[SIGCIS-Members] [EXTERNAL] Introduction and Humanity and the IBM System/360-descended mainframe

Fri Jul 17 16:32:17 PDT 2020

James, that is an excellent idea - and I'm embarrassed to admit that it hadn't previously occurred to me, even though I have several of Emerson Pugh's books on my desk in front of me, which I have used in-depth in my thesis.

I just Googled around but couldn't readily locate his contact information - does anyone have it, or a good site for getting it, handy?

- Reg Harbeck

On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 16:21:39 -0500, James Cortada <jcortada at umn.edu> wrote:

... and you should probably reach out to Emerson Pugh, who worked on S/360 and wrote four books about IBM and its technologies.  Jim

On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 2:38 PM Reg Harbeck <reg at harbeck.ca> wrote:

Thank you, Gary. This is an angle I could perhaps spend more time thinking about than I have so far. I appreciate the recommendation!

  - Reg Harbeck

On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 19:33:36 +0000, "Grider, Gary Alan" <ggrider at lanl.gov> wrote:

Interesting thesis topic.  If you trace 360 back a bit further I think you will find that the 360 descended in some degree from Stretch or at least what was learned from Stretch.

Since I walk by the building built for Stretch at Los Alamos every day, While I am not sure that the Cold War represents the best in humanity, it is a slightly different angle to your quest.

Not sure if the Stretch 360 predecessor adds to your humanities angle but much has been written about the Stretch project and the people involved were a bit of a who’s who in Computing of that era.

Gary Grider

LANL

From: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of Reg Harbeck <reg at harbeck.ca>
Date: Friday, July 17, 2020 at 1:24 PM
To: "members at lists.sigcis.org" <members at lists.sigcis.org>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [SIGCIS-Members] Introduction and Humanity and the IBM System/360-descended mainframe

Hello, SIGCIS. I am happy to have joined your listserv and be in such excellent company.

I've joined this listserv at the recommendation of Dr. Willard McCarty, founder of the Humanist listserv, which I've also joined, and for the same reason:

I'm working on my second draft of my thesis for my Master of Arts (Interdisciplinary Humanities) with a subject of the humanity of the IBM System/360-descended mainframe.

I've been working on that platform since 1987, the year both of these listservs were founded, as a technologist and, more recently, ecosystem enabler. You can see what I've been up to if you Google "Reg Harbeck" "mainframe" - lots of both technical and cultural content.

My research, experience, and perhaps predisposition, lead me to believe that the best of our human and humanities history were brought to bear in the development and announcement of IBM's System/360 mainframe on April 7, 1964. Prior to that, everything from the lessons of deep history (e.g. "measure twice, cut once" and other established practical and philosophical principles), more recent history (e.g. Jacquard, Babbage, WW II, Turing, Von Neumann, Fr. Roberto Busa, etc.), and input from experience and experienced users (e.g. the SHARE user group, founded in August of 1955 - still alive at SHARE.org) from the first two decades of electronic computing, funnelled into the design and creation of this system.

Since then, while the actual platform was used by people studying the humanities, including the humanity of computing, until more autonomous systems became generally available, its further advances were more driven by the practical needs of serving humanity - especially business - than by philosophical considerations.

Today, the modern mainframe descended from S/360, aka IBM Z, runs the world economy, with the large majority of credit card, financial, tax, and other government and business data of record. But most personal computing happens on other platforms - for now. But Moore's Law has ended, and the world is refocusing from novelty to sustainability, just on time for this same mainframe platform to become an increasingly evident option for quality cloud services.

All of which leads to my request from this list: I'm still trying to tie the threads together well enough to ensure my thesis statement is logically supportable by the data I've put together, and my current version of that statement, still somewhat in flux, is something like, "The IBM System/360 mainframe and its successors are a definitive manifestation of the best of historical humanity and humanities, and it has continued to develop in a definitive role as part of our shared humanity, now and into the unforeseeable future." 

So I would be most grateful if anyone has any publications or other sources they can recommend that speak specifically to these origins and this journey. While I have gathered a great deal of data so far, I'd rather have the same thing recommended to me multiple times than miss an important document that could be the missing link in my thinking.

Thank you all so much for reading and considering this, and for your anticipated responses. 
  - Reg Harbeck
Reg at Harbeck.ca
+1.403.605.7986 

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--

James W. Cortada

Senior Research Fellow

Charles Babbage Institute

University of Minnesota

jcortada at umn.edu

608-274-6382

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