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Latest Additions
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Here's a working draft of my chapter
"History's Other Storytellers: Science Fiction as History of Technology"
intended for a forthcoming volume on science fiction and computers. It's a
labor of love, dealing with some issues I've thought about a lot over the
past few decades (and taught a course about)
but have never tried to write about before. These is some relevance to
history of computing, but it's primarily aimed at persuading historians of
technology to take science fiction more seriously.
(Draft online here).
(14-Dec-2009)
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The latest issue of IEEE Annals of the
History of Computing includes not one but two of my articles. These are
the culmination (for the moment at least) of my research into the origins of
the data base management system (DBMS). "How Data Got Its Base: Information
Storage Software in the 1950s and 1960s" (the title was supposed to be "How
The Data Got Its Base: Generalized Information Storage Software in the 1950s
and 1960s" but that wouldn't fit) builds on my earlier paper on the topic to
expand coverage of collaborative projects in the area particularly the
generalized file maintenance and reporting systems of the 1950s.
(Online here)
(10-Dec-2009)
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The other paper, with Tim Bergin as the main
author, is "The Commercialization of Database Management Systems,
1969-1983." This looks at market dynamics, technical capabilities, and user
experiences with the hierarchical and network systems produced for the
mainframe market during this era.
(Online here).
(10-Dec-2009)
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"Masculinity and the Machine Man: Gender in the
History of Data Processing," forthcoming 2010 in Gender Codes: Why Women
Are Leaving Computing ed. Thomas J. Misa, IEEE Computer Society Press.
This is the much revised version of the workshop paper below. It's more
focused on the specific story of gender in data processing, and gives a
concise, but I hope convincing, story of evolutionary change grounded in the
earlier history of tabulating machine labor, the institutional story of the
data processing management association, and the association of masculinity
with management. I cut general discussion of gender and computing, and some
material on nerd masculinity, because of severe space constraints. However,
as you can tell from the book's title, its editor is hoping to attract an
audience of computer scientists. So the ending abruptly shifts gears to give
some brief conclusions directed towards the present day literature on women
in computing rather than toward the business, labor, or gender history
literatures. This version restores an image lost for copyright reasons in
the final revision. Online here.
(11-Nov-2009)
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I
wrote a paper called "Computing the American Way: Contextualizing the US
Computer Industry of the 1950s and 1960s" for presentation at the
"Appropriating America, Making
Europe" Inventing Europe Eurocores European Science Foundation workshop
in Amsterdam in January. This was pre circulated to participants and was
intended particularly for an audience of European historians of computing
with an interest in Americanization but without a strong grounding in US
business or labor history.
Online here.
(23-April-2009)
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There's another workshop paper,
"Masculinities in the Histories of Computing(s)" pre circulated for the
workshop History|Gender|Computing at the Charles Babbage Institute. It's a rather
rambling paper, intended to stimulate discussion and present perspectives on
the historical use of gender to people with an interest in the history of
computing who are not necessarily trained in social history. Right now I'm
just finishing up a much shorter and reoriented version for the resulting
book, but I thought the original version might also be of interest.
Online here.
(23-April-2009)
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A half hour interview I did with the local
NPR station was broadcast recently and is now available online for your
listening pleasure. "The Evolution of Computers," UWM Today, May 8
2008.
Online here. (21-May-2008)
Site Highlights
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One of my papers, “Inventing Information Systems: The Systems Men and the Computer,
1950-1968” Business History Review 75
(Spring 2001): 15-61 is the first real look at the role of the "systems
men" -- experts in administrative techniques -- as staff managerial
specialists within the
American corporations of the 1950s and 1960s. It examines the emergence of the
modern concepts of information and information systems as political tools
within this history of corporate management, focusing particularly on the
designation of the computer as a tool for management information. The full
text is accessible from my writing page.
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My paper "The Chromium-Plated Tabulator: Institutionalizing an
Electronic Revolution, 1954-1958", IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 23
(October-December 2001): 75-104 tells the story of the first four years of
administrative computing in the USA. It is the first in-depth, overall study
of how early administrative computers were brought and sold, what they were
used for, and the new kinds of jobs that emerged around them. It reveals the
extent to which the use of computers was shaped by the earlier technologies of
punched card machines, and draws attention to the importance of the data
processing department as a new corporate institution. This is also accessible
from my writing page.
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“Software in the 1960s as Concept, Service, and
Product",
IEEE Annals
of the History of Computing 24:1 (January-March 2002). (Click
here for the
issue contents page). Chosen as the leading article for a special issue on the
early history of packaged application software, this article surveys the
origins and early ambiguities of the term "software", the origins of packaged
application programs and their relationship to the concerns of data processing
managers. Here it is as published
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"Remembering the Office of the Future: Word Processing
and Office Automation before the Personal Computer," IEEE Annals
of the History of Computing 28:4 (October-December 2006):6-31. This
article explores the technical, business, and social history of word
processing during the 1960s and 1970s. It is part of a special issue on the
history of word processing, representing the first sustained historical
examination of this important technology. Read it online.
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I wrote two chapters for the 2008 MIT Press book
"The Internet and American Business" edited by William Aspray and Paul
Ceruzzi. The first one, "Protocols for Profit: Web and
Email Technologies as Product and Infrastructure" tells the business and
technological history of development of Internet web browsing and
email/messaging systems. I focus particularly on the ways in which the
design features built into pre-commercial Internet technologies during the
1980s influenced directions taken by the commercial Internet of the 1990s.
Read a preprint version here.
The second, "The Web's Missing Links: The Search Engine & Portal
Industry" does a similar job for the development of the web navigation
industry. Read a preprint
version here (05-Oct-2007)
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