Janet Abbate
Biographic Data
| ID | 376036 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Janet Abbate |
| GIVEN NAMES | Janet |
| FAMILY NAME | Abbate |
| SIGNATURE | ABBATE J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Virginia Tech |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8230-6334 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Computational thinking and gender imbalance in computer science
The percentage of female computer science majors is lower today at U.S. schools than in the 1980s, despite decades of effort by concerned computer scientists and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Researchers have addressed a variety of possible reasons, ranging from the lack of female role models, to sexism on campus and in the workplace, to conflicts between work and motherhood. More recently, efforts to attract women have focused on t…
Introduction: (Re)writing gender in Internet histories
This special issue aims to illuminate women’s contributions throughout history by using gender as a critical lens in internet historiography and challenging the dominance of male-centered narratives. In the introduction, we contextualize the socio-cultural moment in which this issue was conceived and outline its dual focus. First, we reconstruct women’s contributions to the history of the Internet. Second, we examine gender identity and the role …
Researching gender in the history of the Internet and the Web. A roundtable at the SHOT 2023 conference
The co-editors of this special issue—Janet Abbate, Autumn Edwards, Leopoldina Fortunati, along with Valérie Schafer, a co-editor of the journal—launched an open call for organizing a roundtable during the SHOT 2023 conference, in which they invited scholars to delve deeper into the multifaceted sources, approaches, and methodologies related to Gender in the history of the Internet and the Web. This edited transcription of the roundtable presents …
Joy Lisi Rankin. A People’s History of Computing in the United States
Historiography of computing has evolved from a focus on inventors and technical milestones to a deeper engagement with computer users, practices, and cultures. Joy Lisi Rankin’s A People’s History of Computing in the United States continues this trend, highlighting user practices to challenge a hardware-centric account of the origins of online sociality. Rankin argues against a “Silicon Valley Mythology” that the invention of microcomputers in th…
Code Switch: Alternative Visions of Computer Expertise as Empowerment from the 1960s to the 2010s
In the 2010s, claims that learning to program would bring economic success for disadvantaged groups became ubiquitous in American public discourse. Although the coding movement presented itself as radically new, it recapitulated earlier framings of computing skill as a mechanism for empowerment. Using examples from the early history of computing and the twenty-first-century coding movement, I show how programming skill has been variously construc…
What and where is the Internet? (Re)defining Internet histories
The ways in which historians define the Internet profoundly shape the histories we write. Many studies implicitly define the Internet in material terms, as a particular set of hardware and software, and consequently tend to frame the development of the Internet as the spread of these technologies from the United States. This essay explores implications of defining the Internet alternatively in terms of technology, use and local experience. While …
How not to network a nation: The uneasy history of the soviet internet
Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing
The untold history of women and computing: how pioneering women succeeded in a field shaped by gender biases. Today, women earn a relatively low percentage of computer science degrees and hold proportionately few technical computing jobs. Meanwhile, the stereotype of the male “computer geek” seems to be everywhere in popular culture. Few people know that women were a significant presence in the early decades of computing in both the United States…
Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History (review)
Reviewed by: Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History Janet Abbate (bio) Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History. Edited by Darren Tofts, Annmarie Jonson, and Alessio Cavallaro. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. Pp. xiv+322. $32.95. The cultural practices surrounding new media and information technologies are the subject of the growing field of cyberculture studies. While most specialists in this area have focused on contempor…
The Triumph of Ethernet: Technological Communities and the Battle for the LAN Standard (review)
The Internet is now the subject of a substantial scholarly literature, in part because of that network's impressive scale and worldwide scope. But another key part of our information infrastructure has been less visible to the public and to historians: local area networks, or LANs. These are the networks linking computers within a single campus or office building; like local streets feeding into the highway system, LANs provide most of us with th…
Government, Business, and the Making of the Internet
In 1969, when few commercial communications networks existed, a U.S. Defense Department research agency created an experimental system that would eventually become the Internet. Driven by both research and military considerations, the designers of the Internet created a complex, robust, and flexible system that differed in significant ways from contemporary commercial communications networks. In the 1970s and 1980s, computer manufacturers (mainly…
Work and Technology in Higher Education: The Social Construction of Academic Computing ed. by Mark A. Shields
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 653 banned, as would intentional analysis. History as an academic field would have to be completely recast in a positivist direction. I believe that few of us would want such a development, but in order to avoid it, we should be careful with our use of explanatory concepts. Here, Turner is of great help—although he is better at criticizing others than at constructing his own positive alternative. Finally, I hav…
Work and Technology in Higher Education: The Social Construction of Academic Computing
Contents: Preface. M.A. Shields, The Social Construction of Academic Computing. P. Lyman, Is Using a Computer Like Driving a Car, Reading a Book, or Solving a Problem? The Computer as Machine, Text, and Culture. S. Turkle, Paradoxical Reactions and Powerful Ideas: Educational Computing in a Department of Physics. W. Graves, III, Ideologies of Computerization. W.O. Beeman, Stalking the Art Historian. P. McQuillan, Computers and Pedagogy: The Invis…
"People and Computers" at the Computer Museum
Boston's Museum originated as a place where computer professionals could admire vintage machines and relive their industry's past. Since becoming a nonprofit educational organization and moving to its current downtown location, the museum has changed its orientation from glorifying artifacts to explaining how computers work and their impact on society. Each of its new exhibits addresses a different educational goal: Walk-Through Computer explains…
Government, Business, and the Making of the Internet
In 1969, when few commercial communications networks existed, a U.S. Defense Department research agency created an experimental system that would eventually become the Internet. Driven by both research and military considerations, the designers of the Internet created a complex, robust, and flexible system that differed in significant ways from contemporary commercial communications networks. In the 1970s and 1980s, computer manufacturers (mainly…
What and where is the Internet? (Re)defining Internet histories
The ways in which historians define the Internet profoundly shape the histories we write. Many studies implicitly define the Internet in material terms, as a particular set of hardware and software, and consequently tend to frame the development of the Internet as the spread of these technologies from the United States. This essay explores implications of defining the Internet alternatively in terms of technology, use and local experience. While …
Researching gender in the history of the Internet and the Web. A roundtable at the SHOT 2023 conference
The co-editors of this special issue—Janet Abbate, Autumn Edwards, Leopoldina Fortunati, along with Valérie Schafer, a co-editor of the journal—launched an open call for organizing a roundtable during the SHOT 2023 conference, in which they invited scholars to delve deeper into the multifaceted sources, approaches, and methodologies related to Gender in the history of the Internet and the Web. This edited transcription of the roundtable presents …
"People and Computers" at the Computer Museum
Boston's Museum originated as a place where computer professionals could admire vintage machines and relive their industry's past. Since becoming a nonprofit educational organization and moving to its current downtown location, the museum has changed its orientation from glorifying artifacts to explaining how computers work and their impact on society. Each of its new exhibits addresses a different educational goal: Walk-Through Computer explains…
Work and Technology in Higher Education: The Social Construction of Academic Computing ed. by Mark A. Shields
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 653 banned, as would intentional analysis. History as an academic field would have to be completely recast in a positivist direction. I believe that few of us would want such a development, but in order to avoid it, we should be careful with our use of explanatory concepts. Here, Turner is of great help—although he is better at criticizing others than at constructing his own positive alternative. Finally, I hav…
Work and Technology in Higher Education: The Social Construction of Academic Computing
Contents: Preface. M.A. Shields, The Social Construction of Academic Computing. P. Lyman, Is Using a Computer Like Driving a Car, Reading a Book, or Solving a Problem? The Computer as Machine, Text, and Culture. S. Turkle, Paradoxical Reactions and Powerful Ideas: Educational Computing in a Department of Physics. W. Graves, III, Ideologies of Computerization. W.O. Beeman, Stalking the Art Historian. P. McQuillan, Computers and Pedagogy: The Invis…
Government, Business, and the Making of the Internet
In 1969, when few commercial communications networks existed, a U.S. Defense Department research agency created an experimental system that would eventually become the Internet. Driven by both research and military considerations, the designers of the Internet created a complex, robust, and flexible system that differed in significant ways from contemporary commercial communications networks. In the 1970s and 1980s, computer manufacturers (mainly…
The Triumph of Ethernet: Technological Communities and the Battle for the LAN Standard (review)
The Internet is now the subject of a substantial scholarly literature, in part because of that network's impressive scale and worldwide scope. But another key part of our information infrastructure has been less visible to the public and to historians: local area networks, or LANs. These are the networks linking computers within a single campus or office building; like local streets feeding into the highway system, LANs provide most of us with th…
Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History (review)
Reviewed by: Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History Janet Abbate (bio) Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History. Edited by Darren Tofts, Annmarie Jonson, and Alessio Cavallaro. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. Pp. xiv+322. $32.95. The cultural practices surrounding new media and information technologies are the subject of the growing field of cyberculture studies. While most specialists in this area have focused on contempor…
Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing
The untold history of women and computing: how pioneering women succeeded in a field shaped by gender biases. Today, women earn a relatively low percentage of computer science degrees and hold proportionately few technical computing jobs. Meanwhile, the stereotype of the male “computer geek” seems to be everywhere in popular culture. Few people know that women were a significant presence in the early decades of computing in both the United States…
What and where is the Internet? (Re)defining Internet histories
The ways in which historians define the Internet profoundly shape the histories we write. Many studies implicitly define the Internet in material terms, as a particular set of hardware and software, and consequently tend to frame the development of the Internet as the spread of these technologies from the United States. This essay explores implications of defining the Internet alternatively in terms of technology, use and local experience. While …
How not to network a nation: The uneasy history of the soviet internet
Code Switch: Alternative Visions of Computer Expertise as Empowerment from the 1960s to the 2010s
In the 2010s, claims that learning to program would bring economic success for disadvantaged groups became ubiquitous in American public discourse. Although the coding movement presented itself as radically new, it recapitulated earlier framings of computing skill as a mechanism for empowerment. Using examples from the early history of computing and the twenty-first-century coding movement, I show how programming skill has been variously construc…
Joy Lisi Rankin. A People’s History of Computing in the United States
Historiography of computing has evolved from a focus on inventors and technical milestones to a deeper engagement with computer users, practices, and cultures. Joy Lisi Rankin’s A People’s History of Computing in the United States continues this trend, highlighting user practices to challenge a hardware-centric account of the origins of online sociality. Rankin argues against a “Silicon Valley Mythology” that the invention of microcomputers in th…
Researching gender in the history of the Internet and the Web. A roundtable at the SHOT 2023 conference
The co-editors of this special issue—Janet Abbate, Autumn Edwards, Leopoldina Fortunati, along with Valérie Schafer, a co-editor of the journal—launched an open call for organizing a roundtable during the SHOT 2023 conference, in which they invited scholars to delve deeper into the multifaceted sources, approaches, and methodologies related to Gender in the history of the Internet and the Web. This edited transcription of the roundtable presents …
Computational thinking and gender imbalance in computer science
The percentage of female computer science majors is lower today at U.S. schools than in the 1980s, despite decades of effort by concerned computer scientists and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Researchers have addressed a variety of possible reasons, ranging from the lack of female role models, to sexism on campus and in the workplace, to conflicts between work and motherhood. More recently, efforts to attract women have focused on t…
Introduction: (Re)writing gender in Internet histories
This special issue aims to illuminate women’s contributions throughout history by using gender as a critical lens in internet historiography and challenging the dominance of male-centered narratives. In the introduction, we contextualize the socio-cultural moment in which this issue was conceived and outline its dual focus. First, we reconstruct women’s contributions to the history of the Internet. Second, we examine gender identity and the role …
Computer Science (11 works) · Sociology (8 works) · World Wide Web (8 works) · The Internet (7 works) · History of Computing Technologies (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Cybernetics and Technology in Society (3 works) · Digital Games and Media (3 works) · Engineering (3 works)