Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
innovation is as much driven by social processes as by inherent techno-
logical imperatives. That is to say, there is never a single, ideal type
toward which any given technology will inevitably evolve. Specifi c tech-
nologies are developed to solve specifi c problems, for specifi c users, in
specifi c times and places. How certain problems get defi ned as being most
in need of a solution, which users are considered most important to
design for, what other technological systems need to be provided or
accounted for, who has the power to set certain technical and economic
priorities—these are fundamentally social considerations that deeply
infl uence the process of technological development. Nowhere are the
social dimensions of technological development more apparent than in
the history of computing.
If we take seriously the notion, foundational to the history of technol-
ogy, that the things that human beings build matter—that the vast tech-
nological systems that we construct to understand and manipulate our
environment both refl ect our social, economic, and political values, and
constrain them—then it is absolutely essential that we understand how
these systems get built, by whom, and for what purposes. If there was
indeed a computer revolution of the mid- to late twentieth century, then
computer specialists were its primary revolutionaries; it behooves us,
therefore, to understand something about who they were and what they
hoped to accomplish.
