This page contains materials
intended to facilitate class discussion
(excerpts from readings, outlines of issues,
links to resources, etc.). The materials
are not necessarily the same as the instructor's
teaching notes and are not designed to represent
a full exposition or argument. This page
is subject to revision as the instructor
finalizes preparation. (Last revised
1/21/04
)
Preliminary Class
Business
Read ahead in Thomas Pynchon, The
Crying of Lot 49
Information Paradigm
Signature
Technologies
Logical
Architecture
Peak
Epoch (Period of Monopolistic
or Cartel Dominance)
Information as Mass Media
Radio,
Photography, Film, TV, Magazines
Broadcast
Model
1920s-1970s
Information
as Communication
Telegraphy,
Telephony, Radio
Transmission
Model
1940s-70s
(ATT breakup in 1984)
Information as Computing I:
Age of the Mainframe
Mainframes
and Minicomputers, Databases
Centralized
information services
1950s-1970s
Information as Computing II:
Age of Distributed Computing
PC's
The "Software Revolution"
Graphical User Interface (GUI)
Networks (LAN's, WAN's)
Hypertext
Client/Server Architecture
Packetization
1980s-2000s
Paradigm of Mainframe
Computing (review):
Conceptual
Paradigm: Enduring Principles
(1) The
Digital Principle
Digital principle
is mathematically
general
Digital principle
(specifically, base-two
system) is logically
general
Digital principle
is suited to the new,
fast switching technologies:
vacuum tubes, relays,
transistors)
(2) The
von Neumann computer architecture
(First formulated in von
Neumann's A First Draft
of a Report on the EDVAC
(June 1945):
Sequential, linear
calculation (counting
and accumulating operations)
Separation of processing
from memory
Stored program principle:
Fast access to
both instructions
and data
Equivalence of
programming instructions
and data (both are
"writable")
In essence: a new model
of "thinking"
(compare literary treatments
of the problem of memory
(e.g., Pynchon, Gibson,
Falco, Coverley)
Implementation
Model: Centralized Computing
Centralized mainframe
computers, controlled by
MIS (Management Information
Services) or other centrally-housed
departments (IBM
7094)
Suited to the "fortress"
organization (e.g., the
military or a "vertically-integrated"
company: hierarchically
controlled, autonomous,
non-networked to the outside
world)
Mark Poster, The
Second Media Age
(Cambridge: Polity, 1995),
p. 86: "The population is
now cognizant of being surveilled
constantly by databases
and it apparently feels
ill at ease as a result.
Database anxiety has not
of yet developed into an
issue of national political
prominence but it is clearly
a growing concern of many
and bespeaks a new level
of what Foucault calls the
normalization of the population"
(Poster is discussing the
database as "super-panopticon")
Michel Foucault,
Discipline and Punish:
The Birth of the Prison,
trans. Alan Sheridan
(New York: Vintage,
1979)
Jeremy Bentham,
The Works of Jeremy
Bentham, vol. 4 (Edinburgh:
William Tait, 1843)
(on the Panopticon)
Age of Distributed
Computing: The Personal Computer and the
Network (late 1970s-2000s)
Enabling social/cultural
factors of the 1960s-70s
(see Martin Campbell-Kelly
& William Aspray)
computer "hobbyists"
1970s counterculture
("computer lib")
computer science grad
students
—early "hackerdom"
The Invention of the
Personal Computer
1975:Altair
8800 (first microprocessor
computer); Bill Gates and
Paul Allen develop a BASIC
programming system for the
machine; Microsoft forms
in 1975; contracts with
IBM in 1980 to create MS-DOS
operating system
Creation of the Homebrew
Computer Club in Menlo Park,
CA (near Palo Alto and Stanford
U.); Steve Jobs and Stephen
Wozniak attend the Club
meetings, create the first
crude "Apple"
in a few weeks; Apple
II in 1976-77
Jobs visits Xerox Parc in
1979 and sees the GUI interface;
Apple's Macintosh
computer in 1984
1978-80: Creation
of the early "killer apps"
(applications) for the personal
computer that would soon
make it de rigeur in the
business world: the spreadsheet
(VisiCalc),
word-processing (WordStar)
1981:IBM's
PC Personal Computer
introduces personal computing
to the workplace (by 1984,
35% of the business information
technology market is captured
by PCs)
The
Rise of Networking
1970: Creation
of the ARPAnet or ancestral
Internet (one of the original
four nodes of the net is
UCSB) (see Richard T. Griffiths,
"From
ARPANET to World Wide Web")
1980s: Rapid expansion
of LANs (Local Area Networks,
usually Ethernet-based)
and WANs (Wide Area Networks,
TCP/IP-based)
1990s: Rapid expansion
of the Internet (privatization
of the Internet "backbone"
by 1995), and of "intranets"
1992: Invention
of World Wide Web
1993-94: Mosaic
and Netscape Web browsers.
Paradigm of Personal
Computing/Networking
Conceptual
Paradigm: Distributed Computing
The
"Client/Server"
principle (personal
computer or workstation
networked to a microprocessor-based
server). Applications and
processing distributed between
client and server machines.
Definition of TCP/IP
(the Internet protocol for "packet-switched"
information transmission)
from Microsoft
Press Computer Dictionary, 3rd.
ed. (Redmond, Wash.: Microsoft Press,
1997):
TCP: "The protocol within
TCP/IP that governs the breakup
of data messages into packets
to be sent via IP, and the reassembly
and verification of the complete
messages from packets received
by IP"
IP: "The protocol within
TCP/IP that governs the breakup
of data messages into packets,
the routing of the packets from
sender to destination network
and station, and the reassembly
of the packets into the original
data messages at the destination."
Packet-Switching: "A
message-delivery technique in
which small units of information
(packets) are relayed through
stations in a computer network
along the best route available
between the source and the destination.
A packet-switching network handles
information in small units, breaking
long messages into multiple packets
before routing. Although each
packet may travel along a different
path, and the packets composing
a message may arrive at different
times or out of sequence, the
receiving computer reassembles
the original message correctly
[ . . . ].
The Internet is an example of
a packet-switching network."
Packet: "In packet-switching
networks, a transmission unit
of fixed maximum size that consists
of binary digits representing
both data and a header containing
an identification number, source
and destination addresses, and
sometimes error-control data."
References
History of Computing
Barbara
Garson, The Electronic Sweatshop:
How Computers Are Transforming the
Office of the Future into the Factory
of the Past (1988; rpt. New
York: Penguin, 1989)
Herman H. Goldstine, The
Computer from Pascal to von Neumann
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press,
1993)
Joan Greenbaum, Windows
on the Workplace: Computers, Jobs,
and the Organization of Office Work
in the Late Twentieth Century
(New York: Monthly Review Press,
1995)
Other Resources
Michel Foucault, Discipline
and Punish: The Birth of the Prison,
trans. Alan Sheridan (New York:
Vintage, 1979)
Jeremy Bentham, The
Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol.
4 (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1843)
(on the Panopticon)
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling,
The Difference Engine (New
York: Bantam, 1991)
Mark Poster, The Second
Media Age (Cambridge: Polity,
1995)
Information as Mass Media