Considering Race and Gender in the History of Computing

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Our discussion towards the end of class on Monday concerning the role of race and gender played in the development of hypertext raised questions for me, particularly concerning Vannevar Bush. I wonder whether the racial biases and sexism of the pioneers of computing had a tangible effect on the development of specific technologies, and whether this persists today?

Haas’ work detailing the history of hypermedia within Native American’s wampum tradition broke up the white-dominated discussion of computing. Clearly there is a form of multi-media and modal, non-linear story telling in Native American culture that predates the development of the internet. It might not be plausible to suggest the developers of hypertext and HTML were inspired by wampum, but it sure is plausible that we see similarities between the two. Wampum demonstrates technical proficiency and mastery people fail to attribute to the indigenous tribes of America. Clearly, there is not a racial-monopoly when it comes to the ideas behind computing.

With this, there are some difficult issue to ignore. Though Bush did not explicitly discuss race, his use of coded language did much to reveal his prejudice. Did his views, and others’ like his, impact the development of hypertext? What he foresaw was a development which would specifically preserve the knowledge of the white race. In this way, the memex, and what eventually became hypermedia and the internet, were meant for white Americans. Based on this, it would not be foolish to suggest that the development of hypertext was done without consideration for racial minorities. Moreover, Bush saw the job’s of women eventually becoming irrelevant because of computing developments, rather than women being able to do more afterwards. Much of computing developments seems to be attributed to a monolith of white males; how exactly did this impact technological advancements and their perceived uses?

 

O’Regan: The Internet Revolution (Chapter 14)

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Vannevar Bush was an American inventor who worked on a machine called the differential analyzer that was capable of solving first order differential equation. Bush also theorized about a device called the memex that would be capable of storing referential knowledge in an encyclopedic manner. Bush was also the director of the Scientific Research and Development and coordinated research between Harvard and Berkeley that led to the creation of ARPA (Advanced Research project agency) and eventually DARPA.

By the 1960s the Department of Defense’s program was working on creating network-to-network protocol that would allow computers to communicate with one another. The new protocol was known as the TCP, which details how information is broken into packets, and IP, which focuses on sending the packets across the network. Although some computers connected with each other, Tim Berners-Lee created a system for universal communication using a URL accessible through HTTP formatted in HTML. Since the technical terms are not necessary for the story, the essay summarizes its purpose: “Browsers are used to connect to remote computers over the Internet and to request, retrieve and display the web pages on the local machine” (O’Regan 169).

Many may wonder why O’Regan may have included a section regarding business models in a chapter about the history of the internet. However, it is essential to see how the World Wide Web changed so much about how business was conducted, as it has had a profound influence on how the internet influences society today. While the World Wide Web grew at a staggering pace, creating many financial successes, it is crucial to acknowledge the mess it produced as a result of the dot-com bubble. O’Regan two main issues of this era that lead to the subsequent downfall of many companies. The first was the fact that many companies had deeply unsound business models (the article discusses how a good business model with a bad idea can be more beneficial than a flawed business model and even the best of ideas), and the share price of stocks were severely inflated, as companies values were examined based on “potential future earnings.” Thus, while we recognize that the World Wide Web has paved the way for a “new economy,” it is important to acknowledge the various occurrences as a result of this significant change.

Sean: 1st paragraph  | Luis: 2nd paragraph  | Kate: 3rd paragraph & post

As We May Think

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Section 1-2

In the beginning, Bush describes the numerous scientific advances the world has had in the last 100 years. Bush argues that science is the single reason why human communication has been so advanced for so long. Bush then says that while all these things contribute to our prosperity they also make it difficult for most of the cutting edge research of the present to be truly examined and thought about. This is because we are currently in a cycle of making so many advancements with so few people and resources to accurately understand them, “The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present-day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record” (Bush, 36). With this in mind, Bush articulates many different advancements in photography and the future of photography shows us what is possible with science such as the invention of microfilm and has the possibilities to create superior results.

Section 3-5

In this section of his essay, Bush discusses the ways in which the record of the future could be produced, with sound recording or photographically. Bush also postulates some predictions about the future, including that the speed of arithmetic on a computing machine will accelerate. However, this process of computing is not sufficient to put humanity in conversation with the world. Many other automated processes will be needed to attain the proper storage and dissemination of information throughout the world that Bush desires. To that end, Bush also calls for a new symbolism of numerical representation which is similar to the function binary code completes today. He argues that a new numerical “positional” system will facilitate access to and dissemination of the record of the future.

TJ did sections 1-2 and posted online

Gray did sections 3-5

Wampum as Hypertext: An American Indian Intellectual Tradition of Multimedia Theory and Practice

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The reading of Wampum as Hypertext describes the origins of the ideas behind Hypertext, which actually began with the ideas from the Native American’s wampum belt, in which textile showed specific patterns and links are used in order to represent and read as memory and information. While initially appearing complicated, a person who understands the pattern work would have access to such information through the lines of the wampum and would know the finer details. This idea proved to be a rather profound idea that would arrive to use in the modern era with the creation of hypertext, also in which a person would have access to numerous amounts of related information, created through the patterns of code and programming, similar to wampum textile. These ideas proved to be revolutionary to the internet, and the access of it allowed for easy access to information and quicker development of the computing system

Both wampum and Western hypertexts show digital and visual rhetoric. Wampum communicates through combinations of dark purple and the white beads, just like computers use zero and one. They also share nonlinear networks which contain layered information and narratives, sharing more than one story within each of their respective sections. As well, both act as supplemental memory. Hypertext contains troves of data readily available for research, while each bead within a wampum belt is a node representing information. Moreover, the very nature of wampum is interactive; nodes create association between symbolic representation and the spoken word, with connecting material linking to related information, and the belt as a whole represents the relationship between the “giver” and “presenter” of the belt. All of this lends itself to the power of wampum as a hypertext of community knowledge. Thus, unlike to Western hypertext, people should belong to the community in order to interpret, present, and recreate wampum communications.

Understanding the connections between wampum and hypertext credits American Indians as understanding and developing technologies in their own right. It also poses the question, “whose definition of technologically advanced are you using when evaluating your technological proficiency?” (Haas 94). Haas argues that the west does not get to decide unilaterally what constitutes advanced technology.  She does not believe that western hypertext in its digitized format was originally conceived of by American Indians. Instead, she highlights the fact that American Indians, too, developed a concept of an interconnected web of information, and that their version of this web is a different version of technology yet equally valid.

 

Gabriel -> Wrote the first paragraph

Sean -> Wrote about digital rhetoric, visual rhetoric, associative indexing in the second paragraph and helped edit

Charles -> Wrote about nonlinear knowledge and supplementary memory in the second paragraph

Georgia -> Wrote the third paragraph

Integrated Circuit

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I didn’t know anything about the integrated circuit before the three readings regarding both its invention and large scale production, and I appreciated learning about the Navajo women in conjunction with Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce.  Hearing about the role that a seemingly unlikely population of women played in the production of what is one of the most important foundational technologies to our modern digital age, really helped me break down my own perception of what innovation looks like as a whole.  It is so easy to focus inventors and sensationalize and idolize them while completely ignoring all the necessary aspects of production following invention and all the people that are involved in that process.

Of course, these three readings together didn’t capture the whole story, but they did encourage me to look at innovation as an event that may start with particular individuals, but is ultimately carried out by a very large population of people who will often times remain unnamed.  The first integrated circuits started it all, but then there was also the necessary subsequent improvements, the efforts for large scale production, the various ideas that this technology inspired in others and so on, all of which has brought us to where we are today.

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It seems as if there are, among the readings, three narrative threads that emerge in telling the story of the integrated circuit. The first is about innovation and the history of science the second economic and the third sociological. 

The invention of the integrated circuit is attributed to Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce. In 1958, while working at Texas Instruments, Kilby created the first circuit whose resistors and capacitors were made from the same material and interconnected into a single semi-conductor. Two years later, in 1960, Robert Noyce improved on Kilby’s concept and created a circuit out of silicon. Noyce became the co-creator of Intel, and in the following decades the integrated circuit became instrumental in the proliferation of computers and computing technology. Kilby went on to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics.

The second part of the story about the integrated circuit is the about economics. While scientific discovery and advancements in technology created a new field of computing technology, the proliferation of computers did not occur until much later in the 1980’s. This was largely a result of the creation of the personal computer. As the integrated circuits improved and became more efficient and cheaper to produce, the integrated circuits became central to the massive economic expansion of the tech boom.

The third component of the story which also allowed for the profit margins that made the economics possible was the sociological story about the laborers who produced the integrated circuits. Beginning in 1965 Fairchild opened a plant in Shiprock New Mexico on a Navajo reservation. The location was chosen because of government subsidies as well the lack of unions and jobs in the Navajo community. The workers were paid very little given the skilled and precise nature of the work and made possible the massive profit margins of companies

 

 

The Integrated Circuit in Social Context

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In class on Wednesday, Professor Rodriguez asked us to think about how each of the three articles we read overlapped. Two of the articles had significant pieces in common. They were more traditional pieces: one was a history of computing, the other a Nobel lecture by Jack Kilby, the inventor of the integrated circuit. The piece focused on technological development, invention and innovation. They depicted men alone in their workshops taking up ideas and crafting hardware that would fundamentally alter the trajectory of computing. History was linear and glorious, and prestige was available to those who worked hard enough in the right industries. The third article had notably little in common with the other two, which was to me the most notable and the most important answer to the question of overlap. It described the way Navajo women were exploited in the mass production of circuit chips. Men like Kilby and these women stand in stark contrast. Kilby is an example of why we see the American dream as unlimited social mobility. The women are examples of the harsh limitations of this dream, and the barriers in place for those who do not start in a place of relative privilege.

An Addition to Nakamura (Reading Discussion 2 Response)

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As I was not in class and thus do not feel that I can comment on the actual discussion, I will take this blog post to go a bit more in-depth with my group’s reading, Lisa Nakamura’s Ingenious Circuits.

In an attempt to understand further things that occurred surrounding the Fairchild plant on the Navajo Shiprock Reservation, I went to the internet and looked at images, twitter posts, and YouTube videos, along with articles. I was even more surprised, though, given how expansive the internet can be, that there were not many resources on this subject.

When I typed in “Navajo weavers Fairchild,” almost all of the first page was a link to Nakamura’s article. On YouTube, I only could find videos on how Navajo women weave and one TEDx video titled “What it means to be a Navajo Woman.”

One Twitter user, Kyle McDonald, tweeted, “how did I not know this story about Navajo weavers providing the backbone for Fairchild semiconductor in the 60s and 70s?” I am not particularly surprised at the fact that nobody seems to know, as there are very few sources of information for the history itself. Lisa Nakamura appears to be one of the only easily findable people talking about this to a broader audience.

The most helpful image I found on Google Images was an image found initially from Kyle McDonald ’s tweet. The picture was from what I assume to either be an art museum or a book of art that featured a piece by Navajo weaver Marilou Schultz titled “Replica of a Chip.” The work was a woven in 1994 and featured the design of a computer chip; she also had previously been commissioned by Intel to create a circuit board weaving years earlier. If I am reading the text on this image correctly, however, Schultz was unaware of the ties to Fairchild’s history of using Navajo women to produce circuit boards in the decade between 1965 and 1975.

Thus, further exploration of this subject has further amplified my previous understanding through this course of how history is told and the differences when different people are telling the story.

Moore’s law

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A couple of folks asked about Moore’s law on their exit tickets from Monday.

Tl;dr: Moore’s law is the conjecture made by Gordon Moore, based on observation of the early progress of integrated circuit production, that the upper limit in transistor density would double every year. This would lead to cheaper manufacture of more powerful computers, driving not just the market for high-end machines (such as those commissioned by the military and specialized research labs) but for consumer products (aka things average people could afford and use). It is NOT a scientific law. It’s kind of a nifty catchphrase that’s turned out to be more or less accurate. So far. But there’s speculation that we are going to reach the hard limit of transistor density as traditionally conceived, because things are getting pret-ty small in there, like nearing the width of an atom.

To go further:

Here’s a good overview.

Here’s something the Association for Computing Machinery had to say about it recently.

Here’s a critical technology studies reading of it by Paul Ceruzzi, which relates the general acceptance of this as a “law” to our tendency to adopt an outlook of technological determinism, or that our tools decide our future rather than they other way around.