Oct 28, 2020

Welcome to the history of computing podcast. Today we’re going to talk about the use of big data in elections. But first, let’s start with a disclaimer. I believe that these problems outlined in this episode are apolitical. Given the chance to do so I believe most politicians (or marketers), despite their party,...

Oct 20, 2020

Voters elect officials in representative democracies who pass laws, interpret laws, enforce laws, or appoint various other representatives to do one of the above. The terms of elected officials, the particulars of their laws, the structure of courts that interpret laws, and the makeup of the bureaucracies that...

Oct 12, 2020

JCR Licklider sent a memo called "Memorandum For Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network" in 1963 that is quite possibly the original spark that lit the bonfire called The ARPANet, that was the nascent beginnings of what we now called the Internet. In the memo, “Lick” as his friends called him,...

Oct 8, 2020

This prefix “cyber” is pretty common in our vernacular today. Actually it was in the 90s and now seems reserved mostly for governmental references. But that prefix has a rich history. We got cyborg in 1960 from Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline. And X-Men issue 48 in 1968 introduced a race of robots called...