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Cyhist Mar 18 1997 B
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Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 08:57:51 -0500
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: Thierry Bardini <phagolin@MLINK.NET>
Subject: CM>Social History of Computing
In-Reply-To: <199703172157.QAA01970@zinc.Mlink.NET> Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
Hi Folks,
Mark Stahlman wrote:
>I was interested to hear in an earlier post that Richard Hull is looking at "investigating the role of the social sciences in the history of computing" -- which a topic that I'm also quite interested in researching. There is some treatment of the concerns of early cyberneticians about the social implications of computers in Steve Heims' book regarding the Macy Conferences, but I have been able to find little else. Is anyone on this list aware of any thorough treatment of the early debates and the larger policy implications regarding the social impact of computerization. I'm looking for scholarship, not popular or speculative treatments, BTW.
I am also interested in this topic, and it has been my experience that there is not much published (scholarly). I am currently working on a book for Stanford University Press that focuses on Douglas Engelbart's work at SRI and his*legacy* at Xerox PARC and Apple. I have been wrestling with this issue, since Engelbart has always claimed (since the early 1960s, at least) that the development of computing technology have forgotten the "other half of the system", "the human system." My interest is to study the social history of the human-computer interface at the most global level, in terms of the physical and symbolical relationships between the two entities. I particularly stress the development of skills (both inscribing and incorporating practices) necessary on the human side. I developped a thesis about what happened in the 1960s in the ARPA community, and conclude that Artificial Intelligence research slowly pushed the distribution of intelligence toward the machinic side of the human-computer symbiosis (As Licklider called it in 1960).
Following Engelbart, I attempt to show that *user-friendliness* can, indeed, be seen as a dated and situated *social construction*. I stress the fact that one of the results of this social construction was the partial disappearence of the former emphasis on *learning* on the human side. I show that Engelbart was influenced in that matter, not only by the cyberneticians (Wiener, Ashby, McCullogh, etc.) but also by some *social scientists*: I especially emphasize the influence of Benjamin Lee Whorf (And the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis) and the influence of Count Alfred Korzybski and his vision of *human engineering* in the General Semantics Program.
I do not want to waste too much bandwidth here talking about my work, but those interested will soon have the opportunity to read a little more of this thesis in one of the next issues of the (E-) Journal of Computer Mediated Communication (at http://jcmc.mscc.huji.ac.il/) . Unfortunately, I do not know yet when exactly will the paper appear. I am still slaving on the book and the manuscript should be ready by this Summer. In the meantime, the only paper I published about this issue appeared in the Journal of Communication (45(3)), under the title *the social construction of the personal computer user.* Finally, those interested in the *social impact of computerization* should read the work of Rob Kling and his colleagues at UCI, since they have provided the scholarly community with some of the best analyses (albeit not necessarily in the historical dimension of interest here) on this broad topic.
Thierry Bardini
Dept. of Communication
University of Montreal
______________________________________________________________________
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: Thierry Bardini <phagolin@MLINK.NET>
Subject: CM>Social History of Computing
In-Reply-To: <199703172157.QAA01970@zinc.Mlink.NET> Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
Hi Folks,
Mark Stahlman wrote:
>I was interested to hear in an earlier post that Richard Hull is looking at "investigating the role of the social sciences in the history of computing" -- which a topic that I'm also quite interested in researching. There is some treatment of the concerns of early cyberneticians about the social implications of computers in Steve Heims' book regarding the Macy Conferences, but I have been able to find little else. Is anyone on this list aware of any thorough treatment of the early debates and the larger policy implications regarding the social impact of computerization. I'm looking for scholarship, not popular or speculative treatments, BTW.
I am also interested in this topic, and it has been my experience that there is not much published (scholarly). I am currently working on a book for Stanford University Press that focuses on Douglas Engelbart's work at SRI and his*legacy* at Xerox PARC and Apple. I have been wrestling with this issue, since Engelbart has always claimed (since the early 1960s, at least) that the development of computing technology have forgotten the "other half of the system", "the human system." My interest is to study the social history of the human-computer interface at the most global level, in terms of the physical and symbolical relationships between the two entities. I particularly stress the development of skills (both inscribing and incorporating practices) necessary on the human side. I developped a thesis about what happened in the 1960s in the ARPA community, and conclude that Artificial Intelligence research slowly pushed the distribution of intelligence toward the machinic side of the human-computer symbiosis (As Licklider called it in 1960).
Following Engelbart, I attempt to show that *user-friendliness* can, indeed, be seen as a dated and situated *social construction*. I stress the fact that one of the results of this social construction was the partial disappearence of the former emphasis on *learning* on the human side. I show that Engelbart was influenced in that matter, not only by the cyberneticians (Wiener, Ashby, McCullogh, etc.) but also by some *social scientists*: I especially emphasize the influence of Benjamin Lee Whorf (And the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis) and the influence of Count Alfred Korzybski and his vision of *human engineering* in the General Semantics Program.
I do not want to waste too much bandwidth here talking about my work, but those interested will soon have the opportunity to read a little more of this thesis in one of the next issues of the (E-) Journal of Computer Mediated Communication (at http://jcmc.mscc.huji.ac.il/) . Unfortunately, I do not know yet when exactly will the paper appear. I am still slaving on the book and the manuscript should be ready by this Summer. In the meantime, the only paper I published about this issue appeared in the Journal of Communication (45(3)), under the title *the social construction of the personal computer user.* Finally, those interested in the *social impact of computerization* should read the work of Rob Kling and his colleagues at UCI, since they have provided the scholarly community with some of the best analyses (albeit not necessarily in the historical dimension of interest here) on this broad topic.
Thierry Bardini
Dept. of Communication
University of Montreal
______________________________________________________________________
