Computing: A Concise History by Paul E. Ceruzzi (review)

Paul Ceruzzi’s contribution to the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series is a concise history of computing up to present day social networks. The intended public of the MIT series consists of nonexperts interested in the fundamentals of a discipline. For this audience, Ceruzzi outlines the main aspects of computing, despite being aware that “new developments transform the field while one is writing, thus rendering obsolete any attempt to construct a coherent narrative” (p. ix).

The historical account is structured according to four main threads that constantly resurface in the six chapters of the book. The first thread, named the digital paradigm, emphasizes the long-lasting choice to code information, computation, and control using only two digits, 0 and 1. The second thread, convergence, instead points out that different technologies, ranging from the telephone to the calculating machine, have contributed to the making of the computing tools we have today. The third thread, referred to as solid-state electronics, concentrates on the role of electronics in the development of increasingly smaller and more powerful computing devices. The last thread, named the human-machine interface, reflects on the interaction of human beings with computing tools and addresses both the quest for a mechanical equivalent of human intelligence as well as the issues related to the most effective machine designs.

Ceruzzi begins his narrative recounting the roots of the digital age and the several streams that contributed to computing over time and to the making of its master technology, the computer (Chapters 1 and 2). He concludes with the aspects of greater impact on the general public nowadays—that is, the Internet and the World Wide Web and the rise of social networks like Facebook and Twitter (Chapter 6). In between, he deals with the stored-program principle, the development of computer architecture and programming languages, and the relevance of World War II as a turning point in the history of computing (Chapter 3).

The role of solid-state electronics is examined throughout the book starting with the transistor, the electronic device that made possible the transition from mainframes in need of a dedicated space to minicomputers that could be “brought … out of the computer room and into the hands of the user” (p. 71) (Chapter 3). The chip (Chapter 4), the microprocessor (Chapter 5), and their role in the development of computing are investigated as well.

In the book’s conclusion, Ceruzzi is unwilling to speculate about future trends, but rather invites the reader “not [to] lose sight of the general themes that have driven computing and computer technology from its origin” (p. 155) and comes back once again to the four threads behind his account and to the long-term perspective that they provide to his story, structuring it from beginning to end.

Ceruzzi’s narrative choices are the chief asset of the book and make it a distinctive and welcome contribution to the popularization of the history of computing. In fact, Ceruzzi systematically challenges the simplistic approaches too often adopted by popularizers—that is, the emphasis on endless and linear progress and the focus on chronology, pioneers, or national traditions. His account instead makes clear that the lineage of the computer is complex and that this technology has many ancestors and more mothers and fathers than can be named in a concise history. Ceruzzi is resolute as well in remarking how unsatisfactory a history based on “firsts” is, and he insists on the complementarity of the computer projects, which implemented the stored-program principle after World War II, rather than their chronological order. He also engages the reader in the historiographical debate on the role of technology in shaping history and shows how deterministic accounts that describe solid-state technologies as a driving force in computing remain inadequate, while a mutual interaction of technologies and human agency offers, for instance, an interpretive key for understanding the development of the personal computer.

Despite its small format, Ceruzzi’s book nevertheless contains appendices helpful for the nonexpert reader, such as a glossary and...