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Lined-paper illustration of Tom Watson Jr. and Sr.

The Rise and Fall of the ‘IBM Way’

What the tech pioneer can, and can’t, teach us.
by Deborah Cohen via The Atlantic on December 13, 2023
A man pressing a button on an early IBM computer.

How an IBM Computer Learned to Sing

The IBM 7094 anticipated the future of music—and also sounded like the Auto-Tuned pop stars of today.
by Ted Gioia via The Honest Broker on March 26, 2023
The Police Beat Algorithm, along with its computational key. Illustrated by Kelly Chudler.

The 1960s Experiment That Created Today’s Biased Police Surveillance

The Police Beat Algorithm’s outputs were not so much predictive of future crime as they were self-fulfilling prophesies.
by Charlton D. McIlwain via Slate on November 11, 2022
Computer keys 'Control," "Alt," and "Delete."

The History of CTRL + ALT + DELETE

It started as a trade secret. Then it became an icon.
by Virginia Hughes via Mental Floss on July 12, 2013
Eliot Noyes standing outside of an IBM building.

The Complicated Legacy of Eliot Noyes

Noyes is not a household name, but his evangelism for the notion of design as a holistic strategy is so pervasive that many now take it for granted.
by Menachem Wecker via Humanities on April 2, 2025
A barcode.

A Linear Morse Code

How fifty years of barcode magic came to be.
by Chris Myers Asch via What's Gone Right on November 17, 2024
Smiley face with game pieces as facial features against a blue background

What the History of AI Tells Us About its Future

IBM’s chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue was eclipsed by the neural-net revolution. Now, 25 years on, the machine may get the last laugh.
by Clive Thompson via MIT Technology Review on February 18, 2022
Women working at typewriters in an office.

How ‘Automation’ Made America Work Harder

Computers were supposed to reduce office labor. They accomplished the opposite.
by Jason Resnikoff via Zócalo Public Square on September 2, 2021
Man and woman researching using machines

Where Would We Be Without the Paper Punch Card?

An 80-by-10 grid punched into a paper card helped drive us out of the Industrial Age and into the Data Age.
by Caleb Scharf via Slate on June 23, 2021
Detail from the newsletter "Interrupt," featuring a raised fist and the slogan "Computers serve the landlords."

Mainframe, Interrupted

A member of the 1960s-70s collective Computer People for Peace talks about the early days of tech worker organizing.
by Joan Greenbaum, Jen Kagan via Logic on January 7, 2019
Binary information.

A Brief History of Character Codes

Character codes have been evolving through multiple systems over multiple centuries, this is the story.
by Steven J. Searle via TRON Web on August 6, 2004
Close-up of barcode being scanned.

Happy 50th Birthday to the UPC Barcode – No One Expected You Would Revolutionize Global Commerce

The scanning of a package of gum in an Ohio grocery store in 1974 marked the beginning of an era.
by Jordan Frith via The Conversation on July 25, 2024
Shopper looking through a large bar code as if peering behind a curtain

How We Almost Ended Up with a Bull’s-eye Bar Code

If history had taken another path, bar codes would look dramatically different today.
by Jordan Frith via The Conversation on January 10, 2024
Employees working at desks in post office

Guaranteed Income? 14th Grade? Before AI, Tech Fears Drove Bold Ideas.

Three-quarters of a century before artificial intelligence concerns, rapid advances in automation prompted panic about mass unemployment—and radical solutions.
by Jerry Prout via Retropolis on October 29, 2023
Ripped green ScanTron sheet

The End of Scantron Tests

Machine-graded bubble sheets are the defining feature of American schools. Today’s kindergartners may never have to fill one out.
by Matteo Wong via The Atlantic on September 19, 2023
Black and white photos of news paper headlines about computers.

When the Mac 'Ruined' Writing

Quills were once the default writing tool, when pens rose to prominence their impact on writing would be a hot debate in the literary world, and now computers.
by Louis Anslow via Newart on September 19, 2023
Machine in a wooden box with 40 dials: an electromechanical machine used in the 1890 U.S. census.

How the US Census Kick-Started America’s Computing Industry

As the country grew, each census required greater effort than the last. That problem led to the invention of the punched card – and the birth of an industry.
by David Lindsay Roberts via The Conversation on December 1, 2021
Joe Biden.
partner

The History of Using Computers to Distribute Benefits Like Biden’s Relief Checks

Technology can break down, but just as often with government tech, glitches are rooted in policy failures.
by Marc Aidinoff via Made By History on March 10, 2021
Abstract illustration of life working remotely.

The Perpetual Disappointment of Remote Work

What the troubled history of telecommuting tells us about its future.
by Richard Cooke via The New Republic on January 4, 2021
Comic with Donald Trump at the head of a White House conference room.

The End of the Businessman President

Donald Trump’s catastrophic tenure will be the nail in the coffin of the worst idea in politics: that the government can be run like a corporation.
by Kyle Edward Williams via The New Republic on December 9, 2020

Will This Year’s Census Be the Last?

In the past two centuries, the evolution of the U.S. Census has tracked the country’s social tensions and reflected its political controversies.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on March 16, 2020
Photo of a group of well-dressed professionals is edited to blot out their faces.

How McKinsey Destroyed the Middle Class

Technocratic management, no matter how brilliant, cannot unwind structural inequalities.
by Daniel Markovits via The Atlantic on February 3, 2020
Photograph of a student using a teletype machine.

How Minnesota Teachers Invented a Proto-Internet More Centered on Community Than Commerce

Civic-minded Midwesterners realized that network access would someday be a necessity, and worked to make it available to everyone, no strings attached.
by Joy Lisi Rankin via Zócalo Public Square on February 21, 2019
Douglas Engelbart wearing an earpiece, sitting at a computer, in 1968.

The Future, Revisited: “The Mother of All Demos” at 50

How the ’60s counterculture gave birth to personal computers and the vast tech industry that builds and sells them.
by Andy Horowitz via Los Angeles Review of Books on December 8, 2018

The Crash of ’87, From the Wall Street Players Who Lived It

An oral history of the biggest one-day stock market drop in history.
by Richard Dewey via Bloomberg on October 16, 2017

How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

Blame messy history for the gender imbalance bedeviling Silicon Valley.
by Stephen Mihm via Bloomberg on August 19, 2017
Rows of typewriters in front of computers

How Literature Became Word Perfect

Before the word processor, perfect copy was the domain of the typist—not the literary genius.
by Josephine Livingstone via The New Republic on May 2, 2016

A Brief History of the ATM

How automation changed retail banking.
by Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo via The Atlantic on March 26, 2015
Scientists attend to banks of monitors at NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston in 1965.

Mission Control: A History of the Urban Dashboard

Futuristic control rooms with endless screens of blinking data are proliferating in cities across the globe. Welcome to the age of Dashboard Governance.
by Shannon Mattern via Places Journal on March 1, 2015
Cubicles

The Moral Life of Cubicles

On the utopian origins of Dilbert's workspace.
by David Franz via The New Atlantis on December 1, 2008

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