[SIGCIS-Members] My CACM column on "The Tears of Donald Knuth"

[Dave Walden]

There are lots of people who already know a lot 
of computer science who could be encouraged to 
help research or write more history, for example,
  - I know an undergraduate history major who 
then got a PhD in computer science
  - lots of us who studied and practice computer 
science for our career have retired and now have 
time to research and/or write computing history
How about a SIGCIS session at SHOT oriented to 
one-time practitioners and advertising for their 
participation on lists where they might see the 
session announcement, e.g., on the Internet History list.
Any of the above might also be willing to 
collaborate in a piece of history research.
I know lots of us who have spent lots of time 
helping popular authors of computing history 
understand the technology.  We could also help 
professionally trained historians if they asked 
us, either as named co-authors and full 
collaborators or simply helping with technology 
in the background with an acknowledgement at the 
end of the paper.  If we don't know the 
technology area ourselves, we probably know 
someone who knows who might be willing to help.
Of course, there is also quite a number of 
professionally trained historians who have 
undergraduate and perhaps graduate degrees in computer science.



At 07:59 PM 1/14/2015, Nabeel Siddiqui wrote:

>Dear all,
>
>Janet beat me to it, but I had a similar 
>reaction upon reading the article.  I believe 
>that two additional factors will lead to the 
>technical history of computer science diminishing even further. Â
>
>First, it is nearly impossible for a graduate 
>student to currently spend time gaining a 
>technical understanding of computer science and 
>still stay competitive for jobs in a humanities 
>field.  As Tom noted, there are no jobs 
>available for a student that wanted to do this 
>kind of work. I would take the technical history 
>of computer science to be, at best, suited for 
>an intellectual history position.  Intellectual 
>history itself has eschewed this type of 
>approach and now heavily focuses on social 
>history. There, even a student trained in 
>intellectual history would have a hard time 
>gaining a foothold in the academy.  A student 
>would likely have to learn the technical 
>literature on their own unless they were 
>specifically admitted to a program to study the 
>history of computers. In my own 
>interdisciplinary program of American Studies, I 
>have had the opportunity to take a great deal of 
>independent studies, but I have still had a 
>difficult time taking a course outside of humanities departments. Â
>
>Two, while this listserv is an exception, few 
>historians of science are trained in computer 
>science in any significant way.  The few that 
>are usually have their undergraduate degrees in 
>computer science rather than vice versa.  While 
>some of these people have been able to dable in 
>both history and computer science, I would say 
>it is getting rarer with newer students.  In 
>fact, I have found that many students of 
>computer science now take more courses in 
>"marketable" skills like programming and 
>networking.  While these contain a technical 
>component, I don't know how many in the future 
>would have the training necessary to understand 
>old technical documents that may contain 
>approaches that are outdated or unnecessary for their own work. Â
>
>I would love to see some fellowships or 
>opportunities for humanities graduate students 
>to counter this.  In my own research on 
>personal computers, I come through a great deal 
>of articles dealing with technical topics in 
>early hobbyist magazines.  Unfortunately, 
>because these hobbyist magazines assume that 
>their readers are other engineers, things like 
>schematics, code, etc. is often lost on me.  I 
>don't believe a historian necessarily needs to 
>know this to gain the gist of the articles, but 
>it would be helpful.  Business historians have 
>been doing this for a while with workshops that 
>teach economics and finance basics.  Digital 
>humanities scholars have also been at the 
>forefront of humanities oriented technical 
>training with workshops on programming and statistics. Â
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Nabeel
>