Histories of Computing

In the current issue of Science, I have a review of a recently published collection of the late Princeton historian Michael Mahoney’s essays on the history of software [Histories of Computing, Harvard University Press, 2011, Thomas Haigh (ed.)] Mahoney was one of the intellectual giants of the history of computing. I studied with him in graduate school, and he was a friend and colleague for many years afterward. For any scholar of the information age, this is a collection well worth owning. Read the review: among other things, it is very likely the only time I will get published in Science.

A brief but insightful quote from the first of Mike’s essays to appear in the volume about the importance of studying the histories of computing: “What is truly revolutionary about the computer will become clear only when computing acquires a proper history.”