Given that my group’s reading focused heavily on the people responsible for creating some of the first computing machines, such as Leibniz’s step reckoner or Babbage’s difference engine, and the actual logic behind how these machines work, I went into class assuming that that was going to be the main discussion topic. Hearing from the other groups about their readings encouraged me to begin to contemplate how the O’Regan reading was written to influence our more machine-centric views of it.

For example, I read about Lady Ada Lovelace in another book, The Innovators, by Walter Isaacson, and I recall reading a lot more about her personal life and the actual details surrounding her involvement with Babbage’s work. Because the book’s purpose was not so much to talk about the actual analytic engine, for example, it focused more on one of the humans involved in it, Ada Lovelace. However, in O’Regan’s work, while the humans behind the actual machines were discussed, they were done so in a secondary way. This fact is made even more evident by the way in which the section headings are divided. When I looked back at the titles of O’Regan’s sub-chapters, I noticed that the headings focused on the actual technology.  Thus, even when discussing the same topics or even people, there is going to be a difference depending on who is telling the story.

I randomly found myself contemplating how history will be told in the future, given the technological advancements that have occurred for us to provide a more globalized telling of history. I am assuming that all of the information that is being put online, for example, may have a longer-lasting shelf-life than, papyrus documents, for example, which we spoke of during the first week of class. Will this mean that history in the future will be focused on more perspectives in general?