The history and theory of computing and the history and theory of media were, for a surprisingly long time, separate fields of scholarship. There were some obvious historical reasons for this: computers were devised as computing machines and understood to have been derived from devices for calculating numbers, while the word ‘media’ had been reserved for the ‘mass media’ of communication and the public services of telecommunications. Of course, ever since the 1960s there had been predictions that telecommunications and computers would merge, and computers, automation and artificial intelligence were from the beginning a speculative topic for media theory, for instance in Marshall McLuhan’s writings. Thus, when computing and media did merge, for a moment it seemed that media theory would be well-prepared to develop theories about “the tele-computing-coordinated media” future (to use a retro-futuristic term that doesn’t really exist), which has become our present and even our fate. But it seems, both computer science and media studies carried such a heavy theoretical load on their shoulders that the anticipated intellectual fusion had to be postponed, though the practical fusion quickly overwhelmed us. Computer science was not prepared for media theoretical discussions of networked computing and their media interfaces, and at least some media theoretical experts expected media to vanish in an all-encompassing hypertext reality, or in a convergence of all past media on one platform. In many respects, particularly in Germany, media studies and computer history both remained hypnotized by the idea that a computer was first and fundamentally a Turing Machine, and not the strange amalgam of networks and nodes, of software and hardware, social relationships and faddish interfaces, computerization movements and disillusioned bubbles, simulations of old media and parasitic new practices that slowly emerged as the dominant reality of both media and computing. Thus, the history of computing had to find its own way, along the edges of more dominant fields, Science and Technology Studies (STS), library and information studies, business history, the history of science, cultural studies, and especially the research done by computer scientists and programmers into their own history. It is only recently and due to the relentless efforts of Tom Haigh, Gerard Alberts, JoAnne Yates, Rebecca Slayton and their comrades-in-arms that the history of computing has been able to break out of its niche at the intersections of other fields and emerges as a possible disciplinary field in its own right.
The present volume is dedicated to this emerging synthesis. It will help to close the gap between media studies and the history of computing by making both strands meet in the historical reconstruction of digital computing devices, whether they were called media or computers or neither. Because once we are able to treat digital computing devices in their own right, the vexing questions of “are they computers?” and “when did they turn into media?” become secondary. And by becoming secondary, they can be answered much more efficiently, because. this move makes it easier for scholarship to follow the symmetry standards set by science and technology studies: the big opposition between ‘internalist’ and ‘externalist’ descriptions is overcome; the successes and failures of innovations and projects may be explained and described with the same concepts; technical details, social organization, cultural transmission turn out to be aspects of one seamless whole; and the different kinds and attributions of human and non-human agency involved in computing can be more easily acknowledged.
Luckily, at least one thing about digital computers seems to have withstood the test of time. Digital machines they remain, or at least some digital machines is what they are made of. And computerized media: digital machines they became, or at least a vital part is made of digital machines. Even if other digital machines were and are called neither ‘computers’ nor ‘media’, this is the best common ground one can find.
Following digital computing devices through history, we can expect the liberating effect Gerard Alberts described so well in his generous and thoughtful preface to this volume: to work beyond a priori assumptions about media and computers. And to be honest, we don’t have much of a choice. Because our digital computing devices today are ubiquitous and pervasive it is a matter of great arbitrariness if they are now called ‘computers’, if they were historically called ‘computers’, if they are or were called ‘media’, if they are called ‘the software component’, ‘machines’, ‘instruments’, ‘control panels’ or whatever. Computing has become ubiquitous, and somehow ‘the computer’ as a clearly defined physical entity, from mainframe to desktop and beyond, is gone. But computing devices with their variable geometries, and their physical and material effects still exist and proliferate. And media, though we have long expected their demise or final convergence, have not disappeared either, if only because we need devices to perform our long-cherished media practices. We know a smartphone is not a phone, but it is a phone for us. And as long as we do the driving ourselves, we can’t escape the impression this bundle of computing devices, wheels and seats, glass and steel, is a car. But what about cashiers, hotel keys and locks, credit cards and countless other devices? Whether things are called computers or media or neither doesn’t give us a theoretical or historical clue what the computing device in its belly does. That’s why we need a thorough history of digital computing devices to answer the questions of historical continuity: “How did we get here?” and “What to expect next?”
And concerning “what the future has in store”, let me close with a personal remark. Actually, it may be a personal remark, but it concerns the professionalism of our universities world-wide. The scholars represented in this volume know how few experts in the history of computing field actually are able to meet their standards, and how fragile and tenuous the field still is. Because the experts in this field have to combine a profound technical knowledge with a versatile knowledge of changing historical circumstances in all scales, in the micro-scale of networks of computing experts, but also in the macro-scale of shifting economical, political and social circumstances, in the guise of government sponsorship and guidance, of market supply and demand, and of professional career-opportunities. And speaking of career opportunities, the history of computing field is still on the verge of taking off. After all, digital media do rule the world, or rather, if you change the rules of digital media, in any of its numerous monopolies and cartels you are wielding enormous power. Economics, education, administration, entertainment, the list is long, have all been digitalized, are being run with the help of digital algorithmic machines and their asymmetrical power relationships. Come to think of it, each and every major university in this world should have a professorship for the History of Computing, to teach our students (and not only the computer scientists amongst them) how it became possible that the world could be run by digital machines – and how it was possible to do without them. And how many professorships for the History of Computing do you think actually exist in this world, to take up that task? To whom it may concern.
Erhard Schüttpelz
(Collaborative Research Center “Media of Cooperation”, University of Siegen & editor of the Springer Series Media of Cooperation.)