There is already substantial interest in the historical study of computers, and especially of their impact on society and culture. As time goes on, the subject will attract more interest, funding, and jobs in academe. While the CS world may not now (and probably never will) be open to historical analysis of computing, the subdiscpline/cross-discipline of "History of Technology" could provide you with the training to be a computer historian.
History of Technology tends to focus on the social/cultural/political context as well as the technical details of a given technology. People in the field study everything from metallurgy to recombinant DNA. History of Technology is a stepsister to History (and/or Philosophy) of Science. History of Science, as traditionally practiced, focuses on the development of ideas, e.g. from Newton to Bacon to Darwin, etc. Some History of Science people do technology and/or society, too.
Check out the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), and especially their journal, Technology and Culture. http://shot.press.jhu.edu/
If you want to be an academic computer historian, research and teaching in the history of technology be a good route to employment. Starting out from high school, the first step is getting a good undergraduate education. Don't be afraid to follow your interests. Try to choose classes from the most invigorating (not necessarily the most emminent) professors. Lean to think clearly, to write well, to read with great abandon.
Then, if you really want to be an academic, chose a program carefully. Chances are, the place to do computer history in most universities will be either the History department or the History of Science deptartment. A few schools have History of Technology or Studies in Technology and Society programs. All it takes is one or two good professors to make a good department. Rensaeler Polytechnic, MIT, U of Chicago are some schools with strong History of Technology programs. Start by reading widely--find books/articles you like, and find out who wrote them. Maybe you can study with those authors, or with those that trained them. Read a good general guide to graduate school--I like either Lingua Franca's The Real Guide to Grad School: What You Better Know before You Choose or Peters, Getting What You Came For.
Academe can be a great life, if it's what you really want to do. Don't worry about that now, though--enjoy your education.
Well, besides scale and quality (and digital rips | digital copies at least have the potential to sound as good as the originals) the other factor involved in Naptster (and net copying more generally, as in hotline) is anonymity. When I used to get tapes of records from my friends, that was just it--they were my friends, and the tapes were a labor of love or at least friendship. Likewise, I made lots of tapes for my friends, some requested, others just because I had to turn them onto some music I liked. When I use Naptster (or gnutella or websites or hotline) I generally have no clue who is providing me with the music--and it doesn't matter. Likewise, people are constantly downloading stuff from my harddrive and I make no effort to monitor them, let alone get to know them personally. Home taping has a self-limiting factor, in the size of friendship circles. Even old-fashioned "taping trees" (designed to maximize the convenience of making lots of semi-anonymous copies of live bootlegs) tend to limit at a small size (relative to sales of the same artists' major-label releases). I do think that people are using Napster at least some of the time to avoid buying CD's of songs that they might otherwise buy. And I agree that the artists who originate the music should have some right to say whether and how that music may be distributed, and especially that they deserve a cut if someone's making money off the distribution. If you want the equivalent of free software (as in speech, not just beer), then join the folk music movement. People there share songs because they like to play them together, and to hear how the songs grow and change as they get passed from player to player. But taking prerecorded music from the musicians withouth their permission is something like theft (even if it doesn't leave the artist with an empty warehouse).
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There is already substantial interest in the historical study of computers, and especially of their impact on society and culture. As time goes on, the subject will attract more interest, funding, and jobs in academe. While the CS world may not now (and probably never will) be open to historical analysis of computing, the subdiscpline/cross-discipline of "History of Technology" could provide you with the training to be a computer historian.
History of Technology tends to focus on the social/cultural/political context as well as the technical details of a given technology. People in the field study everything from metallurgy to recombinant DNA. History of Technology is a stepsister to History (and/or Philosophy) of Science. History of Science, as traditionally practiced, focuses on the development of ideas, e.g. from Newton to Bacon to Darwin, etc. Some History of Science people do technology and/or society, too.
Check out the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), and especially their journal, Technology and Culture. http://shot.press.jhu.edu/
If you want to be an academic computer historian, research and teaching in the history of technology be a good route to employment. Starting out from high school, the first step is getting a good undergraduate education. Don't be afraid to follow your interests. Try to choose classes from the most invigorating (not necessarily the most emminent) professors. Lean to think clearly, to write well, to read with great abandon.
Then, if you really want to be an academic, chose a program carefully. Chances are, the place to do computer history in most universities will be either the History department or the History of Science deptartment. A few schools have History of Technology or Studies in Technology and Society programs. All it takes is one or two good professors to make a good department. Rensaeler Polytechnic, MIT, U of Chicago are some schools with strong History of Technology programs. Start by reading widely--find books/articles you like, and find out who wrote them. Maybe you can study with those authors, or with those that trained them. Read a good general guide to graduate school--I like either Lingua Franca's The Real Guide to Grad School: What You Better Know before You Choose or Peters, Getting What You Came For.
Academe can be a great life, if it's what you really want to do. Don't worry about that now, though--enjoy your education.
--EG
Well, besides scale and quality (and digital rips | digital copies at least have the potential to sound as good as the originals) the other factor involved in Naptster (and net copying more generally, as in hotline) is anonymity. When I used to get tapes of records from my friends, that was just it--they were my friends, and the tapes were a labor of love or at least friendship. Likewise, I made lots of tapes for my friends, some requested, others just because I had to turn them onto some music I liked. When I use Naptster (or gnutella or websites or hotline) I generally have no clue who is providing me with the music--and it doesn't matter. Likewise, people are constantly downloading stuff from my harddrive and I make no effort to monitor them, let alone get to know them personally. Home taping has a self-limiting factor, in the size of friendship circles. Even old-fashioned "taping trees" (designed to maximize the convenience of making lots of semi-anonymous copies of live bootlegs) tend to limit at a small size (relative to sales of the same artists' major-label releases). I do think that people are using Napster at least some of the time to avoid buying CD's of songs that they might otherwise buy. And I agree that the artists who originate the music should have some right to say whether and how that music may be distributed, and especially that they deserve a cut if someone's making money off the distribution. If you want the equivalent of free software (as in speech, not just beer), then join the folk music movement. People there share songs because they like to play them together, and to hear how the songs grow and change as they get passed from player to player. But taking prerecorded music from the musicians withouth their permission is something like theft (even if it doesn't leave the artist with an empty warehouse).