There were lots of people who made predictions about the future (e.g. Ed Berkeley's "Giant Brains"), but your question is about works that computer people acted to bring into being. That is a more restricted set. Not sure of Berkely had that influence on computer engineers and scientists. Alan Kay's description of a "Dynabook"? John Sculley's video about a personal assistant?  (Not clear if the folks at Apple or anywhere else took his video as marching orders or not).

Maybe a negative writing: Dreyfus's "What Computers Can't Do."  As much as it was disparaged, AI researchers did come around to take a different tack on AI, with great success. Whether they were persuaded by Dreyfus's arguments or not I am not sure.

Paul Ceruzzi




From: Members <members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of Lori Emerson <lori.emerson@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2022 2:29 PM
To: Janet Abbate <abbate@vt.edu>
Cc: members@SIGCIS.org <members@sigcis.org>
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] The Communicators
 

External Email - Exercise Caution

Hi Evan and all,

I would add George Orwell on the "World Brain" as well as Paul Otlett's Mundaneum - not explicitly computers but definitely imagining a networked, world wide information sharing system.

yrs, Lori

On Thu, Mar 17, 2022 at 12:25 PM Janet Abbate <abbate@vt.edu> wrote:
Hi Evan,

David Ferro and Eric Swedin’s anthology, "Science Fiction and Computing: Essays on Interlinked Domains" (McFarland & Company, 2011) is a series of essays about science fiction that affected real-life computing. I don’t recall how much coverage there was of pre-1965 SF.

I used to teach Asimov’s short story “The Last Question” (1956), which is one of his most widely read, but I don’t know if it influenced actual computing.

Janet

Dr. Janet Abbate
Professor, Science, Technology and Society
Virginia Tech
Co-director, VT National Capital Region STS program
liberalarts.vt.edu/sts
www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS
https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/stsconnect/

> On Mar 17, 2022, at 11:23 AM, Evan Koblentz <evank@njit.edu> wrote:
>
> Good suggestion! Science fiction often tells us about the present, sometimes more than the future.
>
> ----
> Evan Koblentz
>
> Staff Writer, Office of Strategic Communications
> Adjunct Instructor, Ying Wu College of Computing
>
> evank@njit.edu
> (973) 596-3065
> Https://web.njit.edu/~evank
> @TechnicallyEvan
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Adam Hyland <achyland@uw.edu>
> Date: 3/17/22 11:15 AM (GMT-05:00)
> To: Jean Graham <jean.graham@stonybrook.edu>
> Cc: Evan Koblentz <evank@njit.edu>, "members@SIGCIS.org" <members@sigcis.org>
> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] The Communicators
>
> I wouldn't know how to begin writing about this, but Asimov comes immediately to mind for pre 1965.
>
> On Thu, Mar 17, 2022 at 8:04 AM Jean Graham <jean.graham@stonybrook.edu> wrote:
> Definitely the people who wrote hacker zines and bulletin boards, not least because they combined a political point of view with their technical writing
>
> On Thu, Mar 17, 2022 at 10:58 AM Evan Koblentz <evank@njit.edu> wrote:
> I’m interested in a new-to-me research angle: the people who changed computing by writing about it.
>

>
> Lovelace comes to mind. So do Vannevar Bush and Edmund Berkeley.
>

>
>       • Who else should I consider from prior to 1965? (I have the microcomputer generation covered.)
>       • Are there existing papers on this subject?

>
>
>
> Evan A Koblentz
> Staff Writer, Office of Strategic Communications
> Adjunct Instructor, Ying Wu College of Computing
> evan.a.koblentz@njit.edu • (973) 596-3065
> https://web.njit.edu/~evank
> @TechnicallyEvan
>

>
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> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
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>
> --
> Adam Hyland (he/him)
> adampunk.com
> UW HCDE PhD Student
> _______________________________________________
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--
Lori Emerson | she/her/they/them
Co-author of THE LAB BOOK: Situated Practices in Media Studies, available April 2022
Associate Professor of English and Intermedia Arts, Writing, and Performance
Director | Intermedia Arts, Writing, and Performance Program
Director | Media Archaeology Lab
Traditional territories of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute Nations