Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
10 Vannevar Bush and
the Differential Analyser
(a powerful analogue
calculator), 1920s.
panoptic society described by Foucault. Within his system people
are made visible as pieces of digital data. They are individuals, but
their individuality is rationalized and normalized in a system of
signs that also homogenizes them as a mass, and makes them inter-
changeable and manipulable as data. Widely adopted by insurance
companies and railways, Hollerith's machine is the first direct
ancestor of the modern computer. The tabulating machine industry
became one of the bases of the future computing industry via
companies such as IBM, and it was also one of the technologies
exploited in the
s during research into the possibilities
of calculating machines for scientific research. Hollerith's invention
also helped found a connection that continues unabated to this
day, between digital technology and methods of surveillance, control
and discipline.
Hollerith's invention enabled the management of large amounts
of data with an unprecedented degree of efficiency. It made possi-
ble great advances in the development of sophisticated calculating
machines, such as Vannevar Bush's Differential Analyser (illus.
1920
s and '
30
10
),
designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
, of
which Alan Turing was aware. In the following decade the very
first digital electronic calculating machines, as well as Turing's
conceptualization of the universal machine, described above, were
1930
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