The Machine that Changed the World: Part I: "Giant Brains"
1.) What is distinctive about a computer in relation to
other machines? Why is it ironic that this machine is called a "computer"
of all things?
2.) Before 1945 the term "computer" connoted a job description, not a machine. Furthermore, the term was gendered in that it described "women's work" more than it described "men's work." How did the advent of electronic computers after 1945 change the gender meaning of the term computer? How were the gender relations inherent in the older, human notion of computing transferred into or transformed by the new electronic computers?
3.) What role did World War II play in the development of the first electronic computers? How did the war influence the emergence of the Electronics Age more generally after 1945?
4.) Use the history of Eckart, Mauchly, and ENIAC to answer the following question: "Which was more important in the development of electronic computers: individual computer scientists or the power of government?"
5.) Do machines like computers have an intrinsic political
meaning? In other words, do they exert a precise political force themselves
or are they merely neutral tools which acquire different political meanings
depending on how they are used? To answer this question, consider the following
related questions. Were the first electronic computers instruments of individual
liberation or social control? In shaping this outcome, which was more important:
the machines themselves or their users? Could the machines have been put
to different uses, or was their intended use inscribed in the machine itself?
In what ways did the first electronic computers reflect the political and
cultural assumptions that inspired their development? How might different
conditions have produced different machines? What larger lessons about
the proper relationship between technology and democracy do you draw from
the early history of electronic computing?