"It seems probable that once the machine thinking method has started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. ... At some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines to take control, in the way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler's 'Erewhon'." ~Alan Turing
"...the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue" ~John_ von Neumann: origin of term "singularity" which we'll revisit again under Future
1958: Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)created by President Eisenhower in 1958 for the purpose of forming and executing research and development projects to expand the frontiers of technology and science, and able to reach far beyond immediate military requirements; later renamed "DARPA"
"What, exactly, is the Internet? Basically it is a global network exchanging digitized data in such a way that any computer, anywhere, that is equipped with a device called a "modem" can make a noise like a duck choking on a kazoo." ~Dave Barry
The Decades That Invented the Future: Part 6: 1950sTransistorized Computer; Sci-Fi Cinema, Rock&Roll; Spy Satellites; Hockey Mask; Hovercraft; Digital Photograph; Tennis for Two (videogame); DNA; Black Box; Fidel Castro; Catalyzed Plastics; ICEE Machine; Wired; 11/22/2012
1951: UNIVAC I; UNIVersal Automatic Computer; predicted 1952 election; Computer History Quiz
1954: Silicon transistor
1957: Sputnik; How Sputnik Worked