[SIGCIS-Members] Summer reading for historians of computing -- your suggestions

[Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan]

Hey Sigcis Members,

I recently got turned onto John Dewey's "The Public and Its Problems," which dates to 1927. A pleasure to read, features a kind of quasi-"networking" theory of modern democracy towards the end, and also something that has been popping up in theoretical literature lately as some of the actor-network theorists and thing theorists turn towards American pragmatism. Markus Krajewski's  recently published German-language book "Der Diener," a history of the figure of the servant, from 18th c. literature to contemporary notions of computer servers, is also a bizarre and fascinating invitation to reconsider how we think about computation and culture.

Best,
Bernie



Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan
bernard at u.northwestern.edu

Graduate Fellow, Mediale Historiographien, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Doctoral Candidate, Screen Cultures, Northwestern University

On Jul 14, 2011, at 3:34 AM, David Alan Grier wrote:

> Tom
>    I would say that the most informative author that I have read in the last two years beyond LaTour who was also new to me and Henry Adams to whom I return regularly, was Immanuel Wallerstein. I read all of his World Systems Theory books. I found them fascinating and engaging, though they always left me with the feeling that he was overreaching. 
> 
> David
> _______________
> David Alan Grier
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On Jul 13, 2011, at 3:36 PM, "Thomas Haigh" <thaigh at computer.org> wrote:
> 
>> Hello SIGCIS members,
>> 
>> Please consider helping the community sharpen its engagement with new ideas.
>> Back in graduate school I read feverishly in labor history, business
>> history, history of technology social history, organizational sociology, etc
>> in preparation for my oral examinations. My classes covered still more
>> eclectic topics, ranging from a "greatest hits" of literary theory to
>> nonparametric methods. Over the ten years since I physically left Penn I've
>> been focused on an ever more specialized set of literatures, primarily the
>> burgeoning history of computing field, which I know in ever more depth. In
>> general I've also been doing more writing and less reading. This is probably
>> pretty typical of the intellectual career of a tenured academic, expressed
>> in the cliché that we come to know "more and more about less and less,"
>> though as I don't have an opportunity to teach any courses related to my
>> interests it may be a little more extreme.
>> 
>> Last summer I finally read Latour's _Science in Action_ properly for the
>> first time (lying outside a dacha on the outskirts of Kiev) and enjoyed it
>> rather more than I'd expected. That hardly puts me on the cutting edge of
>> intellectual fashion, but it did remind me of the pleasure of reading a
>> really nicely constructed and provocative book of general interest.
>> 
>> So, putting these two thoughts together I wondered what new work of equally
>> broad interest might have appeared over the past ten years. I'm thinking of
>> books of implicit rather than explicit relevance to the history of
>> computing, either offering new intellectual perspectives or just serving as
>> models of craft. Scholarly books that could be read for pleasure rather than
>> duty. I'm sure suggestions would be of general interest to the SIGCIS
>> community, as it heads to the beaches, lakes, mountains and dachas of the
>> world.
>> 
>> Suggestions should include the book and a short description of why it
>> deserve to be read widely by historians of computing.
>> 
>> I'd like to accumulate suggestions on our website, as comments to a blog
>> post: http://www.sigcis.org/node/271. We just upgraded our site, so it's
>> easy to post comments using our new WYSIWIG editor. You do need to login
>> first, but accounts are free and you have probably already registered (if
>> you forgot your password it can be reset online). While you are there,
>> please also explore our latest posts from bloggers including Chris McDonald,
>> Marie Hicks and Dave Walden. http://www.sigcis.org/blog
>> 
>> However you could also just email a reply to the list if you have trouble
>> logging in.
>> 
>> Tom
>> 
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> _______________________________________________
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