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The newsroom of the Mobile Press-Register, ca. 1982.

Journalists and the “Origin Story” of Working from Home

Journalists helped to pioneer what would eventually result in our mobile world.
by Will Mari, Juliette De Maeyer via The Saturday Evening Post on October 14, 2024

Digital Queers: How Computers Transformed LGBTQ Life in the United States

Digital communications allowed transgender individuals and organizations the digital tools to organize and connect at a previously impossible scale and speed.
by Avery Dame-Griff via Process: A Blog for American History on June 29, 2023
Steve Jobs with Apple II computer.

The Birth of the Personal Computer

A new history of the Apple II charts how computers became unavoidable fixtures of our daily lives.
by Kyle Chayka via The New Yorker on May 18, 2023
Photo of two kids, on African American one white, at a computer ca. early 1980s.

Framing the Computer

Before social media communities formed around shared concerns, interests, politics, and identity, print media connected communities.
by Kelcey Gibbons via Charles Babbage Institute on August 1, 2022
Image of plastic human figurine hunched over at a desk and computer.

How the Personal Computer Broke the Human Body

Decades before 'Zoom fatigue' broke our spirits, the so-called computer revolution brought with it a world of pain previously unknown to humankind.
by Laine Nooney via Vice on March 12, 2021
Photograph of a student using a teletype machine.

How Minnesota Teachers Invented a Proto-Internet More Centered on Community Than Commerce

Civic-minded Midwesterners realized that network access would someday be a necessity, and worked to make it available to everyone, no strings attached.
by Joy Lisi Rankin via Zócalo Public Square on February 21, 2019
Douglas Engelbart wearing an earpiece, sitting at a computer, in 1968.

The Future, Revisited: “The Mother of All Demos” at 50

How the ’60s counterculture gave birth to personal computers and the vast tech industry that builds and sells them.
by Andy Horowitz via Los Angeles Review of Books on December 8, 2018
Rows of typewriters in front of computers

How Literature Became Word Perfect

Before the word processor, perfect copy was the domain of the typist—not the literary genius.
by Josephine Livingstone via The New Republic on May 2, 2016
Computer terminal with BASIC code on screen, surrounded by a cartoon potion, cauldron, and lips wearing a wizard's hat, in a magical lair.

Back to BASIC—the Most Consequential Programming Language in the History of Computing

Coding was a preserve of elites, until BASIC hit the streets.
by Clive Thompson via Wired on July 29, 2024
Lined-paper illustration of Tom Watson Jr. and Sr.

The Rise and Fall of the ‘IBM Way’

What the tech pioneer can, and can’t, teach us.
by Deborah Cohen via The Atlantic on December 13, 2023
Keyboard, microphone, and mixer in a music studio.

How the Billboard Hot 100 Lost Interest in the Key Change

One of the key changes—pun intended—to the pop charts in the last 60 years is the demise of key changes. What happened?
by Chris Dalla Riva via Tedium on November 9, 2022
Image of a woman sitting in front of the computer

The Intimate and Interconnected History of the Internet

A new book offers a picture of an early Internet defined by community, experimentation, and lack of privacy. 
by Kevin Driscoll, Jacob Bruggeman via The Nation on October 14, 2022
An oil rig on the ocean.

Spillovers from Oil Firms to U.S. Computing and Semiconductor Manufacturing

Smudging state–industry distinctions and retelling conventional narratives.
by Cyrus C. M. Mody via Reviews In American History on February 22, 2022
Split image - half a 1980s computer, other half a modern laptop; on the screen for both, an hourglass icon that symbolizes loading.

54 Years Ago, a Computer Programmer Fixed a Massive Bug — and Created an Existential Crisis

A blinking cursor follows us everywhere in the digital world, but who invented it and why?
by Sarah Wells via Inverse on December 3, 2021
Women working at typewriters in an office.

How ‘Automation’ Made America Work Harder

Computers were supposed to reduce office labor. They accomplished the opposite.
by Jason Resnikoff via Zócalo Public Square on September 2, 2021
Illustration from the 1919 catalogue of the Library Bureau depicting women working at desks and filing cabinets.

The Filing Cabinet

The filing cabinet was critical to the information infrastructure of 20th-century nation states and financial systems.
by Craig Robertson via Places Journal on May 1, 2021

How Silicon Valley Broke the Economy

The question of how to fix the tech industry is now inseparable from the question of how to fix late 20th century capitalism.
by Adrian Chen via The Nation on October 14, 2019

The Failed Political Promise of Silicon Valley

Tech was meant to help us transcend our most intractable problems. What went wrong?
by Kim Phillips-Fein via The New Republic on September 27, 2019
multicolor illustration of Gmail icons, iMessage text boxes, reply arrows, and refresh arrows.

Was E-mail a Mistake?

Digital messaging was supposed to make our work lives easier and more efficient, but the math suggests that meetings might be better.
by Cal Newport via The New Yorker on August 6, 2019

Computers Were Supposed to Be Good

Joy Lisi Rankin’s book on the history of personal computing looks at the technology’s forgotten democratic promise.
by Gillian Terzis via The Nation on January 30, 2019

The Forgotten '80s Home Robots Trend

Alexa’s interface is treated as revolutionary, but you might be surprised to learn of its predecessors from the mid-1980s.
by John Ohno via Tedium on May 24, 2018

Designers On Acid: The Tripping Californians Who Paved The Way To Our Touchscreen World

Ever wondered why email, trash cans, Google Docs and desktops look the way they do? The answer lies in 1960s hippie culture.
by Oliver Wainwright via The Guardian on May 11, 2017
Computer keys 'Control," "Alt," and "Delete."

The History of CTRL + ALT + DELETE

It started as a trade secret. Then it became an icon.
by Virginia Hughes via Mental Floss on July 12, 2013
Binary information.

A Brief History of Character Codes

Character codes have been evolving through multiple systems over multiple centuries, this is the story.
by Steven J. Searle via TRON Web on August 6, 2004
A Silicon Valley office building.

Better, Faster, Stronger

Two recent books illuminate the dark foundations of Silicon Valley.
by Ben Tarnoff via New York Review of Books on August 31, 2023
A man pressing a button on an early IBM computer.

How an IBM Computer Learned to Sing

The IBM 7094 anticipated the future of music—and also sounded like the Auto-Tuned pop stars of today.
by Ted Gioia via The Honest Broker on March 26, 2023
Book cover of Whole Earth, featuring an image of Stewart Brand backlit and walking through a door, encircled by the earth.

On Floating Upstream

Markoff’s biography of Stewart Brand notes that Brand’s ability to recognize and cleave to power explains a great deal of his career.
by W. Patrick McCray via Los Angeles Review of Books on March 22, 2022
Logo of AT&T used from 1969-1982.

The Breakup of "Ma Bell": United States v. AT&T

The US government broke up AT&T's monopoly over the telecom industry through an antitrust case in 1984, leading to a transformation of communication.
by Jake Kobrick via Federal Judicial Center on February 1, 2022
The cover of Black Software by Charlton D. McIlwain, depicting a raised fist against a green background.

Alternative Internets and Their Lost Histories

What has been gained and lost from overlooking histories about the wild heterogeneity of networks that existed for well over a century?
by Lori Emerson via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 12, 2021

The Man Who Created the World Wide Web Has Some Regrets

Tim Berners-Lee has seen his creation debased by everything from fake news to mass surveillance. But he’s got a plan to fix it.
by Katrina Brooker via Vanity Fair on July 1, 2018
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