The History of Information Technology

March 2010 Draft version to appear in the
Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, Vol. 45, 2011

Thomas Haigh thaigh@computer.org University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Thomas Haigh The History of Information Technology – ARIST Draft

2

In many scholarly fields the new entrant must work carefully to discover a gap in the existing literature. When writing a doctoral dissertation on the novels of Nabokov or the plays of Sophocles, clearing intellectual space for new construction can be as difficult as finding space to erect a new building in central London. A search ensues for an untapped archive, an unrecognized nuance, or a theoretical framework able to demolish a sufficiently large body of existing work.
The history of information technology is not such a field. From the viewpoint of historians it is more like Chicago in the mid-nineteenth century (Cronon, 1991). Building space is plentiful. Natural resources are plentiful. Capital, infrastructure, and manpower are not. Boosters argue for its “natural advantages” and promise that one day a mighty settlement will rise there. Speculative development is proceeding rapidly and unevenly. But right now the settlers seem a little eccentric and the humble structures they have erected lack the scale and elegance of those in better developed regions.
Development is uneven and streets fail to connect. The native inhabitants have their ideas about how things should be done, which sometimes causes friction with new arrivals. In a generation everything will be quite unrecognizable, but how?
This is a guide to the growing (if ramshackle) secondary literature in the history of information technology: monographs, edited volumes, and journal articles written to explore different aspects of computing from historical perspectives. Except as a frame in which to situate these secondary