Information Technology as Business History: Issues in the History and Management of Computers (review)

This book is largely a call to arms aimed at historians of the computer industry and computing. A growing number of historians from a range of disciplines are clustered around this topic, and the early years of the computer must surely be by now the most well trodden historical path in the history of technology. James Cortada is not satisfied, however, and is determined to carry the discipline forward. He has already published widely in this field, including a compilation of biographies, an extended bibliography, and a notable study of the precursors to computers in office automation.

A primary difficulty facing the historian of computing is defining the boundaries of the topic, since what is currently called information technology encompasses a range of technologies, industrial processes, and institutions in addition to general applications and effects on industry and society. Cortada’s book, which is based upon a series of essays, some of which have appeared elsewhere, is organized into three sections: industry structure, applications for computers, and the management of information processing.

Information Technology as Business History contains a general introduction to the history of computing, outlining the work of various scholars and highlighting areas needing further study. In the first part of this endeavor, Cortada is inevitably more successful than in the second, reflecting his pioneering work in constructing bibliographical material elsewhere on the topic. Appeals for further study, however, frequently devolve into lists—a recurrent feature of the book. Unfortunately, the pertinent is often buried in what are, to be frank, rather unrealistic demands for researchers. Later in the book, for example, the author’s “initial list” of subjects relating to the management of information processing that “must be explored” runs to twenty-seven areas and would involve hundreds of research projects.

Cortada is very good at locating the history of the computer manufacturing industry within the broader context of the history of information processing. Though the story of earlier punch-card technologies and office machine manufacturers can be found elsewhere, the book presents a useful and accessible synopsis. The same is true of the general history of the postwar computer manufacturing sector, which embraces both hardware and software developments. Somewhat surprisingly, however, more recent works on strategy, structure, and organizational capabilities are rather neglected. He ignores, for example, Steve Usselman’s prizewinning essay testing evolutionary economic theory on the case of IBM.

Later chapters on applications—how computers were used—and the management of information processing are ambitious in scope but unsatisfactory. They do provide a great deal of useful empirical detail, much of it in tabular form. However, sociologists, labor historians, and technology historians, to name but a few, will no doubt be a little dismayed to be told that “historians and the public at large tend to focus on computers—the machines—and very little on their uses” (p. 139). Sweeping claims such as this recur frequently throughout the book, and are, in fact, a reflection of the issues with which computer historians have been preoccupied. The rest of us have long been interested in the social impact and shaping of these technologies—their embedded values rather than simply the machinery itself.

Overall this book is a bit of curate’s egg. The reader gets ample doses of historical material and analysis and useful suggestions for areas worthy of future study. These are, however, often lost among the somewhat rambling demands that Cortada places on computer historians and by his frequent tendency to leap forward chronologically into a flourish of impressionistic contemporary observations. The book also shows signs of having been rather rushed; there are a good many typos and grammatical errors. Cortada has undoubtedly performed a great service to fellow historians with his biographical and bibliographical work. This book is a useful addition, though its hectoring tone based on limited foundations will irritate many readers from outside the closed world of computer...