Computers and Computing in Society

in NTM (2020)

This review essay aims to highlight some of these recent trends within the history of computing and information technology through the consideration of three recently published books : 1/ Frank Bösch (Ed ... [more ▼]

This review essay aims to highlight some of these recent trends within the history of computing and information technology through the consideration of three recently published books : 1/ Frank Bösch (Ed.) 2018. Wege in die Gesellschaft. Computernutzung in der Bundesrepublik (1955–1990). Geschichte der Gegenwart, Bd. 20. Göttingen: Wallstein, geb.; 2/ Marie Hicks 2017. Programmed Inequality. How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 3/ Joy Lisi Rankin 2018. A People’s History of Computing in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. They are increasingly opening up to approaches that are oriented towards society and actors, whether the latter are producers, regulators, users, or even maintainers. This is achieved with historical rigour by the authors, who highlight the history of a field that is not only scientific, technical, industrial and economic, but also profoundly social, and which is marked by multiple debates, negotiations and power relationships. [less ▲]

Die Regeln der Eisenhüttenkunde : Genese und Struktur eines technikwissenschaftlichen Feldes 1870–1914

in NTM (2010), 18(1), 29-60

The ways in which the sciences have been delineated and categorized throughout history provide insights into the formation, stabilization, and establishment of scientific systems of knowledge. The ... [more ▼]

The ways in which the sciences have been delineated and categorized throughout history provide insights into the formation, stabilization, and establishment of scientific systems of knowledge. The Dresdener school’s approach for explaining and categorizing the genesis of the engineering disciplines is still valid, but needs to be complemented by further-reaching methodological and theoretical reflections. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social practice is applied to the question of how individual agents succeed in influencing decisively a discipline’s changing object orientation, institutionalisation and self-reproduction. Through the accumulation of social, cultural and economic capital, they succeed in realising their own organisational ideas and scientific programs. Key concepts for the analysis include the struggle for power and resources, monopolies of interpretation, and the degree of autonomy. A case study from the Aachener Technische Hochschule shows that the consolidation of ferrous metallurgy can be conceived as a symbolical struggle between Fritz Wüst, professor for ferrous metallurgy, and the German Iron and Steel Institute, leading to a construction of a system of differences in which scientists accepted being scientists rather than entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs accepted becoming entrepreneurs and renounced science. [less ▲]