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There is a full list of articles, book reviews, etc. published and forthcoming on my vita, including links to full text, so what I decided to do here is group my more important publications thematically. As well as articles I've included a few unpublished conference papers, oral history interviews, etc. where these fit well with the other materials -- though coverage is by no means complete in these areas. Data Processing Practices, Institutions, and Identities(with Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo) "Engineering Change in Mexico: The Adoption of Computer Technology at ICA (1965-1971)," under preparation for IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. A case study following several generations of computer use in Mexico's first successful multinational company. As well as practices, the article explores shifts in the strategic rationale for computing work and its relationship to the firm's structure and culture. "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. "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. Online here. "How the Computer Became Information Technology: Constructing Information in Corporate America, 1950-2000." A much revised and extended version of the Hagley conference paper "The Fix is Information, Now What Was the Problem?" available below. The draft version is now online here. Many of my papers address, in one way or another, the construction of information as a managerial panacea. My paper, “The Fix is Information, Now What Was the Problem?” presented at the Hagley Museum and Library conference on the Technical Fix in October 2002 was my first public attempt to communicate the overall findings of my dissertation research, exploring the startling commonalities from the office managers of the 1910s to the chief information officers of the 1990s in their uneasy attempts to combine managerial and technical claims to authority by invoking the power of information systems. Here is the abstract, here is the text as delivered, and here are the pretty pictures. I gave a paper at the October 2002 Toronto meeting of the Society of the History of Technology. When writing my Business History Review paper "Inventing Information Systems" I had to cut out a lot of interesting material on the ties between the world of administrative systems work and the elite cold-war systems engineering with which it shared some ideas and jargon. I developed this angle more extensively in my dissertation, and gave one part of it in a public presentation in my paper, “Lost In Translation: Total Systems from War Room to Board Room, 1954-1968,” which sets this administrative systems work in the broader cold war context, building on my preliminary work presented at the Science and the Cold War conference. The text I delivered is available here, and the pretty pictures are here. "The Chromium-Plated Tabulator: Institutionalizing an Electronic Revolution, 1954-1958" IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 23 (October-December 2001): 75-104. (Click here for the issue contents page) The computer promised business of the 1950s an administrative revolution. What it delivered was data processing—a hybrid of new technology and existing punched card machines, people, and attitudes. This paper examines how first-generation computers were sold and purchased, and describes the occupations (analyst, programmer, and operator) and departments that emerged around them. It appears in a special issue celebrating the Charles Babbage Institute and the scholarship it has nurtured. Here it is as published. “Inventing Information Systems: The Systems Men and the Computer, 1950-1968” Business History Review 75 (Spring 2001): 15-61. This was chosen as the leading article for a special 75th anniversary issue on the theme of computers and networking. The abstract is on-line. You can read the paper here on my site (note that this may differ slightly from the published version) or download a scanned acrobat (.pdf) version. Harvard Business School prepared a very short version called "Birth of the Systems Men" as a featured article on the Business History section of its Working Knowledge website (bits of which get syndicated around the internet). I gave a paper called "From Machine Man to Information Manager: Class Formation and Group Mobility in Corporate Computing, 1953-1964" at the North American Labor History conference in Detroit in the Fall of 2000. It was about on the attempts of punched card machine operators and supervisors of the 1950s to transform themselves into professional and/or managers. In this case I have the abstract and the actual paper as read. Much of this material found its way into my "Chromium-Plated Tabulator" paper, the rest can be found in more detail in the dissertation itself. History of Software: Technologies and Industries"Protocols for Profit: Web and E-mail Technologies as Product and Infrastructure" in The Internet and American Business, edited by William Aspray and Paul Ceruzzi, MIT Press, 2008: 105-158. This chapter tells the business and technological history of development of Internet web browsing and email/messaging systems.It doesn't include any insider or archival sources, but goes beyond existing journalistic accounts by brining the whole story together and putting it into a historical framework. 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. (online). "The Web's Missing Links: Search Engines and Portals" in The Internet and American Business, edited by William Aspray and Paul Ceruzzi, MIT Press, 2008:159-200. In a second chapter from the same volume I explored the emergence of the web navigation industry over its dozen years. The main argument is that the web succeeded because of technical features that made publishing information online very easy. But these same features made finding information very hard, and thus the market evolved toward a system of highly decentralized publishing and highly centralized navigation services. (online). "The Secret History of Open Source Software Practices: Their Corporate and Scientific Origins, 1954-1980", GSLIS Research Forum, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, November 2007. (audio)(slides). A talk given in a number of different versions, coming from my work with SIAM on the history of mathematical software packages. This is a lengthy version of the presentation, and was recorded. An article based on this work, in collaboration with Maria Haigh, should be completed soon. "ADAPSO, Timesharing Firms and Software Companies, 1968-1975" IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 27:1 (January-March 2005): 67-73. The article continues the series of publications on the computer software and services trade association ADAPSO and its more active members, looking at the expansion of the association during the early 1970s to encompass software product and timesharing companies. It accompanies biographies of Rick Crandall and Larry Welke published (for reasons of space) in the previous issue. Read it online here. "ADAPSO, Regulated Competition, and Professional Services: 1976-1986" IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 27:2 (April-June 2005): 89-93. This short article, really a continuation of the one above separated for space reasons, concludes my series on ADAPSO. It includes a biography of Larry Schoenberg. Here it is as published. "ADAPSO and the Service Bureau Industry: 1961-1968" IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 25:1 (January-March 2004): 78-93. This article outlines the foundation and early history of the computer software and services trade association ADAPSO, the Association of Data Processing Service Organizations. During this period, ADAPSO's membership was dominated by service bureaus, and the article also discusses the service bureau business and its development. It accompanies biographies of Frank Lautenberg and Bernard Goldstein (also listed below). *Not formally peer reviewed* Here it is as published. “Software in the 1960s as Concept, Service, and Product" IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 24:1 (January-March 2002):5-13. (Click here for the issue contents page). Chosen as the leading article for a special issue on the early history of 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. History of Software: Data Base Management Systems"How Data Got its Base: Information Storage Software in the 1950s and 60s," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 31:4 (Oct-Dec 2009):6-25 (online). This takes some of the material from the articles below and reworks it with a lot of new information, particularly on the generalized file management and reporting systems of the 1950s and their relationship to later DBMS efforts. (with Tim Bergin) "The Commercialization of Data Base Management Software 1969-83," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 31:4 (Oct-Dec 2009):26-41 (online). This looks at market dynamics, technical capabilities, and user experiences with the hierarchical and network systems produced for the mainframe market during this era, as DBMS systems emerged as a key sector within the new packaged software industry. C.J. Date, Oral history interview by Thomas Haigh, 13 June 2007, Mountain View, CA. Computer History Museum, Mountain View. (online) Time constrains with the Computer History Museum's facilities prevented me from covering everything in Date's career, but the interview is full of interesting material on his career and the early days of relational databases. 'A Veritable Bucket of Facts:' Origins of the Data Base Management System," ACM SIGMOD Record 35:2 (June 2006). A new and improved version of the conference paper mentioned below, including illustrations, corrections and new material from archival research and an oral history interview. (online) Charles Bachman, ACM Oral History Interview #2. Oral history interview by Thomas Haigh, 25-26 September 2004, Tucson, AZ. Association for Computing Press, New York (online at ACM) (online). A very detailed interview, covering Bachman's entire career. “A Veritable Bucket of Facts: Origins of the Database Management System” in The History and Heritage of Scientific and Technological Information Systems: Proceedings of the 2002 Conference eds. W. Boyd Rayward & Mary Ellen Bowden (New Jersey: Information Today, 2004):73-78. I presented this at the second major conference on the History and Heritage of Scientific and Technical Information Systems sponsored by ASIS&T and the Chemical Heritage Foundation. This is about the emergence of the data base concept and its entry into the corporate world. Here it is as published in the conference book. History of Personal Computing"Opening the Beige Box: Materiality and the Evolution of the IBM PC, 1981-1995," Annual Meeting of the Society for the History of Technology, Pittsburgh, October 2009. (slides) An exploration of the evolving role of the IBM PC as a product, industry standard, and material artifact. I'm fascinated by ways in which minor decisions made by its original designers determined the configuration not just of a decade of clone machines but also of the industry that produced them. "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 is the first real historical exploration of word processing in the days before the personal computing. It includes the origins of text processing techniques, the introduction of the word processing concept, use and application of early word processing, the development of the computerized word processing industry and the creation in the late-1970s of a broader concept of office automation. (online) “Making the Computer Personal: Reconstructing Domesticity for the Information Age” at Japan Association for Science, Technology and Society Symposium Series, Tokyo University, January, 2006. (slides) I've given evolving versions of this talk in a number of venues, since its debut at SHOT in 2004. I really want to get back and dig into this for a book project, but still have a number of other commitments to complete first. "An Industry of Enthusiasts: Users Make the Computer Personal, 1975-1981." Business History Conference, Minneapolis, May 2005. (abstract) (slides) A business history angle on my interest in the early days of the personal computer. The role of dealers in the development of personal computer use has been neglected so far. Historiography of Computing"The History of Information Technology," Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 45, forthcoming 2011. "Computing the American Way," forthcoming in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (special issue on Americanization, 2010). "The Software Crisis Reconsidered," at the SOFT-EU Workshop on ALGOL, IBM and Software Crisis, The state of Historiography in Transnational Interpretations, Grenoble & St Pierre de Chartreuse, January 2008. (slides) "Sources for ACM History: What, Where, Why" (with Elizabeth Kaplan and Carrie Seib), Communications of the ACM 50:5 (May 2007):36-41. (online) The paper is an outgrowth of my work with the ACM History Committee to advise the association on its historical initiatives. The historians and archivists involved labored mightily to convince the association that preserving and archiving its records was far and away the most useful thing it could do to support historical work. We used this experience to craft a broader appeal, explaining how historians work and why we need archival sources.
“The History of Computing: An Introduction for the Computer Scientist” in
Using History to Teach Computer Science and Related Disciplines ed.
Atsushi Akera & William Aspray (Washington, D.C.: Computing Research
Association, 2004):5-26. Based on a talk I prepared for a 2001 NSF funded
workshop
organized by the
Computing
Research Association which was intended to bring historians and computer
scientists together to work out how history could improve the teaching of
computing. My talk was on "Tools
and Methods in the History of Computing" and introduced the audience of
computer scientists to the history of computing field, its main questions, key
resources and the differences between historians and scientists. You can read it
as an on-line PowerPoint presentation.
Then in 2004, I took part in two follow-on workshops for speakers at the earlier
event, intended to help us further develop our ideas into published form. The
article has a fairly informal tone and includes three main parts: an
introduction to the current state of the history of computing and its key
institutions, an explanation of what historians do and how they are different
from computer scientists, and a personal stab at suggesting ways in which
history might be of instructional value.
Here it is as published. The
entire book resulting
from the workshops is also available online. Other Topics"Technology's Other Storytellers: Science Fiction as History of Technology" under preparation for Canticle for the Machine: Interdisciplinary Essays on Science Fiction and Computers, ed. David Ferro & Eric Swedlin, 2011. “Research Interactions Between University and Industry in Computer Science in the United States and United Kingdom”, 1995 technical report UMCS-95-8-1, University of Manchester (UK) Department of Computer Science. Seemingly a lifetime ago, Manchester University published my M.Eng. thesis as a technical report. Its based on interviews with technology transfer and industrial liaison people, computer scientists and industrial sponsors. Back in 1995, posting something on the web seemed so exciting. It's available on paper, but you'd probably prefer the hypertext version. |
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