I am the warthog…
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Sorry for the late reply. Been preparing for my daughter’s B-day party! How she got to be 14, I’ll never know!
Honestly, I found it hit or miss. I think it’s great for understanding how the US government was justifying development of computing from the second world war on and how it relates to the Cold War. It’s an intellectual history so it’s about the discussion and ideas, more than the actually development, though he does go into some projects. The most concrete stuff was on the postwar relationship between academia and the state in trying to develop weaponized programs (he discusses programs like whirlwind and SAGE). He has this whole chapter at the end, which talks about films and AI from the late Cold War, which I found interesting and kind of fun, but distracting from the rest of the book.
In general, intellectual histories tend to be just that - studying the evolution of ideas rather than necessarily events, so they can be… squishier? I guess might be the word. If you’re interested in the relationship between development of computers, how the government was thinking about what computers could do for national defense, then I’d recommend this book.
But honestly, I think it’s important to remember that the development of computers were part and parcel of war time and Cold War time policies, even as people were seeing liberatory/countercultural possibilities in what became the internet and personal computers.
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Time travel.
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OMG! She’s the Doctor!
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I’m already familiar enough with the relevant history and motives so it doesnt sound like this book has much to offer me. Familiar enough to know that “even as” isn’t really correct here. The hippie stuff really came later after all the hard work was already done by others.
You inadvertently helped me understand why I dont like any of the Doctor Who actors/scripts after Eccelston! I just now caught on to the fact that the series is actually a chick flick. Thanks for helping!
Oh and I hope the birthday party went well!
Inclined to agree here.[quote=“Israel_B, post:25, topic:91253”]
I just now caught on to the fact that the series is actually a chick flick.
[/quote]
I don’t think my daughter would agree, but okay. She’s not big on “chick” flicks herself and prefers strong, heroic women.
She had a fun time, although it turned out to be a small affair. Although for the first like, hour or so, we had a power outage… so the kids sat around and played cards for a while…
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The “hippy stuff” isn’t even hippy stuff. Computers as cultural transformers goes right back to 1945:
http://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/303881/
Note this is the essay which inspired Douglas Engelbart, among others, to develop PCs as we know them.
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This needs to be posted.
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What the what?
Is that some sort of personal stream of consciousness or do you think there’s an actual connection in a joke about a kid (who happens to be female) growing up so fast it seems like she’s a time traveler and a flippant term for movies created to attract female audiences rather than male or male & female together?
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Ironic. As after Eccelston, we have Moffat running the show, and he has a demonstrated problematic history with women; women characters, women writers, women directors, women fans, basically just women in general.
Hilarious to me that you pick those ones to be “chick flick” when there’s been so much feminist critique of it.
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Well aware of this article and its place in history. Its also not quite relevant to the timeline which @anon61221983 and I were discussing.
Yes. Nothing to do with the birthday girl at all.
Ye gods, how dare I discuss anything about the history of computing before checking to see whether or not 1) you’ve already read it and 2) it was taking the discussion in a way you wanted it to go!
But non-sarcastically, a little root cause analysis is always a good idea, especially in the history of computing. History should not be written by the marketers – nor, necessarily, by the journalists, since they take those marketers at their word so often.
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Agreed. Part of why I’ve got a shelf full of first hand accounts on the history of computing and relevant info. One title that is timely to the essay you linked is “The Story of Magic” by Frank B. Rowlett, a first hand account of the cryptanalysis computing efforts in the time leading up to America’s entry in WWII.
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