[SIGCIS-Members] Query re. readings on global history of computing

[Ben Peters]

Hi Paul,

What a great list and exercise!

My list is definitely cybernetic-focused, but I suspect Yale's Access to
Knowledge book case studies on India, Egypt, and Brazil may have some
helpful material.

http://isp.yale.edu/access-knowledge/books

For the more historical, here are a few more, in addition to Peter
Collopy's helpful bibliography on cybernetics
<https://collopy.net/projects/bibliography.html>:

(England) Pickering, Andrew. 2010. The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of
Another Future. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

(France) Segal, Jérôme. 2003. *Le Zéro Et Le Un: Histoire De La Notion
Scientifique D’information Au 20e Siécle*. France: Editions Syllepse.

(Chile) Medina, Eden. 2011. *Cybernetic Revolutionaries : Technology and
Politics in Allende’s Chile*. Cambridge: MIT Press.

(Comparative) David Mindell <http://mit.edu/mindell/www/>, Jérôme Segal
<http://jerome-segal.de/>, and Slava Gerovitch
<http://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/>, “From Communications Engineering to
Communications Science: Cybernetics and Information Theory in the United
States, France, and the Soviet Union,” in Science and Ideology: A
Comparative History
<http://www.worldcat.org/title/science-and-ideology-a-comparative-history/oclc/49395331>,
edited by Mark Walker (Routledge, 2003).

I hope others may someday add my own book, *The Soviet Internet*, to such a
list. First I just need to publish it! :) (Look for it late 2015 or early
2016 from MIT.)

Ben

petersbenjamin.wordpress.com

On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 3:04 PM, Paul N. Edwards <pne at umich.edu> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> I’m putting together an upper-level undergrad course on “Computers and the
> Internet: A Global History,” and I would really appreciate suggestions for
> my course reading list.
>
> I’m intrigued by the opportunity created by recent scholarship to look at
> regions of the world usually left out of the traditional US-UK story.
>
> I am looking for *well-written, short (or readily excerptable) work* that
> will appeal to an audience of juniors and seniors, some from History and
> some from the iSchool.
>
> I’m particularly looking for refs on Africa, Asia, and South America. I’m
> interested in video as well as writing, and accessible primary source
> collections too. Period is from Babbage to the present.
>
> Here’s most of what’s on my reading list so far (not including US-UK
> oriented material)
>
> Campbell-Kelly, Aspray, and Ensmenger,* Computer*
> Medina, *Cybernetic Revolutionaries*
> Cortada, *Digital Flood*
> Edwards and Hecht, “History and the Technopolitics of Identity: The Case
> of Apartheid South Africa”
> Jenkin, "Talking to Vula: The Story of the Secret Underground
> Communications Network of Operation Vula."
> Shapard, “Islands in the (Data)Stream: Language, Character Codes, and
> Electronic Isolation in Japan”
> Takhteyev, *Coding Places: Software Practice in a South American City*
> (Brazil)
> Gerovitch, “‘Mathematical Machines’ of the Cold War: Soviet Computing,
> American Cybernetics and Ideological Disputes in the Early 1950s.”
> Gerovitch. “Internyet: Why the Soviet Union Did Not Build a Nationwide
> Computer Network.”
> De Lacy, Justine. 1989. "The Sexy Computer.” (on Minitel)
> McHenry and Goodman, “MIS in Soviet Industrial Enterprises: The Limits of
> Reform from Above” (1986, CACM)
> Flamm, “Government and Computers in Japan and Europe,” from *Targeting
> the Computer*
>
>
> Best,
>
> Paul
>
> ___________________________
>
> Paul N. Edwards
> Professor of Information <http://www.si.umich.edu/> and History
> <http://www.lsa.umich.edu/history/>, University of Michigan
> A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global
> Warming <http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/vastmachine/index.html> (MIT
> Press, 2010)
>
> Terse replies are deliberate <http://five.sentenc.es/> (and better than
> nothing)
>
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