Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This presentation will introduce the forthcoming book, Computing and Its Cultures, which will be published by Taylor and Francis in 2019. Written in collaboration by a computer scientist and a cultural historian, this book surveys the historical and cultural factors that gave rise to the networked/interconnected world we inhabit. While a number of textbooks and surveys have traced stages of computing history from the ancients to the web in traditional narrative fashion, none has applied critical historiographical methods to explore the relationships between these developments and their social and cultural contexts. Ours provides a much needed synthesis, explaining that the history of technology—and the technology of information in particular—is intricately woven together with the cultural history of humanity, as well as its social and political transformations. Taking this omni-disciplinary approach, our work delineates the fundamentals everyone needs to know about computing history from the evolution of number systems, through the invention of calculating and computing machines, to the emergence of communication technology via the Internet. More than any other survey of computing history, though, this book contextualizes each major technical advance with correlate developments in intellectual history, politics, economics, literature, art, music, film, and many more areas. Ultimately, this book combines the fields of computer science and cultural history into a Cultural History of Computing which can and should be understood as a field of “Humanities.” Presentation of its themes is sure to trigger vital discussion about many convergences between knowledges and machines.