Computer: A History of the Information Machine

Computer: A History of the Information Machine traces the history of the computer and its unlimited, information-processing potential.

Comprehensive and accessibly written, this fully updated fourth edition adds new chapters on the globalization of information technology, the rise of social media, fake news, and the gig economy, and the regulatory frameworks being put in place to tame the ubiquitous computer. Computer is an insightful look at the pace of technological advancement and the seamless way computers are integrated into the modern world. The authors examine the history of the computer, including the first steps taken by Charles Babbage in the nineteenth century, and how wartime needs and the development of electronics led to the giant ENIAC, the first electronic computer. For a generation IBM dominated the computer industry. In the 1980s, the desktop PC liberated people from room-sized mainframe computers. Next, laptops and smartphones made computers available to half of the world’s population, leading to the rise of Google and Facebook, and powerful apps that changed the way we work, consume, learn, and socialize.

The volume is an essential resource for scholars and those studying computer history, technology history, and information and society, as well as a range of courses in the fields of computer science, communications, sociology, and management.

Martin Campbell-Kelly is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Computer Science at Warwick University. His most recent book is Cellular: An Economic and Business History of the International Mobile-Phone Industry (with Daniel Garcia-Swartz, 2022).

William F. Aspray is a Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. His recent books include Fake News Nation: The Long History of Lies and Misinterpretations in America (with James Cortada, 2019).

Jeffrey R. Yost is Director of the Charles Babbage Institute and Research Professor in the Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, at the University of Minnesota. His books include Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry (2017).

Honghong Tinn is Assistant Professor in the Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Her works on the history and globalization of information technology have been published in Technology and Culture, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, and Osiris.

Gerardo Con Díaz is Associate Professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Software Rights: How Patent Law Transformed Software Development in America (2019) and has held fellowships at Yale Law School and the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.