Hello Paul and others,
Good questions. You may find our online syllabus repository to
be of interest in course planning. Joe November is currently updating and
improving it. http://www.sigcis.org/?q=node/12
Please consider contributing your own syllabus when it is ready.
On the PC front there is little to report, which is odd. There’s
so much that could be written about user groups, dealerships, popular
discourse, reconstruction of personal computers for different cultural spaces, gender,
technology transfer, etc. Mostly it hasn’t been written. However I would
recommend Lindsay’s chapter on the TRS-80 (“From the Shadows”)
in the Oudshoorn & Pinch volume How Users Matter. Frank Veraart in
the Netherlands and Tom Lean in Manchester have, if I remember correctly, recently
completed dissertations on personal computing topics. I do not know if they’ve
published anything suitable in English. (Don’t be shy to speak up guys).
For a sweeping popular summary of the PC story I’d go with
Cringely’s Accidental Empires (or chapters from it) over Fire
in the Valley, as it’s more entertaining but actually very insightful
with respect to platform competition, architecture lock in, etc. You’ll
just have to turn the datedness into a teachable feature and make it do double
duty as a primary source.
For the Internet, you should definitely check out the new Aspray
& Ceruzzi edited MIT Press book The Internet and American Business. http://www.amazon.com/Internet-American-Business-History-Computing/dp/0262012405.
Mostly the book looks at the Internet in use in various fields, with a star
studded cast of history of computing contributors.
Momentarily eschewing modesty, my own chapter from this book “Protocols
for Profit: Web and Email Technologies as Product and Infrastructure” could
fit your requirements. It retells the history of web and email technologies
from a business history meets STS perspective. I tried to focus particularly on
ways in which the legacy of the pre commercial Internet shaped browser and
email development in the commercial era. I don’t have any special sources
and relied on published accounts, mostly newspaper articles, for the actual
facts. A draft is online at http://tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/ProtocolsForProfitDRAFT.pdf.
My other chapter, “The Web’s Missing Links” looked at the web
navigation business (search engines, directories, and portals) from a similar
perspective. http://tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/WebsMissingLinksDRAFT.pdf.
However I do encourage you to get the whole book.
Don’t discount Janet’s book. You might not want to
assign the whole thing, but I found that the chapter on email and applications
stands nicely on its own.
Also
From: members-bounces@sigcis.org
[mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Geoffrey C. Bowker
Sent: Friday, May 08, 2009 4:36 PM
To: Paul Edwards
Cc: members@sigcis.org
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Introducing myself
Hi Paul,
Good questions all - I'll be interested in the response. Henry Lowood has
some nice stuff at http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/lowood.html,
though I suspect you know this already. Doug Engelbart's demo is on the
web. I could set up a skype session with Regis McKenna, who knows SV
backwards. There was a Nova or BBC series which I heard good reports on,
but I forget the details. Exciting is hard to come by in general
though. Laura de Nardis' excellent new work on internet names will not be
accessible enough I fear. There's also The Wealth of Networks, though I'm
not too attuned to the analysis - http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/wealth_of_networks/Main_Page.
take care,
geof
Paul Edwards wrote:
All -
I'm getting ready to teach an undergrad course (juniors and
seniors) on "History of Computers and the Internet" for the first
time in 7 years.
I'm looking for suggestions on three things:
1) A recent book on the history of personal computers that's
well-written and exciting for undergrads. I used to use Fire in the Valley, but that's very dated
now.
2) On history of the Internet, I've been using Janet
Abbate's Inventing the Internet for
years. It's a great book but somewhat inaccessible for undergrads, and now a
bit dated.
3) Books or articles -- again, exciting for undergrads -- on
history of the WWW. Please, not Tim Berners-Lee's awesomely self-centered
memoir.
Thanks for any and all.
- Paul
—————————————————
Paul
N. Edwards, Assoc. Professor of Information
School
of Information
3078
West Hall
University
of Michigan
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South University Ave.
Ann
Arbor, MI 48109-1107
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