Wanted to announce a new book that I just published with MIT Press that may be of potential interest--Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry.
The computer services industry has worldwide annual revenues of over a trillion dollars and employs millions of workers, but is often overshadowed by the hardware
and software products industries (both of which are less than half its size). In this book, I examine how computer services, from consulting, data processing, programming, systems integration, time-sharing, and facilities management to data analytics and
cloud computing, have played a crucial role in shaping information technology -- in making IT
work (both in the sense of making IT useful, and also extending the ever growing IT labor force). Based on extensive archival research (many CBI collections, the IBM Corporate Archives, Hagley Museum & Library, MIT Archives, etc.), oral histories, and
trade journal research, I provide a business, social (gender, labor, professionalization), policy/legal/political economy history of this 65 year old industry. In doing so, I seek to contribute to business, social, and technology historiography.
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Associate Director, Charles Babbage Institute
Faculty, Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine