A brief history of computing technology

The ideas behind the design of this course/blog revolve around the work of information system development and delivery. As an element of a Masters level subject we're hoping that you try to be a critical learner, that is critical in the sense of being prepared to engage in analysis that considers the merits and the flaws of the accounts we read. Critical also in the sense of arriving at your own judgement on the merits of claims from the literature be they drawn from practitioners, academics, from popular culture, or your own experience.

A central learning process is to undertake critical readings of the literature and media. To better articulate the challenges posed by software/system development, to appreciated the values of multiple modes of delivery, technologies, tools, and structures used to produce both software and systems of use. Being critical means being open to considering alternate paradigms of software production that appear to conflict with consensus views on management and control.

Ultimately you must form your own perspectives, on what you recognise to be the significant aspects of development, the values and qualities of its workers, and to arrive at your own measured responses to the challenges of its organisation.

Starting this process means acknowledging the point from which you start from, that in turn implies that you understand something of the history and context from which you begin. The three presentations below highlight the context and milestones in the history of computational technology:

1. Timeline of Computing History (by Computer.org link)
2. Some Milestones in Computer Input Devices: An Informal Timeline (by Bill Buxton link)
3. (A History of) Mobile Computing (by Jesper Kjeldskov link)

A subtext to the history of computing technologies, is the resilience of various beliefs and assumptions held by managers, designers, users and others,  for example, in the agency of technology, assumed rational/irrational behaviour of users, the efficacy of management structure, and the availability and control of knowledge. You will encounter politics, selective facts and seemingly incontrovertible truths bound up in the work of designing, developing and applying technology. The pace of technological centred development and innovation is faddish and gyrates. Beliefs and fashions change, and there is a fascination with the 'new' or radical that often overlooks its relationship and dependence on other older innovations and systems.

We might note resilience of certain ideas, concepts, aspirations, and observe the often selective couching of seemingly incontrovertible "facts" surrounding the design and development of technology. What is the relationship between management thinking and apparently newer and radical departures from a linear conceptualisation of trajectories of innovations?