Publication News & Notes

The Cloud is a Factory

February 14, 2021     #publications

I am immensely proud to be part of the new volume Your Computer is on Fire, published by MIT Press and edited by Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks and Kavita Philip. This... <more>

The Multiple Meanings of a Flowchart

July 31, 2016     #publications

From the very earliest days of electronic computing, flowcharts have been used to represent the conceptual structure of complex software systems. In much of the literature on software development, the flowchart serves as the central design... <more>

Chicago Law Review

February 20, 2012     #publications

In the most recent edition of the Chicago Law Review, two former University of Pennsylvania colleagues and I published a long (20,000 word) review/response to Timothy Wu’s recent book, The Master Switch. At the heart of the review is... <more>

Gender Codes

September 09, 2010     #publications

A new anthology exploring the history and sociology of women in computing that developed out of the Charles Babbage Institute conference is now available from Wiley. My contribution is... <more>

The Computer Boys Take Over!

August 21, 2010     #publications

The “computer revolution” of the mid-20th century is widely considered to be one of the defining moments of contemporary history. And yet very little is known about its principal revolutionaries, the computer... <more>

Resistance is Futile

May 10, 2007     #publications

Nathan Ensmenger, “Resistance is Futile? Reluctant and Selective Users of the Internet” in P. Ceruzzi and W. Aspray, The Commercialization of the Internet and Its Impact on American Business (MIT Press, forthcoming)

Download the pdf of the draft version... <more>

Software as Labor Process

May 10, 2002     #publications

thecomputerboys.com

In April 2000, the International Conference on the History of Computing hosted a special conference on the history of software. The goal was to set an agenda for future scholarship in the history of information processing.... <more>