It looks like the America COMPETEs act is making its way out of Congress (See here). One interesting part of the science and technology legislature being considered is the creation of ARPA-E, an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (initial budget of $300M.) Similarly, a while back (former) Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte discussed an intelligence effort called IARPA. Both of these names are in reference to DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which used to be called just ARPA and was responsible for funding the ARPANET which eventually became the Internet (A minor funding sucesss, you might say 🙂 )
Hmm, it seems to me that ARPA is the new lower case letter “i” (“i” being the new lowercase “e”, of course.) Anyone seen any more ARPAs out in the wild? More importantly, when will I get my ARPAphone?
O brave new quantum world!
But from what you were just saying, ARPA came before “e” and before “i”… So it’s a bit of a stretch to call it the new “i”. I guess ARPA was just slow to become popular.
So, back in the day I thought ARDA was the equivalent of iARPA. Is ARDA dead? Their website hasn’t worked for some time.
ARDA became the DTO, the “Disruptive Technology Office”.
The way I remember it when I was online in 1972 was the ARPANET became the DARPANET became the ARPANET became the internet.
So if ARPA is the new “i” there is this i^3 = -i phenomenon to deal with. Have a drink, at the Rotating Vector. “V” reference. Speaking of which…
In Roman times, if ARPA is the new I, then VARPA is the new 5, and XARPA is the new 10.