A People's History of Computing in the United States by Joy Lisi Rankin

I lead the Gender, Race, and Power in AI Program, which works to mobilize history to make the inequitable power structures on which AI technologies are built both visible and actionable.

These erasures also rob us of our histories, building false narratives that justify White supremacist patriarchy as “natural” and “evidenced.” They have genuine material consequences contributions unrecognized are contributions that are not compensated. These erasures deny contributors to their expertise, labor, community standing, and ultimately, their power. This is a lasting injustice: women, Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, people with disabilities, and other historically excluded individuals have long made crucial contributions to science, technology, and engineering, yet their labor has been continuously erased. For the majority of her time on the project, her male supervisor Arnold Lowan instead received credit. Despite her contributions, Blanch did not appear as the author of the papers she wrote. After earning her doctorate in mathematics at Cornell, she led new approaches to computation and published volumes of tables and calculations in scientific journals. Show this publication on our institutional repository ().In the 1930s Dr Gertrude Blanch led the important Mathematical Tables Project, a nearly 450-person effort to compute logarithmic, exponential, and other calculation results essential to the American government, military, finance, and science. This is achieved with historical rigour by the authors, who highlight the history of a field that is not only scientific, technical, industrial and economic, but also profoundly social, and which is marked by multiple debates, negotiations and power relationships. They are increasingly opening up to approaches that are oriented towards society and actors, whether the latter are producers, regulators, users, or even maintainers. A People’s History of Computing in the United States. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 3/ Joy Lisi Rankin 2018. How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing. Computernutzung in der Bundesrepublik (1955–1990).

This review essay aims to highlight some of these recent trends within the history of computing and information technology through the consideration of three recently published books : 1/ Frank Bösch (Ed.) 2018.

A People's History of Computing in the United States by Joy Lisi Rankin