History of Computing: Software Issues: International Conference on the History of Computing, ICHC 2000 April 5–7, 2000 Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum Paderborn, Germany PDF
Preview History of Computing: Software Issues: International Conference on the History of Computing, ICHC 2000 April 5–7, 2000 Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum Paderborn, Germany
History of Computing: Software Issues Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg GmbH Ulf Hashagen Reinhard Keil-Slawik Arthur L. Norberg (Eds.) History of Computing: Software Issues International Conference on the History of Computing, ICHC 2000 AprilS-7,2000 Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum Paderborn, Germany Springer Editors Ulf Hashagen Münchner Zentrum für Wissenschafts-und Technikgeschichte Deutsches Museum 80306 München, Germany [email protected] Reinhard Keil-Slawik Heinz Nixdorf Institut Universität Paderborn Fürstenallee 11 33102 Paderborn, Germany [email protected] Arthur L. Norberg Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota Department of Computer Science 200 Union Street, SE Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA [email protected] Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication applied for. Die Deutsche Bibliothek -CIP-Einheitsaufnahme History of computing: software issues I International Conference on the History of Computing (ICHC 2000), April 5-7, 2000, Heinz-Nixdorf-MuseumsForum, Paderborn, Germany. Ulf Hashagen (ed.).- Berlin; Heidelberg; New York; Barcelona; Hongkong; London; Mailand; Paris; Tokio: Springer, 2002 ISBN 978-3-642-07653-4 ISBN 978-3-662-04954-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-04954-9 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is con cerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, repro duction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its cur rent version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer-Verlag. Violations are liable for prosecution under the German Copyright Law. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002 Originally published by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York in 2002. Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 2002 The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Typesetting: Camera-ready by editors Cover-Design: KünkelLopka Werbeagentur Printed on acid-free paper SPIN: 10851186 45/3142XO -5 43210 Preface The papers in this volume were presented at a conference that was designed to map out historical study needs in one area of the history of computing, namely, software. The Paderbom conference was sponsored by the Heinz Nixdorf Muse umsForum and co-sponsored by the Charles Babbage Institute and the Heinz Nixdorf Institute of the University of Paderbom. The idea for the conference emerged from the consideration of a larger concept that was to prepare a new handbook on the history of computing. Believing that preparation of the handbook would encounter obstacles in some areas of computing that have not received adequate attention from historians, the originators of the idea of the handbook decided on aseries of mapping conferences to try to overcome the obstacles, of which the Paderbom conference is the first. The organizers of the conference invited a group of historians, sociologists, and computer scientists to present pa pers and comments about a selected set of issues in the history of software. The organizing committee consisted of William Aspray (Computing Research Asso ciation, Washington, D.C.), Martin Campbell-Kelly (University of Warwick, U.K.), Ulf Hashagen (Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, Paderbom), Reinhard Keil Slawik (Heinz Nixdorf Institute, University of Paderbom), Michael S. Mahoney (Princeton University) and Arthur L. Norberg (Charies Babbage Institute, Uni ver sity of Minnesota). The ambitious overall objective of this conference was to review our present understanding of the history of software and to establish an agenda for further research. The program of the conference was an attempt to explore the topic of the history of software in a new way. We neither intended nor expected the product to be a finished history of any of the topics included in the conference, nor did we want a continuation of previous efforts to describe histories of individual software artifacts. The conference presenters were asked not to attempt to provide finished histories for any of the areas of software history. Instead, speakers and commenta tors were asked to comment on the fundamental elements that make software what it is, and offer an exploration of our current understanding of software and its history. The organizers decided to address two different perspectives in the con ference: the perspective of the computer scientists and the perspective of the histo rians and sociologists interested in the larger context of a development. Hence, computer scientists, entrepreneurs, historians, and sociologists met to discuss the VI Preface selected set of issues. Between speakers and commentators, we hoped to merge the two perspectives into one scheme for investigating the history of software. We hope that the volume presented here is only the first step in a larger series of conferences and scholarly studies on the history of software. Many issues had to be left out, and the attempts to structure the field have to be regarded as imma ture. The dialogue started here, especially between historians and computer scien tists, has to be continued. This dialogue will be by no means easy to conduct, because with software the object of historical study comes close to our personal life and experiences. It is, however, our dear hope that this dialogue will create for the reader as much of achallenging learning experience as it was for the historians and computer scientists attending this conference. Acknowledgments The way the book evolved also made great demands on everyone engaged in its production. We are especially indebted to Sandra Sewzyk (Heinz Nixdorf Muse umsForum), Andreas Brennecke (Heinz Nixdorf Institute, University of Pader born) and Lars Klein (University of Paderborn), who coordinated the production of the book and eventually assumed responsibility for the layout of the text as a whole. Our gratitude also goes to Philip Bacon, who took care of correcting our non-native speakers' English. Finally, we would like to thank Ingeborg Mayer and Dr. Hans Wössner of Springer-Verlag. The extraordinary care and patience they all showed here have contributed to the overall quality of the book. VIf Hashagen Reinhard Keil-Slawik Arthur L. Norberg Munich, Paderborn, and Minneapolis, January 2002 Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1 Prologue: A Computer Pioneer's Talk .............................................................. 9 Pioneering W ork in Software During the 50s in Central Europe .................. 11 Friedrich L. Bauer Part 1: Software as Science .............................................................................. 23 Software as Science-Science as Software ................................................... 25 Michael S. Mahoney Commentary on Michael S. Mahoney ........................................................... 49 David Edge Software as Science? Commentary on Michael S. Mahoney ........................ 55 Gerhard Goos Discussion following "Software as Science" ................................................ 61 Thomas Haigh Part 2: Software as Engineering ...................................................................... 63 Software as Engineering ................................ ................................................ 65 James E. Tomayko Commentary on James E. Tomayko .............................................................. 77 Albert Endres Commentary on James E. Tomayko .............................................................. 83 Bruce E. Seely Discussion following "Software as Engineering" ......................................... 93 Mary Croarken Part 3: Software as Reliable Artefact .............................................................. 95 A View from the Sonnenbichl: On the Historical Sociology of Software and System Dependability ............ 97 Donald MacKenzie Commentary on Donald MacKenzie ........................................................... 123 BemdMahr Dependability Then and Now: Commentary on Donald MacKenzie .......... 127 Victoria Stavridou VIII Table of Contents Discussion following "Software as Reliable Artefact" .......... ..................... 135 Mary Croarken and David Grier Part 4: Software as Labor Process ................................................................ 137 Software as Labor Process.................... ........................................................ 139 Nathan Ensmenger and William Aspray Are Programmers Oppressed by Monopoly Capital, or Shall the Geeks Inherit the Earth? Commentary on Nathan Ensmenger & William Aspray 167 David A. Hounshell A Commentary on David A. Hounshell's Commentary on "Software as Labor Process" ........... ... ....... .................. ........................... 177 Nathan Ensmenger and William Aspray Discussion following "Software as Labor Process" ...... ............................. 179 Mary Croarken Part 5: Software as Economic Activity .......................................................... 183 Software as an Economic Activity ...... ................................................ ........ 185 Martin Campbell-Kelly Commentary on Martin Campbell-Kelly ..................................................... 203 Pierre-E. Mounier-Kuhn Commentary on Martin Campbell-Kelly ..................................................... 211 David C. Mowery A Note on Martin Campbell-Kelly's "Software as an Economic Activity" and David Mowery's "Commentary" .......................................................... 219 David A. Hounshell Discussion following "Software as an Economic Activity" ........................ 223 Thomas Haigh Part 6: Museums and Exhibitions ..... ......... ......................................... .......... 225 Collecting Software: Preserving Information in an Object-Centred Culture 227 Doron Swade Commentary on Doron Swade .................................................................... 237 Joachim Fischer Towards a Software Museum: Challenges and Opportunities ..................... 245 Ernst Denert and Klaus-Peter Löhr Towards a Software Museum: Challenges and Opportunities ..................... 261 Friedrich L. Bauer Preserving Software in History Museums: A Material Culture Approach .. 263 David K. Allison Commentary on David K. Allison, "Preserving Software in History Museums" ................................................ 273 Hartrnut Petzold Epilogue ........................................................................................................... 275 Probing the Elephant: How Do the Parts Fit Together? .............................. 277 Michael S. Mahoney Introduction The stimulus for this conference came from a recognition that the historical soft ware literature focuses too narrowly on a few technical developments and not enough on the wider range of issues in areas such as software development, appli cation, processes, and people. In one perspective, the history of software is now about at the stage that hardware history was 15 years ago. Writers on computing history over the past two decades, both in and out of university settings, have focused primarilyon hardware and firms. Entries about software topics seem to emulate articles on hardware, giving precedence to particular languages, or are set pieces about a particular application such as the United States Government's SAGE air defense project and the Bank of America's ERMA system, which stood for Electronic Recording Machine-Accounting, both projects of the 1950s. Within the expanding bibliography on the his tory of information processing, the history of software has the least number of entries. Virtually all the literature about the history of software presents reviews of the development of a particular soft ware artifact. Articles on programming languages, operating systems, applications programming, and network protoco!s, to name only a few, make up the examples in this area, along with a group of essays on members of the software industry. While these articles and books are good and useful, we still have little appreciation for the overall history of software; certainly nothing similar to our history of hardware. While we focus on our way of interacting with one another through the Internet, people outside the field of computing as a profession often fail to appre ciate the extent to which computers have become an integral part of our lives. Our ways of doing business have changed: we practice medicine in an entirely differ ent, and more effective, manner, and many of us even play differently. As a result, the scholarly literature about software history, good as it is for some topics, is inadequate for pursuing any complete analysis of the history of computing. In the view of the organizers, if we continue the trend of only prepar ing articles on separate topics in software history , such as another review of some operating system or adescription of some ostensibly new application, we will only lengthen the time it will take to develop an overall picture of software's signifi cance and history. We need to broaden our approach to the history of software, because the information processing activity marches on, relentlessly adding to our burden.
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