on each piece of the puzzle. His grasp of urban history/planning just isn't there -- he dismisses transit to Dulles on the ground that it would have to stop between there and D.C., of all things, while touting PRT -- and he can't do a good enough job keeping up with the parallel stories of tech clusters in Silicon Valley, Southern California, Maryland and Boston.

Nor does he have the storytelling chops to keep what are some truly anonymous institutions (top names: BDM, DynCorp, System Development Corporation, Planning Research Corporation, Melpar) from being utterly interchangeable.

The result is that I feel I can now ask the question "what's the story of Northern Virginia?" with greater precision, but not that I really have any answers.

[Ben Sweezy · Rating 4 out of 5]

did you know that all that mess in northern virginia was farmland little more than 50 years ago? and systems research, management analytics, and internet backbones created Tyson's corner and a whole lot of asphalt with cars on it?

Also fun to compare to the lecture: "Secret History of Silicon Valley"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_R...

[Shirley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tells the story of how government intelligence and IT services business cluster at Tysons Corners Virginia (outside Washington) developed. A recommended read if you are not familiar with the shape of IT and computing services for the US federal government.

[Tom]

Very interesting, well-written history of Tyson's Corner!