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

The success of Silicon Valley as a technology region has encouraged boosters from other areas to claim some special distinction for their area or deliberately try to create an analogous high-tech region. Oregon has the “Silicon Forest,” while New York City has “Silicon Alley,” and so on. These regions or putative regions provide outstanding opportunities for historical analysis and Paul Ceruzzi has picked up the challenge of telling the history of Virginia suburbs lying to the southwest of Washington, D.C., covering both the military-contracting firms located in Tysons Corner and the nearby but originally unrelated computing networking firms located in the area that came to be known as Internet Alley. Ceruzzi’s work combines the history of technology with the history of suburbanization, with his book showing the interplay between the history of the technology companies and the history of real estate and infrastructure development.

While one might think that the rise of the national security state after World War II would make it inevitable that defense-related businesses would develop in the vicinity of the Pentagon, Ceruzzi does an excellent job of showing the contingent events that shaped the timing, location, and nature of the firms that appeared in northern Virginia. Geographically most important were the specific decisions siting the Pentagon, the Capital Beltway, and Dulles Airport. Ceruzzi identifies Vannevar Bush as the godfather of Tysons Corner, through his institution of a system of “federalism by contract” wherein a large portion of defense research money went to private organizations. Tysons Corner organizations developed as a way to provide expertise to the Pentagon while still allowing for private-sector salaries. The archetypical Tysons Corner firm had a cryptic name such as BDM, CACI, or PRC, was little-known to outsiders, and produced analyses for the Pentagon but made no hardware.

Ceruzzi’s title is in some ways misleading, for only one chapter deals with the cluster of computer-networking firms near Dulles Airport called “Internet Alley.” This cluster was less dependent on the Pentagon, and its location was a function of a variety of factors, such as the Information Processing Techniques Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency location in Rosslyn, as well as MCI’s headquarters in the D.C. area (which served as a base for MCI’s legal battles with AT&T). One wishes that this chapter were longer and more detailed.

A major theme of the book, both implicit and explicit, lies in comparisons between the region and Silicon Valley, and one’s attention is drawn most to the differences. While recent scholarship has highlighted the importance of the military in the development of Silicon Valley, it was even more important in Tysons Corner. Silicon Valley developed in such a way that it ultimately lessened its dependence on the military over time. From Ceruzzi’s account, Tysons Corner and Internet Alley appear to have developed far less in the ancillary fields, such as venture capital and other entrepreneurial services, that have enabled Silicon Valley to move from technology to technology. The D.C. area’s technological renewal after the collapse of the dot-com bubble was based largely on the renaissance of the national security state after 9/11.

Internet Alley seems aimed largely at a local nonacademic audience. Ceruzzi writes in a conversational style, and some of the detail will be best appreciated by people familiar with the area. A fascinating sub theme is how Maryland and Virginia developed in different ways, with Maryland expanding earlier, and being more often the site of government-controlled labs, while later-developing Virginia became the home of private contractors. Still, Ceruzzi tells his story with reference to a wide range of scholarship on suburban development and military technology. And historians of technology can both learn from his scholarship and emulate a model narrative of the history of technology in a broad context.