Dear Aoirs i am looking for books, essays etc. about a cultural and/or sociological history of computer. I know just one book, e.g. Steven Levy: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Any help/suggestions will be appreciated Yours Antonio
Pfaffenberger, Bryan (1988) "The Social Meaning of the Personal Computer: Or, Why the Personal Computer Revolution was No Revolution". Anthropological Quarterly, Vol 61, pp 39-47. This paper gives an interesting account of the ideas around personal computing in the 60-70's. Despite I am not fully agree with his argument it is worth a reading. Cheers, Mario Guimaraes. On Mon, 15 Apr 2002 17:09:30 -0400 Antonio Roversi <roversi@scform.unibo.it> wrote:
Dear Aoirs
i am looking for books, essays etc. about a cultural and/or sociological history of computer. I know just one book, e.g. Steven Levy: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Any help/suggestions will be appreciated
Yours
Antonio
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mario Guimaraes Jr. CRICT - Brunel University, UK mario.guimaraes@brunel.ac.uk http://www.cfh.ufsc.br/~guima
Antonio, Check out the following: 1) The Triumph of the Nerds http://www.pbs.org/nerds/ 2) Nerds 2.01 http://www.pbs.org/opb/nerds2.0.1/ Both are video programs that outline the silicon valley perspective Also see: Peter Salus's A Quarter Century of Unix (1994) Janet Abbate's Inventing the Internet I guess you should go back as far as Babbage to start documenting efforts to build computers. hth, Karim -- =================================== Karim R. Lakhani MIT Sloan School of Management MIT Open Source Research Project e-mail: lakhani@mit.edu voice: 617-851-1224 fax: 617-344-0403 http://opensource.mit.edu http://mit.edu/lakhani/www ===================================
For the PC revolution only, I like "Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer" by Paul Freiberger & Michael Swaine (1984). I have seen a more recent updated edition of the book..........Alex ============================== Alex Kuskis MEd, PhD Candidate OISE/University of Toronto e-Learning Consultant, e-Scholars.ca Assoc. Faculty, Royal Roads University http://www.royalroads.ca/oll/madl/information.htm akuskis@ican.net ** alex.kuskis@utoronto.ca "Learning a living" - Marshall McLuhan
Antonio, Try this PowerPoint presentation. I found it interesting and useful. http://www.pitt.edu/~poole/historyofcomputers_files/v3_document.htm It was created by Bernie Poole at the University of Pittsburgh. It works best in IE. Hope it helps. Laura At 05:09 PM 04/15/2002 -0400, you wrote:
Dear Aoirs
i am looking for books, essays etc. about a cultural and/or sociological history of computer. I know just one book, e.g. Steven Levy: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Any help/suggestions will be appreciated
Yours
Antonio
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Laura J. Little, Ed.D. Instructional Technologist Marietta College Marietta, OH littlea@marietta.edu (740)376-4815
An extremely solid history of computing (but with almost no cultural analysis) is Paul Ceruzzi's _History of Modern Computing_. A little more in depth in the cultural analysis is Campbell-Kelly and Aspray's _Computer: A History of the Information Machine_ but really only because they investigate the role of the commercial sector in more depth. Finally, an interesting an often overlooked book is Paul Edwards' _The Closed World_ that details an interesting configuration of military command and control, behavioralism, and computing use. Edwards' book is Foucaldian in the sense that he is detailing a historical episteme that gave rise for the need of computing technology. It is also interesting for its use of literary, cultural, and historical analysis. best- Phillip Thurtle University of Washington Co-editor of H-SCI-MED-TECH
This should yield a few leads... ;-) Bardini, Thierry. 1995. The Social Construction of the Personal Computer User. Journal of Communication, Summer. . 2000. Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Edwards, Paul N. 1996. The closed world: computers and the politics of discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hafner, Katie, and Matthew Lyon. 1998. Where wizards stay up late: the origins of the Internet. New York: Touchstone. Rheingold, Howard. 2000. Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology. 2nd Rev. ed: MIT Press. Smith, Douglas K., and Robert C. Alexander. 1988. Fumbling the Future: How Xerox invented, then ignored, the first personal computer. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. Waldrop, M. Mitchell. 2001. The Dream Machine. J. C. R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal. New York: Penguin. winston, Brian. 1998. Media technology & society: a history from the telegraph to the internet. London: Routledge. Best, Charlie -- Charlie Breindahl Ph.D. Student, Copenhagen + Malmö Web: http://staff.hum.ku.dk/hitch/ http://www.creativeenvironments.mah.se/ Phone: +45 35 32 81 19 or +46 40 665 71 51 Mobile: +45 51 92 15 98 E-mail: hitch@hum.ku.dk "For the modern Don Quixote, the windmills have been preprogrammed to turn into knights" - Janet H. Murray
-----Original Message----- From: air-l-admin@aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin@aoir.org]On Behalf Of Antonio Roversi Sent: 15. april 2002 23:10 To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] History of computer
Dear Aoirs
i am looking for books, essays etc. about a cultural and/or sociological history of computer. I know just one book, e.g. Steven Levy: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Any help/suggestions will be appreciated
Yours
Antonio
_______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l
An indispensable original source is the Usenet group alt.folklore.computers. It's a place where you can meet really eye witnesses of computer history. Discussions are mostly techno-centric but do cover other issues too - sometimes. There are stories like a person getting lost inside a 1950's military-supercomputer (several stories high inside a concrete cube). You may read about life and employment situation of computer experts in the 50's to 70's, catch some glimpses of institutional and political backgrounds and have a lot of fun reading. Gerhard Antonio Roversi wrote:
i am looking for books, essays etc. about a cultural and/or sociological history of computer. I know just one book, e.g. Steven Levy: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Any help/suggestions will be appreciated
-- Gerhard Lukawetz A-1140 Vienna - Austria
participants (8)
-
Alex Kuskis -
Antonio Roversi -
Charlie Breindahl -
Dr. Laura J. Little -
Gerhard Lukawetz -
Karim R. Lakhani -
Mario Guimaraes Jr. -
Phillip Thurtle