[SIGCIS-Members] CCS Thursday May 20th - Doron Swade on Historiography of the History of Computing

[Brian Randell]

Hi:

This has just been posted by the Computer Conservation Society:

Dear Fellow CCS Members
 
The May meeting of the Computer Conservation Society is on Thursday 20th May via Zoom. This is the final meeting of the 2020/21 programme. The lecture will begin at 2.30PM with the Zoom session opening at 2.15PM.
 
Our speaker is the CCS Chairman Dr Doron Swade is our speaker and his title is Historiography of the History of Computing.
Doron has written: A task of history is to provide a coherent account for the profusion of past events — contingent occurrences, breakthroughs, markets, users, human motivations, agency, change and consequence. Histories use narratives that allow us to marshal otherwise unmanageable levels of detail. I describe the three major narratives that have emerged so far and show how at least one was constructed in a way that is now misleading. A solution is offered. I also look to artefactual history — the history of products and artefacts of technology, and a crisis in material culture — the “collapse of categories” that occurred in the wake of revolutions in solid-state physics. This all sounds rather abstract and conceptual. Not so. The material is rooted in the specific episodes, machines and devices of computing of which history seeks to make sense. Historiography is concerned with how history is written. This is my excuse for the pretentious title.

About the speaker - Doron Swade is an engineer, historian and museum professional. He was Curator of Computing for many years at the Science Museum, London and later Assistant Director & Head of Collections. He has studied physics, mathematics, electrical engineering, control engineering, philosophy of science, man-machine studies, and history at various universities. He has published four books (one co-authored) and many scholarly and popular articles on history of computing, curatorship, and museology. He was responsible for founding the Computer Conservation Society in 1989 and is its current chairman. He is an Honorary Fellow of the British Computer Society and of Royal Holloway University of London. He was awarded an MBE in 2009 for services to the history of computing.

Please pre-register for the event.  To do so, follow this link http://www.computerconservationsociety.org/lectures/current/lecture.htm and click on the “Book” symbol. All registrants will be notified of the URL for the Zoom link in advance of the meeting.

Details of the 2021/22 season will soon be available. We are currently planning that our future meetings starting in September will be hybrid – offering both attendance in the BCS London meeting rooms and also remote participation in real time as well as providing the usual recorded version on the CCS YouTube channel. This is proving ambitious and will depend on the BCS meeting room having the necessary equipment and internet connections.

Our meetings are free to attend and open to all. Please tell anyone who may be interested about this event.
 
We have recently been asked to draw to your attention the UK based Archives of IT.
 
Good wishes
 
Roger Johnson
CCS London Programme Secretary

Cheers

Brian Randell

—
 
School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG
EMAIL = Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 191 208 7923
URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/people/profile/brianrandell.html