Vviewpoints
DOI: 10.1145/2160718.2160728
Historical reflections
The future of the Past
Reflections on the changing face of the history of computing.
IHAVe AlWAyS thought that Eras- mus had his priorities correct when he remarked: “When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and
clothes.” For as long as I can recall I
have loved secondhand bookshops, libraries, and archives: their smell, their
restful atmosphere, the ever-present
promise of discovery, and the deep
intoxication produced by having the
accumulated knowledge of the world
literally at my fingertips. So it was perhaps inevitable that, despite having
pursued a career in computer science,
I would be drawn inexorability toward
those aspects of the discipline that
touched most directly on the past: the
history of computing and preservation.
the MaX ne WMan digital archiVe, the UniVerSity of PortSMoUth fUtUre Proof
coMPUting groUP, and St. John’S college, caMbridge, U.k.
A great deal of my personal research,
particularly on the largely unknown
role played by M.H.A. Newman in the
post-war development of computers,
has obliged me to spend many hours
uncovering and studying old letters,
notebooks, and other paper-based records. While some of my source material came to me after having been
transferred to digital format, none of
it was born digital. Future historians
of computing will have a very different experience. Doubtless they, like
us, will continue to privilege primary
sources over secondary, and perhaps
written sources will still be preferred
to other forms of historical record, but
for the first time since the emergence
of writing systems some 4,000 years
ago, scholars will be increasingly unable to access directly historical material. During the late 20th and early 21st
century, letter writing has given way
to email, SMS messages, and tweets,
Cracking German codes during WWii. handwritten notes by m.h.A. Newman.
diaries have been superseded by blogs
(private and public), and where paper
once prevailed digital forms are making inroads and the trend is set to continue. Personal archiving is increasingly outsourced—typically taking
the form of placing material on some
Web-based location in the erroneous
belief that merely being online assures
preservation. Someone whose work is
being done today is likely to leave behind very little that is not digital, and
being digital changes everything.
Digital objects, unlike their physical
counterparts, are not capable directly
of human creation or subsequent ac-
cess but require one or more interme-
diate layers of facilitating technology.
In part, this technology comprises fur-
ther digital objects: software such as a
BIOS, an operating system, or a word
processing package; and in part it is
mechanical, a computer. Even a rela-
tively simple digital object such as a
text file (ASCII format) has a surprising-
ly complex series of relationships with
other digital and physical objects from
which it is difficult to isolate it com-
pletely. This complexity and necessity
for technological mediation exists not
only at the time when a digital object is
created but is present on each occasion
when it is edited, viewed, preserved, or
interacted with in any way. Further-
more, the situation is far from static as
each interaction with a file may bring it
into contact with new digital objects (a
different editor, for example) or a new
physical technology.
