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 

A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010)

Terse replies are deliberate (and better than nothing)

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