The Local and the Global in the History of Computing

Although it never received much respect from computer scientists, the Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL) is one of the most influential programming languages in the history of computing (and, even more surprisingly, to this day one of the most widely used). Even today, more than a half-century after its original invention, it remains one of the most widely used programming languages, a testament to the durability of the seemingly ephemeral object we call “software.” From the very beginning, one of the defining design features and selling points of COBOL was its “English-like” syntax, which allegedly made it more “readable.” In his article “Common Language: Business Programming Languages and the Legibility of Programming,” Ben Allen explores the history of the decision to design COBOL to be “English-like.” Whether or not the resemblance between COBOL and (a very historically and culturally specific) human language made it easier to write or read programs, Allen argues, the resemblance between COBOL code and English-language business writing “made programming itself more legible to the people responsible for purchasing machines and hiring programmers.” At a time in which corporate managers were trying to figure out how electronic digital computers might be made useful to their organizations, the potential of COBOL to be read and understood by laypeople was significant. In this it was not so much the universal human-like characteristics of language that was compelling (the meaningful keywords of COBOL can, and were, easy to translate into German or French, for example), but the specific appeal to a particular audience: COBOL was to be written like English because that was the language American business managers would recognize as significant. If the important English-language words in COBOL could simply be substituted out arbitrarily, then what you had was just another code, and not a real language—at least according to the decision makers at Remington Rand UNIVAC, the company by whom Grace Hopper, the principle designer of COBOL, was employed. And while, as many contemporary programmers believed, and Allen readily admits, the English-like syntax and unnecessary verbosity of COBOL did not, for the most part, contribute to better, more efficient, or even more readable computer programs, it did serve an important function within the nascent computer industry: what proved most “common” about the Common Business Oriented Language was not so much its platform independence or broad applicability in the business context, but the discursive and marketing value of the concept of “English-like.”

Where Allen’s article focuses on influence of parochial interests (English-speaking business managers) on the history of computing, Philip Frana’s article “Telematics and the Early History of International Digital Information Flows” explores the emergence of an explicitly global conversation about computer-based data. As transnational flows of digital data became increasingly important to global governance and the global economy in the 1960s, national concerns about security, sovereignty, and identity became subjects of debate and concern among business leaders, lawyers, computer scientists, international development specialists. Would the digital world converge around the global village predicted by Marshall McLuhan or descend into “electronic imperialism” or “electronic colonialism”? Both governments and industry groups had a stake in shaping the narrative about the likely consequences of transborder data flow and telematic security. But while by the early 1970s many leaders were predicting the imminent emergence of a single unified global computer network, in practical terms it was the United States and Canada who faced the most immediate need to resolve some of the issues created by cross-border data exchanges. In this as in other situations, American tech firms encouraged the transparent, free flow of communications and data. Other groups, such as the United States State Department, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation, and UNESCO, adopted different approaches and perspectives. In his far-ranging history that spans decades and continents, Frana provides a much-needed historical context for understanding developments that today will read as remarkably familiar and prescient. The structures and choices that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s continue to influence the possibilities and attitudes that frame our contemporary discussions about...