Writing Computer and Information History

Approaches, Connections, and Reflections

William Aspray

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Year: 2024
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781538183823
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This is not a book about the history of computing or the history of information. Instead, it is a meta-historical book about the research and writing of these types of history.

The formal presentation of historical research in the form of a publication often hides the process by which the topic was selected, boundaries were drawn, evidence was selected, analytic approach was chosen and applied, results were presented, how this work fits into a larger body of scholarship, the implicit goals and biases of the author, and many other similar issues. This process of learning about the various ways to carry out computer history or information history can be enriched by this collection of reflective essays by experienced scholars, discussing the craft that they practice.

This is a book that concerns both computer history and information history. The first scholarship in computer history by professionally trained scholars began to appear in the 1970s, so we are approaching a half century of research and publication in this area. The field has generated numerous pieces of exemplary scholarship from various perspectives such as intellectual history of individual technologies, business histories of firms, economic histories of market sectors, externalist histories of funding and professionalization, and so on.

However, the field continues to evolve, especially as computing and communication technologies have drawn together in the form of the Internet and social media; and with them a new set of scholars is participating, drawn not only from the history of science and technology, but also from the communication and media studies fields. Powerful theories, approaches, and frameworks are being increasingly drawn more widely from both the humanities and the social sciences to inform the practice of computer history. The scholars in this volume look at what's happened, what's happening now, and where historical scholarship in these disciplines is headed.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I: The Master Narratives
• Chapter 1: Historians and the Information Turn in History
• Chapter 2: Writing the Big Story
• Part II: Creating a New Story of Information History
• Chapter 3: Writing Information History Using New Frameworks, Theories, and Approaches
• Chapter 4: Writing Information History from the Perspective of Rhetorical Genre Theory
• Chapter 5: An i for an I: Call and Response for the iSchools
• Part III: Reshaping the Mature Story of Computing History
• Chapter 6: Writing the History of Computing: The First Half Century
• Chapter 7: Visionaries and Transformative Product Launches in Computing and Information Business History
• Chapter 8: Writing the Economic History of Computing
• Chapter 9: Writing Law and Public Policy into Computing and Information History
• Part IV: Broadening Computing and Information History
• Chapter 10: Writing the History of Telecommunications and Data Networks
• Chapter 11: Writing Data into the Histories of Computing and Information
• Chapter 12: Writing about Writing about Social Informatics: Opportunities and Challenges
• Chapter 13: Writing Geography into the History of Computing and Information
• Chapter 14: Traveling Across the Lands of History, Philosophy, and Practices of Computing : Confessions of a Nomad
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors