Dear all, Janet beat me to it, but I had a similar reaction upon reading the article. I believe that two additional factors will lead to the technical history of computer science diminishing even further. First, it is nearly impossible for a graduate student to currently spend time gaining a technical understanding of computer science and still stay competitive for jobs in a humanities field. As Tom noted, there are no jobs available for a student that wanted to do this kind of work. I would take the technical history of computer science to be, at best, suited for an intellectual history position. Intellectual history itself has eschewed this type of approach and now heavily focuses on social history. There, even a student trained in intellectual history would have a hard time gaining a foothold in the academy. A student would likely have to learn the technical literature on their own unless they were specifically admitted to a program to study the history of computers. In my own interdisciplinary program of American Studies, I have had the opportunity to take a great deal of independent studies, but I have still had a difficult time taking a course outside of humanities departments. Two, while this listserv is an exception, few historians of science are trained in computer science in any significant way. The few that are usually have their undergraduate degrees in computer science rather than vice versa. While some of these people have been able to dable in both history and computer science, I would say it is getting rarer with newer students. In fact, I have found that many students of computer science now take more courses in "marketable" skills like programming and networking. While these contain a technical component, I don't know how many in the future would have the training necessary to understand old technical documents that may contain approaches that are outdated or unnecessary for their own work. I would love to see some fellowships or opportunities for humanities graduate students to counter this. In my own research on personal computers, I come through a great deal of articles dealing with technical topics in early hobbyist magazines. Unfortunately, because these hobbyist magazines assume that their readers are other engineers, things like schematics, code, etc. is often lost on me. I don't believe a historian necessarily needs to know this to gain the gist of the articles, but it would be helpful. Business historians have been doing this for a while with workshops that teach economics and finance basics. Digital humanities scholars have also been at the forefront of humanities oriented technical training with workshops on programming and statistics. Sincerely, Nabeel On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 6:37 PM, James Cortada <jcortada@umn.edu> wrote:
Which all begs the question, have we now reached a critical mass in the teaching and study of computing's history that we need to develop a blueprint, format, curriculum, not sure of the term I am grasping for, of what an historian needs to know about information technology itself, perhaps borrowing from the course guidelines produced by such organizations as the Computer Society and the ACM? Sounds like a great project to create such a core body of info for historians funded by the Sloan Foundation.
Maybe the history committee at the Computer Society should consider taking this on with the collaboration of several IT historians.
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 5:14 PM, Brian Randell < brian.randell@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi Janet:
Well said!
However, as a "computer scientist not trained in history”, let me claim that at least for my main area of CS research, namely "system dependability”, a number of us put a lot of effort over a number of years into identifying and explaining the concepts involved - see
Avizienis A, Laprie J-C, Randell B, Landwehr C. Basic concepts and taxonomy of dependable and secure computing. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing 2004, 1(1), 11-33.
But I must admit that computer scientists were our intended audience, not historians :-)
And though we got a lot of agreement in our immediate community, I cannot claim that we persuaded everybody to use our recommended set of concept definitions!
Cheers
Brian
On 14 Jan 2015, at 17:54, Janet Abbate <abbate@vt.edu> wrote:
Tom does a good job of spelling out the problem of audience (or market, in institutional terms) for particular kinds of history. It's extremely encouraging that the column has received so much attention; perhaps it will even inspire some historical work by computer scientists.
One important issue that Tom did not address is the difficulty for a historian not trained in CS to achieve a sold technical understanding of computer science concepts. Part of the problem is that in many subfields, computer scientists themselves have not made public an agreed-on set of major concepts that the historian could then set about trying to learn. This information is buried in the technical literature, and it's difficult for a non-specialist to tease out. We need better roadmaps of the field if we want better technical history.
This makes me think that collaboration between historians and computer scientists will be necessary in order to move the history of computer science (rather than technology) forward. I hope to make some moves in that direction myself.
best, Janet
On Jan 12, 2015, at 2:57 47PM, Thomas Haigh wrote:
Hello Everyone,
Thought you might be interested in my latest "Historical Reflections"
column >> in Communications of the ACM, titled "The Tears of Donald Knuth: Has the >> History of Computing Taken a Tragic Turn?" (I thought about calling it "Flow >> My Tears, The Computer Scientist Said," in honor of a 1970s Philip K. Dick >> novel). >> http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of-donald-knuth/fullte >> xt >> >> The piece builds on SIGCIS list discussion from last summer, when the video >> of Knuth's talk, "Let's Not Dumb Down the History of Computer Science" was >> posted online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAXdDEQveKw). Knuth's talk >> was, in turn, centered on his distress at reading Martin Campbell-Kelly's >> paper "The History of the History of Software," which he saw as celebrating >> a regrettable shift away from technical history of computing. Campbell-Kelly >> recently published his own response to Knuth in IEEE Annals: >> http://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/an/2014/03/man2014030096.pdf. >> >> As a Ph.D. historian my natural sympathies are with the turn towards broader >> historical approaches praised by Campbell-Kelly, but I have also come to >> appreciate the value and rigor of more technical kinds of history (including >> early programming tools and techniques by both Knuth and Campbell-Kelly). So >> I attempted to be fair to both perspectives, while stressing that the >> history of computer science accounts for a quite small proportion of the >> work now being done on the history of computing. I also argue the realities >> of academic society mean that the kinds of history favored by Knuth will >> only flourish if computer scientists themselves make a significant >> investment in historical work. Finally I took the opportunity to cite some >> outstanding work on the history of computer science and to publicize some >> new initiatives and scholars in the area. >> >> Such is the allure of Knuth's name that the column was seized on by tech >> aggregation sites such as Slashdot, Hacker News, and Reddit when it first >> appeared online over the Christmas break. It's also been tweeted and >> blogged, and currently has about 75,000 downloads - more than the all the >> other articles in the January CACM combined. I can't say that the online >> discussions were particularly well informed, although they do include some >> thoughtful comments along with sentiments such as "Gawd academia disgusts >> me. These "historians" would be more useful to society if they dug cans and >> bottles out of the trash." Anything that makes more people think about the >> history of computing and its purpose is a good thing for the field. >> >> I'd like to thank those who commented on drafts of the column, including Len >> Shustek, Dave Walden, David Hemmendinger, Bill Aspray, Chuck House, and Paul >> Fishwick. Not all of them agreed with all of my points, but I did find their >> input very useful in sharpening the argument and presenting my thoughts in a >> way less likely to unnecessarily offend computer scientists. >> >> Best wishes for the New Year, >> >> Tom >> >> _______________________________________________ >> This email is relayed from members@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://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members > > _______________________________________________ > This email is relayed from members@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://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@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://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- James W. Cortada Senior Research Fellow Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota jcortada@umn.edu 608-274-6382
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@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://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members