[SIGCIS-Members] Silicon City

[Laine Nooney]

The position of the exhibit was "Greater NYC", which certainly makes sense
as a regionalist designation, and allowed the exhibit to extend its scope
into spaces like Tennis 4 Two at Brookhaven National Lab in Long Island,
Bell Labs in NJ (whose famed artistic-engineering collaborations were
largely possible because of proximity to the collective creativity of NYC),
and IBM itself in upstate.

For the sake of transparency in the record, I also consulted very briefly
regarding the games component of the exhibit, but ultimately passed the
curator off to my colleague Raiford Guins, who was better specialized in
topics the exhibit wanted to focus on.

Evan I would be very interested in some sort of panel discussion (rather
than a series of presentations) about these issues, especially in
collaboration with key exhibit decisionmakers. I'd like to find our common
ground here. Perhaps it would be even more valuable to bring in people not
yet included in the story--it was surprising to see no representation of
NYC's 1990s "Silicon Alley" moment. Other topics drifting include Stacy
Horn's ECHO, and the history of NYC's polytechnic schools, as well as
programs like ITP @ NYU.

thoughtfully,
Laine



On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 2:09 PM Kim Tracy <tracy at cs.stanford.edu> wrote:

> Bell Labs did start in 1925 in NYC on West Street as part of Western
> Electric and moved to Murray Hill, NJ in the early 1940s.  A number of
> folks that I worked with started at the West Street location.  So, some of
> the computing work was done there but much more after that in NJ.
>
> --Kim
>
>
> --Kim Tracy
> tracy at cs.stanford.edu
>
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 1:57 PM, Evan Koblentz <evan at snarc.net> wrote:
>
>> Would also like to encourage others to go, perhaps most especially to
>>> start a conversation about how we can imagine computer histories. I
>>> attended yesterday with a colleague and left feeling dismayed--the
>>> sticky fingers of IBM (a major donor for the exhibit) appeared to be all
>>> over it (at one point I openly laughed at some wall text that described
>>> Apple as a "plucky startup" but insisting IBM /really/ drove the tech
>>> revolution). There are a few special, very sincere parts--the 1964
>>> Worlds Fair dome, the focus on NYC's role in electronic art and music
>>> (Cage, Bell Labs, etc) but otherwise reads like the history of computing
>>> told through the history of IBM--which feels strange given that there's
>>> no special effort to frame IBM as a /regionalist /company.
>>>
>>> Would love to stoke a conversation, even off list, about other's
>>> impressions...feel free to drop me an email.
>>>
>>
>>
>> I'm planning to go soon.
>>
>> NYHS asked for my assistance several months ago. I provided a lot of
>> feedback about NY computer history beyond Big Blue. They said I'd be
>> credited as a consultant, so I am disappointed to hear that the exhibition
>> is basically just an IBM gig.
>>
>> I hope that didn't claim Bell Labs as a NY entity. Statue of Liberty is
>> in * New Jersey * waters, the "New York" Giants and Jets both play in New
>> Jersey, now Bell Labs? Note to myself .... go see the exhibit firsthand
>> before getting judgmental. :)
>>
>> In 1966 -- a decade * before * IBM started telling customers that real
>> computers are made out of metal by east coast corporations, not plastic by
>> west coast hippies -- Steven Grey began publishing the "Amateur Computer
>> Society" newsletter from his home in Manhattan. This was before the Mother
>> of All Demos, Xerox PARC, and the People's Computer Company.
>>
>> Upon starting his newsletter, Gray contacted IBM to see about funding.
>> IBM replied with a very nice letter saying no. The letter is signed by
>> Thomas Watson Jr. -- there are copies online, but the original is at the
>> (Wall, N.J.) InfoAge Science Center where I run the computer wing.
>>
>> Tens years later, when Creative Computing, Byte, DDJ, etc. all emerged,
>> and the photocopied ACS newsletter closed, IBM invited Gray to lecture
>> about this "new" idea of microcomputing -- in the Thomas Watson Research
>> Center.
>>
>> I'm just saying. :)
>>
>>
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-- 
Laine Nooney
www.lainenooney.com

DM <http://dm.lmc.gatech.edu/> @ LMC <http://lmc.gatech.edu/> @ GT
<http://www.gatech.edu/>
Assistant Professor
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