[SIGCIS-Members] Introducing myself

Fri May 8 15:40:03 PDT 2009

Hello Paul and others,

Good questions. You may find our online syllabus repository to be of
interest in course planning. Joe November is currently updating and
improving it. http://www.sigcis.org/?q=node/12 Please consider contributing
your own syllabus when it is ready.

On the PC front there is little to report, which is odd. There's so much
that could be written about user groups, dealerships, popular discourse,
reconstruction of personal computers for different cultural spaces, gender,
technology transfer, etc. Mostly it hasn't been written. However I would
recommend Lindsay's chapter on the TRS-80 ("From the Shadows") in the
Oudshoorn & Pinch volume How Users Matter. Frank Veraart in the Netherlands
and Tom Lean in Manchester have, if I remember correctly, recently completed
dissertations on personal computing topics. I do not know if they've
published anything suitable in English. (Don't be shy to speak up guys).

For a sweeping popular summary of the PC story I'd go with Cringely's
Accidental Empires (or chapters from it) over Fire in the Valley, as it's
more entertaining but actually very insightful with respect to platform
competition, architecture lock in, etc. You'll just have to turn the
datedness into a teachable feature and make it do double duty as a primary
source.

For the Internet, you should definitely check out the new Aspray & Ceruzzi
edited MIT Press book The Internet and American Business.
http://www.amazon.com/Internet-American-Business-History-Computing/dp/026201
2405. Mostly the book looks at the Internet in use in various fields, with a
star studded cast of history of computing contributors. 

Momentarily eschewing modesty, my own chapter from this book "Protocols for
Profit: Web and Email Technologies as Product and Infrastructure" could fit
your requirements. It retells the history of web and email technologies from
a business history meets STS perspective. I tried to focus particularly on
ways in which the legacy of the pre commercial Internet shaped browser and
email development in the commercial era. I don't have any special sources
and relied on published accounts, mostly newspaper articles, for the actual
facts. A draft is online at
http://tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/ProtocolsForProfitDRAFT.pdf. My other
chapter, "The Web's Missing Links" looked at the web navigation business
(search engines, directories, and portals) from a similar perspective.
http://tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/WebsMissingLinksDRAFT.pdf. However I do
encourage you to get the whole book. 

Don't discount Janet's book. You might not want to assign the whole thing,
but I found that the chapter on email and applications stands nicely on its
own.

Also 

From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
Behalf Of Geoffrey C. Bowker
Sent: Friday, May 08, 2009 4:36 PM
To: Paul Edwards
Cc: members at sigcis.org
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Introducing myself

Hi Paul,

Good questions all - I'll be interested in the response.  Henry Lowood has
some nice stuff at http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/lowood.html, though I
suspect you know this already.  Doug Engelbart's demo is on the web.  I
could set up a skype session with Regis McKenna, who knows SV backwards.
There was a Nova or BBC series which I heard good reports on, but I forget
the details.  Exciting is hard to come by in general though.  Laura de
Nardis' excellent new work on internet names will not be accessible enough I
fear.  There's also The Wealth of Networks, though I'm not too attuned to
the analysis - http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/wealth_of_networks/Main_Page.

take care,

geof

Paul Edwards wrote: 

All - 

I'm getting ready to teach an undergrad course (juniors and seniors) on
"History of Computers and the Internet" for the first time in 7 years.

I'm looking for suggestions on three things:

1) A recent book on the history of personal computers that's well-written
and exciting for undergrads. I used to use Fire in the Valley, but that's
very dated now. 

2) On history of the Internet, I've been using Janet Abbate's Inventing the
Internet for years. It's a great book but somewhat inaccessible for
undergrads, and now a bit dated.

3) Books or articles -- again, exciting for undergrads -- on history of the
WWW. Please, not Tim Berners-Lee's awesomely self-centered memoir.

Thanks for any and all.

- Paul

-----------------

Paul N. Edwards, Assoc. Professor of Information

School of Information

3078 West Hall

University of Michigan

1085 South University Ave.

Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1107

(734) 764-2617 (office)                  

(206) 337-1523  (fax) 

http://www.si.umich.edu/~pne/ <http://www.si.umich.edu/%7Epne/> 

  _____  

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