Browsing by Subject "Computing"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    The Future of the History of Computing
    (Journal of Opinions, Ideas & Essays (JOIE), 2013-12) Nelsen, R. Arvid
    The history of information technology is not the history of how wires got into boxes. Technological developments are intertwined in the social fabric, and their story includes the direct experience of individuals and the impacts felt by communities. Computers were once thought to be relevant only to specialists, but people today are more aware of the reach of computers into their lives. Similarly, the history of computing has traditionally been the focus of specialists in technology, but a greater variety of scholarly researchers is now studying archival collections about computing. The Social Issues in Computing Collection at the University of Minnesota’s Charles Babbage Institute seeks to collect a wider array of perspectives on the industry and even to change the way people think about computing and archives.
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    Maker Made: Creating a Silicon Place in Berlin, Germany
    (2016-12) Phillips, Leonore
    Drawing on the inspiration that Silicon Valley provides, this dissertation is about the way Silicon Allee in Berlin Germany is made by workers, students, bureaucrats and even the larger population of Berlin. Silicon Allee is a community; it’s a matrix of interconnected people, machines, ideas, places and words that are changing, connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting; maintained through webpages, text messages, classrooms, university spaces, meetups, camps, tweets, coworking sites, coffee shop talk and offices. In this age of ultra-information and continuous connections that can span the globe in seconds, Berlin’s Silicon Allee is also embedded in a larger culture of computing that both ignores and reinforces boundaries. I use this dissertation to explore the way that these boundaries are made, unmade and revised both locally, nationally and globally through discourses on and practices of work.
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    The moral field of computing.
    (2011-12) Smajda, Jon
    This dissertation examines the culture of open source software development and debates around ``openness'' in computing through the lens of sociology. Drawing on contemporary theory and research in cultural, economic, and political sociology, I develop a framework---the moral field of computing---for making sense of the role that group boundaries and moral beliefs play in the day-to-day work of software development. I first show how this field emerged over time during the mid- to late-20th century, and then I show its structure animates the contentious debates and decisions within computing today by analyzing data collected as a participant-observer in several open source communities. For researchers studying computing, this dissertation places the unique culture of software development into a larger context of modern liberalism and sociological research and theory on the relationship between work, democracy, and the market. For sociologists, this dissertation represents a theoretical attempt to understand the relationship between group boundaries, community identities, and moral worldviews through examining an empirical case that has been understudied and undertheorized within the context of cultural sociology and sociological theory.
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    Oral History Interview with James Cortada
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 2021-12) Cortada, James; Cortada, James
    James Cortada recounts his childhood and higher education before discussing his career at IBM. One main topic of the interview are his publications on business and management of computing, Spanish history, history of computing, and history of information. He discusses the various individuals and institutions he interacted with as he worked in the history of computing. Of particular note is the Charles Babbage Foundation, which he chaired. This interview is part of the series on the early history of the history of computing.