Читать книгу Code Nation - Michael J. Halvorson - Страница 25

In the end, the Tom Swift Terminal would not become a commercial product. A few months after it was proposed, the Altair 8800 microcomputer Altair 8800 microcomputerkit kit was released Computing mythologiespersonal computing by MITS in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Lee Felsenstein, Gordon French, and Fred Moore organized the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club to examine the device, and they attracted a cross-section of electronics enthusiasts from the region to discuss the Altair and other projects.

The next part of the story is better known, and the subject of popular books, television programs, and films. After the Altair, the microcomputing era took shape at a fast pace. In mid-1975, Bob Marsh, Lee Felsenstein, and Gordon French designed a new microcomputer around the Intel 8080 microprocessor called the Sol-20 Sol-20. The Sol was ready for commercial sale in December 1976. Their device created major excitement—it appeared as if the potential for low-cost computing was finally being realized.

Wozniak, SteveSteve Wozniak and Jobs, Steve Steve Jobs also demonstrated a new microcomputer at the Homebrew Computer Club in July 1976—a homemade prototype later known as the Apple ComputerApple I computer Apple I. (See Figure 2.9.) About a year later, the Apple ComputerApple II computer Apple II microcomputer debuted. This machine was a more mature product with a custom plastic case, a printed circuit board, and slick modular components. Moving beyond the Silicon Valley circle of hobbyists, the Apple II became a catalyst for personal computing hardware and the nascent PC software industry across the country. In a cultural sense, the Apple II also reflected the aspirations and designs of Lee Felsenstein, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, and other prominent voices from the counterculture movement. Steve Wozniak summed up the connection to Ivan Illich’s work in a special Byte magazine Byte article to commemorate the launch, “To me, a personal computer should be small, reliable, convenient to use and inexpensive.”⁴⁹ Notice that Wozniak, too, used the emerging term, Personal computers (PCs) personal computer. In this early phase of personal computing, a PC was defined as a small, multi-purpose device that was relatively inexpensive to purchase (compared to minicomputers and workstations), and it was designed to be used by individuals.

In rapid succession, there came a series of PCs from different manufacturers: the Apple II (June 1977), the Tandy TRS-80 microcomputer Tandy TRS-80 (August 1977), and the Commodore PET 2001 Commodore PET 2001 (October 1977). These three devices definitively launched what pundits later called the PC Revolution “PC Revolution,” a new social order that fulfilled the promise of earlier microcomputer experiments with mass market products and opportunities.

What began as a push to provide simple computing tools to ordinary people culminated in a new sector of the computer industry. Behind the devices was a mythological belief that the tools would enrich the experience of average Americans, elevate their consciousness, and promote political change. This “revolution” produced unexpected results when the world’s largest computer manufacturerComputing mythologiespersonal computing chose to enter the nascent sector as well, releasing the IBM Personal Computer in August of 1981. This device was intentionally assembled from off-the-shelf products and did not have its own operating system, software, or programming tools.⁵⁰ However, IBM PCs and compatibles would soon carve out a lucrative niche in the PC industry as well. It took years for PCs to compete with mainframe and minicomputers in terms of revenue, but the PC industry had launched and soon there was a need for PC programmers and learning tools for both developers, business users, and hobbyists. Between 1981 and 1983, the receipts of PC software publishers grew from $70 million to $486 million.⁵¹

Figure 2.9Steve Wozniak (left) and Steve Jobs with the Apple I Computer (1976). A repeating message on the displays reads, “Computer… available at BYTE Shop.” (Photo: Joe Melena. Image courtesy of the Computer History Museum and used with permission of Apple Computer)

The stage was set for the rapid democratization of programming culture in the U.S. Computer literacy programs U.S. Computer literacy programs developed in the wake of widespread exposureComputing mythologiespersonal computing to computers, as new users sat in front of PCs and wondered what to do with them. Computer programming, once considered the domain of corporate specialists, became a popular way to learn about computers and benefit from them. In the next chapter, we will learn more about this new skill, and how learning to program gained momentum as a popular movement in America.

1.Cited in David Lorge Parnas, “Education for computing professionals,” Computer 23, no. 1 (Jan. 1990), 17–22.

2.Margaret S. Elliott and Kenneth L. Kraemer, “Computerization movements and the diffusion of technological innovations,” in Computerization Movements and Technology Diffusion: From Mainframes to Ubiquitous Computing, edited by Margaret S. Elliott and Kenneth L. Kraemer (Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc., 2008), 6.

3.For a deeper look at the issues, see Janet Abbate, Recoding Gender: Women’s Changing Participation in Computing (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012), 97–111; Sandy Payette, “Hopper and Dijkstra: Crisis, revolution, and the future of programming,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 36, no. 4 (2014): 64–73; Adam Barr, The Problem with Software: Why Smart Engineers Write Bad Code (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2018); Liesbeth De Mol and Giuseppe Primiero, eds., Reflections on Programming Systems: Historical and Philosophical Aspects (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019).

4.Quoted in Hal Sackman, W. J. Erickson, and E. E. Grant, “Exploratory experimental studies comparing online and offline programming performance,” Communications of the ACM 11, no. 1 (1968): 3–11.

5.See Abbate, Recoding Gender; Marie Hicks, Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017); Nathan Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics and Technical Expertise (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2010).

6.Abbate, Recoding Gender, 102–103.

7.Peter Naur and Brian Randell, eds., Software Engineering: Report on a Conference Sponsored by the NATO Science Committee, Garmisch, Germany, Oct. 7–11, 1968 (Brussels: Scientific Affairs Division, North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO], 1969). I thank Brian Randell and Robert M. McClure for sharing important information with me about the conference via email and postal correspondence. See http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/NATO/nato1968.PDF. Accessed August 20, 2019.

8.Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over, 196–197.

9.On the legacy of the 1968 conference, see Matti Tedre, The Science of Computing: Shaping a Discipline (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2015), 111–137. Also useful is Merlin Dorfman and Richard H. Thayer, eds., Software Engineering (Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1997).

10.Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over, 196–197.

11.Stuart Shapiro, “Splitting the difference: the historical necessity of synthesis in software engineering,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 19, no. 1 (1997): 25–54.

12.Shapiro, “Software Engineering,” 20.

13.Naur and Randell, Software Engineering Report, 13. The italic formatting is mine.

14.For the original transcript, see Naur and Randell, Software Engineering Report, 24–25. The speakers were Professor J. N. P. Hume (University of Toronto), J. D. Babcock (Allen-Babcock Computing, New York, NY), Professor J. Berghuis (Philips’ Computer Industrie [a Dutch computer manufacturer], Netherlands), J. W. Smith (Scientific Data Systems, El Segundo, CA), Dr. M. Paul (Leibniz-Rechenzentrum [a computing research center], Munich), and Professor A. J. Perlis (Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA).

15.Harvard Business School, Lehman Brothers Collection, Allen-Babcock Computing Inc. https://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/lehman/Data-Resources/Companies-Deals/Allen-Babcock-Computing-Inc. Accessed August 20, 2019.

16.Luanne Johnson, “A view from the sixties: how the software industry began,” in From 0 to 1: An Authoritative History of Modern Computing, eds. Atsushi Akera and Frederik Nebeker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 101–109.

17.Not until 1998, when Microsoft overtook it, did IBM cease to be the world’s largest software supplier. See Martin Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003), 174.

18.A number of excellent books have explored the myths and mythmaking of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and software developers, including (by date of publication), Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984; Revised edition, Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2010); Theodore Roszak, From Satori to Silicon Valley: San Francisco and the American Counterculture (San Francisco, CA: Don’t Call It Frisco Press, 1986); John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counter-culture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Penguin Books, 2005); Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger, Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer, Third Edition (Dallas, TX: The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2014); Walter Isaacson, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014); Clive Thompson, Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World (New York: Penguin Press, 2019); Margaret O’Mara, The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America (New York: Penguin Press, 2019).

19.Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1969).

20.Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture, 31–34.

21.This statement appeared on the title page of each catalog, one page after the image of the planet earth from space. (See Figure 2.5.) For an excellent introduction to the Whole Earth Catalog and its structure, see Caroline Maniaque-Benton, ed., Whole Earth Field Guide, with Meredith Gaglio (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016).

22.Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture, 32.

23.Nicholas Negroponte, The Architecture Machine (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1970).

24.Stewart Brand et al., The Last Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools (San Francisco, CA: Portola Institute, 1971), 321.

25.For important assessments of Nelson’s work, see Peter Morville, Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything (Ann Arbor, MI: Semantic Studios, 2014); and Douglas R. Dechow and Daniele C. Struppa, eds., Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson (Heidelberg, Germany: Springer, 2015).

26.On this term, Nelson wrote in Dream Machines: “EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED. In an important sense there are no ‘subjects’ at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly.” Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Second Edition (Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1987), DM 31 [1974 Edition, DM 45].

27.Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Second Edition, 40.

28.Stewart Brand, “Foreword,” in Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Second Edition, by Nelson, ii.

29.Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Second Edition, 151.

30.Louis Fein, “The role of the university in computers, data processing, and related fields,” Communications of the ACM 2, no. 9 (1959): 7–14.

31.The founding of Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science department is described in an important interview with Alan Newell, a colleague of Perlis’. See Allen Newell, “An interview with Allen Newell,” interview by Arthur L. Norberg, Charles Babbage Institute (University of Minnesota), June 10–12, 1991, 34.

32.Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over, 133.

33.Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over, 129.

34.Tedre, The Science of Computing, 6.

35.Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over, 115.

36.Abbate, Recoding Gender, 3.

37.Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over, 129.

38.Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over, 133–134.

39.Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over, 134.

40.Peter J. Denning, “Computer Science: The discipline,” in Encyclopedia of Computer Science, Fourth Edition, eds. A. Ralston, E. Reilly, and D. Hemmendinger (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003).

41.Elizabeth Petrick, “Imagining the personal computer: conceptualizations of the Homebrew Computer Club 1975–1977,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 39, no. 4 (2017): 27–39, here at 31.

42.I thank Lee Felsenstein for his detailed description of the decentralized bull horn system, which he explained via email correspondence in June 2019. Felsenstein also granted me permission to reproduce the image in Figure 2.8.

43.“Total learning expands when the range of spontaneous learning widens along with access to an increasing number of taught skills and both liberty and discipline flower.” Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1973), 59.

44.Unpublished Felsenstein memoir, quoted in Isaacson, The Innovators, 299–300.

45.Levy, Hackers, 2015.

46.Lee Felsenstein, “The Tom Swift Terminal, or, A Convivial Cybernetic Device.” http://www.leefelsenstein.com/. Accessed August 19, 2019.

47.On this point, see Joy Lisi Rankin, A People’s History of Computing in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 27. I introduce BASIC programming concepts in Chapters 4 and 5.

48.Lee Felsenstein, “Tom Swift Lives,” printed by People’s Computer Company, Menlo Park, California. http://www.leefelsenstein.com/ Accessed August 20, 2019.

49.Steve Wozniak, “System Description: The Apple-II,” Byte 2, no. 5 (May 1977), 34–43; here at 34.

50.For more on the origins of the first IBM PC, see James W. Cortado, IBM: The Rise and Fall and Reinvention of a Global Icon (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2019), 379–418. I provide a more detailed analysis of this platform and its early software in Chapters 5, 6, and 9.

51.Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog, 210.