Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
document: technical specialists and other midlevel laborers rarely leave
records, or at least the kind of records that are useful and accessible to
historians. And since the community of specialists associated with the
computer encompasses a broad and diverse range of occupational cate-
gories—from academic computer scientists to corporate computer pro-
grammers to machine operators and maintenance workers—they are an
especially diffi cult group about which to generalize. It is not altogether
startling, therefore, that many conventional histories of computing focus
on easily identifi able pioneers and isolated incidents of technological
innovation.
A subtler and more signifi cant explanation for the lack of attention
paid to computer specialists has to do with the traditional bias in the
traditional emphasis of the history of
computing
on the history of the
computer
. Or to be more specifi c, on the history of a particular type of
computer: the electronic, programmable, digital computer. Most histo-
ries of computing begin and for the most part end with the invention of
this particular artifact. The development of the fi rst modern electronic
computers in the late 1940s is typically regarded as the seminal moment
in the birth of the modern information age, the culmination of all the
innovations in information technology that preceded it, and the precur-
sor and enabler of all that would come after. Once the electronic
computer had embarked on its seemingly inexorable march toward
Moore's law—toward ever-smaller, faster, and more affordable comput-
ing power—the eventual “computerization” of all of society was both
desirable and inevitable.
This focus on the invention and perfection of the technology of elec-
tronic computing makes for a clear and compelling narrative, and pro-
vides a straightforward and largely technologically determined explanation
for the emergence of the electronic computer as the defi ning technology
of the modern era. In doing so, however, it downplays or disregards the
contributions of the majority of the computer people. Whatever it is that
they really do, the typical computer specialist has almost nothing to do
with either the design or construction of actual computers. There are
certainly engineers and technicians whose primary responsibility is build-
ing computers, but they are an increasingly rare breed, and are generally
concentrated in a small number of large and highly specialized computer
manufacturers. The vast majority of computer specialists, from the earli-
est days of commercial computing to the present, spend little time inter-
acting with—and probably understand little about—the inner workings
of an electronic computer. Their association with the computer is much
