Introducing Programming Concepts via A Social History of Computing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lillian Pentecost
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
History Of Computing ◽  
History Of

scholarly journals The life-history of objects: memories for a history of computer science (1968-2008)

2020 ◽  
pp. 122-134
Author(s):  
Ana Temudo
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Procedural Memory ◽  
Computer Engineering ◽  
History Of Computing ◽  
Academic Context ◽  
Engineering Department ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

This article presents the results of a musealization project at the Computer Engineering Department of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Oporto (FEUP), which aimed to bring together the history of computing in the academic context of the city, between the sixties of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century. This research was rooted in the subjective and naturally fallible memory (Pollack, 1992) of the key people interviewed who, through their testimony, described the impact of technological transformations on their professional and personal experience. During the investigation, we did not try to find the history of the great moments and their "heroes", but rather the small, fragmented and diverse narratives of key persons. Our aim was thus to create a narrative rich in the deviations, flaws, and imperfections that distinguish Man from Machine. We accumulated stories (Kopytoff, 1988) through objects that we used as memory triggers (Simon, 2010) to set a social history of computing in Oporto. Upon realizing that we were also interested in capturing the “procedural memory” the participants then began to enthusiastically describe striking moments, mimicking the sound of machines and identifying friends and colleagues in documents and photographs. However, the most recurrent was the access to “episodic” and “historical” memory (David Manier and William Hirst 2010). We may say that this is a male-written story annotated by women. The immaterial heritage that this project recorded in the form of interviews supports and attributes values to the material heritage (objects, machines, utensils, books and documents) existing at FEUP museum, and attests to the plurality of its contexts of use and agents.

Early Cinema in Scotland

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Early Cinema ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Audience

This collection of essays, drawn from a three-year AHRC research project, provides a detailed context for the history of early cinema in Scotland from its inception in 1896 till the arrival of sound in the early 1930s. It details the movement from travelling fairground shows to the establishment of permanent cinemas, and from variety and live entertainment to the dominance of the feature film. It addresses the promotion of cinema as a socially ‘useful’ entertainment, and, distinctively, it considers the early development of cinema in small towns as well as in larger cities. Using local newspapers and other archive sources, it details the evolution and the diversity of the social experience of cinema, both for picture goers and for cinema staff. In production, it examines the early attempts to establish a feature film production sector, with a detailed production history of Rob Roy (United Films, 1911), and it records the importance, both for exhibition and for social history, of ‘local topicals’. It considers the popularity of Scotland as an imaginary location for European and American films, drawing their popularity from the international audience for writers such as Walter Scott and J.M. Barrie and the ubiquity of Scottish popular song. The book concludes with a consideration of the arrival of sound in Scittish cinemas. As an afterpiece, it offers an annotated filmography of Scottish-themed feature films from 1896 to 1927, drawing evidence from synopses and reviews in contemporary trade journals.

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