Silence and Banalization: An Analysis of History Writing About Computing
Loading...
Date
2022-10-26
Authors
Hamid, Sarah
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Myth, hype, and industry-captured historiography depict this moment as a unique and unprecedented confrontation with computational power and the devastating effects it has on vulnerablized communities. But automated decision schemes are neither new nor newly urgent; they are the inheritance of almost seventy years of computing history, a history that has never not been entangled with state repression, genocidal and ecocidal violence, and racialized expropriation. Carceralilty and computing are mutually reinforcing projects, an entanglement that remains underappreciated by vernacular historicity. This paper attends to that breach, offering an account of how computing loses track of its own past. Through an analysis of historical writing from three specific sites, each characterizing a distinctive orientation towards computing and historiographic custom, I describe how historical production, as it relates to computing, is the consequence of a tightly managed program of disinheritance.