Information Systems History: What is History? What is is History? What is History? … and Why Even Bother with History?

Abstract

Prologue and preamble The views of Collingwood can be summarized as follows. The philosophy of history is concerned neither with ‘the past by itself’ nor with ‘the historian's thought about it by itself’, but with ‘the two things in their mutual relations’. (This dictum reflects the two current meanings of the word ‘history’ – the inquiry conducted by the historian and the series of past events into which he inquires.)
Carr (1961: 1l)

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Editorial
Information Systems history:
What is history? What is IS history?
What IS history? y and why even
bother with history?
Antony Bryant
1
, Alistair Black
2
, Frank Land
3
, Jaana Porra
4
1
School of Computing and Creative Technologies, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK;
2
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA;
3
Information Systems and Innovation Group, London School of Economics, London, UK;
4
Department of Decision and Information Sciences, C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston, Houston, USA
Journal of Information Technology (2013) 28, 1–17. doi:10.1057/jit.2013.3
Prologue and preamble
The views of Collingwood can be summarized as follows.
The philosophy of history is concerned neither with ‘the
past by itself ’ nor with ‘the historian’s thought about it by
itself ’, but with ‘the two things in their mutual relations’.
(This dictum reflects the two current meanings of the
word ‘history’ – the inquiry conducted by the historian
and the series of past events into which he inquires.)
Carr (1961: 11)
D
eveloping from Carr’s summary of Collingwood’s
insights, the collection of essays on Information
Systems (IS) history presented in this and the
subsequent issue of the Journal of Information Technology
illustrates a range of different ways in which the mutual
relations between ‘the past’ and the ‘the way in which
historians view the past’ can be exemplified with regard to
the field of IS. In effect, the authors of the papers are
historians, even if that is not their specific or designated
area of expertise or specialization. They are all ‘doing
history’, but the nature of the various ways in which they
seek to engage in this activity is itself an important issue
that needs to be addressed. Consequently, in this intro-
ductory essay, we wish to take up the task of ex amining
different respo nses to the question posed famously by
Carr (1961) in his G M Trevelyan lectures What is History?,
at the same time providing a consideration of what might
be specific or germane to IS history. In so doing, we have
deliberately sought to widen consideration of what ‘doing
history’ involves, drawing on sources and concepts that
might not have been at the forefront of IS-centred dis-
cussion of historical accounts. We also offer these thoughts
for IS academics in a more general sense, in the hope that
they will provide a basis for a wide range of research- and
practice-oriented issues and activities.
Fresh departures in the field of history are often
precipitated by significant and new developments in the
contemporary world. In Britain, the rapid expansion of
trade unions in the late nineteenth century gave rise to an
interest in their origins and early development (Webb and
Webb, 1894). The perplexing persistence of poverty in the
early twentieth century, despite incredible economic,
scientific, and technological advances over the previous
150 years, led to historical consideration of conditions and
standards of living in the past (Hammond and Hammond,
1917). Growing interest in socialism in the wake of the
Russian Revolution of 1917 sparked historical studies of
the working classes, including their political and coopera-
tive movements in the nineteent h century (Cole, 1923; Hutt,
1937; Morton, 1938). After the Second World War, the
growth of popular culture, deepening conflict in the arena
of industrial relations, and continuing class tensions gave
rise to further, and in many ways, ground-breaking
histories of the working classes and of plebeian culture
(Briggs, 1959; Thompson, 1963; Rude
´
, 1964; Hobsbawm,
1965; Jones, 1971; Zinn, 1980). Across the western world,
the civil rights and feminist struggles of the 1960s and 1970s
generated an explosion of interest in women and black
history (Spear, 1967; Rowbotham, 1973; Parker and Pollock,
1981; Commire, 2000). From the late 1960s onwards, the
return of mass unemployment and the associated debate
over the efficacy and future of the Keynesian project and
of welfare-state capitalism prompted studies of earlier
malfunctions in the labour market and of the origins and
morality of social welfare provision (Bacon and Eltis, 1978;
Thane, 1978; Harris, 1984). The waning and eventual
demise of European empires resulted in studies of
imperialism and of how the west viewed oriental culture
(Gallagher and Robinson, 1953; Said, 1978); while recent
revolutionary events in the Islamic world and its interaction
with international geo-politics have fostered an intense
Journal of Information Technology (2013) 28, 1–17
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interest in the history of religion (Armstrong, 1994;
Esposito, 1999).
It is hardly surprising, therefore , that the revolution in
digital information and communication technology (ICT),
the perce ived emergence of an infor mation society, and
‘our current fascination with things informational’ (Welle r,
2008: xiv) should have encouraged scholars not only to
investigate the trajectory of such developments, but also
how information was collected, organized, and used in the
past, before the advent of these technologies. The millennial
changes supposedly wrought by computer-mediated IS
have pushed historians into asking if pre-computer systems
of information provision can provide a new lens through
which major shifts in human history might be reint er-
preted; for example, the transition to, and the maturation
of, capitalism; the rise of modernity; or the growth of
imperialism (Black and Schiller, forthcoming).
The arrival of digital society has prompted scholars
to sea rch for its roots, precursors, and antecedents,
technological and non-technological. There are notable
examples of work that have sought to answer specific
questions within this broad area, and which may well
provide useful, alternative starting points for imaginative
consideration by IS historians:
 To what extent can a direct line of descent be drawn from
the internet to the telegraph (Giddens, 1985: 16–18;
Standage, 1998)?
 or to the Republic of Letters and its reliance on
correspondence, and its development of centralized bureaux
containing lists of everyday information (Rayward, 2011)?
 or, in respect of email, to the development of robust
national and international mail systems (Daunton, 1985;
John, 1995)?
 Might the digital computer be viewed as a mere extension
of systems that grew within, and underpinned, state
bureaucracies from the early nineteenth century onwards
(Agar, 2003)?
 In what fashion is today’s computer-mediated surveil-
lance society similar to, or different from, the state’s
oversight of its citizens as these processes developed
from the late middle ages onwards (Foucault, 1979;
Lloyd, 2003; Higgs, 2004; Slack, 2004; Robertson, 2010)?
Although potentially useful in offering different orienta-
tions for the study of IS-related issues, there is the problem
that such questions may well pre-suppose and emphasize
linear perceptions of history, underplaying or ignoring
discontinuities and differences. Seeking to avoid this
danger, although often still influenced by the social and
technological changes they themsel ves experience, histor-
ians have sought to investigate past systems of information
provision without resorting to mechanistic accounts that
suggest smooth trajectories from past to present. The
information revolution of the late twentieth century has
spawned a large number of studies of the manual
technology revolution in organizations, commencing in
the corporate sector, a century earlier (Beniger, 1986; Yates,
1989; Heide, 2009; Krajew ski, 2011). The communications
revolution of the mid-twentieth century onwards served as
a backdrop, if not a stimulus, to efforts that pulled from
relative obscurity, in terms of the priorities historians had
been expressing, the print revolution that began in the
fifteenth century (Eisenstein, 1979), and its subsequent
effect on science (Shapin, 1998), as well as on distribution
networks from publisher to bookshop, to what Irwin (1957)
conceptualized as the ‘golden chain’ of library provision,
and what Darnton (1982) called the ‘life cycle’ of the book.
Also rescued from near oblivion at this time was the
pioneering work of Paul Otlet, which began with the
International Institute for Bibliography in Brussels in 1895,
and later devel oped into a scheme for a world centre (The
Mundaneum), housed in an indep endently governed world
city, containing a universal index and encyclopaedia of
human knowledge (Rayward, 1975). Otlet’s schemes –
designed as they were to cope with industrial society’s
prolific production of, and increasing dependence on,
documentation – were based on the realization that the
problem of informa tion overload, a recurrent theme for
centuries (Blair, 2010), could only be solved by ‘deeply’
indexing fragments of knowledge lodged in whole biblio-
graphic items. The resulting index, Otlet envisaged, could
be subjected to hypertext linking, thereby leading to
subsequent ascription of his project as the ‘paper internet’,
and bestowing upon him the status of the founder of
information science – the other ‘IS’. In the first half of the
twentieth century, similar utopian schemes, attempting to
resurrect the dream that was encapsulated in the universal
library in ancient Alexandria, were envisioned by H.G.
Wells and Vannevar Bush (Muddiman, 1998; MacLeod,
2000; Houston and Harmon, 2007).
The topic of IS History has garnered importance and
attention in recent years, although it must be stressed that
the topic itself has been raised in several notable
publications in the past – particularly Mason et al.’s
(1997) work dating back to the 1990s or even earlier. One of
the reasons for the current vogue is that many of those
associated with the earliest days of IS and computer-based
systems are now mature in years and offer a rich, but
inevitably dwindling, resource of insight and wisdom. One
of our number, Frank Land, emb odies both the academic
and the commercial foundations of IS, and to an extent
it is his recent calls for further attention to be paid to
these histories that has resulted in these special issues
(Land, 2010, 2012).
In line with the maturing of these founding figures, IS
itself seeks to articulate and claim a heritage – although a
complex and mixed one as will be explained later – and
such claims require historical anal yses and explicated
lineages. To an extent, this also necessitates engaging with
issues around the sense in which IS can be regarded as a
discipline or at least as a distinct field of study; although
this is not a topic we wish to address at any length in this
essay. On the other hand, it is worth pointing out that a
consideration of the papers in this is sue and the subseque nt
one affords some particular pointers to how this long-lived
debate might be usefully redirected. Thus, several papers –
such as that by Bernroider and colleagues – demonstrate
the necessity for a rich institutional backdrop to any field of
studies if it is to achieve a sustainable identity and level of
visibility. Claims for disciplinary status and maturity – or
some equivalent – need to encompass recognized journals
and conferen ces, authoritative sources and statements ,
specific methods, and historical accounts, although taken
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together these are not always sufficient to ground such
claims, and establish a widely regarded identity and
recognized boundaries. Conversely, any deficiencies in the
aforementioned characteristics do not necessarily under-
mine claims for a distinct disciplinary identity.
These observations, taken together with the argument
that disciplines construct their own subject matter and
methods at least as much as subject matter and methods
provide the basis for a disciplinary foundation (Bryant,
2006; Bryant and Land, 2012), results in a view of
disciplines as actively and constantly creat ed, sustained,
and occasionally reinvented. This all implies that dis-
ciplinary histories are ‘made’ at least as much as they are
‘discovered’, and that the relationship between ‘the past
itself’ and the ‘histori an’s thou ght’ is a key factor.
Consequently, there can be no definitive, finally author-
itative IS history; on the contrary, the process of articulat-
ing the history of IS needs to be a wide-ranging, continuous
effort, encompassing different perspectives and agendas.
In assembling the collection of papers that follows in
this issue, and the one subsequent to this, we have sought
to offer readers a selection of approaches and topics that
atleasthintatthewiderangeoforientationsand
understandings of what it is to engage with I S history.
The edito rial team encompasses a range of expertise,
including the pioneering days of commercial computing
and academic IS, extensive historical analyses of ICT
organizations, so ciological issues around ICT, and some-
one specifically trained as an academic his torian. More-
over, w e took it upon ourselves to ensure that the
submitted papers were reviewed by historians as well as
those with expertise in IS. This resulted in s ome
interesting exchanges, drawing attention to t he ways in
which those working in cognate areas often had varying
interpretations of what c onstituted good historical re-
search, as well as differing views on t erms such as
‘information studies’, ‘IS’, and ‘information science’.
Before going any further, however, it is worth pointing
out that many of the issues raised in these exchanges –
some of which a re addressed in what follows – emanate
from debates within and around the historical discipline.
The term historiography specifically refers to the study of
how historical studies are carried out and the associated
findings (re)presented. Moreover, in ways that r esonate
with some of the discussions that characterize what
constitutes the core concerns of IS, there is no general
agreement among historians of what it is that constitutes
‘good historical research’. The earliest histories were
often presented in the form of chronicles or narratives, in
many cases based on first-hand accounts. In the nine-
teenth century, some historians sought a more scientific
and empirical status for their discipline, something that
has been challenged by those arguing for more inter-
pretative approaches. In more recent t imes, h istorians
such as White (1974) have argued forcefully that his-
torical writing has to be seen as incorporating aspects of
key literary forms, and so judged accordingly. We do not
attempt to resolve these debates, but seek to indicate the
ways in which historians themselves differ with regard to
‘doing history’, and how this range of diverse perspec-
tives needs to be taken into account in developing IS
history.
What has become apparent, if it was not already, is that
those of us working within IS need to ensure that we
continue to encourage a range of historical contributions to
journals, conferences, and other forums: these include
detailed and focused analyses of specific topics, as well as
wide-ranging efforts that seek to relate or explain broad
sweeps of IS activity. In the pages that follow, we hope to
provide some helpful yet cautionary guidelines for future
contributors to this endeavour.
History as disciplinary veneer
Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-
new house in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything
about the Veneerings was spick and span new. All their
furniture was new, all their friends were new, all their
servants were new, their plate was new, their carriage was
new, their harness was new, their horses were new, their
pictures were new, they themselves were new, they were
as newly married as was lawfully compatible with their
having a bran-new baby, and if they had set up a great-
grandfather, he would have come home in matting from
the Pantechnicon, without a scratch upon him, French
polished to the crown of his head.
For, in the Veneering establishment, from the hall-chairs
with the new coat of arms, to the grand pianoforte with
the new action, and upstairs again to the new fire-escape,
all things were in a state of high varnish and polish. And
what was observable in the furniture, was observable in
the Veneerings – the surface smel t a little too much of the
workshop and was a trifle sticky. (Charles Dickens, Our
Mutual Friend)
Any discipline or field of professional practice has a
history, often extending back in time to a period before
these practices coalesced into anything resembling the
current state of the discipline or field. As the discipline
develops, even matures, this history needs to be articulated
and brought into the forefron t of its practitioners’
awareness; indeed, it has been argued that for any field of
study or practice to be considered a true discipline it has to
have an articulated and developed historical account of
itself. The field of IS is no different in this regard. As the IS
field matures, it needs to evolve a historical perspective on
its own subject matter; but the extract from Our Mutual
Friend illustrates the dangers in seeking to misappropriate
a historical account. Thus, in commenting on the ‘bran-
newness’ of everything about the Veneeri ngs, Dickens
draws attention to their status as nouveau-riche and
parvenus; hence, their determined efforts in later sections
of the book to ensure that those invited to join them at their
various social gatherin gs can remedy the Veneerings’ lack
of pedigree by being able to boast of far more distinguished
ancestries. Dickens develops this theme in order to ridicule
the efforts of the Veneerings and their ilk to invent or hitch
themselves – literally through marriage – to an illustrious
heritage. Yet he also wishes to prick the pomposity and
arrogance of those who rely on the status accorded to them
based on the supposed grandeur of their antecedents. If the
former are in danger of appearing somewhat ‘sticky’, the
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latter are more than a little musty and in danger of
appearing ridiculous.
The recent burgeoning of interest in ‘IS history’, as
evidenced by speci al issues of journals such as JAIS
(Hirschheim et al., 2012) and JIT, as well as various
conferences and discussions, might be seen as a Veneering-
like effort to move beyond the ‘sticky-ness’ of a ‘bran-new’
discipline, towards something that is more established
and venerable. In some regards, this is laudable and
understandable, an expected and even necessary adjunct
to the incessant debates and concerns regarding the IS
disciplinary identity, as well as offering new insights into IS
phenomena. But on the other hand, it is important that
such efforts do not efface the genuinely innovative nature of
IS, nor recreate a historical narrative that is derived from an
uncritical reading of the past from the perspective of the
present. Dickens clearly pokes fun at the Veneerings, but it
could be argued that at least they are aware of the ways in
which they are creating their own history, a point that
needs to be constantly borne in mind when developing
a disciplinary history. The development and articulation
of disciplinary histori es has to be a collective effort, usually
contested, that amounts to a sustained and continual act of
creation as well as discovery. In effect, mirroring the
ways in which disciplines construct their own subject
matter and methods at least as much as subject matter and
methods construct a discipline (Bryant, 2006; Bryant and
Land, 2012).
Although there has been some significant work within
academic studies of IS that relies upon and uses historical
data, there has been little by way of information
historiography to guide further work and future research
emanating from within IS itself, although the recent paper
by Mitev and De Vaujany (2012) is a notable exception. On
the other hand, cognate areas such as information studies
and information science provide a wealth of resources
deserving of far more of our attention, including specific
writings addressing the topic of ‘information history’
(Black, 2006; Burke, 2007; Weller, 2008; Fyfe, 2009; Weller,
2011; Bawden and Robinson, 2012; Cortada, 2012). This
deficiency is ironic, given that IS themselves are now the
fons et origo of contemporary and future archives (richly
demonstrated by the recent WIKILEAKS affair). In addi-
tion, within IS research and general IS literature, there is
significant reliance upon case studies and other forms of
historical narrative. Thus, it is essential that those working
within academic IS understand the role and nature of
archives and other historical sources, both in terms of
a resource for research into IS history, and as a topic for
discussion among archivists, historians, and other informa-
tion and IS research ers and professionals: Also developing
an awareness of the processes underlying the development
of archives as social artefacts – see, for instance, Derrida
(1996); Shepherd and Yeo (2003); Shepherd (2009).
The interest in producing IS history encompasses many
disciplines and varying perspectives on IS. The IS discipline
itself is closely related to other disciplines or research
domains, such as informa tion studies, information science,
library history, organizational studies, business studies,
software engineering (including requirements engineering),
Human/Computer Interaction (HCI), Artifical Intelligence
(AI), CAD/CAM, criminology, social studies, behavioural
sciences, economics, and communication studies – although
all too often these links are ignored or simply forgotten. In so
doing, the IS community is missing an opportunity to engage
with, and learn from, others with differing perspectives on
topics of common interest. Furthermore, this engenders an
uneasy feeling that many current IS issues and concerns
might be at least partially resolved with a better knowledge
and understanding of information history in its broadest
sense. The purpose of this introductory essay is to explore
how a historical approach can help us understand the
evolution of the IS discipline (broadly understood), includ-
ing its failings. We wish to use this opportunity to raise the
awareness of the important choices we are making as a
discipline as we create and develop our history. We hope that
this discourse will continue in forms such as a future
IS history conference, and history tracks at major IS con-
ferences, incorporating dialogues with other disciplines and
historians.
History as collective memory and identity
Without history, the nations themselves are denied their
true identities. (Ferro, 2002)
Histories are important to those who see themselves as the
subjects of such accounts, or at the very least recognize
their roots in them. Histories are powerful because they
both create and reinforce collective identities. Without
a history, it is difficult to know who one is, where one
comes from, or where one is headed. It is difficult to belong
or have direction. Having a history is important because
what is articulated as having happened in the past
profoundly affects all aspects of our lives and will affect
what happens in the future.
Yet such collective characterizations of ‘the past’ are
never fixed; they change in content and priority, are often
contested, and are the result of selectivity; some things
must be recalled and remembered, others must be
forgotten, erased, or ignored: Others are even invented
(see below). Jorge Luis Borges’ story Fune s, The Memorious
centres on Ireneo Funes, a youth who, aged 17, is thrown
from his horse and left paraly zed, but consequently is
empowered with total recall. Far from being a blessing, this
proves to be a curse since as Borges (2000) reports:
Without effort, he had learned English, French,
Portuguese, Latin. I suspect, nevertheless, that he was
not very capable of thought. To think is to forget a
difference, to generalize, to abs tract. In the overly
replete world of Funes there were nothing but details,
almost contiguous details.
Recent real-life cases such as that of Jill Price
1
attest to
the disabling impact of this condition, now labelled as
hyperthymestic syndrome or highly superior autobiogra-
phical memory.
On the other hand, the inability to recall events of one’s
past, even the previous day, is equally devastating. The
recent novel by Watson (2011), Before I Go To Sleep ,
centres on Christine Lucas who awakes every morning in a
strange bed, in a strange room, sleeping next to a strange
man; but the stranger is her husband, and the bed is in the
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bedroom in her house. She simply cannot recall anything
from her past, even her immediate past. Similarly, the
central character in Christopher Nolan’s film Memento,
2
Leonard Shelby, is unable to create and recall memories of
events that occur in the wake of, or occurred just before,
a particularly traumatic event. This is termed anterograde
amnesia, as opposed to retrograde amnesia where sufferers
lose the ability to retrieve older memories predating some
incident. In reality, amnesiacs often suffer from both forms
to some degree. Without a history, a collective suffers from
a similar amnesia.
Thus, at either extreme – memoriousness and antero/
retrograde amnesia – life is fairly debilitating. We operate
best when we have access to certain levels of recall, but are
also able to develop abstractions based on ignoring some
aspects and focusing on others. Historical research then
involves developing new levels of abstraction, as well as
challenging existing ones. The past is very much alive, and
very much in and of the present. Without history, individuals
and collectives alike find great difficulties in relating to
others, in finding their bearings, in making intelligent
decisions (Marwick, 2001). In other words, without history,
individuals and collectives alike lack identity.
Thus, a discipline’s identity is in part driven by the
decisions and actions that are taken, concerning what the
collective history should include and exclude. Incorpora-
tion of a chronology is necessary, but not sufficient; there is
also a need for narrative accounts. To borrow from E M
Forster, ‘The king died, and then the queen died’ is a
chronology, while ‘The king died, and then the queen died
of grief’ is narrative. Moreo ver, although histories might
aim to provide answers to questions such as ‘Why’ or ‘How’
something happened in the past, historical enquiry involves
far more than this.
The way in which disciplines can be considered as
‘discursive practices’, spawning their own reality, has been
articulated by Bauman (1992), and brought to the attention
of the IS community in various publications (Bryant, 2006;
Bryant, 2008; Bryant and Land, 2012), although the con-
tinuing discussions regarding the ‘core’ of the IS discipline
have consistently failed to engage with this argument. As
the IS academic community pays increasing attention to
historical issues, however, it is important that such activ-
ities are recognized not simply as an exercise in super-
imposing a narrative on some ‘pure, neutral, atemporal,
silent form’ (Bauman, 1992: 70), but rather an act of social
construction. In terms of the professions, many of which
are underpinned by academic disciplines, the notion of
social construction has replaced trait theory in explaining
the process of professionalization. Whereas trai t theory
assesses professional status according to criteria such as the
attainment of licen sing, the passing of examinations, the
formulation of a code of ethics, and the establishment of a
professional association, the theory that professions are
socially constructed revolves around the idea of jurisdic-
tional conflict (Abbott, 1988). A profession can lay claim to
its status by pointing to a body of exclusive abstract
knowledge underpinning its operations. In library science,
to take one example, this would lie in such areas as
classification, cata loguing, bibliography, and bibliometrics.
But often professional status is also a function of a profes-
sional group’s level of success in winning jurisdictional
dominance; that is, the ability to secure and maintain,
through such non-expertise factors as public relations
initiatives, lobbying and marketing, the predominant right
to deliver services in a particular sector. Thus, to con-
tinue with the example of library science, the cla im of
librarians to be the ‘heart and brain of the information
society’ (Batt, 1999) can be seen l ess as a sincere statement
explaining the exclusive applicability o f their knowledge
base to the deve lopm ent of all i nfor mati on culture –
something which no profession could claim – rather
than as a bid to raise their pro fessional status in a ra pidly
changing and, for them, potentially damaging or threaten-
ing environm ent.
Taking this further implies that exercises in the creation of
a disciplinary history can be seen in the same light as what
Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) term ‘the invention of
tradition’. Hobsbawm (1983: 1) characterizes this as follows:
‘Invented tradition’ is taken to mean a set of practices,
normally govern ed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules
and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate
certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition,
which automatically implies continuity with the past. In
fact, wher e possible, they normally attempt to establish
continuity with a suitable historic past y. However,
insofar as there is such reference to a historic past, the
peculiarity of ‘invented’ traditions is that the continuity
with it is largely fictitious. In short, they are responses to
novel situations which take the form of reference to old
situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-
obligatory repetition.
Moreover, Hobsbawm went on to argue that suc h actions of
social construction serve to facilitate socialization, helping
to establish collective identity, and confer legitimacy on
institutions. Although H obsbawm and Ranger were point-
ing out that many seemingly ancient traditions were recent
concoctions and inventions, their argu ment applies in a far
wider sense to all forms of historical writing. Thus, drawing
attention to this should not be taken to imply that those
concerned with delineating the ‘history of IS’ are engaged in
some gigantic, conceptual con. On the other hand, it is
worth stressing that histories are not simply discovered,
they are the results of various acts of creativity and insight
– and oversight. For instance, it can be pointed out that
while there was en tirely appropriate laudatory commem-
oration in 2012 of the centenary of Alan Turing’s birth, at
the time of his untimely death in 1954 he would at best have
merited an awkward footnote. In a similar vein, it might be
argued that the sustained anguishing in the IS world over
identity, core concerns, and specifically IS-type theories
amounts to an invented tradition centred on a substantive
failure actually to invent one.
History is written by people with conscious and
unconscious agendas. This was encapsulated by Carr
(1961) in his succinct but highly influential book that
offered a response to the question ‘What is History?’ He
took issue with any simplistic empiricism, opening the door
for what has been termed constructivist or perspectival
history, or even histories. This was in contrast to those who
viewed the role of the historian as one centring on detailed
and painstaking research, aimed at achieving truth and
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objectivity. For example, Sir Lewis Namier saw his study of
eighteenth-century politics in Britain – based on immensely
detailed study of Parliamentary and other records – as a
project that exposed myths, displacing them with objective
truths. Price (1961: 71) described this work as ‘first of all,
characterized by the utmost intellectu al rigor. Within
human limits, he read nothing into his documents that
was not there, and missed little that was there’. Following
Carr, and many others , it might be pointed out that Namier
must have added and subtracted (perhaps even abstracted)
something from the detailed records, otherwise he would be
simply parroting what was there. Furthermore, it is surely
the role of the historian to enhance the sources under
investigation, although the extent to which such ‘enhance-
ment’ can be justified based on those – and other – sources
is precisely the point about what makes for convincing and
edifying historical narrative.
Thus, Carr (1961: 11) argued that ‘[T]he facts speak only
when the histo rian calls on them: it is he who decides to
which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context’.
In sum, the issue of establishing a disciplinary history is not
a trivial matter, it amounts to far more than simply
uncovering or re-narrating the facts of the past to which we
have to add that the facts are themselves constructs
developed – sometimes consciously and sometimes inad-
vertently – both by historians as well as by the record
keepers of the past who engaged in a process of selection
and invention.
Carr also stressed the instrumental value of history,
believing that humans draw lessons from the past ‘to
increase man’s understanding of, and mastery over, his
environment’. This view was opposed by, among others, G
R Elton (1969: 66 ): ‘Teachers [of history] must set their
faces against the y ignorant demands of society y for
immediate applicability’. Those who thought that a rgu-
mentssuchasCarr’swerealicenceforhistoriansto
construct history according to their own – political or
ideological or populist – agendas stressed the importance
of ai ming at so me form o f historical ‘truth’, or at least
seeking to achieve a near-consensual understanding on
past events. The outcome has been that for some history
retains a quasi-scientific identity, while others oppose this
and offer a far more interpretative perspective on the
relationship between the historian and ‘the past by itself’.
More nuanced views are offered by Thompson (1978: 28–
29): ‘Evidence is there, in its primary form, not to disclose
its own meaning, but to be interrogated by minds trained in
a discipline of attentive disbelief’, and by G. Kitson Clark,
‘Evidence must be dealt with in the same way as a kitten
plays with a ball of wool’.
History as teleology
The History of the World travels from East to West, for
Europe is absolutely the end of History, Asia the beginning.
Hegel (1988: 103), Lectures on the Philosophy of History
‘History’, however, has other meanings and resonances.
For Hegel, and many others, history is a process
culminating in an objective or aim, one t hat embodies a
design and purpose. Hence the concept of teleology; the
Greek term telos meaning purpose or goal. Consequently
philosophical theories of history such as Hegel’s can be
understood as postulating a process leading towards some
ultimate aim. In some of his writings, Hegel seemed to
argue that this end-point was near to being achieved in the
embodiment of the Prussian state. Butterfield (1931)
referred to broadly similar arguments as ‘The Whig Inter-
pretation of History’, using the term pejoratively and
aimed particularly at British historians who produced
historical studies demonstrating that the past led inex-
orably to the current (nineteenth century) British con-
stitutional settlement:
The following study deals with ‘the whig interpretation of
history’ in what I conceive to be the accepted meaning of
the phrase y. What is discussed is the tendency in many
historians to write on the side of Protestants and Whigs,
to praise revolutions provided they have been successful,
to emphasize certain principles of progress in the past
and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the
glorification of the present. (Preface)
In so doing, Butterfield was warning against the ten-
dency to read the past in terms of the present, as if
what came before was largely an embryonic and less-
developed precursor. This is also a characteristic of history
as something that is ‘written by the victors’, and should
raise awareness that the process of deciding ‘to which facts
to give the floor’ is not simply dependent on the whim or
fancy of the historian, but has to be seen against a larger
and more complex backdrop. At least since the 1960s,
various groups have challenged the generally accepted
orthodox historical accounts, pointing out that these usually
favour the ‘pale males’ at the expense of women, other ethnic
groups, and various parts of the world, which were colonized
or conquered in the past. Consequently, there have been
movements aimed at delineating Black, Women’s, Colonial,
and various other histori es.
In contrast to the Whig orientation to the past,
Butterfield (1931) proposed that historians should see
themselves as representing:
the spirit of man brooding over man’s past y working not
to accentuate antagonisms or to ratify old party-cries but
to find the unities that underlie the differences and to see
all lives as part of the one web of life’. y The historian
trying to feel his way towards this may be striving to be
like a god but perhaps he is less foolish than the one who
poses as god the avenger. Studying the quarrels of an
ancient day he can at least seek to understand both parties
to the struggle and he must want to understand them
better than they understood themselves. (Chapter 4)
This form of criticism serves as a caveat with regard to
reading the past in terms of the present, but it affords little
by way of resolution to an understanding of the nature of
‘doing history ’ – that is, the relationship between ‘the past
by itself’ and the work of the historian. On the contrary, as
will be illustrated below, the ways in which historians can
or should try to ‘understand both parties y better than
they understood themselves’ has been a central and long-
lived debate within and around historiography.
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For the present context, however, it is important to draw
attention to the ways in which these criticisms of partiality,
based on inter preting the present as the defining point of
processes anchored in the past, take on a specific hue with
regard to histories of technology in general, and ICT in
particular, w here it is important not to see things in terms
of earlier, primitive technologies leading inexorably to the
current state-of-the-art devices. In many cases, current
technologies are ba sed on earlier devices that were
originally invented for purposes that have little or no
connection with their present use. For instance, the
telephone was invented as a broadcasting device; radio
was developed for one-to-one communication: When lasers
were invented, no one had any clear idea how they might
be useful (Bryant, 2006, Chapter 4; Winston, 1998). The
electronic computer was seen initially as only having a very
restricted use, with many experts predicting that no more
than a few dozen would be needed worldwide.
What many of these failed predictions have in common is
a set of assumptions that the past was very much like
the present – but per haps less devel oped, slower, and
tending to monochrome. In considering technology from a
historical perspective, it is crucial that attention is given not
only to ‘successful’ devices but also to unsuccessful ones,
also to the interactions between devices and wider contexts.
The papers by Jacobs on the X.400 standard, and Campbell-
Kelly and Garcia-Swartz on forgotten or neglected aspects
of the developments leading to the widespread adoption of
the internet, exemplify these issues. Winston Churchill
once remarked that ‘We shape our buildings; thereafter
they shape us’, and Marshall McLuhan then rephrased
this as ‘We shape our tools and they in turn shape us’.
In considering historical processes aro und ICT, attention
needs to be paid to the ways in which people make
technologies and then technologies make people. This
should prevent historical studies of technology resorting
simply to either a ‘deterministic’ or conversely a ‘sympto-
matic’ viewpoint.
In his writings about the development of television,
Raymond Williams offered an alternative view while
rejecting both technological determinism and symptomatic
readings of technology, since each in its own ways posits
technology and its associated research and development as
independent, asocial activities. He exemplifies each position
as follows:
Deterministic 1 TV was invented as a result of scientific
and technical research. Its power as a
medium of social communications was
then so great that it altered many of
our institutions and forms of social
relationships.
Deterministic 2 TV was invented as a result of scientific
and technical research, and developed as a
medium of entertainment and news. It
then had unforeseen consequences, not
only on the other entertainment and news
media y but on some of the central
processes of family, cultural, and social life.
Symptomatic 1 TV, discovered as a possibility by scien-
tific and technical research, was selected
for investment and promotion as a new
and profitable phase of a domestic con-
sumer economy.
Symptomatic 2 TV became available as a result of
scientific and technical research, and its
character and uses exploited and empha-
sized elements of a passivity, a cultural
and psychological inadequacy, which had
always been latent in people. (Williams,
1974: 11–12).
The deterministic and the symptomatic positions,
although they appear contrary, share the assumption that
technology is an isolated facet of existence, outside society
and beyond the realm of intention. Anticipating Castells’
argument about the relationship between society and
technology, Williams stresses that technology must be seen
as being ‘looked for and developed with certain purposes
and practices already in mind’, these purposes and practices
being ‘central, not marginal’ as the symptomatic view would
hold. Thus, television cannot be seen simply in terms of the
tangible technology itself, but must be located within more
complex processes including systems of consumption,
entertainment, communication, leisure and so on. As
Castells later observed technology is social:
Indeed the dilemma of technological determinism is
probably a false problem, since technology is society, and
society cannot be understood or represented without its
technological tools. (Castells, 1996: 5, Stress in original)
On the other hand, once in place, specific technologies may
be taken up and developed in ways completely at odds with
those intentions, as, for instance, it happened with radio,
telephones, and computers – thus, Williams’ argument will
only tak e us so far. But it does provide a caveat when
gauging the ways in which our present technological
capacities and devices evolved from earlier forms and
inventions. Moreover, it should prevent us from simply
looking back at technological developments, thinking we
can understand them in terms of ‘purposes and practices’ of
the past; something that is in the worst case inaccessible to
us, or at best based on our own interpretations.
This tension between continuities, context, and con-
tingencies can be exemplified if we consider the early
development of computer technology. Babbage’s design for
an automated computing engine was in part grounded in
his interest in the ways in which the division of labour
operated under the emerging conditions of factory-based
manufacturing in British cities in the nineteenth century.
Hence, the importance of the influence of his visits to
France in 1819 was to see how the production of
mathematical tables had been organized under Napoleon,
a system itself grounded in the practices of the division of
labour resulting in significant increases in productivity and
accuracy (Hyman (1982); als o see http://history-compu-
ter.com/People/BabbageBio.html). The later recognition by
Lyons that a computer could solve some of their business
problems emanated from pressures for increased produc-
tivity and efficiency given their very tight margins and
rising labour costs, but the aim of raising operational and
administrative in part also arose from recognizing that
a mathematically oriented technology that had worked well
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in the context of war time efforts at code-breaking could be
turned to meet other commercial objectives (Land, 2000a).
In the context of IS, historical accounts need to include
consideration of the ways in w hich current IS phenomena
of interest developed, and why others seem to have fallen by
the wayside. IS historians need to investigate, for example,
the advent of current technologies and practices; however,
there should also be some attention paid to issues that were
part of earlier IS agendas, but which seem to have been
neglected, ignored, or forgot ten. Thus, Enid Mumford and
C. West Churchman, two of the founding members of the
field, made bold and specific suggestions regarding the
nature of the IS discipline. Mumford stressed that the IS
discipline should focus on understanding the role of IS in
solving wicked problems such as drugs and money
laundering. Writing in the late 1990s, she argued that
today’s problems are ‘new, complex, and often very
threatening’ (Mumford, 1999: 1): ‘Some problems are so
serious that despite our lack of knowledge we must make
major efforts to remove or reduce them, even though the
likelihood of success of doing so is poor’. Churchman
suggested a similarly broad scope for the IS discipline:
‘Extremely difficult problems such as global crime are
exactly the kinds of problems we [IS discipline] should
spend our time solving’ (Churchman quoted in Porra, 1999:
20). Churchman looked to the IS discipline to contribute
to solving these large and complex problems, leading to
change on a wider social basis. Unfortunately, these topics
have been largely neglected by the academic IS community,
usually in favour of far narrower, more commercially
oriented concerns rooted in the business school ethos
(Land, 2000b). In 2012, we could readily add to Mumford
and Churchman’s concerns, calling for the incorporation of
studies that look at the ways in which aspects of the ‘dark
side’ of IS/information technology (IT) have developed, and
how they might be combated (see Coopersmith, 2000;
Coakes et al., 2011; Rost and Glass, 2011); also the grey
areas such as the role of pornography as a driver of internet
development and high proportion of its use, as well as the
role played by sites such as Wikileaks, which afford ways
of side-stepping legal constraints on secrecy and privacy.
As a discipline, we should also be asking questions such as
‘How has humanity changed as a result of developments in
IS/IT?’, particularly with regard to issues of social justice,
empowerment, the role of women, various minorities,
and the potential for new forms of participation and
representation.
History as a meeting of ourselves as ‘Other’
The past is a foreign country; they do things diff erently
there.
L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between
Hartley sums up the issue succinct ly; but in recent times
it is the work of Michel Foucault that has been the focus of
attention for its claims regarding the ways in which the
study of the past presents us with obstacles in developing
any coherent and cogent understanding of the past.
Foucault took issue with the ideas of those who followed
Hegel, and supposed that history was teleological and
outside human agency, as well as those who followed von
Ranke (2010), who stressed the importance of an empirical
study of history. If the former view could be seen as a
‘totalizing’ vision where everything could be explained as
part of a universal plan leading inexorably to the present
day, the latter can veer perilously close to the Dickensian
character in Hard Times , Mr. Gradgrind, whose school
teaches ‘facts only facts’.
Carr sought to undermine any Ranke-influenced study of
history, at least to the extent of trying to ensure that
historians at least were aware of their own choreography,
giving some characters and aspects ‘the floor’, leaving
others at best waiting in the wings, at worst, excluded
altogether. But Foucault offered a more trenchant critique,
and in some respects is regarded by many historians as an
anti-historian and academic pr ovocateur. The historical
totalizers, such as Hegel, sought to explain the broad sweep
of history as an unfolding of a divine or near-divine
essence, thereby stressing the continuities between the past,
the present, and the future. Moreover, such perspectives
posited key characteristics as ‘necessary’ or ‘essential’, and
thus others as contingent. Foucault (1967, 1994), in his key
works such as Madness and Civilization,andThe Birth of
the Clinic,soughttostressthediscontinuities that arise
when investigating topics such as the history of madness
or practices of medical confinement, in many instances
seeking to show that what for us in the present is regarded
as ‘necessary’ and ‘essential’ was actually regarded as c on-
tingent for our predecessors – and vice versa. Studying
history then becomes an activity o f seeking to discover
‘the other’, and thereby to confront ourselves. Much as we
may wish to look back on the past as something
potentially familiar, Foucault wishes to point out that
we should be prepared to be shocked by its strangeness,
which in turn should make us confront the present in a
similar manner. Thi s then invites the converse that what
at first sight appears strange and unfamiliar turn o ut on
inspection to have a close affinity with some present
phenomenon. (Thus, we might note that the role of the
adjutant in military history ha s a bearing on our
understanding of today’s high-tech decision-support
systems.) The paper by Gannon offers a glimpse of both
sides of this argument in considering the ways in which
the IS function developed in corporations where the
associated technology and the people associated with it
were seen as outsiders.
In his early work, Foucault (1969: 139) used the term
‘archaeology’ to characterize his approach, distinguishing it
both from positivist, causal histories – which merely
scrambled about on the surface – as well as from
hermeneutics – which sought ‘to rediscover the continuous,
insensible transition that relates discourses, on a gentl e
slope, to what precedes them, surrounds them, or follows
them’. (NB: Foucault, as one might expect, has his
idiosyncratic characterizations of the positivist and herme-
neutic projects, but essentially the former centres on facts
and seeks objectivity, and the latter focuses on inter preta-
tion and perhaps some form of consensus between different
parties to some dialogue.)
In his later work, Foucault (1984) enhanced his archa e-
ological perspective w ith what he saw as a genealogical one,
explicitly using this term in the same way, and as homage to
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Nietzsche’s work on the genealogy of morals (Nietzsche, 2008).
If the archaeological per spective stressed the structural
aspects of history, undermining the idea of the primacy of
the individual or some form of historical consciousness at
play, the genealogical aspect placed stress on the accidental
and contingent nature of developments.
Genealogy does not pretend to go back in time to restore
an unbroken continuity that operates beyond the
dispersion of forgotten things; its duty is not to
demonstrate that the past actively exists in the present,
that it continues secre tly to animate the present, having
imposed a predetermined form on all its vicissitudes.
Genealogy does not resemble the evolution of a species
and does not map the destiny of a people. On the
contrary, to follow the complex course of descent is to
maintain passing events in their proper dispersion; it is
to identify the accidents, the minute deviations-or
conversely, the complete reversals-the errors, the false
appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to
those things that continue to exist and have value for us;
it is to discover that truth or being does not lie at the root
of what we know and what we are, but the exteriority of
accidents. (Foucault, 1984: 81)
Foucault’s concept of ‘discursive formations’ or ‘epistemes’
is akin in important respects to Kuhn’s (1996) concept of
paradigms. At the heart of both lies the view that knowledge
and understanding can be thought of as systems that operate
above and beyond – but through – individuals. Historical
analyses have to be undertaken with the understanding that
the past is foreign, thus the relationship between ‘the past by
itself ’ and ‘the historian’s thought about it by itself ’ involves
different discursive formations or paradigms – a similar
consideration applies to the accounts of different historians.
One of the criticisms of this view is that if this is really the
case then how does any understanding develop between
different formations. Are paradigms ‘incommensurable’?
Clearly, they are not, or we have to act as if they are not,
otherwise there would be no way in which we could even
begin to make sense of the past. In using Nietzsche’s concept
of genealogy, however, Foucault alerts us to the ‘faults,
fissures, and heterogeneous layers’ that characterize histor-
ical development, subverting efforts to characterize the
process from past to present as the advent of increasing
rationalism and continuous improvement.
3
For Foucault, these processes are not merely of academic
interest. In line with his formula that ‘power creates
knowledge’, the ‘constructing’ of the knowledge bases of
disciplines and professional practices calls upon an expert-
led strategy of recreating an account of the past in
accordance with the requirement that any discipline or
professional domain needs a history.
The uses of history
The past is never dead, it is not even past. (William
Faulkner)
The term ‘History’ (much like ‘IS’) refers both to the
discipline as well as to the topic of study. In the case of
‘History’, the ambiguity is usually resolved by the context,
although with the current contra ction of higher education
across many countries, and particular targeting of the
humanities, phrases such as ‘the end of history’ might refer
to either. (Some UK universities have already witnessed the
‘end of chemistry’, and the ‘end of mathematics’ is certainly
looming in some UK institutions.)
For many people, ‘history’ is something best left to the
historians and others interested in the past, but the quote
from Faulkner encapsulates the argument that ‘history’ is
very much part of the present for each and every one of us.
In our everyday and professional lives, we constantly draw
upon what has happened in the past, or rather particular
versions and interpretations that have been both experienced
directly and handed down to us. To paraphrase Carr,
decisions are constantly taken regarding which facts to give
the floor, and in what order or context: The opening event of
the 2012 Olympics in London – which celebrated Britain’s
industrial revolution, but ignored its more unsavoury
aspects such as child labour and other forms of exploitation
that accompanies it – being a case in point. These decisions,
however, are not taken by people individually, but as part of
collectivities or communities that range across families,
friends, peers, colleagues, and cultures, exemplifying Hobs-
bawm’s regard for the establishment of identity and
legitimacy through socialization. In this sense, ‘history’ is
very much part of the present, a collective activity to which
we all contribute, constituting and sustaining it.
Moreover, history has a number of other uses or roles.
Histories can provide analyses of the historical record in
order to offer bases for making sense of and explaining
contemporary phenomena. For example, Porra et al. (2005,
2006) in their extended study of IT at Texaco seek to offer
an explanation why, despite recognized success, the IT
Department over many years failed to be fully accepted by
Texaco management, and was constantly attacked and
finally largely outsourced. The authors accomplish this
using systems theory as a tool for analysing the historical
record, produ cing an historical account from a particular
perspective that adds to existing narratives.
Histories also are used to establish a record of the past,
and despite E. M. Forster’s distinction between chronology
and narrative it is important that people do understand the
dates and sequences of events in the past. (Sellar and
Yeatman famously sought to provide a history of England
without including any dates, but had to settle for including
two – 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England,
comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103
Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates – but this
should be considered the exception, not the rule!) Once
historians move from providing dates of specific events to
offering frameworks centred on sequences of particular
stages or phases, however, they have moved well
beyond chronology, and need to engage with critiques
such as those derived from Carr, Foucault, and numerous
others. Hirschheim and Klein’s (2012) history of IS in the
JAIS special edition is a case in point. It offers a useful
account from the authors’ perspective, but needs to be
taken as a starting point for further work, and seen as a
spur for conscious research to uncover what Cam pbell-
Kelly and Garcia-Swartz term ‘The Missing Narratives’.
Developing from Carr’s point about specific agendas, and
Hobsbawm’s ‘invented traditions’, there is no doubt that
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historical accounts pl ay a key role in propaganda and myth-
making. This often amounts to a mix of selectivity and
pure make-believe as such accounts are developed to create
a story to enhance or glorify, demean or debase, some
aspect of society, politics, nationhood, or technological
innovation – thereby identifying heroes and villains.
In England, Newton is upheld as the inventor of calculus;
in Germany, the credit is given to Leibniz. Most people if
asked assume that the firs t commercial application of
computer technology took place in the United States, rather
than in the more prosaic surroundings of a British
company most noted for its tea shops (Caminer et al.,
1998). The historian Ferguson (2003) is an example of
historian bent on destroying myths, but who nevertheless is
often accused of producing historical accounts that owe too
much to his own ideological, contrarian thinkin g. Ferguson
is also an example of the ways in which history can be used
as entertainment – the wow factor. Other examples include
the histories of code breaking at Bletchley (both documen-
tary and fictionalized drama), the construction of Colossus,
and the story of the first business computer LEO, built by
a catering company (Ferry, 200 3 and Mason, 2004), where
the wow factors include (a) that this technological advance
was developed in a catering company, and (b) that it took
place in the United Kingdom and not in the United States.
For an attempt at probing the historical record to attem pt
to explain this, see Land (2000a), and we must stress that
simply offering such accounts as historical entertainments
does not detract from them also being highly instructive.
A brief history of IS history (IS?)
History, said Stephen, is a nightmare from which I am
trying to awake.
James Joyce, Ulysses
One of the perplexities of the Olympics in London in 2012
was the constant reference to ‘Team Great Britain (GB)’:
Why was it not ‘Team UK’? Or for that matter, how come
that in football (‘soccer’ to our US readership!) there are
separate teams for England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern
Ireland? Without going in to too much detail, the UK refers
to the union of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern
Island, the full title is ‘The United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Island’. ‘GB’ refers to the first three
components of the UK, since athletes from Northern Island
had the option of competing for Eire (Republic of Ireland)
‘Team GB’ was preferred to ‘Team UK’.
‘When people say England, they sometimes mean Great
Britain, sometimes the United Kingdom, sometimes the
British Isles but never England’.
How to be an Alien’ by George Mikes
4
Consequently, historians must be careful and consistent in
their use of terminology if writing about the history of this
part of the world. Winston Churchill found a very usef ul –
although more far-rea ching – resolution to the problem in
the title of his four-volume work : The History of the
English-Speaking Peoples. In writing about IS, a similar set
of terminological conundrums need to be confronted,
perhaps in the form of a question such as:
‘What is the correct term for the study of the use and
application of information and communication technol-
ogies?’ – Is it (a) Information Systems; (b) Information
Management; (c) Information Technology; or (d) Infor-
matics? (Bryant, 2006)
Among the four editors of this special issue, we can count
the first UK Professor of IS, one Professor of Informatics,
one Professor in a School of Library and Information
Science, and one Profes sor in a Department of Decision and
Information Sciences. Moreover, other terms and abbrevia-
tions also add to this morass – for example, IT, ICT,
Management Information Systems (MIS). Even the abbre-
viation IS itself is ambi guous; apart from IS, the term could
also be taken to refer to Information Studies or Information
Science. The term ‘fragmented adhocracy’, first applied to
management studies in the 1980s, has always been an apt
one for IS, but anyone offering an overview of IS history
needs to give readers some idea of the central subject of
such accounts. IS historians cannot simply assume that
there is any robu st consensus on even this most
fundamental issue, and care needs to be taken when using
terms such as IS, IT, ICT, and the like – some writers often
use these terms as near sy nonyms, others seek to make
clear distinctions between them. The papers that follow
comprise various responses to this proto-disciplinary
morass. We do not seek to offer a resolution to this, that
is not the primary purpose of this paper or this issue of
the journal, and in any case we would argue that seeking to
articulate some definitive account is unwarranted and at
best nugatory. We can, however, stress the importance of
encouraging a wide variety of different approaches to the
topic of IS history, and point to the work that has been
done, such as by Hirschheim and Klein (2012), building on
the earlier work of Mason.
Porra et al. (in a forthcoming paper) have pointed out that
one of the earliest historical studies in the IS literature is that
of Mann and Williams (1960) who looked at the dynamics of
organizational change associated with the implementation of
electronic data processing equipment. This did not lead to
further specifically historical accounts since in these early
days the preferred format within Academic IS appears to have
been case studies usually centring on ground-breaking and
innovative IS implementation and use. Pettigrew (1973) did
seek to provide a longitudinal case study where theoretical
questions were raised and explored based on a historical
narrative, and Markus (1983) offers a case study where
historical events are analysed through three theoretical lenses.
Yet neither discussed the specifically historical methods used
in producing these narratives.
McFarlan (1984) first noted the absence of historical
studies in a research colloquium titled The Information
Systems Research Challenge held at Harvard University.
This concern later led to the establishment of the Harvard
MIS History Project, which ultimately produced the
historical stud ies Airline Reservation Systems: Lessons from
History (Copeland and McKenney, 1988), and Bank of
America: The Crest and Trough of Technological Leadership
(McKenney et al., 1997). Neith er study gives any space to
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present an account of the methods used, although Mason’s
paper of 1997 does address the matter.
Apart from these historical acco unts of corporate IT
systems, there have been a number of histories of computer
development. Some have centred on specific machines,
including LEO – the world’s first commercial computer
(Caminer et al., 1998) – as well as more general historical
analyses of computer t echnology – for example, Beniger.
Kidder’s (1981) contemporaneous account of the develop-
ment of the DG Eclipse offers a different form of account
that would now be read in histori cal terms. There are
historical analyses on the development of the MIS field,
such as that by Dickson (1981), also Friedman and
Cornford (1989) on the evolution and growth of the
systems analyst professi on and the systems analysis
function. Porra and colleagues have sought to take up the
earlier work of Mason et al. (1997) and McKenney et al.
(1997) in their historical accounts published in MIS
Quarterly (Porra et al., 2005) and Information and
Organization (Porra et al., 2006).
History continues to be made, both in the sense of
historians writing history and in the sense of unfolding
events. In the IS sphere, history in the first sense is in its
infancy, but in the latter sense it is happening at an
incredible pace. The IS community, academic, and practi-
tioner owes it to posterity to record as much of that history
as possible. In this way, there will be not a record of the
‘unvarnished truth’, but rather a rich source of material for
researchers of the future; also a basis for educating and
enlightening newcomers to the IS community and beyond.
Some progress in that direction is being made with, for
example, the numerous case studies emerging from IS
research. But these primarily focus on the corporate world,
helping to engender an understanding of IS success or
failure – for example, Clemons and Row (1988) focuses on
success, Mitev (1996) on failure, and Porra et al. (2005,
2006) attem pt to explain a puzzling phenomenon. A few
others have ‘written-up’ studies of old applications, partly
to show what lessons can be learned from them, but also
partly to put on record the achievements of the IS pioneers
(Land, 2006). Many more studies of old IS are needed while
those inv olved remain to offer their memories. One way is
by the collection of Oral Histories, and the IFIP Working
Group 9.7, concerned with Computer History, has recently
sponsored a book edited by its chairman Tatnal (2012). A
chapter entitled ‘Remembering LEO’ sets out some of the
ways the IS community can record both old and con-
temporary histo ry (Land, 2012). If we regard history as a
valuable resource for the study and understanding of IS
then as a community we mu st be much more systematic in
ensuring that the student of the future has the available
historical resource we can create.
None of the papers selected for this special issue and
the subsequent one tries to tackle the whole subject of IS
history, although those that appear in the following pages
do seek to outline some core features of the field in the
process of taking a particular historical focus. Campbell-
Kelly and Garcia-Swartz put forward an argument about the
development of the internet that cou nters many specific
aspects of existing accounts, and they point to the ways in
which these narratives are in many senses examples of a
Whig interpretation of ICT history. Jacobs complements
this with his account of a technology and associated
standards that are now seen as a failure, and consequently
ignored or downgraded, but from which it is important that
lessons are learned. Heinrich and Riedl offer an insight into
the ways in which concerns around ICT developed in the
German-speaking context in ways that are markedly
different from those found particularly in the UK and the
United States, while Gannon’s paper is explicitly addressed
to several audiences, both within and without the IS
academic and IS practitioner communities. It offers an
historical account of the early days of the intro duction of
ICT and IS into large corporations, using a range of
perspectives that encompass interpretive approaches, first-
hand accounts, and what might be seen as the start of an
ethnography of IS practice. Finally, Bernroider and
colleagues provide a framing of the papers published in
the AIS basket of journals from the mid-1990s to 2005 that
highlights the diversity and multi-disciplinary nature of the
discourses they encompass.
There are also key differences between the ways in which
some of the terms are understood or claimed in different
parts of the world. Information Science is seen by some as
focused on provision of information, particularly within the
public domain, with IS then seen as having primarily a
commercial focus. The term ‘informatics’ is now hotly
contested, and could itself be the subject of an interesting
history that traces its use in various languages in the mid-to-
late twentieth century, its use by Donna Haraway (1985) who
defined the term as the ‘technologies of information as well
as the biological, social, linguistic, and cultural changes that
initiate, accompany, and complicate their development’, and
its more recent appropriation by computer scientists. Thus,
in some institutions, ‘informatics’ is zealously guarded by
computer science, but extended terms such as ‘social
informatics’ or ‘community informatics’ or ‘health infor-
matics’ can be claimed without challenge by other faculties.
Today, the IS world encompasses or is closely dependent
upon areas and fields such as MIS, IS, IT, Information
Science, Design Science, Computer Science, AI, Software
Engineering, HCI, Knowledge Management (KM), and recent
hybrids focusing on specific topics such as Security,
Computer Forensics, and Cyberwarfare. How this state of
affairs came about affords a series of challenges for his-
torians to explain the processes that led to these different
positions – perhaps centring on the nature of the boundaries
and their purported distinctiveness, the role of institutions,
government policies, technical developments and so on.
5
As was stated earlier, with regard to Foucault and
Bauman, any such efforts must take account of the ways in
which a discipline relates to its history. Thus, once we allow
that disciplines can characterize their own subject con-
cerns, and also create their own histories – as well as the
more common view that sees the inverse of this – then
‘doing IS history’ can encompass moving from current
institutional aspect s of the IS field – for example, journals,
conferences, centres of excellence, specific individuals – to
characterizations of the field itself. In the papers that
follow, there are examples of the ways in which journa ls act
as institutional resources, in particular in the paper by
Bernroider and colleagues.
IS history must then be seen as part of the IS central
agenda, contributing to the delineation of the field and also
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offering poss ible routes for its future directions. Conse-
quently, it is critical that historical analyses oriented
around ICT, IS, and the like are open-ended, participative,
and encourage inclusion of a wide range of interests and
specialisms. If History is indeed just ‘one damn thing after
another’ (attributed to Arnold Toynbee) then with regard to
the history of IS the challenge is to decide what each ‘damn
thing’ might actually be, and the sequence and interrela-
tionships that bind them. Hirschheim and Klein’s paper
offers one perspective on this, using the device of four
overlapping eras. But it is important to bear in mind the
dictum that ‘Epochs in the history of society are no more
separated from each other by hard and fast lines of
demarcation than are geological epochs’ (Marx). Moreover,
frameworks such as Hirschheim and Klein’s need to be
supplemented and challenged by those that offer different
perspectives, scopes, and even starting points – indeed, it
will almost certainly be necessary to consider the pre-
history of IS, conceptualizing the development of ‘systems
of infor mation’ that pre-date the computer revolution.
At the end of their paper, Hirschheim and Klein state that
they think it important that studies of the sort they offer
will provide the basis for ‘a shared history’ and an
alignment of perspectives. They recognize, however, that
it is also critical to encourage participation and debate on
the subject, although they worry that this might lead to
‘sectarianism’, accompanied by mutual indifference or
animosity, and a failure to engage in critical dialogue. It
seems clear that their paper is intended to be understood as
part of a process of establishing a basis for disciplinary
legitimacy and identity, but there is a certain irony in their
worrying about splits into ‘sub-communities’, when IS itself
can be seen as an upstart breakaway from various parent al
disciplines such as Business Studies or Computing, having
largely ignored the pre-existing area of Information
Science. More account needs to be taken of Foucault’s
project of using history as a way of developing an
understanding of ourselves as ‘other’. Historical accounts
are then seen not only as eliciting alternative and
challenging chronologies, but also as challenging already
existing accounts, perhaps in other areas and disciplines.
Ideas about IS are understandably assumed or tacitly
accepted until something occurs to undermine or question
them, and it is at times such as these that many
assumptions become articulated or recognized as open to
multiple interpretation. For instance, in 1999 Lynne Markus
asked: ‘What Happens if the IS Field as We Know it Goes
Away?’ She was not arguing that the field will actual ly
disappear in the sense that ‘Horse and Buggy’ studies might
have disappeared – or certainly declined – had it ever
existed in the nineteenth-century academy. On the con-
trary, the threat was not one of disappearance, but of
dissipation and dissolution. ‘As computers increasingly
become embedded in every aspect of personal and
organizational life, it is less and less possible to disti nguish
between computing and everything else’ (1999: 176). The
unthinkable, as Markus (1999: 175) put it, was that the IS
disciplinary turf will be cut up and hauled away by a host of
other disciplines: ‘We bemoan the fact that intellectual
communities like organizational behaviour, operations
management, and marketing are discovering informa tion
technology (IT) as an important topic for their teaching and
research. y we see them as laying claim to research
domains that we think of as ours’.
6
Markus’ solution to
what she terms ‘Academic IS’ is that it should focus on
‘electronic integration of socio-economic activity’, although
she left her readers with a perplexing coda, calling for
jettisoning the Academic IS field of the past ‘so that we can
create the IT (sic) field of the future’!
Markus was, however, quite correct to note the ways in
which Academic IS was indeed under threat, someth ing that
has continued in recent times as the funding for higher
education has been squeezed, resulting in pr essures from
other disciplines as well as those from outside the Higher
Education (HE) sector. The furore sparked by Carr’s (2003)
HBR article ‘IT Doesn’t Matter’ was, among other things, an
example of the ways in which issues around IS are not
readily understood, even by those who should be expected
to know better, given their professional roles and respon-
sibilities. Responses to Carr, as well as the motivations
behind arguments such as that proffered by Markus, are
based on the assumption that IS is ‘a good thing’, but this is
not a position that can be taken for granted.
Given this state of affairs, the need to provide historical
accounts of IS becomes a pressing matter – both as an issue
of academic-cum-institutional survival and a wider, social
one. Hirschheim and Klein’s history of the IS field arguably
can be seen as providing a list of ‘who is who’, focused
largely on the early days of the field, and inevitably there
will be those who feel that mu ch and many have been left
out. Responses should then take the form of articulated
accounts, that not only expand upon or challenge
Hirschheim and Klein, but also complement their work
and so provide a wide and differentiated basis for people’s
understandings of the IS field. In seeking to respond to
questions such as: ‘Whose IS history?’ and ‘What IS
history?’, IS historians will be contributing to a general
understanding that IS does constitute an important and
developing field of study, with valuable contri butions to
make to contemporary is sues and concerns.
As was noted earl ier, those work ing within IS have paid
scant regard to IS history. McFarlan’s clarion cry regardin g
the absence of historical stud ies went largely unheeded
until comparatively recently. Land (2010) has long argued
the need for a historical underpinning and understanding
of IS, most recently in the twenty-fifth anniversary edition
of the Journal of Information Technology.
Ramiller (personal communication) distinguishes two
broad roles for historical enquiry in the context of the IS
field, each with its own specific approach. The first one he
terms ‘history of the field’, which he sees as providing
historical accounts that reflects on our field’s evolving
scholarship. Hirschheim and Klein’s IS field history belongs
to this first category. The second approach he terms
‘history in the field’. This is the use of history in
understanding substantive phenomena that are of interest
to our disciplinary c ommunity. There are numerous
examples of this, ranging from studying the impact on
teenagers of social networks (e.g., Pempek et al., 2009) to
how the use of EDI changes the relationship between
business partners (e.g., Iacovou et al., 1995), and including
studies of the economic impact of global outsourcing on
national economies (e.g., Grossman and Helpman, 2005).
The paucity of papers reporting on such studies in the ‘top’
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IS journals, ho wever, might be seen as indicative of the way
in which the IS agenda has been narrowed by the processes
of disciplinary gatekeeping over the years.
With regard to Ramiller’s first aspect, it could be well be
asked ‘What took us so long?’ With regard to the second
one, however, we are in danger of missing the boat, and
must be ready to acknowledge that many such accounts are
already underway, and that IS-related contributions will
have to take their place as part of various trans-disciplinary
encounters (Bryant and Land, 2012). For instance, topics
such as the development of the impact of ICT and IS
(however defined) on everyday life are already much
studied, as are histories of inventions and technologies in
general – but now focused specifically on trends leading up
to mobile technologies and network technologies as
embodied in the iPhone and Facebook, respectively.
Such accounts must also encompass ways of investigating
the historical developments underlying the changes that
have occurred in the ways in which we use and access
information in everyday life – that is, outside academic and
commercial contexts. In so doing, we can heed the example
of others who have sought to delineate ‘history from below’
such as the Annales School (Burke, 1990), as well as those
offering historical accounts emanating from specific ethnic,
gendered, or other perspectives.
Doing and making IS history
Whatever one’s position might be with regard to what
constitutes the most effective, rigorous, and well-founded
way of undertaking historical research and historical
writing, the extensive debates on historical methods and
historiography cannot be ignored. Historians now have to
be prepared to contend with issues emanating from social
sciences, economics, and politics, as well as from the
humanities, particularly cultural, literacy, and feminist
studies. Moreover, if IS history is to become part of what
IS researchers do, it is essential that there is an under-
standing of historical methods and techniques. One
obstacle to this is that historians have often been reticent
about the assumptions and techniques they use (Marwick,
2001). Historians do not necessarily see their practices in
philosophical terms, preferring to focus on their work
rather than studying or sharing discussion about their
own practices (Porra et al., in a forthcoming paper). One
central assumption historians share, however, is that their
narratives have to be based on careful examination of past
evidence. But it should not be thought that this implies a
simple-minded objectivism. In the light of the critiques
from Butterfield, Carr, Foucault, White, and many others,
historians cannot simply retrea t to Pric e’s claim that good
historical research is en suring that one reads in nothing
that is not already there.
7
Evidence in whatever form has to
be viewed with healthy scepticism if not suspicion. Indeed, IS
academics should be well aware of this, given the ways in
which digitized information now forms such an important
component of actual and potential historical evidence.
Computer-based IS need to be specified, designed, and
implemented, necessarily including some aspects at the
expense of others, also placing some aspects at the forefront
of users’ attention, while pushing others further away.
An investigation of such systems at a later stage could not
simply take things at face value, but would involve seeking to
uncover the processes underlying the development and later
operation of the system, which would be by no means a
straightforward undertaking (calls perhaps for a project on
Information and Systems Archaeology). Similar strictures
apply to all historical research, whatever sources are involved.
Moreover, in ‘doing history’ of any sort, one must take
account of the ways in which it might be ‘done’ differently by
people from different regions, linguistic backgrounds and so
on – the paper by Heinrich and Riedl for instance offers an
account of the development of Business Informatics among
the German-speaking IS community centred on Wirtschaft-
sinformatik. This will involve awareness of how various polar
antitheses might play out in the history both ‘of’ and ‘in’ the
IS field (cf., Pedersen, 2002). Such antitheses include regional
contrasts, rich vs poor, upper vs lower class, privileged vs
not-so-privileged IS folk, English-speaking vs non-English
speaking. IS historians need to ponder issues such as power
and resistance, authority and legitimacy, order and obedi-
ence, governance and coercion. In the same vein, we should
better understand the meaning of other axes of social
differentiation (such as gender and race) related to IS.
IS historians need to face the many conscious choices that
need to be made with regard to the philosophical, theoretical,
and methodological issues related to historical research and
historical narratives. In this way, they can participate
effectively in the unending dialogue between the present and
the past (Carr, 1961: 30). IS academics also need to ensure that
our contemporaries – students, colleagues, and those in other
areas of our academic institutions and funding bodies – are
aware of the main themes and issues in IS history. This will
involve seeking to focus on certain continuities and
discontinuities, such as the way in which terms such as
‘information’ and ‘communication’ have been understood and
used both before and after the advent of digital computers
and ICT in gene ral. Willi ams (1976: 63) noted that:
In controversy about communication systems and com-
munication theory it is often useful to recall the unresolved
range of the original noun of action, represented at its
extremes by transmit, a one-way process, and share y a
common or mutual process.
Indeed, the history of technology is not merely a case of
continuities or discontinuities, but also one of surprisal and
confrontation. This often occurs as a result of the ways in
which ICT develops and becomes imbricated into various
facets of our social existence, often bringing ou t hitherto
neglected or unrecognized aspects of those facets or
practices. For instance, the focus on ‘office automation’ in
the 1970s and 1980s was initially on using new technology
for office-situated tasks such as filing, copying, and typing.
Yet it soon became clear that the purpose and function of
the office was not merely centred on these tasks; the office
was also critical as a site of informal exchange and focus for
aspects of organizational culture and learning. Similar
observations might be made with regard to developments
around e-commerce, e-government, and social networking,
each initially being seen as a mechanism with ramifications
in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, but later under-
stood to have substantive impact as well as enhancing our
understanding of the pre-existing state of affairs.
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Markus’ fear that the disciplinary turf of IS will be cut up
and dragged away from us continues to be well-founded,
indeed in some countries it may be even more pressing
than it was in the late 1990s. Thus, there is the danger that
in researching IS history we are simply writing our own
epitaph. On the other hand, historical narratives centred on
IS may well help make the case for the distinctiveness of the
field, simultaneously demonstrating the ways in which it
relates to its precursors as well charting potentially fruitful
inter-disciplinary alliances. Efforts over the past 10–15
years or more have largely centred on the development of
characteristically distinctive IS theories, yet ironically the
range of theories ‘borrowed’ and adapted from elsewhere
has continued to grow as evidenced by the website/wiki
devoted to ‘theories used in IS research’ .
8
Perhaps, it is time
to pay less attention to creating IS theories, and more to
creating IS histories. This will involve remedying the
lacunae that Hirschheim and Klein lament in the knowledge
of those attending an IS conference who did not know the
relevance and meaning of LEO. It will also involve ensuing
that there is an understanding of the derivation of terms
such as ‘the registry’, now a commonplace among those with
problems with Windows. Students should have read about or
at least have some knowledge of LEO, and perhaps they
might also be advised to read fictional ‘pre-histories’ such as
The Difference Engine by Gibson and Sterling (1991). We
should also pay attention to parallel histories of earlier and
other technologies for any lessons that might be drawn. For
instance, it is worth reading the report on the 1953
symposium on Computing edited by B. Bowden under the
title ‘Faster Than Thought’, published by Pitman and now
available on Google.
9
It now appears remarkably prescient
with regard to the impact of computer technology, and
differs greatly from the very conservative forecasts reputedly
emerging from IBM’s chief Tom Watson (see below).
Some of the papers that follow (e.g., Campbell-Kelly and
Swartz, and Jacobs) look at technologies that failed to take
off, and in writing the intellectual history of ideas related to
IS we need to record the ways in which central IS-related
ideas grew and/or diminished over time, drawing attention
to the faddishness of the field, particularly in terms of topic
such as MIS, Total Quality Management (TQM), BPR, and
various other TLAs!
10
This needs to be part of an IS
historical account that counters the pervasiveness of the
‘good news’ view of technological advances, itself an
example of the Whig interpretation of history. Such efforts
can take the ir place as part of an acceptance of Foucault’s
admonitions regarding the changes in what is regarded as
essential and what as contingent. This applies particularly
to predictions and prognostications about technology, there
being a long history of statements that in retrospect appear
fatuous. For instance, in the nineteenth cen tury, there were
initial warnings that London would soon be knee-deep in
horse droppings; later, as cars became more popular for the
very rich, this changed to admonitions that there would
soon be a shortage of chauffeurs. With regard to computers,
this readership will be well aware of the statements relating
to the maximum number of computers that would be
needed worldwide (around 100), or the lack of any demand
for a computer in the home.
11
An understanding of the
rationales behind such claims might help in our response to
current ones that ‘Google is making us stupid’ (Carr, 2008 ),
or that our brains are being changed by our use of the
internet (Greenfield, 2003).
12
But we need to be careful in the way in which we seek to
accomplish the dream of belonging that underl ies efforts
involved in creating an IS history. In the UK, there now
exists an organization that goes under the grand name of
The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. It
has been granted this status as number 100 on a list of
Livery Companies that march in order of their numbering
at the annual parade for the incoming Lord Mayor of the
City of London. They take their place together with the
Worshipful Companies of Tax Consultants and Interna-
tional Bankers. Their website proclaims that:
Each livery company has an armorial bearing or coat
of arms. Our own coat of arms symbolises our identity
and objectives in the following ways: Vert (green) is
associated with video displays. Azure (blue) and the stars
scattered on the shield represent electricity, the power
that enables IT. The stars also spread light, just as
IT spreads knowledge. Or (gold) is one of the best
conductors of electricity. The book and keys symbolise
knowledge and access to knowledge. The crest features
Mercury, the messenger god, who embodies communica-
tion. The griffin (half lion, half eagle) and Pegasus (the
winged horse) symbolise energy, speed, intelligence and
reliability. Our company motto, Cito, means ‘swiftly’. As
well as describing the way our members apply IT, the
word incorporates the ini tial letters of our name, the
Company of Information Technologists. http://www.wcit.
org.uk/members/anon/new.html?destination ¼ %2Findex.
html
Like many of Dickens’ parodies, reality is not that far from
his fictional creations: not so much a case of caveat emptor,
rather ‘cavete historici’!
Notes
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Price, accessed 9 December 2012.
2 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/, accessed 9 December 2012.
3 (NB: One of us in commenting on an early draft posed the
question ‘I wonder if a distinction between “foreign” and “alien”
would be useful? We cannot hope to understand that which is
alien, but foreigners are our cousins’. This evoked the response
that in the United States, two of our numbers are themselves
classified as aliens!)
4 The British Isles is yet another term – but a geographical one.
This English junior school website offers a very clear explana-
tion http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/
questions/britain.html, accessed 9 December 2012
5 In preparing this essay, one of our number suggested that we
might try to produce a family tree of the different areas and the
ways in which they had grown and interrelated. But we decided
that whatever we did produce would be at best highly partial
and contentious – moreover, we would find it difficult to
indicate the differences between parts of this ‘global family’
emanating from different parts of the world.
6 It is not exactly clear who is included/excluded in Markus’ ‘we’
and ‘ours’ – see Bryant and Land (2012) from where this
specific point is taken up.
7 For more about historical methods and various influences upon
them see, that is, Bloch (1953); Carr (1961); Gottschalk (1969);
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Hexter (1971); Shafer (1974); Tuchman (1981); Novick, P.
(1988); Bijker et al. (1990); Kieser (1994); Howell and Prevenier
(2001); Marwick (2001); Wineburg (2001); Cannadine (2002);
Jones and Zeitlin (2007).
8 http://www.fsc.yorku.ca/york/istheory/wiki/index.php/Main_
Page, accessed 9 December 2012
9 http://archive.org/details/FasterThanThought, accessed 9 December
2012
10 Three Letter Acronyms
11 A number of early forecasts have been reported including from
IBM’s Tom Watson, Howard Aitken, and others. Most of these
reports are themselves myths and good examples of how we make
history – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson.
12 Each of these might be termed as an example of ‘eminence-
based research’.
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About the authors
Antony Bryant is currently the Professor of Informatics at
Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK. His current
research includes investigation of how the Open Source
model might be developed as a contributory feature for the
reconstructed financial sector in the wake of the economic
melt-down, coining the term Mutuality 2.0 and developing
the concept in various contexts.
He has written extensively on research methods, being
the Senior Editor of The SAGE Handbook of Grounded
Theory (SAGE, 2007) – co-edited with Kathy Charmaz with
whom he has worked extensively within the area of
Grounded Theory and research methods in general.
Alistair Black is a full Professor in the Graduate School of
Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, USA. Recent authored/co-authored
books include The Early Information Society (2007) and
Books, Buildings and Social Engineering (2009), a socio-
architectural history of public libraries in Britain before
World War II. With Peter Hoare, he edited Volume 3
(covering 1850–2000) of the Cambridge History of Libraries
in Britain and Ireland (2006). He is currently the North
American editor of Library and Information History,alsothe
co-editor of Library Trends.
Frank Land started his career in computing with J. Lyons in
1953, working on the pioneering LEO Computer. In 1967,
he joined the London School of Economics to establish
teaching and research in systems analysis, becoming
Professor of Systems Analysis in 1982. In 1986 he joined
the London Business School as the Professor of Information
Management. He retired in 1991 and was appointed
Emeritus Professor at the LSE in 2000. He is a Fellow of
the British Computer Society and was awarded a Fellowship
of the AIS in 2001 and the AIS LEO Award in 2003.
As a researcher, Frank has worked with Enid Mumford
and others on sociotechnical ideas since the early 1970.
More recently, he has become involved with work in
Knowledge Management, focussing on the manipulative
aspects of KM.
Jaana Porra is an Associate Professor at the University of
Houston, C.T. Bauer College of Business, Texas, USA. Her
research interests include: IS history, long-term organiza-
tional and IS evolution and change, colonial systems,
systems the ory, and qualitative research methods. Together
with Rudy Hirschheim and Michael S. Parks, she has
written an account of the IT function within Texaco. She
has published in journals such as Information Systems
Research, Management Information Systems Quarterly, and
Journal of the Association for the Information Systems.
Before her academic career, she worked in the IS industry
in Finland.
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