-----Original Message-----From: Graeme Kirkpatrick [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 04 April 2002 21:28
To: john.armitage
Subject: call for participants
John,
Please could you circulate this via the CSL?
Thanks,
Graeme
Call for participants
We are looking for academics to participate in a research project that will
explore the early history of Personal Computing in Europe. Our aim is to
bring together academics from all over Europe in a series of workshops
culminating in a major international symposium in Summer 2003. It is hoped
that the venture will be funded by the European Science Foundation and it is
with this in mind that we invite expressions of interest at this stage. If
you are interested in participating in the project and have a history of
research in this or a related area, please forward your details to:
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>.
Expressions of interest will not be taken to imply that you want write or
present a paper, only that you are likely to want to attend one of the
events. The deadline for expressions of interest in participating is 7th May
2002.
Full details of the project are below.
----------------------------------------------------
The early history of Personal Computing in Europe
In Andrew Feenberg's memorable formulation, the Personal Computer (PC) was
"...launched on the market with infinite promise and no applications...". It
was left to the early enthusiasts who bought the first PC's to come up with
ideas about how they might be used. This was as true in Europe in the 1970's
as it had been in the United States a few years earlier. However, while the
latter case has been intensively researched and there are now a large number
of journalistic and scholarly accounts of the early history of the PC in the
American social context, the European experience has not been explored in
anything like the same depth. This is an intriguing gap in our knowledge of
the history of technology. The PC has become the technological
infrastructure at the heart of the 'informational economy' and it was the
experiences, dabblings and innovations of the first consumers of PC's that
made this possible. The proposed series of workshops will bring together
scholars from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives, each of whom
share an interest in this period in the history of computing, in order
specifically to address the European experience.
The project will involve scholars with expertise in a range of disciplines
and from a number of perspectives on the development of computer technology.
This will facilitate a genuinely multi-disciplinary perspective that
combines insights from history, economics, psychology, sociology,
human-computer interaction, education and international relations. The
project will begin with presentations at a series of workshops, to be held
in the first half of 2003 at different European universities. The
discussions that ensue will enable authors to prepare final versions of
their work for presentation to a symposium in Brussels in Summer 2003. This
will be an international event involving participants from academia and
interested parties from the commercial and 'third' sectors.
The questions addressed will be wide-ranging and diverse, reflecting the
multi-disciplinary character of the project. However, the following will
constitute the defining core of concerns for all participants:
* What kinds of people (gender, social class,
political orientation) in Europe bought the first PC's and what did they use
them for?
* What kind of machines were the first
European PCs? How did they differ from the first American PC's and from
previous 'mini-computers'? Why did they take the form that they did and what
potential did they have?
* What, if any, kinds of civil association
arose between the buyers and users of the first European PC's? Were there
any distinctive beliefs, or a specific cultural milieu associated with it?
* What were the economic factors that affected
patterns of PC diffusion and dominant ideas about the PC and what it might
be used for in different parts of Europe? What business possibilities were
perceived by early PC users in Europe? Were there any interesting failures?
What were the early successes and how do these relate to subsequent
commercial uses of the PC?
* How did the activities and ideas of the
early PC users in Europe inform subsequent technology design? How did they
shape the now established conception of what PC's are for and how they are
presented to their users? Were there any ideas and innovations specific to
Europe at this time which informed global PC design and manufacture?
* What technical variations can be discerned
within the relevant technological elites and sub-cultures of this time? Were
different programming styles in evidence in different user groups? How did
divergent attitudes to and beliefs about technology, characteristic of
discrete social groups, play out in different uses of PC's?
* How did education systems and institutions
in different countries respond to the PC and how did its diffusion affect
them? How do these factors correlate with prevailing institutional and
cultural patterns that define the character of national education systems?
* How were the ideas and experiments of PC
users in Europe shaped by their national and regional cultures? Were they
affected by economic, political and cultural factors specific to the
European context?
* What was the influence of geo-political
factors upon the diffusion and use of the PC? How did the cold war and
popular perceptions of technology in its relation to the two power blocs
influence the social diffusion of the technology? What precise variations
can be identified in the ways in which the PC was received and 'played with'
in Eastern and Western Europe?
The outputs of the project will add to our understanding of issues in a
number of fields and the symposium itself can realistically be expected to
be a major event in the study of the social shaping of technology. The
studies generated as discussion papers will explore the issues listed above
either through studies of the diffusion of PC's in specific countries, or by
taking a comparative approach. They will add significantly to our knowledge
in the following established areas of enquiry:
* The social dynamics of technological development, including
the shaping of technology by diverse social groups and by the relations
between those groups
* The engineering-society interface and the dialogue between
science and the arts, especially in the field of interface design
* The relationship between national and technical cultures,
extending to the role of educational systems in shaping different countries'
responses to the PC
Improved understanding of how populations respond to new technical artefacts
and of the social, political and cultural circumstances that constrain and
shape their creativity with them can be expected to clarify the most
efficient implementations of technical principles from a number of points of
view. The research will therefore inform subsequent work in a number of
fields, especially the role of social responsibility, ethics and politics in
technology design. Many of the outputs will have practical implications for
contemporary technology design, manufacture, and marketing strategies.
Papers presented to the Brussels symposium will form chapters in a book,
with the provisional title, "The Early History of Personal Computing in
Europe".
Participants must be academics at European universities with some record of
publication in this or a related area. Please respond by 7th May 2002.
Contact: [log in to unmask]
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