History and Culture of Computing?

living phoenix wrote: "I'm currently working on the feasibility of teaching a class in the history and culture of computing for a collegiate senior thesis project. Basically, I would spend a little over a year studying the subject matter to create enough class materials for 3 hour per week class sessions for 16 weeks. I would like to cover, in very brief terms, the "invention" of zero and the positional number system as it relates to computers, mechanical computers including Babbage's Analytical Engine, analog computing, ENIAC, EDVAC, the Mark Series and the first "bug", the PDP series up through the moderns with shorter stops at the creation of the internet and systems design. This is a massive undertaking for me, in part because I have so much research to do to simply select the points that are best suited for a 16 week course. Has anyone ever taken a course such as this, heard of such a course, or know anyone who has taught the course? Also, I'm making a request for research materials, if you have a text that you thought was intriguing and/or would pertain well with the course objectives please let me know so I can use them in my research." Well, just searching slashdot I see a CNET article and a book review that will help you out. And don't forget the history of Unix. My guess is that there will be too much material - the hard part will selecting what is important to keep in and what can be left out.

Comments

Eh? Heh, I'm taking that class!

[Mike Hicks]

Wow, that pretty much describes the class that I'm taking now at the University of Minnesota. How would you differentiate your class from an ordinary history of computing class? I guess you mentioned the `culture' of computing, which might make it different from what I'm taking. Also, my class is dealing a lot with how the government of USA (and occasionally others) funded quite a few important programs..

Anyway, I'm taking a class with Arthur Norberg, and we're using 4 books:

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon

Computer: A History of the Information Machine by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray

The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder

Transforming Computer Technology: Information Processing for the Pentagon, 1962-1986 by Arthur L. Norberg and Judy E. O'Neill
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Useful books:

[Azog]

If you want to plan such a course, here are some interesting, readable books that would be useful:

For the history of Mathematics, invention of zero, etc. read: "Mathematics: Queen & Servant of Science" by Eric Temple Bell.

Before the internet and the personal computer, two of the major uses and research topics for computers were Cryptography, and Artificial Intelligence. Of course plain old number crunching has always been important, but I don't know of any books on that.

But for the early history and development of cryptography, check out: "The Code Book: the evolution of secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to quantum cryptography" by Simon Singh

For a read on the early history of AI from a nay-sayers perspective, check out "What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason" by Hubert L. Dreyfus.

Hmmm. Possible course outline schedule:

1. History of mathematics.
2. Pre-history of computers: Abacus, mechanical machines, Pascal, Von Neumann, etc.
4. First major use of computers: number crunching. The development of mathematical algorithms.
5. The Artificial Intelligence hype of the 60's and 70's.
6. Cryptography and computers.
7. Theoretical results: Turing, the incomputability theorems, equivalence of artificial languages, "All computer languages are the same", define and describe the P=NP question. "All the interesting questions are too hard".
8. The rise of the personal computer. I think "Fire in the Valley" is supposed to be good for this but I haven't read it?
9. The rise of the internet...

Maybe about a week on each of those... you would have to move pretty quick and just hit the high points, but it would be a pretty good "tour" of computer science.

Speaking of tours, another really interesting book is: "The Turing Omnibus: 61 Excursions in Computer Science" by A. K. Dewdney. It has standalone, easy to read chapters on topics like Algorithms, Finite Automata, Simulation, Godel's theorem, The Chomsky Hierarchy, Random Numbers, Error correcting codes, Boolean Logic, Time and Space Complexity, Recursion, Neural Nets, The Fast Fourier Transform, Public Key Cryptography, Number Systems for Computing, Parallel Computing, Logic Programming, Church's Thesis, Relational Databases...

Heck, you could teach the course entirely out of "Mathematics, queen and servant of science" followed by the Turing Omnibus. That would cover everything important...


Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

Jargon File

[FTL]

It should go without saying that the Jargon File should be required reading. Not only is it informative, but it is also extremely funny.
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Who invented what?

[w00ly_mammoth]

For a development so recent, there is considerable controvery over some basic details. For instance, consider GUI. Popular folklore attributes it to Parc, followed by Apple. But there is another viewpoint, the almost forgotten Engelbart. It's amazing that with all the people involved in these inventions still alive today, nobody quite agrees on who invented what. It's another matter trying to figure out who invented the first computer. I can't imagine what it will be like in a hundred years, when people look up contradictory records postulating various different accounts. Good luck trying to piece it together.

As for older theoretical subjects, one book you'll find invaluable is Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, in which he painstakingly traces back the history of various mathematical and computational developments.

Who invented the zero?

w/m