Seminar 3:

Building on - and taking issue with the perspectives in Week 2 - Jonathan Aylen will be presenting a lecture on

Computers and the early Information Society

and then leading the discussion that this sparks!

The powerpoints will be made available, and a number of references provided beyond these useful resources (here are the links for books on Amazon):
The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage
see http://tomstandage.com/vicnet.html

A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the World's First Office Computer by Georgina Ferry
here's an accessible account http://www.csrc.lse.ac.uk/LEO/archive/caminer.pdf - I suspect there is also a BBC radio talk or programme by Georgina Ferry, I recall hearing this a few years ago: this may be it http://www.usabilityviews.com/uv005591.html

The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society by James R. Beniger


Jonathan has now provided the following input for this very interesting session:

Computers and the Early Information Society

In an earlier session, Professor Miles suggested there are stages in the evolution of an information technology society. This session focuses on a corner of that evolution, the early emergence of computer hardware, computer software and the early spread of computer use and its impact.

Social Shaping versus the Technical Approach to Computer History

The Role of SAGE

At one stage, the project trained half of the software programmers in America.

SAGE – the Semi Automatic Ground Environment air defence system – is credited with transforming the US computer industry with a sequence of hardware, software and communication innovations and catapulting IBM into manufacturing leadership in the computer sector. Key computing innovations were spawned by demands of this giant project, ranging from magnetic core memories to time-sharing. SAGE is also credited with introducing a systems approach to the management of large projects. At one stage, the project trained half of the software programmers in America.

Whether SAGE was “one of the major human accomplishments of the twentieth century” (Redmond and Smith, p.429) is open to debate. But it is clear that computer development in the US was shaped by the cold-war agenda.

Here we have a controversy. Some argue that the whole of computer development was shaped by the needs and rhetoric of the cold war:

Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America, London: MIT Press, 1996

Others see the computer as a technical trajectory which moved forward in the face of user needs.

Kent G. Redmond and Thomas M. Smith, From Whirlwind to Mitre: The R&D Story of the SAGE Air Defense Computer, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000

This by no means exhausts the reading on SAGE!

Automation in Industry

A similar approach dominates the controversy over the development of process control, contrast the following two accounts discussing essentially the same issue, how automation spread through manufacturing industry:

David F. Noble, Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation, New York, OUP, 1986. This argues “technological developments are mediated by social power and domination, by irrational fantasies of omnipotence, by legitimating notions of progress and by the contradictions rooted in the technological projects themselves”(p.324.)

Jonathan Aylen, "Megabytes for Metals – The development of computer applications in the iron and steel industry", Ironmaking and Steelmaking, vol. 31, issue 6, December 2004, pp.465-478 – also featured on http://www.maney.co.uk/files/samplepages/Iron_Steel_article.pdf [UK] and http://www.smecc.org/ge_process_control.htm [USA] websites. Essentially treats the same process as the enthusiastic response of engineers struggling to improve the technical performance of equipment they managed, with innovation champions playing a key role.

The Application of Computers

Again on office and retail computing, Haigh and Cortada stress the importance of continuity, the significance of managerial issues and the slow evolution of technology in the workplace:

Thomas Haigh, “The Chromium-plated tabulator: Institutionalizing an electronic revolution, 1954-58, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 2001, pp.75-104

James W. Cortada, The Digital Hand, How Computers Changed the Work of American Manufacturing, Transportation and Retail Industries, Oxford University Press, 2004. Good on the basic theme, weak on detail. Exclusively US focus.

Paul David (1990), “The dynamo and the computer: an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox”, American Economic Review, vol.80, Conference issue, May, pp.355-361

Hardware Development

Christopher Freeman and Luc Soete, The Economics of Industrial Innovation, Routledge, 3^rd edition, 1997 (chapter 7, a brief treatment of computer hardware and electronics with an unduly strong emphasis on IBM.)

http://www.thocp.net/index.htm partial coverage but accessible

http://www.leo-computers.org.uk/pageone.htm great fun and a fascinating story!

Software Development

Software development is a neglected aspect of computer history.

Martin Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2004

http://www.levenez.com/lang neglects early Manchester and US contributions

http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/ this really is the correct URL, you’ll soon get the idea !

http://people.ku.edu/~nkinners/LangList/Extras/langlist.htm

. . . and the truly remarkable

David Alan Grier, When Computers Were Human, Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005 (Shows how the systematic application of large scale calculation to scientific problems started long before scientific computers.)

B. Jack Copeland, Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park’s Codebreaking Computers, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006 (more accurate than earlier versions of this story. Shows how investment in science and technology can pay off with spectacular effect.)

Simon Lavington, The Pegasus Story: A history of a vintage British computer, London: Science Museum, 2000 (a succinct story of a widely used, Manchester built, 1950’s mainframe computer.)

Bedside Reading

Georgina Ferry, A Computer Called Leo: Lyons Teashops and the World’s First Office Computer, London: Fourth Estate, 2003

Jonathan Aylen

February 2007.