Which comes first, the technology or the need for the technology?
In this module, we’ll look at the emergence of digital computing as a cold-war technology and how various networks first emerged and were inter-networked. ARPAnet was not the only contender! We’ll look at how various standards emerged and the political and social contexts of their deployment.
The time period explored will roughly correspond with that period of time from the 1950s to the 1980s, more or less overlapping with the Cold War.
Things to Read and Annotate and By When
Add to your calendar:
- For Oct 6: Kevin Driscoll: A Prehistory of Social Media
- For Oct 15: Roy Rosenzweig: Wizards, Bureaucrats, Warriors & Hackers: Writing the History of the Internet OR Peter Denning: The Science of Computing: The ARPANET after Twenty Years
- For Oct 27: Mar Hicks: When Winning Is Losing: Why the Nation that Invented the Computer Lost Its Lead.
- Not required, but an awful lot of fun: Rob MacDougall and ‘The Killer App: How the Cold War Created Video Games and Vice Versa’ youtube (1 hr)
- Also not required, but super interesting: Laine Nooney on ‘How The Computer Became Personal’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5XVojLWIQo) (1 hr).
Key Dates & Topics
Add to your calendar:
- Oct 6: BBS
- Oct 8: MUDS
Oct 13: Thanksgiving, no class
- Oct 15: ARPANet
Fall Break: Oct 20 - 24
- Oct 27: Research note/précis 2
- Oct 29: Meanwhile, in the rest of the world