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The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise

Online ISBN:
9780262289351
Print ISBN:
9780262050937
Publisher:
The MIT Press
Book

The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise

Nathan L. Ensmenger
Nathan L. Ensmenger
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Published:
13 August 2010
Online ISBN:
9780262289351
Print ISBN:
9780262050937
Publisher:
The MIT Press

Abstract

This is a book about the computer revolution of the mid-twentieth century and the people who made it possible. Unlike most histories of computing, it is not a book about machines, inventors, or entrepreneurs. Instead, the book tells the story of the vast but largely anonymous legions of computer specialists—programmers, systems analysts, and other software developers—who transformed the electronic computer from a scientific curiosity into the defining technology of the modern era. As the systems that they built became increasingly powerful and ubiquitous, these specialists became the focus of a series of critiques of the social and organizational impact of electronic computing. To many of their contemporaries, it seemed the “computer boys” were taking over, not just in the corporate setting, but also in government, politics, and society in general. This book traces the rise to power of the computer expert in modern American society. Its portrayal of the men and women (a surprising number of the “computer boys” were, in fact, female) who built their careers around the novel technology of electronic computing explores issues of power, identity and expertise that have only become more significant in our increasingly computerized society. In a recasting of the drama of the computer revolution through the eyes of its principle revolutionaries, the book reminds us that the computerization of modern society was not an inevitable process driven by impersonal technological or economic imperatives, but was rather a creative, contentious, and above all, fundamentally human development.

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