As mediators between the technical system (the computer) and its social environment (existing structures and practices), these specialists became a focus for opposition to the use of new information technologies. They did so not as inventors from the traditional mold, but as the developers of the "software" (broadly defined to include programs, procedures, and practices) that integrated the novel technology of electronic computing into existing social, political, and technological networks. In The Computer Boys Take Over, Nathan Ensmenger describes the emergence of the technical specialists-computer programmers, systems analysts, and data processing managers-who helped transform the electronic digital computer from a scientific curiosity into the most powerful and ubiquitous technology of the modern era. People-not impersonal processes-made it happen. Like all great social and technological developments, the "computer revolution" of the twentieth century didn't just happen. The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise is a book by Nathan L.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |