Hello Jeremy, I'm surprised you don't include the Sinclair ZX80 (see e.g. http://www.oldcomputers.net/zx80.html ) in your timeline - I may be mistaken but I think it was the first 'PC' that was cheap enough to go straight into the average household - the ZX81 had more of a mass market and then it was followed by the Spectrum. I remember playing my first computer game on a ZX81, and using them in school too :) On the database question - I would say that yes they have to be considered. However a database is in essence just a list of things - which must have been around ever since the first sapiens tried to tell someone about their favourite gathering spots :) So how and why (or if) they become something exclusively 'IT' I don't know. Mark Poster deals with the significance of databases in a Foucauldian manner: Poster, Mark. The Second Media Age. Cambridge: Polity Press; 1995. Regards, Julian ++++++++++ Julian Hopkins Lecturer HELP University College - ADP Kuala Lumpur tel: +60 3 2095 8791 x2913 email: julianh@help.edu.my Message: 13 Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 16:52:53 +0200 From: "Jeremy Depauw" <jeremy.depauw@gmail.com> Subject: [Air-l] ICT's Timeline: thanks and first draft To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Message-ID: <f837fdd90610110752l3cd745b9y41566e6dc619440e@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Dear all ! Firstly, I would like to thank readers who have taken some of their time to answer my question about ICT's Timeline. Lots of suggestions were very usefull. Now I would like to present the first draft I made since I manages to catch a first wave of dates and ideas. To view it, feel free to click on that link <http://dev.ulb.ac.be/%7Ejdepauw/telecharger/EN_timeline-TIC.pdf>. I think that my info are still too "computer oriented" but by the way, I am not sure there is so much other fields of innovation for my question. I translated it very quickly and the layout is still to be improved. My new motivation is here to ask for an advice : should I consider the history of "databases" as relevant in my reflection and should I link it to the developpement of on-line ressources ? (which I couldn't take into account yet) -- Jeremy Depauw The Power of Knoweldge Sharing and Skills Synegism Journal de recherche: http://dev.ulb.ac.be/~jdepauw/dotclear/index.php