Nathan Ensmenger
Biographic Data
| ID | 1116663 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nathan Ensmenger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nathan |
| FAMILY NAME | Ensmenger |
| SIGNATURE | ENSMENGER N |
| AFFILIATIONS | California University of Pennsylvania |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5408-6837 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Environmental History of Computing
From Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (a product of an increasingly global British maritime empire) to Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine (designed to solve the problem of "seeing like a state" in the newly trans-continental American Republic) to the emergence of the modern petrochemical industry, information technologies have always been closely associated with the human desire to understand and manipulate their physical environment. More …
Computing and the Environment
In much of the literature on the information society, its defining characteristic is assumed to be its immateriality. That is to say, as our interactions and activities become less dependent on the movement of atoms and more focused on the manipulation of bits, they seem less limited by the constraints of physical reality. But when we look closely at the material underpinnings of the information economy—from the minerals that make up digital devi…
The Multiple Meanings of a Flowchart
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 document around which systems analysts, computer programmers, and end users communicate, negotiate, and represent complexity. And yet the meaning of any particular flowchart was often highly contested, and the …
Beards, Sandals, and Other Signs of Rugged Individualism
Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, male computer experts were able to successfully transform the "routine and mechanical" (and therefore feminized) activity of computer programming into a highly valued, well-paying, and professionally respectable discipline. They did so by constructing for themselves a distinctively masculine identity in which individual artistic genius, personal eccentricity, antiauthoritarian behavior, and a characteristic…
The Digital Construction of Technology
In recent decades, the history of computing has moved beyond its traditional focus on machines towards a broader study of people, processes, and practices. The study of software in particular has opened up new avenues for exploring questions about gender, labor history, organizational politics, users and use-practices, expertise, and professional identity as they relate to the changing role of computers in society. Beginning with a creative re-im…
Punch-Card Systems and the Early Information Explosion, 1880–1945 (review)
Reviewed by: Punch-Card Systems and the Early Information Explosion, 1880–1945 Nathan Ensmenger (bio) Punch-Card Systems and the Early Information Explosion, 1880–1945. By Lars Heide. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Pp. 369. $65. The emergence of the modern information society is generally associated with the invention of the electronic digital computer in the mid-twentieth century. But as the historian Lars Heide reminds us, the…
Is chess the drosophila of artificial intelligence? A social history of an algorithm
Since the mid 1960s, researchers in computer science have famously referred to chess as the 'drosophila' of artificial intelligence (AI). What they seem to mean by this is that chess, like the common fruit fly, is an accessible, familiar, and relatively simple experimental technology that nonetheless can be used productively to produce valid knowledge about other, more complex systems. But for historians of science and technology, the analogy bet…
The Computer Boys Take Over
The contentious history of the computer programmers who developed the software that made the computer revolution possible. This is a book about the computer revolution of the mid-twentieth century and the people who made it possible. Unlike most histories of computing, it is not a book about machines, inventors, or entrepreneurs. Instead, it tells the story of the vast but largely anonymous legions of computer specialists—programmers, systems ana…
Technological Turf Wars
Reviewed by: Technological Turf Wars: A Case Study of the Computer Antivirus Industry Nathan Ensmenger (bio) Technological Turf Wars: A Case Study of the Computer Antivirus Industry. By Jessica Johnston. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. Pp. ix+222. $22.95. The title of this remarkable new book by Jessica Johnston is at once accurate and misleading: although the book is indeed a case study of the computer antivirus industry, the narrow…
The machine in America
Broken Genius
Inventing the Electronic Century
Reviewed by: Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries Nathan Ensmenger (bio) Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries. By Alfred Chandler Jr. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. Pp. xvii+321. $18.95. Reviewing a book written by the originator of an influential school of historical interpretation presents a unique c…
The Success of Open Source (review)
Reviewed by: The Success of Open Source Nathan Ensmenger (bio) The Success of Open Source. By Steven Weber. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. Pp. viii+312. $29.95. In an oft-cited passage from Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine (1981), the computer engineer Tom West, peering into the innards of a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX circuit board, discovers in the complex architecture of its wiring the technical manifesta…
Letting the “Computer Boys” Take Over
In the decades following the development of the first electronic digital computers, the computer industry in the United States grew from nothing into an important and expansive sector of the American economy. Whereas in the early 1950s electronic computers were generally regarded as interesting but extravagant scientific curiosities, by 1963 these devices and their associated peripherals formed the basis of a billion-dollar industry. By the begin…
Beards, Sandals, and Other Signs of Rugged Individualism
Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, male computer experts were able to successfully transform the "routine and mechanical" (and therefore feminized) activity of computer programming into a highly valued, well-paying, and professionally respectable discipline. They did so by constructing for themselves a distinctively masculine identity in which individual artistic genius, personal eccentricity, antiauthoritarian behavior, and a characteristic…
Is chess the drosophila of artificial intelligence? A social history of an algorithm
Since the mid 1960s, researchers in computer science have famously referred to chess as the 'drosophila' of artificial intelligence (AI). What they seem to mean by this is that chess, like the common fruit fly, is an accessible, familiar, and relatively simple experimental technology that nonetheless can be used productively to produce valid knowledge about other, more complex systems. But for historians of science and technology, the analogy bet…
The Environmental History of Computing
From Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (a product of an increasingly global British maritime empire) to Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine (designed to solve the problem of "seeing like a state" in the newly trans-continental American Republic) to the emergence of the modern petrochemical industry, information technologies have always been closely associated with the human desire to understand and manipulate their physical environment. More …
Letting the “Computer Boys” Take Over
In the decades following the development of the first electronic digital computers, the computer industry in the United States grew from nothing into an important and expansive sector of the American economy. Whereas in the early 1950s electronic computers were generally regarded as interesting but extravagant scientific curiosities, by 1963 these devices and their associated peripherals formed the basis of a billion-dollar industry. By the begin…
The Digital Construction of Technology
In recent decades, the history of computing has moved beyond its traditional focus on machines towards a broader study of people, processes, and practices. The study of software in particular has opened up new avenues for exploring questions about gender, labor history, organizational politics, users and use-practices, expertise, and professional identity as they relate to the changing role of computers in society. Beginning with a creative re-im…
Letting the “Computer Boys” Take Over
In the decades following the development of the first electronic digital computers, the computer industry in the United States grew from nothing into an important and expansive sector of the American economy. Whereas in the early 1950s electronic computers were generally regarded as interesting but extravagant scientific curiosities, by 1963 these devices and their associated peripherals formed the basis of a billion-dollar industry. By the begin…
The Success of Open Source (review)
Reviewed by: The Success of Open Source Nathan Ensmenger (bio) The Success of Open Source. By Steven Weber. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. Pp. viii+312. $29.95. In an oft-cited passage from Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine (1981), the computer engineer Tom West, peering into the innards of a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX circuit board, discovers in the complex architecture of its wiring the technical manifesta…
Inventing the Electronic Century
Reviewed by: Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries Nathan Ensmenger (bio) Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries. By Alfred Chandler Jr. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. Pp. xvii+321. $18.95. Reviewing a book written by the originator of an influential school of historical interpretation presents a unique c…
Broken Genius
The machine in America
The Computer Boys Take Over
The contentious history of the computer programmers who developed the software that made the computer revolution possible. This is a book about the computer revolution of the mid-twentieth century and the people who made it possible. Unlike most histories of computing, it is not a book about machines, inventors, or entrepreneurs. Instead, it tells the story of the vast but largely anonymous legions of computer specialists—programmers, systems ana…
Technological Turf Wars
Reviewed by: Technological Turf Wars: A Case Study of the Computer Antivirus Industry Nathan Ensmenger (bio) Technological Turf Wars: A Case Study of the Computer Antivirus Industry. By Jessica Johnston. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. Pp. ix+222. $22.95. The title of this remarkable new book by Jessica Johnston is at once accurate and misleading: although the book is indeed a case study of the computer antivirus industry, the narrow…
Punch-Card Systems and the Early Information Explosion, 1880–1945 (review)
Reviewed by: Punch-Card Systems and the Early Information Explosion, 1880–1945 Nathan Ensmenger (bio) Punch-Card Systems and the Early Information Explosion, 1880–1945. By Lars Heide. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Pp. 369. $65. The emergence of the modern information society is generally associated with the invention of the electronic digital computer in the mid-twentieth century. But as the historian Lars Heide reminds us, the…
Is chess the drosophila of artificial intelligence? A social history of an algorithm
Since the mid 1960s, researchers in computer science have famously referred to chess as the 'drosophila' of artificial intelligence (AI). What they seem to mean by this is that chess, like the common fruit fly, is an accessible, familiar, and relatively simple experimental technology that nonetheless can be used productively to produce valid knowledge about other, more complex systems. But for historians of science and technology, the analogy bet…
The Digital Construction of Technology
In recent decades, the history of computing has moved beyond its traditional focus on machines towards a broader study of people, processes, and practices. The study of software in particular has opened up new avenues for exploring questions about gender, labor history, organizational politics, users and use-practices, expertise, and professional identity as they relate to the changing role of computers in society. Beginning with a creative re-im…
Beards, Sandals, and Other Signs of Rugged Individualism
Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, male computer experts were able to successfully transform the "routine and mechanical" (and therefore feminized) activity of computer programming into a highly valued, well-paying, and professionally respectable discipline. They did so by constructing for themselves a distinctively masculine identity in which individual artistic genius, personal eccentricity, antiauthoritarian behavior, and a characteristic…
The Multiple Meanings of a Flowchart
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 document around which systems analysts, computer programmers, and end users communicate, negotiate, and represent complexity. And yet the meaning of any particular flowchart was often highly contested, and the …
Computing and the Environment
In much of the literature on the information society, its defining characteristic is assumed to be its immateriality. That is to say, as our interactions and activities become less dependent on the movement of atoms and more focused on the manipulation of bits, they seem less limited by the constraints of physical reality. But when we look closely at the material underpinnings of the information economy—from the minerals that make up digital devi…
The Environmental History of Computing
From Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (a product of an increasingly global British maritime empire) to Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine (designed to solve the problem of "seeing like a state" in the newly trans-continental American Republic) to the emergence of the modern petrochemical industry, information technologies have always been closely associated with the human desire to understand and manipulate their physical environment. More …
Computer Science (9 works) · History of Computing Technologies (8 works) · Law (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Engineering (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · History (4 works) · Information Systems Theories and Implementation (4 works) · Business (3 works) · Cybernetics and Technology in Society (3 works)