Writing Computer and Information History - by William Aspray (Hardcover)
About this item
Highlights
- This is not a book about the history of computing or the history of information.
- About the Author: William Aspray is senior research fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute, a research center for the study of Computing, Information, and Culture at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
- 514 Pages
- Language + Art + Disciplines, Library & Information Science
Description
About the Book
This is not a book about the history of computing or the history of information. Instead, it is a meta-historical book about the research and writing of these types of history.Book Synopsis
This is not a book about the history of computing or the history of information. Instead, it is a meta-historical book about the research and writing of these types of history.
Review Quotes
No scholar has contributed as valuable a body of scholarship to the fields of computing history and information history as Aspray has, and no scholar is in a better position to assemble a distinguished team of computer historians and information historians to reflect on methods, craft, and literature. As such, this much needed book delivers strongly... I enjoyed all the chapters in this impressive book, and stylistically, I found Laura Skouvig's "Writing Information History from the Perspective of Rhetorical Genre Theory, and Geoffrey C. Bowker and John Leslie King's "An i for an I: Call andResponse for the iSchools," especially creative and engaging... Aspray brings to the stage seventeen talented and thoughtful scholars from different communities (iSchools, history departments, computer science departments, and management schools) to explore both the distinct paths and shared terrain of information and computing historiography. We owe Aspray much gratitude--or to carry forward the theatre metaphor, a standing ovation--for conceptualizing and editing this wondrous and much needed work of historiographical scholarship. Along with Aspray, we also owe thanks to all of the talented authors for their highly compelling historiographical essays. This should be a "must add" to everyone's summer computer history and information history/studies reading list.
About the Author
William Aspray is senior research fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute, a research center for the study of Computing, Information, and Culture at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He has published extensively on both the history of computing and history of information, including John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing (MIT, 1990) and Fake News Nation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). He has served as the editor of Information & Culture: A Journal of History. He has been an active researcher since the late 1970s. Two of his books have reached audiences of more than 100,000. Four of his publications have been cited more than 500 times, and an additional nine publications have been cited more than 100 times.
