Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
not work but instead that the work that it did do turned out to have
undesirable side effects for the organizations that used them. 23
Computerization projects created “unusual internal implications,”
“placed stress on established organizational relationships,” and demanded
“skills not provided by the previous experience of people assigned to the
task.” 24 Such projects generally crossed organizational boundaries and
disrupted existing hierarchies and power relationships. Information tech-
nology, as Thomas Whisler observed, tended to “shift and scramble the
power structure of organizations among the various functional depart-
ments.” 25 What might on the surface appear to be disagreements about
the particular technical challenges associated with software development
were in reality local disputes about organizational power and authority
and, more signifi cant for this purposes of this topic, about the peculiar
character of the people involved with software development. Ostensibly
debates about the “one best way” to manage a software development
project, they were in fact a series of highly contested social negotiations
about the role of electronic computing—and computing professionals—
in modern corporate and academic organizations.
This is a topic about the history of software, and the intersection between
the history of software and the larger social history of the computer
revolution of the mid- to late twentieth century. It is a topic about how
software gets made, why, and for what purposes. Of particular concern
is the series of software crises that plagued the computer industry
throughout its early history, and the way in which these crises highlight
the heterogeneous nature of software development. Rather than treating
the software crises as a well-defi ned and universally understood phenom-
enon, as they are usually assumed to be in the industry and historical
literature, this topic considers them as socially constructed historical
artifacts. It interprets debates about the core problems facing the soft-
ware industry—and more important, claims about how it could best be
resolved—within the larger context of the struggle for control over orga-
nization power and occupational authority. Specifi c claims about the
nature and extent of the crisis can be used as a lens through which to
examine broader issues in the history of software—and from there, the
larger social history of computing. As with all crises, the software crisis
can be used to reveal the hidden fault lines within a community: points
of tension between groups or individuals, differing perceptions of reality
or visions for the future, and subtle hierarchies and structures of power
relationships.
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