The Evolution of Computing's Present History 

   

The Evolution of Computing's Present History

Computing's Present History     

Parts:- 2
 

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Computing's Present History 

Where the current literature in the history of computing is self-consciously historical, it focuses in large part on hardware and on the pre-history and early development of the computer.2 Where it touches on later             developments or provides a wider view, it is only incidentally historical. A major portion of the literature stems from the people involved, either through regular surveys of the state and development of various fields (e.g. Rosen 1967, Sammet 1969)3 or compilations of seminal papers (Randell 1982; Yourdon 1979,1982; AT&T 1987),4 or through reminiscences and retrospectives, either written directly or transcribed from their contributions to conferences and symposia.5 Biographies of men or machines --some heroic, some polemical, some both-- are a prominent genre, and one reads a lot about"pioneers". A few corporate histories have appeared, most notably IBM's Early Computers (Bashe et al. 1986), but they too are in-house productions. 

 This literature represents for the mostpart "insider" history, full of facts and firsts.While it is first-hand and expert, it is also guided by the current state of knowledge and bound by the professional culture. That is, its authors take as givens (often technical givens) what a more critical, outside viewer might see as choices. Reading their accounts makes it difficult to see the alternatives, as the authors themselves lose touch with a time when they did not know what they now know. In the long run, most of this literature will become primary sources, if not of the development of computing per se, then of its emerging culture.

From the outset, the computerattracted the attention of journalists, who by the late '50s were beginning to recount its history. The result is a sizable inventory of

[2See Aspray (1984) for a recent, brief survey of the state of the field

3Many of the articles in Computing Surveys, begun in 1969, include an historical review of the subject. 4The 25th-anniversary issues of the leading journals also contain useful collections of important articles. 5Wexelblatt (1981), a record of the 1978 ACM Conferenceon the History of Programming Languages, is an excellent example, as is a recent issue of the Annals of the History of Computing on the Burroughs B5000.]

accounts having the virtues and vices of the journalist's craft. They are vivid, they capture the spirit of the people and of the institutions they portray, and they have an eye for the telling anecdote. But their immediacy comes at the price of perspective. Written by people more or less knowledgeable about the subject and about the history of technology, these accounts tend to focus on the unusual and the spectacular, be it people or lines of research, and they often cede to the self-evaluation of their subjects. Thus the microcomputer and artificial intelligence have had the lion's share of attention, as their advocates have roared a succession of millenia. 

 The journalistic accounts veer into another major portion of the literature on computing, namely what may be called "social impact statements". Often difficult to distinguish from futurist musing on the computer, the discussions of the effects of the computer on society and its various activitie stend on the whole to view computing apart from the history of technology rather than from its perspective. History here serves the purpose of social analysis, criticism, and commentary. Hence much of it comes from popular accounts taken uncritically and episodically to support non-historical, often polemical, theses. Some of this literature rests on a frankly political agenda; whether its models and modes of analysis provide insight depends on whether one agrees with that agenda. 

Finally, there is a small body of professionally historical work, dealing for the most part with the origins of the computer, its invention and early development (e.g. Stern1981, Ceruzzi 1982, Williams 1986). It is meant as no denigration of that work to note that it stops at the point where computing becomes a significant presence in science, technology, and society. There historians stand before the daunting complexity of a subject that has grown exponentially in size and variety, looking not so much like an uncharted ocean as like a trackless jungle. We pace on the edge, pondering where to cut in. 

Part :- 3

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• The Questions of the History of Technology
• Recent and future questions and answers about the history of computing and information technologies

PART :- 1

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