A People's History of Computing in the United States

By: Joy Lisi Rankin

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Silicon Valley gets all the credit for digital creativity, but this account of the pre-PC world, when computing meant more than using mature consumer technology, challenges that triumphalism.

The invention of the personal computer liberated users from corporate mainframes and brought computing into homes. But throughout the 1960s and 1970s, a diverse group of teachers and students working together on academic computing systems conducted many of the activities we now recognize as personal and social computing. Their networks were centered in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Illinois, but they connected far-flung users. Joy Rankin draws on detailed records to explore how users exchanged messages, programmed music and poems, fostered communities, and developed computer games like The Oregon Trail. These unsung pioneers helped shape our digital world, just as much as the inventors, garage hobbyists, and eccentric billionaires of Palo Alto.

By imagining computing as an interactive commons, the early denizens of the digital realm seeded today's debate about whether the Internet should be a public utility and laid the groundwork for the concept of net neutrality. Rankin offers a radical precedent for a more democratic digital culture, and new models for the next generation of activists, educators, coders, and makers.

©2018 Joy Lisi Rankin (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

good history

the lack of editing, producing, and the frequent ranting are well worth pushing through to get at the actual history content which is rare and key.

It’s Ok

Performance or reading is poor. There are other books on this history I’ve read or listened to that are better.

The fresh view of the author was very enlightening

I could have done without some of the needing to draw sociology conclusion, but the contrast was stimulating and informative.

wow the woke is woven in

Difficult to follow the history when you are supporting the sociological consequences that early competing is based solely on male testosterone. Grace Hopper, Margret Hamilton, are good examples of early pioneers.

Title is misleading

You might think that this book is about the history of computing in the United States but in fact it talks about the history of time sharing systems and early computer networks in the 1960-70s. It does a good job of focusing on those elements of computing history. If you are interested in those things and that time period, I recommend this book.