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

[Bill Aspray]

This past year, I taught a required semester-long course for our  
doctoral students in information studies on things they should know  
from other areas of humanistic and social study of science and  
technology to prepare them to be good scholars in information studies.  
Of course, history is just one area within information studies, but I  
think there is value for historians to know this material.  Probably  
most of you are already familiar with many of these books.  Below is  
the list of the books we read in the class (yes, I work the students  
hard!).

-Bill

********


Required Readings

Wiebe Bijker et al., ed., The Social Construction of Technological  
Systems (MIT, 1989)


Andy Clark, Mindware (Oxford, 2000)


Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother (Basic Books, 1989)


Michael Crotty, The Foundations of Social Research (Sage, 1998)


Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory (Minnesota, 3rd ed., 2008)


Peter Godfrey-Smith, Theory and Reality (Chicago, 2003)


Karin Knorr-Cetina, Epistemic Cultures (Harvard, 1999)


Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 3rd  
ed., 1996)


David Noble, Forces of Production (Oxford, 1986)


Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite Back (Vintage, 1997)


P.E. Vermaas et al., ed., Philosophy and Design (Springer, 2009)


Walter Vincenti, What Engineers Know and How They Know It (Johns  
Hopkins, 1993)


Geoff Walsham, “The Emergence of Interpretivism in IS Research,”  
Information Systems Research (2001) 6: 4, 376-394. Available online at http://gkmc.utah.edu/7910F/papers/ISR%20emergence%20of%20interpretivism%20in%20IS%20research.pdf 
.




On Jul 13, 2011, at 1:36 PM, Thomas Haigh 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
>
> P.S. 64 people already liked us on Facebook -- go to
> http://www.facebook.com/SIGCIS to be the 65th.
>
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