Power to the People: Toward a Social History of Computing

2017

The social and organizational history of humanity is intricately entangled with the history of technology in general and the technology of information in particular. Advances in this area have often been closely involved in social and political transformations. While the contemporary period is often referred to by such names as the Computing and Information Age, this is the culmination of a series of historical transformations that have been centuries in the making. This course will provide a venue for students to learn about history through the evolution of number systems and arithmetic, calculating and computing machines, and advanced communication technology via the Internet. Students who take this course will attain a degree of technological literacy while studying core historical concepts. Students who complete this course will learn the key vocabulary of the computing discipline, which is playing a significant role in modern human thought and new media communications. The Hist...

1994

Technology & Culture, 2012

IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 2007

Vorüberlegungen für einen internationalen Workshop über die Schaffung, Verbindung und Nutzung großer interdisziplinärer Quellenbanken in den historischen Wissenschaften [1986].

What other political, social, and existential changes the age of the computer will also bring we do not know. What seems certain, however, is that the problem of technological determinism-that is, of the impact of machines on historywill remain germane until there is forged a degree of public control over technology far greater than anything that now exists.

2017

»Über die Notwendigkeit einer Theorie für History Computing«. The early phases of computer supported research in history have been characterized by enthusiasm about the many possibilities opened. Possibilities, which go beyond just one methodological paradigm as the recent discussions about the relative importance of quantitative studies within computer applications in history show. A deeper discussion about these developments is necessary, necessary for pure intellectual reasons as well as for ones within the politics of academia. This requires a theory of historical computing, which starts from an analysis of the differences between computing in history and computers' applications to other disciplines. To illustrate that, a number of examples are given, which show that the information presented by historical sources is inherently different from the one processed by information systems directed at current times.

At the very end of a famous standard textbook on the history of computing we can read: "By the time you read this, many more things will have happened in the world and a good proportion of them will have been made possible by computer technology. Yet, this may be a good place to end our story. At the start of the 2020s, the story of modern computing has reached the beginning of an end, as the last great story of modernist technological progress fractures belatedly into postmodern chaos. Computing is deeply intertwined with vital structural developments in global relations, economics, society, and culture. Barring apocalypse, those connections will only deepen." (Haigh and Ceruzzi 2021, 423) Barring apocalypse-for sure. The authors presume that the world will go on, as it did, more or less at least. But what if the big catastrophe will happen? What if climate change disrupts our societies? What if a nuclear war will-finally-come? What if the global economy crashes? That's why in several recent papers the possibilities of post-apocalyptic computing are discussed. "In this article we […] develop approaches to designing interactive technologies that acknowledge the many, dramatic, and complex phenomena associated with global change." (Silberman and Tomlinson 2010). Or: "Computing researchers and practitioners are often seen as inventing the future. As such, we are implicitly also in the business of predicting the future. […] In this article we explore the relationship between these potential futures and computing research. What hidden assumptions about the future are embedded in most computing research? What possible or even probable futures are we ignoring? What work should we be doing to respond to fundamental planetary limits, and to the ecological and energy constraints that global society faces over the coming years and decades? Confronting such limits is likely to present challenges that we-humanity-have never before faced." (Nardi et al. 2018, 86) This passage is really interesting. It shows awareness of the fact-intensely discussed e. g. by media studies (Ernst and Schröter 2021)-that technologies are always constructed, obviously, with a view on their uses in the future. So, every technology implies visions of the future and future users-often conflicting ones. Additionally, it is known from the very beginning that in the actual future the uses to which a given technology might be put, might differ from the implied futures, as do the real users from the implied users. One or more intended future(s) and its possible non-or other-realizations are already implied in a given technology. That means also, that the future is not just something coming as an unforeseeable event,

Social science concepts and techniques have been bound up with computing since its earliest days. This relationship is described in terms of three distinct ‘frameworks of computing‘, historically specific ways of understanding, working with and developing computer systems. Each framework has different understandings of the "real" and desirable relations between people and computers, and a concern that hardware and software should reflect these relations. They render some forms of computing thinkable and desirable, whilst ruling out others — to a considerable extent they govern the conduct of computing, in both basic R&D and in commercial and organisational development. The frameworks are not purely internal to the historical development of computing, but nor are they the direct effect of any single external factor. They also overlap with each other in different configurations within computing, and two such sites are described in more detail, HCI and CSCW. In conclusion, firstly some suggestions are offered for further research, in particular the possibility that new frameworks are being assembled as computing converges with the media industries; and secondly the form of analysis is presented as being complementary to many existing approaches, through occupying a middle ground between traditional scientific and historical methodologies, and the emergent focus on contextuality, difference and deconstruction.

Springer eBooks, 2016

This oral history interview was conducted between Hans Rutimann and Julianne Nyhan via Skype on 15 November 2012. Rutimann was provided with the core questions in advance of the interview. Here he recalls that his fi rst encounter with computing was at the Modern Languages Association (MLA), c.1968/9. Following a minor scandal at the organisation, which resulted in the dismissal of staff connected with the newly arrived IBM 360/20, Rutimann was persuaded to take on some of their duties. After training with IBM in operating and programming he set about transferring the membership list (about 30,000 contact details) from an addressograph machine to punched cards. After the computer's early use to support such administrative tasks the MLA began investigating the feasibility of making the research tool called the MLA International Bibliography (information about accessing the present-day version of the bibliography is available here: https://www.mla. org/bib_electronic) remotely accessible. Rutimann worked with Lockheed to achieve this. It was in Lockheed's information retrieval lab that the system known as Dialog, an online information retrieval system was developed (see Summit 1967). He vividly recalls how he travelled the 3000 miles to San Francisco to deliver the magnetic tape to Lockheed so that they could make the database available online. He "jumped for joy" when, once back in New York, the data was available to him via the newly acquired terminal of the MLA. While making clear that his roles in MLA, Mellon and the Engineering Information Foundation have primarily been enabling ones (and to this we can add advocacy, strategy and foresight) he also recalls the strong infl uence that Joseph Raben had on him and mentions some of the projects and conferences that he found particularly memorable.

2002

The academic communities directly associated with computing science have varied their scope across a significant part of their development. This article graphically explores the historical development of informatics using the trajectory of curricula recommendations in computing science. The usual description of informatics as an ever expanding field is challenged facing the disciplinary diversity found in the ACM computing curricula recommendations and related documents. Indeed, in a first period the disciplinary diversity fostered by the community was reduced. This reduction of diversity was accompanied by an increase in the depth of a few branches, structuring Informatics in areas such as computer engineering, computing science, and information systems. Later on, Informatics's footprint has increased, demanding a renewal of its disciplinary structure, which triggered the emergence of new related occupations. The graphic representations proposed here mediate a discussion of current professional tendencies, illustrating that Informatics' history is more rich than it is usually seen.

A review of the continuing battle to increase our computational abilities

IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 2012

This narrative on computing history reflects the experiences of the author and his involvement with computing history over a quarter century. The discussion portrays a transition from loathing history as a student to embracing computing history as a professional. The author shows how storytelling can produce interesting excursions on technical subjects and ways in which teaching computing with history can elevate student interest. He also provides examples showing ways in which historical events could complement computing studies. The article also explains how the author's earlier efforts in using history to teach computing led to a landmark publication and subsequent activities within IFIP leading to conferences and related publications.