I sent this to Paul via back channels, but given the liveliness of the thread it might be of interest to others. 

The volume I recently co-edited, Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology and Society in Latin America, has two chapters on the One Laptop per Child program. They are "Balancing Design: OLPC Engineers and ICT Translations at the Periphery" by Anita Chan (on Peru) and "Translating Magic: The Charisma of One Laptop per Child's XO Laptop in Paraguay." 

My doctoral student David Nemer recently published a book of photos on computer use in a Brazilian favela. The book is titled Favela Digital: The Other Side of Technology. You can find more about it here: http://favela-digital.com

Best wishes,
--
Eden Medina
Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing
Director, Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics
Adjunct Associate Professor of History
Indiana University, Bloomington

 
From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Ben Peters [bjpeters@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2014 5:00 PM
To: Paul N. Edwards
Cc: members
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Query re. readings on global history of computing

Hi Paul, 

What a great list and exercise! 

My list is definitely cybernetic-focused, but I suspect Yale's Access to Knowledge book case studies on India, Egypt, and Brazil may have some helpful material. 


For the more historical, here are a few more, in addition to Peter Collopy's helpful bibliography on cybernetics: 

(England) Pickering, Andrew. 2010. The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

(France) Segal, Jérôme. 2003. Le Zéro Et Le Un: Histoire De La Notion Scientifique D’information Au 20e Siécle. France: Editions Syllepse.

(Chile) Medina, Eden. 2011. Cybernetic Revolutionaries : Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile. Cambridge: MIT Press. 

(Comparative) David Mindell, Jérôme Segal, and Slava Gerovitch, “From Communications Engineering to Communications Science: Cybernetics and Information Theory in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union,” in Science and Ideology: A Comparative History, edited by Mark Walker (Routledge, 2003).

I hope others may someday add my own book, The Soviet Internet, to such a list. First I just need to publish it! :) (Look for it late 2015 or early 2016 from MIT.)

Ben 
On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 3:04 PM, Paul N. Edwards <pne@umich.edu> wrote:
Dear colleagues,

I’m putting together an upper-level undergrad course on “Computers and the Internet: A Global History,” and I would really appreciate suggestions for my course reading list.

I’m intrigued by the opportunity created by recent scholarship to look at regions of the world usually left out of the traditional US-UK story.

I am looking for well-written, short (or readily excerptable) work that will appeal to an audience of juniors and seniors, some from History and some from the iSchool. 

I’m particularly looking for refs on Africa, Asia, and South America. I’m interested in video as well as writing, and accessible primary source collections too. Period is from Babbage to the present.

Here’s most of what’s on my reading list so far (not including US-UK oriented material)

Campbell-Kelly, Aspray, and Ensmenger, Computer
Medina, Cybernetic Revolutionaries
Cortada, Digital Flood
Edwards and Hecht, “History and the Technopolitics of Identity: The Case of Apartheid South Africa”
Jenkin, "Talking to Vula: The Story of the Secret Underground Communications Network of Operation Vula."
Shapard, “Islands in the (Data)Stream: Language, Character Codes, and Electronic Isolation in Japan”
Takhteyev, Coding Places: Software Practice in a South American City (Brazil)
Gerovitch, “‘Mathematical Machines’ of the Cold War: Soviet Computing, American Cybernetics and Ideological Disputes in the Early 1950s.” 
Gerovitch. “Internyet: Why the Soviet Union Did Not Build a Nationwide Computer Network.” 
De Lacy, Justine. 1989. "The Sexy Computer.” (on Minitel)
McHenry and Goodman, “MIS in Soviet Industrial Enterprises: The Limits of Reform from Above” (1986, CACM)
Flamm, “Government and Computers in Japan and Europe,” from Targeting the Computer


Best,

Paul

___________________________

Paul N. Edwards
Professor of Information and History, University of Michigan 
Terse replies are deliberate (and better than nothing)

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