Tasha Schoenstein (Harvard)
From a Science of Communication to a Subset of Engineering: A Brief History of the Creation of Computer Science, 1956-1973.
11.11.2021
Ort: Onlinesitzung (via Zoom) - Für die Zugangsdaten schreiben Sie bitte eine Email an: HKNickelsen@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Zeit: 16:00-18:00 Uhr
In the 1950s, researchers interested in computing at a few American universities began to organize themselves around a field they called "C.S."—short for Communication Sciences. However, their vision of research about computing that focused on the computer as part of cybernetic-style systems of communication would quickly be eclipsed by another vision of "C.S."—the Computer Sciences. In this talk, I will discuss how, in a context with available alternative framings and definitions, the field of research most closely tied to the computer became "computer science" in the United States and how that field came to emphasize mathematical and engineering-based approaches, while leaving out the early focus on communication. I suggest that these shifts ultimately had significant implications for the culture and intellectual landscape of the field we now know as computer science.