
The Modern History of Computing (2006) - lainon
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computing-history/
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jdale27
While I'm a fan of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and I'm sure this
is a well-researched article, it seems a bit odd to call it the "Modern
History of Computing", given that it seems to leave off in the 1950s. Although
maybe the SEP editors think that the philosophical implications of computing
were all figured out by then?

~~~
mjn
Glancing at the bibliography, I notice that the author of this article, B.
Jack Copeland, also wrote a book entitled _Alan Turing 's Automatic Computing
Engine: The Master Codebreaker's Struggle to Build the Modern Computer_. It
makes a little more sense in that context, using "modern computer" to mean
broadly what we now thing of as a computer, i.e. an electronic, stored-
program, general-purpose computer, versus previous more special-purpose and/or
electromechanical computing machines.

It still reads funnily to me when phrased as "the modern history of
computing", though. The book title's approach, which is more like "the history
of how we got to the modern computer", makes clearer what he means.

------
ofosos
If you want to look beyond a very US-centric history of computing, you might
want to have a look at Bruderers article in the february issue of CACM.

[https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/2/212431-computing-
histo...](https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/2/212431-computing-history-
beyond-the-u-k-and-u-s/abstract)

(subscription required)

