Power to the People: Toward a Social History of Computing

Abstract

When the Annals of the History of Computing was first established 25 years ago, it assumed for itself an ambitious agenda: by publishing “scholarly papers and anecdotal notes, rigorously researched material and controversial remembrances,” it would serve as a “living history” of the computer revolution’s unprecedented scientific and technological accomplishments. If in practice, its contributions were more often first-hand practitioner accounts rather than scholarly treatises, more often nutsand-bolts descriptions of specific machines and developments rather than richly contextual histories, this was entirely understandable. The field was new, its full scope and boundaries were as yet undefined, and it had not yet captured the attention of the larger scholarly community. In recent years, the history of computing as a discipline—and the Annals as its most prominent professional journal—has evolved into something more broadly encompassing, intellectually sophisticated, and engaging. Both have attracted a diverse group of professional scholars who bring with them new questions, perspectives, and methodological tools. Mirroring developments in the larger field of the history of technology, the history of computing has increasingly situated seemingly internal developments in electronic computing within their larger social, technological, and political context. The result has been more rigorous, convincing, relevant explanations of how the computer shapes, and is shaped by, modern society.