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InterestsMy academic interests revolve around the following topics:
Dissertation ProjectIn my dissertation project, "Technology, Information and Power: Managerial Technicians in Corporate America, 1917-2000” I looked at the history of the management and use of information technology. My focus throughout is on the groups of people within corporate America who have attempted to establish themselves as expert specialists in the techniques and technologies of administration. The paradoxical figure of the managerial technician first appears with the office managers of the 1910s and persists, with many shifts, through the punched card specialists of the 1940s, the data processing managers and "systems men" of the 1950s, the push for management information systems (MIS) executives in the 1960s and so on right up to the Chief Information Officer of the 1990s. I look at the different specialist groups involved, their organizational positions, how they thought of themselves and their relationships with changing tools and technologies. A historical view reveals continuities of which the participants were not usually aware, and illuminates the issues that have changed with technological shifts and those which have remained the same. At its heart is the invention of “information” as a category in managerial thought during the 1950s. Originally shaped as a tool for “systems and procedures” experts to wrest control of the computer away from punched card workers, management information was contested and redefined constantly during the decades that followed. This is the first full-length, scholarly history focused on the use of computers and other information technology in the twentieth century American corporation. The full thing is available by request on compact disk (you can request a copy via email), and both the narrative summary and table of contents are online. On the writings page you can read three published and several draft papers based on this material, and my original dissertation proposal as presented at the Business History Conference. The published papers include "The Chromium Plated Tabulator: Institutionalizing an Electronic Revolution, 1954-1958" IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 23:4 (October-December 2001): 75-104 and “Inventing Information Systems: The Systems Men and the Computer, 1950-1968” Business History Review 75:1 (Spring 2001): 15-61. Current Research ProjectsTwo Dissertation Based Books: I am currently engaged in reworking my dissertation material into book form. Because of its length, this will work best as two separate books. The first is a broad account of the development of corporate use of information technology and systems over the course of the twentieth century, focusing particularly on the different groups of managerial technicians and their organizational mandates, from the office manager to the chief information officer. The second is more tightly focused and more technologically oriented, telling to story of the transition from punched card machines to computers within corporate administration. This book deals only with the 1954-1975 period and pays particular attention to the early evolution of data processing and the data processing department as practice and as professional identity. Discussions with publishers have been very positive, and I expect to see both books published by major academic presses. Further Dissertation Based Papers: As yet unpublished papers under review or preparation from my dissertation project include "Engineering the Progressive Office" on office management and technology in the 1920s (forthcoming in Enterprise & Society) and "How the Computer Became Information Technology: Constructing Information in Corporate America" (draft on writings page) on the evolution of the information concept within management and emergence the Chief Information Officer. I am currently working on two further dissertation based papers, "Lost in Translation: Total Systems and Operations Research from War Room to Boardroom" (conference paper version on writings page) and an as-yet unnamed paper on punched card machine labor in the 1940s and 1950s. Origins of the Data Base Management System: The project has so far produced several conference presentations and a forthcoming publication in an edited conference book. It is the first serious and detailed look at the genesis of the data base concept by a trained historian. The paper, "A Veritable Bucket of Facts: Origins of the Data Base Management System," is available from the writings page. A revised and expanded version was published in ACM SIGMOD Record in 2006. Other papers on related topics are planned, including some biographical writing. Evolution of the Software Package: During the summer 2003 I held a research grant from the Software History Center to use archival materials and oral histories gathered from the trade group ADAPSO to begin to tell the early story of the computer software industry. The immediate product has been a number of short biographies of key individuals and an overview of the group's history, all available from the writings page. History of Scientific Computing: Since the Fall of 2003 I have been working as an historical consultant for the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics on a major project designed to document the origins of scientific computing and numerical analysis. My work included the execution for twenty three oral history interviews with key figures in the world of mathematical software, and the preparation of several short articles and biographical essays based on materials gathered during the project. My particular interest here is in the evolution of standard software packages in this area, their relationship to the institutional contexts in which they were developed, and their role in encapsulating and standardizing expertise. One of the papers I am developing from this project explores the forgotten origins of open source software in the scientific software community. I presented this work as a keynote speech for the Computer History Colloquium in Amsterdam in 2005, and in a shorter version at the International Congress for the History of Technology in Leicester and the Society for the Social Study of Science meeting in Vancouver, both in 2006. The Social History of the Personal Computer (future book project): Nobody has ever written a social or cultural history of the personal computer. We have a shelf of books recounting the same stories about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and other great men. There has also been some journalistic attention to the early role of Californian enthusiasts in pioneering PC technology. But no historian has ever tackled what seems like one of the most important historical developments of the era: the personal computer. a social and cultural history of the personal computer, as it passed from a plaything of hobbyists during the mid-1970s to become a fixture of home, office and school by the mid-1980s. As it entered each of these new social spaces it became a mirror in which to examine fundamental cultural assumptions of the era. For example, even as the advocates of home computing purported to usher in an information revolution, their futuristic visions embodied conservative assumptions about domestic life and gender roles that linked them to the 1950s. Attempts by users, magazine writers, advertisers and software authors to reshape the personal computer as a useful tool within these various environments illuminate the flexibility, contradictions and multifaceted nature of this ideology of information based progress. The story has important parallels with that of the internet, a decade later. I researched this material extensively four years ago and considered using it for my dissertation. I have twice taught the history of the PC, and am well acquainted with the existing literature. I presented papers based on this material at the Society for the History of Technology meeting in Amsterdam in 2004, the Business History Conference in 2005, at Tokyo University in 2006 and several Ukrainian venues in 2007. My first published paper about personal computing explores the creation, use and spread of word processing technology in the 1960s and 1970s. It is called "Remembering the Office of the Future" and is available from the writings page. As it turned out the paper makes the argument that the personal computer was less important than usually imagined in the development of word processing. Other Broad Interests: I am also interested in the cultural and social history of American management, changes in the experience of work over the last half of the twentieth century and nature of community on the Internet. |
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