The History of Computing and its Cultures

The History of Computing and its Cultures: From Calculation to Convergence interprets the emergence of the modern digital world by integrating the histories of Western civilization, computation, communication, and culture into a single historical narrative, offering a new way of understanding how the modern information society came into being.

Co-authored by historian David B. Dennis and computer scientist George K. Thiruvathukal, the book follows this history from humanity's earliest systems of counting and record-keeping to the globally networked society that, by 2020, had become the infrastructure through which work, education, communication, commerce, entertainment, and social life function. Rather than presenting computing as an isolated history of machines, programming languages, and technical innovation, the book situates it within the broader development of political institutions, economic systems, scientific thought, communications media, and cultural life. Alongside the histories of calculating and computing, writing, printing, and telecommunications, readers encounter architecture, the visual arts, literature, music, film, television, and digital media as historical evidence that reveals how different generations have understood and responded to technological change.

Designed for undergraduate instruction with the breadth and rigor of historical scholarship, The History of Computing and its Cultures will be valuable to students, instructors, and wider readers interested in history, computing, communication, and media studies, the digital humanities, and cultural history. It provides the historical perspective needed to understand how the world we now inhabit came to be, and how the integration of computation, communication, and culture shaped the everyday experience of modern life.