[SIGCIS-Members] Is Unix racist?

Tue Aug 18 06:43:18 PDT 2015

This has developed into an interesting discussion, at least in so far as it
exposes some of the disciplinary rifts and boundaries amongst the many
different constituencies and communities claiming some purchase in the
history of computers and computing. Like the Doubloon nailed to the mast in
Moby Dick, here sits Tara McPherson's essay with its provocative title,
"Why are the Digital Humanities so White?" under an even more provocative
listserv subject line, "Is Unix racist?" Not surprising many of us feel
compelled to weigh in.

I suspect some are reading the essay through something like the following
framework:

The author, starting with a bold and perhaps overdetermined thesis, sifts
what historical evidence she can find, comes up short, and so stumbles and
fumbles her way toward an unsatisfying conclusion. Alas, there is no
smoking gun to prove that UNIX developed out of overtly racist motivations
after all, but we can still salvage a publication and an English professor
qua digital humanist can maybe toss some red meat to students.

But that's not what's going on in the essay, I don't think. Instead, I see
the decisive passage as this one:

"By drawing analogies between shifting racial and political formations and
the emerging structures of digital computing in the late 1960s, I am not
arguing that the programmers creating UNIX at Bell Labs and in Berkeley
were *consciously* encoding new modes of racism and racial understanding
into digital systems. (Indeed, many of these programmers were themselves
left-leaning hippies, and the overlaps between the counterculture and early
computing culture run deep, as Fred Turner has illustrated.) . . .  Nor am
I arguing for some exact correspondence between the ways in which
encapsulation or modularity work in computation and how they function in
the emerging regimes of neoliberalism, governmentality, and
post-Fordism. Rather,
I am highlighting the ways in which the organization of information and
capital in the 1960s powerfully responds—across many registers—to the
struggles for racial justice and democracy that so categorized the United
States at the time. . . . Computation is a primary delivery method of these
new systems, and it seems at best naive to imagine that cultural and
computational operating systems don’t mutually infect one another." (149)

The core thesis, then, is that cultural and computational constructs
influence one another. Indeed, the very division is suspect, precisely the
"modularity" of which McPherson speaks.

Who here would seriously disagree? Which is to say, I can well imagine
specialists in the history of Unix (or the history of American social
relations in the 1960s) disputing this or that aspect of her subsequent
discussion and analysis. That's called scholarly communication. But the
kind of rhetoric some here have deployed, questioning her credentials and
the terms of her employment? That's something else entirely. Best, Matt

On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 9:11 AM, Ceruzzi, Paul <CeruzziP at si.edu> wrote:

> Well, we know that BASIC was developed at Dartmouth College, which at the
> time was all-male and quite the macho place. Dartmouth was founded to train
> Native Americans for the Christian ministry—enough about that. It was also
> the inspiration for the movie _*Animal House*_. What this has to do with
> BASIC I have no idea, but when I think of Dartmouth BASIC, I think of John
> Belushi in the cafeteria (a scene that was totally ad-libbed by the way).
> What for me in most interesting about Dartmouth BASIC is that it was
> designed for a time-shared system, but it was adapted by the PC community
> for the Altair and other PCs. That was a radical re-definition of the
> language. For example, you could not have commands like “Peek” and “Poke”
> in Dartmouth BASIC, if you’re running it on a time-shared mainframe. You’d
> crash the system. But Peek & Poke were absolutely necessary for the
> personal computer, given the limitations of memory they had. (Also “usr.”)
> Kemeney & Kurtz did not approve of the way BASIC was modified, but it had
> to happen. Who came up with those changes?—it may have been at DEC for the
> PDP-11.
>
>
>
> Are the terms “peek” and “poke” sexist? Probably, but we do know that
> among the computer companies of the 1960s, DEC was one of the most
> progressive in hiring women.
>
>
>
> As for the Is UNIX Racist discussion, I am disappointed that some of you
> use that paper in coursework. But there are so few alternatives, and the
> topic is sorely in need of further study. I talked about this at the SIG
> meeting in Dearborn. We need to address the topic in a more fundamental
> way. I recommend a recent book by a colleague of mine, Richard Paul, _*We
> Could Not Fail*_, about African-Americans who worked for NASA in southern
> NASA Centers, during the hey-day of the Space Race. Around the same time,
> IBM established a major facility in Atlanta, and the company had to remind
> the Atlanta political and real-estate establishment that its employees were
> to be treated fairly. When the Braves moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta, Hank
> Aaron expressed some concern about the move. The issue was real. What about
> the effort by Ken Olsen at DEC and William Norriss at CDC to establish
> plants in inner city neighborhoods, in St. Paul, Boston, and Springfield,
> Mass.? What became of those plants?
>
>
>
> As I said, this topic merits serious discussion, but the UNIX paper? Maybe
> not so much.
>
>
>
> Paul Ceruzzi
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Members [mailto:members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org] *On Behalf Of *Andrew
> Meade McGee
> *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2015 8:19 PM
> *To:* Nabeel Siddiqui
> *Cc:* Sigcis
> *Subject:* Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Is Unix racist?
>
>
>
> On a semi-related query, has there been much race-, gender-, or
> class-related discussion around the cultural logic or social context of the
> development or reception of BASIC?
>
>
>
> I could imagine that fitting into a larger conversation on class,
> institutions, social action, and (possibly) accusations of paternalism
> given its Sixties-era development and Dartmouth origins. Just curious -- I
> admittedly know far less than I should about the dissemination of
> programming languages.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Andrew
>
>
> -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
> Andrew Meade McGee
> Corcoran Department of History
> University of Virginia
> PO Box 400180 - Nau Hall
> Charlottesville, VA 22904
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 5:55 PM, Nabeel Siddiqui <nasiddiqui at email.wm.edu>
> wrote:
>
> I assign it in my course to discuss race with students, but it does have
> its problems, specifically correlation vs causality.  While the article
> doesn't get into it, I think it adds to David Golumbia's *Cultural Logic
> of Computation* on how computation provides a set of ideas and metaphors
> for people to think about the world around them.  The Digital Humanities
> part is actually a part that was tacked on and doesn't really add much to
> the article.
>
>
>
> Originally, the article was release as "U.S. Operating System at
> Mid-Century" in *Race After the Internet*, edited by Lisa Nakamura and
> Peter Chow-White. Link to the original article's pdf here:
> http://history.msu.edu/hst830/files/2014/01/McPherson_2012.pdf
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 4:57 PM, Janet Abbate <abbate at vt.edu> wrote:
>
> Anyone seen this piece by Tara Mcpherson? It starts with some interesting
> questions, but I found the follow-through to be disappointingly
> ahistorical. Again and again she argues that there must be a connection
> between the modularity of Unix and the compartmentalization of race within
> American culture, but then immediately admits that she has no evidence for
> any direct connection. As far as I can tell, the only reason she singles
> out Unix is because it coincides conveniently with the US Civil Rights era.
> I'm curious to know what others think.
>
> "Why Are the Digital Humanities So White? or Thinking the Histories of
> Race and Computation."
> http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/29
>
> Janet
>
>
> Dr. Janet Abbate
> Associate Professor, Science & Technology in Society
> Co-director, National Capital Region STS program
> Virginia Tech
> www.sts.vt.edu/ncr
> www.linkedin.com/groups/STS-Virginia-Tech-4565055
> www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS
>
>
>
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-- 
Matthew Kirschenbaum
Associate Professor of English
Associate Director, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities
(MITH)
University of Maryland
http://mkirschenbaum.net or @mkirschenbaum on Twitter
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