The Internet is a product of the organizational structure of the Office of Science and Research Development, scientific corporate liberalism of Vannevar Bush's post-WWII policies, the process-oriented rhetoric in Science: The Endless Frontier, and Kennedy's commitment to the New Frontier. This thesis first examines the network infrastructure and then the Web in succession, following the common use of the metaphor, which moved from the rhetoric of science in the 1940s to a metaphor that financially and ideologically supported the Pentagon's Advanced Research Project Agency infrastructure in the 1960s and then finally created the value-laden features of the Internet, cyberspace, and its culture in the 1990s. This thesis connects the stages of development of the Internet to uses of the frontier in political rhetoric.

Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2005. / Title from title page screen (viewed on Feb. 2, 2006). Thesis advisor: George White. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Tennessee, 2007. / Title from title page screen (viewed on Mar. 31, 2008). Thesis advisor: Michael L. Keene. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Michal Ulvr Abstract It was the near-end of the Second World War, which defined the popular reception of the Atomic bomb for upcoming decade. In the first year of the nuclear monopoly, the feeling of uncertainty and fear of death in the nuclear war was not yet present in strength. The mood of relative safety dominated the American society till the fall of the monopoly in 1949. Since the first atomic explosion occurred in the USSR, the atmosphere of fear, that never faded back and was latent since August and September 1945, made an exuberant appearance in press and other media. Suddenly, the American government made (after years of neglect) a great effort to calm down the uncertainty of the public. A Federal Civil Defense Administration was established at the end of 1950 and provided more or less useful information, propaganda, material and logistical support for a war with the Soviet Union, which was expected to come sooner or later. Plenty of educational and propaganda pamphlets, books and training films were produced in determination to make it clear, that survival under nuclear attack was possible. And indeed, at that time, there was even a good chance, that keeping some basic survival rules in mind an individual could come out of a nuclear attack relatively unscathed. Administration even tried to...