Computer Historian?

mike sollanych writes: "Is there any sort of job in the world for someone who's really interested in computer history? I love it, myself, but I'm just approaching the end of high school, and it's time to make some life decisions. So, is there any place in the industry for a computer historian?" How about it? Many businesses and government agencies employ company historians to record activities which might otherwise get overlooked as mundane. What skills would a most benefit a computer historian, and where are such people needed? Does such a job exist in any but the largest of companies now? Tell us what you think.

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[Frymaster]

no, seriously, Steven Levy seems to make a decent living at it (Insanely Great, Hackers et al.)

Personally, I've always been a bit of a computer history geek myself (as my .sig probably attests) and I'd sure as hell be willing to buy yet another book on the subject... so write it.

My only suggestion is start at Alan Turing (or if you go back to babage, at least include him). Most people look at the pre-dawn of computers as a hardware-only affair and tend to skip over Good Ol' Al's contribution on the software front....

I would guess...

[Durinia]

...that there wouldn't be too many jobs for someone interested in computer history anywhere in industry. It IS possible that some well-funded research department might have some interest, but you'd have to make a hard sell for WHY its good for them to be grounded in history.

I think if its REALLY interesting to you, you should consider entering Academia and studying (and teaching) it there. I would have LOVED having a Comp. History course, but, as of yet, few professors are young enough to NOT remember when computers were a "new thing".

I think it might be interesting to see the very specific patterns and progression of computing throughout history. If you wrote some papers on it, I'd certainly read them!

Best of luck!

This *should* be a position at every University.

[yakfacts]

IMO, students should be required to take detailed courses in computer history. Why? Not for the trivia, but to understand why decisions were made, and what has been tried before.

Too many students come out of school thinking they know it all, but understanding only a tiny bit of computers beyond the present generation for which they learned to program. Understanding the computers of the past would be useful.

Alas, I have found no such position, or I would apply for it tomorrow.

Come over to the dark side...

[MaximumBob]

Forget about "the industry." Become an academic.

Yes. Picture it. Spend your days on a college campus, teaching classes on the history of computers. You just come up with some random BS thesis on the ways in which computers have affected and changed society, and run with it.

The advantages? It's tough to get a job as a colleger professor, but once you do, you're good to go. Plus, you spend the rest of your life around college-age women.

Come over to the dark side, Luke.

There are many interesting questions to be asked

[David A. Madore]

I think there's definitely a need for computer historians. They probably belong in Universities (I don't know whether it would be in the CS or the History department, though). It's not because computer science is such a young field that there aren't some interesting questions to be studied yet.

Possible areas of study include:

• The genesis of the computer. Is it the brain-child of a few brilliant genii such as Babbage, Turing and von Neumann, or is it "an idea whose time was ripe"?
• The development of programming languages. Is there some trend of evolution there? The fact that such an advanced language as Lisp is, actually, one of the oldest, is a delicate thing to explain.
• The history of the Internet. And the puzzling question: why was TCP/IP such a success and OSI such a failure? I think Cerf, Postel &co deserve much the same popularity as Gutenberg, and they are far from it. Maybe the Internet Society should open a working group on the history of the Internet.
• The history of operating systems. This is the strangest of all. It started in chaos; then wars raged; and now it is evolving toward uniformity.