Understanding 'How computing has changed the world'

Thomas J. Misa

doi:10.1109/MAHC.2007.4407445

Understanding 'How computing has changed the world'

Thomas J. Misa

Charles Babbage Institute

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

33 Scopus citations

Abstract

How can we satisfactorily address the history of computing, recognizing that computing artifacts and practices are often shaped by local circumstances and cultures, and yet also capture the longer-term processes by which computing has shaped the world? This article reviews three traditions of scholarly work, proposes a new line of scholarship, and concludes with thoughts on collaborative, international, and interdisciplinary research.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	52-63
Number of pages	12
Journal	IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
Volume	29
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.2007.4407445
State	Published - Oct 2007

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
A follow-on project funded by the European Science Foundation is being organized under the banner ‘‘Inventing Europe,’’ and we hope that the history of computing will play a significant role.43 A group of leading European historians of computing, organized by Gerald Alberts, is exploring how Europe took shape through the dissemination and use of software. Multinational companies formed something like a pan-European information-technology network. Even though IBM was a US company, its wide reach and standard-setting technology tended to bind European companies and business cultures together. What resulted, however, was not precisely a single corporate culture. IBM found that its technology and practices interacted with local cultures and expectations: in Finland IBM mean easy access to Western Europe, while in France and the Benelux countries IBM meant access to American culture, even if people traveled to Stuttgart to get it. In Zurich, the site of an important IBM research lab, IBM meant an international technology heavyweight, but not precisely an American one. IBM had surprising influence also in Eastern Europe, through the unauthorized duplication of its machines and their integration into the Soviet planning system. Another topic of interest is IFIP, founded in 1959 as an international forum for computer scientists, and its advocacy of the programming language Algol.

Keywords

Charles Babbage Institute
Computers and society
Digital computing
Historiography
History of computing
Information age

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10.1109/MAHC.2007.4407445

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abstract = "How can we satisfactorily address the history of computing, recognizing that computing artifacts and practices are often shaped by local circumstances and cultures, and yet also capture the longer-term processes by which computing has shaped the world? This article reviews three traditions of scholarly work, proposes a new line of scholarship, and concludes with thoughts on collaborative, international, and interdisciplinary research.",

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Understanding 'How computing has changed the world'

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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