Power to the People: Toward a Social History of Computing

When the Annals of the History of Computing was first established 25 years ago, it assumed for itself an ambitious agenda: by publishing " scholarly papers and anec-dotal notes, rigorously researched material and controversial remembrances, " it would serve as a " living history " of the computer revolution's unprecedented scientific and technological accomplishments. If in practice, its contributions were more often first-hand practitioner accounts rather than scholarly treatises, more often nuts-and-bolts descriptions of specific machines and developments rather than richly contextual histories, this was entirely understandable. The field was new, its full scope and boundaries were as yet undefined, and it had not yet captured the attention of the larger scholarly community. In recent years, the history of computing as a disci-pline—and the Annals as its most prominent professional journal—has evolved into something more broadly encompassing , intellectually sophisticated, and engaging. Both have attracted a diverse group of professional scholars who bring with them new questions, perspectives, and method-ological tools. Mirroring developments in the larger field of the history of technology, the history of computing has increasingly situated seemingly internal developments in electronic computing within their larger social, technological , and political context. The result has been more rigorous , convincing, relevant explanations of how the computer shapes, and is shaped by, modern society. This being said, there is still much room for improvement. The legacy of an earlier tradition of celebratory accounts of " great men, " pioneering machines, and important " firsts " is still very much with us, particularly in popular and journalistic histories. There remain huge gaps in the literature. And as time moves forward and we expand the boundaries of our discipline to include new periods, actors, and developments, the task before us becomes ever more daunting and enormous. In several of his recent Think Piece articles, our new editor-in-chief David Grier has suggested ways in which we can manage this task and move forward as a discipline. These were welcome and useful recommendations. Let me add just one of my own. Restoring human agency Any number of theoretical and historiographical toolk-its exist that we could productively apply to the history of computing. This is part of what makes the subject so intrinsically interesting: it is fundamentally intertwined with many of the major historical developments (technical , social, economic, and political) of the late 19th and 20th centuries. In theory, it is a subject …