16, 17 и 19 апреля 2014 года состоятся исследовательские семинары Центра STS, в рамках которых выступит с докладами Стефани Дик, PhD, Гарвадский университет. Темы докладов: 16 апреля - «Вычисления до ЭВМ» (Computing Before the Computer), 17 апреля - «Программисты и профессионалы» (Programmers and Professionals), 19 апреля - «Компьютерные контр-культуры» (Computer Counter Cultures). Рабочий язык семинаров - английский. Начало семинаров в 13.00, ауд. 173.
For a long time, the history of computing was largely constituted by the history of computers themselves, so-called "genius" pioneers, and the corporations that produced and distributed the early successful computing machines. More recently, historians have turned towards histories that focus on different computing communities and their role in shaping the uses and meanings of the computer in different spheres of culture. Each of these three talks explores different computational communities, their use and interpretation of the computer, and the context of their emergence. The talks offer alternative and comparative histories for consideration next to Soviet and Russian counter developments. They also synthesize and summarize the current state of computing historiography, suggesting interventions that the Program can make in existing literature and theoretical conversations.
First Talk: Wednesday 16 April 2014
Computing Before the Computer («Вычисления до ЭВМ»)
The word "computer" used to refer not to a machine but to a person. Groups of hundreds of human computers were enlisted to perform complicated calculations and produce mathematical tables. Higher level managers worked to break complicated calculations into simple arithmetical calculations that would be repetitively performed by human computers. Most human computers were women or unskilled unemployed laborers during the depression. This talk explores human computing as a precursor to machine computation, exploring the divisions of labor, values, and practices that made large-scale calculations possible. This talk also looked at the earliest advent od modern electronic computing that both replaced and displaced the human computers that preceded them. Some human computers were carried over and became the earliest computer programmers. Others were rendered obsolete. This talk emphasizes the fact that present day computing communities - their practices, institutions, and professional identities - derive in part from earlier manifestations of computing. It also emphasizes the gendered character of early computing and the association of computing with low-level "clerical" and "pink color" work that would be replaced by later imaginings of the computer and of computer specialists.
Second Talk: Thursday 17 April 2014
Programmers and Professionals («Программисты и профессионалы»)
This talk explores different communities that became "computing professionals." There was no single group of people with the skills and authority to claim computing as a whole. Electrical engineers rallied to control the development of computer components and hardware. Others, largely from mathematics and the sciences sought to carve out elements of academic computer science and programming as their professional and intellectual domain. Still others sought to use the introduction of computing to corporate culture to fashion themselves as managerial scientists who would shepherd corporations into the information age. Each community leveraged different tools to fashion and promote their professional identities, their skill sets, and their offerings. Professional organizations with associated publications, conferences, and entrance requirements were founded and competed with one another for particular identities and public presences. These different communities also carefully forged vocabularies for talking about computing that accentuated their skills and interests. Each of these communities also had a different relationship to actual computing machinery - they talked differently about computers and advocated for quite different values, uses and futures to accompany its use. In the talk, I emphasize that there was no "computer" but rather many different computers - as fashioned, used, advocated and talked about by the communities who determined use and societal place.
Third Talk: Saturday 19 April 2014
Computer Counter Cultures («Компьютерные контр-культуры»)
The computer emerged in the contexts of war and flourished in the world of American corporate culture. In the 1960s, counter cultural, civil rights, and free speech activists rallied against the computer as a technology of oppression, control, and dehumanization. They resisted being reduced to mere "information" - their uniqueness, individuality, and their voices taken up as part of a culture of military and corporate information system. By the 1990s, however, the computer served as one of the most prominent tools and metaphors of freedom, equality, and self-determination. Hackers, copyleftists, gamers, and others saw in the computer a liberating force - one that created new and authentic forms of self and of community. In this talk, I explore how computing was transformed from a corporate and military tool into an instrument of the leftist counter cultures of the 1990s. The talk expands on claims made in the previous two talks that the computer is not a "given" technology whose use and meaning is clear. Rather, the computer is interpreted and used differently by different communities according to their political, disciplinary, and, social commitments. The talk explores new approaches to copyright and intellectual property law, new forms of community and social engagement, and new subversive hacker cultures that emerged as different examples of counter-cultural appropriations of computer technology.