[SIGCIS-Members] Is Unix racist?

Tue Aug 18 18:30:26 PDT 2015

A few little known insights on Basic early on:
A manager of a development group at GE got permission from Dartmouth to put
basic on the GE 225.   His management at GE saw no value to doing that and
told him he could not waste his time on that since programming was only for
professional programmers.   This chap (once a long time ago i knew his
name)  went ahead and had his group do this and he was given a 90 day
termination notice.  On about the 88 day  he had a working version and had
it send to all ge 225 users and walked out of the company on the 90 th day.

Three months later a large majority of the current GE 225 owners told GE if
they did not support the GE basic they could take back their GE machines.
The chap was hired back at a sizable increase in salary on length of
contract.

When the international GE timesharing BASIC system was launched a group of
us, located in different  countries, who were working on the same area of
research on message and conferencing communications shared a single account
and use the title of a basic program to indicate who was sending a message
to whom or to the group and then REM lines to write the message.   It was
far cheaper than any use of phone or teletype.

it was perhaps the first international message system open to the public.
Too many of these early events are unrecorded.

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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