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Background and Theoretical Assumptions

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Computers in Swedish Society

Part of the book series: History of Computing ((HC))

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Abstract

Bang, the last file goes in the garbage can. That’s how I picture the late summer of 2007 when we at the Corporate Strategy Department move to Stureplan. Full digitization is what counts. I have no intention of riding there and back on the Hässelby–Stureplan metro just because I have forgotten a paper. Most of it is already thrown away, even if some documents were scanned. The 4-cm-thick evaluation study of the TIDAS project is also thrown away. That’s typical, just as I was asked to write some lines about it.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Erik Sandström, “En resa i TIDas,” autobiography no. 54, http://www.tekniskamuseet.se/it-minnen (accessed June 1, 2009).

  2. 2.

    “Computers” and “information technology (IT),” and also “history of computing” and “IT history” are used synonymously in this book.

  3. 3.

    Earlier accounts of the project are: Per Lundin, Documenting the Use of Computers in Swedish Society between 1950 and 1980: Final Report on the Project “From Computing Machines to IT” (Stockholm, 2009); idem, “From Computing Machines to IT: Collecting, Documenting, and Preserving Source Material on Swedish IT-History,” in History of Nordic Computing 2: Second IFIP WG9.7 Conference, HiNC2, Turku, Finland, August 21–23, 2007: Revised Selected Papers, ed. John Impagliazzo, Timo Järvi and Petri Paju (Berlin, Heidelberg & New York, 2009), 65–73; idem, “Inledning: Projektet och fokusgruppen,” in Användarna och datorerna: En historik 1960–1985, ed. Birgitta Frejhagen (Stockholm, 2009), 13–20; idem, “Metoder för att dokumentera historia,” in ibid., 21–30.

  4. 4.

    Thomas J. Misa, “Understanding ‘How Computing Changed the World,’” IEEE Annals in the History of Computing 29, no. 4 (2007), 52 f. A similar shift in perspective for the history of technology in general has previously been advocated by David Edgerton, “From Innovation to Use: Ten Eclectic Theses on the Historiography of Technology,” History and Technology 16 (1999), 111–36.

  5. 5.

    Misa, “Understanding ‘How Computing Changed the World,’” 53 ff.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., 56 ff.

  7. 7.

    James W. Cortada, The Digital Hand: How Computers Changed the Work of American Manufacturing, Transportation, and Retail Industries (Oxford, 2004); idem, The Digital Hand: Volume 2, How Computers Changed the Work of American Financial, Telecommunications, Media, and Entertainment Industries (Oxford, 2006); idem, The Digital Hand: Volume 3, How Computers Changed the Work of American Public Sector Industries (Oxford, 2008). He summarizes his three-volume work in James W. Cortada, “The Digital Hand: How Information Technology Changes the Way Industries Worked in the United States,” Business History Review 80, no. 4 (2006), 755–66; idem, “Studying the Role of IT in the Evolution of American Business Practices: A Way Forward,” IEEE Annals in the History of Computing 29, no. 4 (2007), 28–39.

  8. 8.

    Cortada, “The Digital Hand,” 760 f.; idem, “Studying the Role of IT in the Evolution of American Business Practices,” 33 f.

  9. 9.

    Examples of other studies pursuing a user perspective in a similar fashion are William Aspray and Paul E. Ceruzzi, eds., The Internet and American Business (Cambridge, MA, 2008); David Caminer, ed., User-Driven Innovation: The World’s First Business Computer (London, 1996); Thomas Haigh, “Inventing Information Systems: The Systems Men and the Computers, 1950–1968,” Business History Review 75, no. 1 (2001), 15–61; idem, “The Chromium-Plated Tabulator: Institutionalizing an Electronic Revolution,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 23, no. 4 (2001), 75–104; Arthur L. Norberg, Computers and Commerce: A Study of Technology and Management at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company, Engineering Research Associates, and Remington Rand, 1946–1957 (Cambridge, MA, 2005); Petri Paju, “National Projects and International Users: Finland and Early European Computerization,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 30, no. 4 (2008), 77–91; JoAnne Yates, Structuring the Information Age: Life Insurance and Technology in the Twentieth Century (Baltimore, 2005).

  10. 10.

    In addition to my own Documenting the Use of Computers in Swedish Society between 1950 and 1980, I have found Hans Fogelberg’s working paper Research on IT Use and Users in Sweden, with Particular Focus on 1990–2010 (Stockholm, 2011) useful when compiling this historiographical survey.

  11. 11.

    Jan Annerstedt et al., Datorer och politik: Studier i en ny tekniks politiska effekter på det svenska samhället (Lund, 1970). See also Jan Annerstedt, Staten och datorerna: En studie av den officiella datorutvecklings- och datorforskningspolitiken (Stockholm, 1969) and the computer scientist Sten Henriksson’s section in Peter Naur, Datamaskinerna och samhället, med ett tillägg om svenska förhållanden av Sten Henriksson, trans. Sten Henriksson (Lund, 1969).

  12. 12.

    Hans De Geer, På väg till datasamhället: Datatekniken i politiken 1946–1963 (Stockholm, 1992); Hans Glimell, Återerövra datapolitiken! En rapport om staten och informationsteknologin under fyra decennier (Linköping, 1989); Sten Henriksson, “Datapolitikens död och återkomst,” in Infrastruktur för informationssamhället: Teknik och politik, ed. Barbro Atlestam (Stockholm, 1995); idem, “De galna åren – en efterskrift,” in Informationssamhället – åter till framtiden, ed. Barbro Atlestam (Stockholm, 2004); Kent Lindkvist, Datateknik och politik: Datapolitiken i Sverige 1945–1982 (Lund, 1984); Thorsten Nybom, “Det nya statskontorets framväxt 1960–1965,” in Statskontoret 1680–1980: En jubileums- och årsskrift, ed. Arne Granholm and Margot Rydén (Stockholm, 1980), 133–79.

  13. 13.

    Lars Ilshammar, Offentlighetens nya rum: Teknik och politik i Sverige 1969–1999 (Örebro, 2002); Jonas Johansson, Du sköna nya tid? Debatten om informationssamhället i riksdag och storting under 1990-talet (Linköping, 2006). See also Stefan Karlsson, Nödvändighetens väg: Världsbildande gränsarbete i skildringar av informationssamhället (Karlstad, 2005); Åsa Söderlind, Personlig integritet som informationspolitik: Debatt och diskussion i samband med tillkomsten av Datalag (1973:289) (Borås, 2009).

  14. 14.

    See, for instance, Thomas Kaiserfeld, “Computerizing the Swedish Welfare State: The Middle Way of Technological Success and Failure,” Technology & Culture 37 (1996), 249–79; Per Lundin, “Designing Democracy: The UTOPIA-Project and the Role of Labor Movement in Technological Change during the 1970s and the 1980s,” in History of Nordic Computing 3: Third IFIP WG9.7 Conference, HiNC 3, Stockholm, Sweden, October 18–20, 2010: Revised Selected Papers, ed. John Impagliazzo, Per Lundin and Benkt Wangler (Heidelberg, 2011), 187–95; Bertil Rolandsson, Facket, informationsteknologin och politiken: Strategier och perspektiv inom LO 1976–1996 (Göteborg, 2003).

  15. 15.

    Karl Johan Åström, “Early Control Development in Sweden,” European Journal of Control 13 (2007), 1–24; Tord Jöran Hallberg, IT-gryning: Svensk datahistoria från 1840- till 1960-talet (Lund, 2007); Jörgen Lund, Från kula till data (Stockholm, 1989); Kjell Mellberg, Gunnar Wedell and Bo Lindestam, Fyrtio år av den svenska datahistorien: Från Standard radiofabrik till …? (Stockholm, 1997); Per Arne Persson, “Transformation of the Analog: The Case of the Saab BT 33 Artillery Fire Control Simulator and the Introduction of the Digital Computer as Control Technology,” IEEE Annals in the History of Computing 21, no. 2 (1999), 52–64. Valuable historical information is also found in the computer club Datasaabs vänner’s book series on the history of Datasaab: Conny Johansson, ed., Tema gudar (Linköping, 2002); Bertil Knutsson, ed., Tema bank: Datasaab och bankerna (Linköping, 1996); Viggo Wentzel, ed., Tema D21 (Linköping, 1994); idem, ed., Tema flyg: Flygets datorpionjärer (Linköping, 1995); Sven Yngvell, ed., Tema D22–D23: Tunga linjens uppgång och fall (Linköping, 1997). Of interest are also several of the essays in Janis Bubenko, Jr., John Impagliazzo and Arne Sølvberg, eds., History of Nordic Computing: IFIP WG9.7 First Working Conference on the History of Nordic Computing (HiNC1), June 16–18, 2003, Trondheim, Norway (New York, 2005). On the Swedish difference engines of the nineteenth century, see Michael Lindgren, Glory and Failure: The Difference Engines of Johann Müller, Charles Babbage and Georg and Edvard Scheutz, trans. Craig G. McKay, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA, 1990).

  16. 16.

    Anders Carlsson, “Tekniken – politikens frälsare?: Om matematikmaskiner, automation och ingenjörer vid mitten av 50-talet,” Arbetarhistoria 23 (1999), 23–30; idem, “Elektroniska hjärnor: Debatten om datorer, automation och ingenjörer 1955–58,” in Artefakter: Industrin, vetenskapen och de tekniska nätverken, ed. Sven Widmalm (Hedemora & Möklinta, 2004), 245–85; Magnus Johansson, “Early Analog Computers in Sweden—With Examples From Chalmers University of Technology and the Swedish Aerospace Industry,” IEEE Annals in the History of Computing 18, no. 4 (1996), 27–33; idem, Smart, Fast and Beautiful: On Rhetoric of Technology and Computing Discourse in Sweden 1955–1995 (Linköping, 1997); idem, “Big Blue Gets Beaten: The Technological and Political Controversy of the First Large Swedish Computerization Project in a Rhetoric of Technology Perspective,” IEEE Annals in the History of Computing 21, no. 2 (1999), 14–30; Tom Petersson, I teknikrevolutionens centrum: Företagsledning och utveckling i Facit, 1957–1972 (Uppsala, 2003); idem, “Facit and the BESK Boys: Sweden’s Computer Industry (1956–1962),” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 27, no. 4 (2005), 23–30; idem, “Private and Public Interests in the Development of the Early Swedish Computer Industry: Facit, Saab and the Struggle for National Dominance”, in Science for Welfare and Warfare: Technology and State Initiative in Cold War Sweden, ed. Per Lundin, Niklas Stenlås and Johan Gribbe (Sagamore Beach, 2010), 109–29.

  17. 17.

    Lena Andersson-Skog, “Från normalspår till bredband: Svensk kommunikationspolitik i framtidens tjänst 1850–2000,” in Omvandlingens sekel: Perspektiv på ekonomi och samhälle i 1900-talets Sverige, ed. Lena Andersson-Skog and Olle Krantz (Lund, 2002), 117–43; Barbro Atlestam, “Datornät,” in Infrastruktur för informationssamhället: Teknik och politik, ed. Barbro Atlestam (Stockholm, 1995), 113–27; Inga Hamngren, Jan Odhnoff and Jeroen Wolfers, De byggde Internet i Sverige, 2nd ed. (Stockholm, 2009); Kaarina Lehtisalo, The History of NORDUnet: Twenty-Five Years of Networking Cooperation in the Nordic Countries (Hørsholm, 2005). Although the historical findings are limited, the essays in the interdisciplinary anthology The World’s Largest Machine: Global Telecommunications and Human Condition (Linköping, 1995) edited by Magnus Karlsson and Lennart Sturesson as well as Lars Ilshammar’s chapter, “Från supervapen till supermarket: Utvecklingen av Internet 1957–1997,” in Den konstruerade världen: Tekniska system i historiskt perspektiv, ed. Pär Blomkvist and Arne Kaijser (Stockholm & Stehag, 1998), 323–43, and Bernt Skovdahl’s book, Den digitala framtiden: Om förutsagda informationssamhällen och framväxande IT-realiteter (Stockholm, 2009), might be of interest.

  18. 18.

    Joakim Appelquist, Informationsteknik och organisatorisk förändring: Teknik, organisation och produktivitet inom svensk banksektor 1975–2003 (Lund, 2005); Christer Johansson and Jörgen Nissen, Människa, informationsteknik, samhälle: MITS – en forskargrupp (Linköping, 1996); Magnus Karlsson, The Liberalisation of Telecommunications in Sweden: Technology and Regime Change from the 1960s to 1993 (Linköping, 1998); Jörgen Nissen, Pojkarna vid datorn: Unga entusiaster i datateknikens värld (Stockholm, 1993).

  19. 19.

    Per Olov Broman, Kort historik över framtidens musik: Elektronmusiken och framtidstanken i svenskt 1950- och 60-tal (Stockholm, 2007); Lena Olsson, Det datoriserade biblioteket: Maskindrömmar på 70-talet (Linköping, 1995); Gary Svensson, Digitala pionjärer: Datorkonstens introduktion i Sverige (Stockholm, 2000). See also Ulf Sandqvist, Digitala drömmar: En studie av svenska dator- och tv-spelsbranschen 1980–2005 (Umeå, 2007).

  20. 20.

    Other exceptions are a number of short essays in Dædalus, the annual of the National Museum of Science and Technology and the papers presented at the Third IFIP Conference on the History of Nordic Computing. Mats Höjeberg, ed., Dædalus 2002: Tekniska museets årsbok: Dator till vardags (Stockholm, 2001); John Impagliazzo, Per Lundin and Benkt Wangler, eds., History of Nordic Computing 3: Third IFIP WG9.7 Conference, HiNC 3, Stockholm, Sweden, October 18–20, 2010: Revised Selected Papers (Heidelberg: Springer 2011).

  21. 21.

    Pioneering was the so-called Scandinavian school in systems development. Jørgen Bansler, Systemutveckling: Teori och historia i skandinaviskt perspektiv, trans. Geije Johansson (Lund, 1990); Kristo Ivanov, Systemutveckling och ADB-ämnets utveckling (Linköping, 1984); Markku I. Nurminen, People or Computers: Three Ways of Looking at Information Systems (1986), trans. Päivi Käpylä and Ellen Valle (Lund, 1988).

  22. 22.

    Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch, “Introduction: How Users and Non-Users Matter,” in How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technologies, ed. Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch (Cambridge, MA, 2003). See also their recent update: Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch, “User-Technology Relationships: Some Recent Developments,” in The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, ed. Edward J. Hackett et al., 3rd ed. (Cambridge, MA, 2008), 541–65. It should be noted here that the concept of user is also a matter for discussion in information systems research and other related ICT-disciplines. See, for instance, Roberta Lamb and Rob Kling, “Reconceptualizing Users as Social Actors in Information Systems Research,” MIS Quarterly 27, no. 2 (2003), 197–236.

  23. 23.

    Oudshoorn and Pinch, “Introduction,” 1f.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 2f.

  25. 25.

    An exception is Ronald Kline and Trevor Pinch’s article “Users as Agents of Technological Change: The Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States,” Technology and Culture 37, no. 4 (1996), 763–95; Oudshoorn and Pinch, “Introduction,” 3f.

  26. 26.

    Ruth Schwarz Cowan, “The Consumption Junction: A Proposal for Research Strategies in the Sociology of Technology,” in The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch (Cambridge, MA, 1989), 263; Oudshoorn and Pinch, “Introduction,” 4ff.

  27. 27.

    End users are “those individuals and groups who are affected downstream by products of technological innovation,” the concept lay end users highlights “some end users’ relative exclusion from expert discourse,” and implicated actors are “those silent or not present but affected by the action.” Oudshoorn and Pinch, “Introduction,” 6.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., 4ff.

  29. 29.

    Ibid., 7ff., 15.

  30. 30.

    “Appropriation occurs when a technical product or service is sold and individuals or households become its owners. In objectification, processes of display reveal the norms and principles of the ‘household’s sense of itself and its place in the world’. Incorporation occurs when technological objects are used in and incorporated into the routines of daily life. ‘Conversion’ is used to describe the processes in which the use of technological objects shape relationships between users and people outside the household. In this process, artifacts become tools for making status claims and for expressing a specific lifestyle to neighbors, colleagues, family, and friends.” Ibid., 14f.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., 16.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., 24.

  33. 33.

    John Krige, “Review: How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology by Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch,” Contemporary Sociology 35, no. 1 (2006), 32.

  34. 34.

    Ibid.

  35. 35.

    Edgerton, “From Innovation to Use”, 111–120; idem, The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 (Oxford, 2007), ix–xviii.

  36. 36.

    JoAnne Yates, “How Business Enterprises Use Technology: Extending the Demand Side Turn,” Enterprise and Society 7, no. 3 (2006), 426f.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., 430.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., 434.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 424f. It should be noted here that the above-mentioned James W. Cortada examines Yates’ argument when discussing the raison d’être for his monumental study The Digital Hand. Cortada, “Studying the Role of IT in the Evolution of American Business Practices,” 30f.

  40. 40.

    There are alternative notions to elite users, but we argue that they are too narrowly defined and do not fully capture the group of users that have the power to shape major historical transformations. With the notion “lead users,” Eric von Hippel emphasizes that innovation often is user-driven. We want, however, to cover more than the role of users in “product innovation,” which is von Hippel’s main focus. Eric von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 1–17; Oudshoorn and Pinch, “User-Technology Relationships,” 542f. Other alternative concepts that we have considered, but, in the end, rejected, are “qualified” users as well as “critical” users. An objection raised against the first is that many users that can be identified as qualified do not necessarily have the position or the possibility “to change the world,” i.e., that they are qualified does not mean that they possess elite attributes. An objection to the second concept is that it is already used by researchers on user-centered design and they do it with a different purpose. With “critical users,” they refer to “users with severe disabilities (motion, sensory or cognitive impairments) who can illustrate the extreme end of the usability spectrum and on whom the impact of poor design is greatest in terms of function and stigma. [---] Such users are in a valid critical position because they have similar lifestyles, aspirations and tastes as creative designers, but have to adapt to ill thought out products that may not have been designed with consideration of their capability limitations.” See, for instance, Hua Dong et al., “Critical User Forums: An Effective User Research Method for Inclusive Design,” Design Journal 8, no. 2 (2005), 49–59.

  41. 41.

    We do, however, acknowledge the analytical value in discussing users at an aggregated level.

  42. 42.

    George E. Marcus, “Elite as a Concept, Theory, and Tradition,” in Elites: Ethnographic Issues, ed. George E. Marcus (Albuquerque, 1983), 7–13.

  43. 43.

    Marcus, “Elite as a Concept, Theory, and Tradition,” 16f.

  44. 44.

    Elite users’ involvement with technology can, furthermore, be described with Oudshoorn and Pinch’s notion of users and technology as coconstructed. Yates even suggests that this notion could be extended from individual to firm users. Yates, “How Business Enterprises Use Technology,” 437.

  45. 45.

    Maria Ågren, “Synlighet, vikt, trovärdighet – och självkritik: Några synpunkter på källkritikens roll i dagens historieforskning,” Historisk tidskrift 2005:2, 249–62.

  46. 46.

    See, for instance, Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithaca, 2001), 37–39.

  47. 47.

    Roy Rosenzweig, “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era,” The American Historical Review 108 (2003), 735–62. The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University also provides on their Web site several insightful essays and discussions on history in the digital era: http://chnm.gmu.edu/ (accessed June 10, 2009).

  48. 48.

    Rosenzweig, “Scarcity or Abundance?” 741–5.

  49. 49.

    A more straightforward solution is to print out digital documents on paper, but then there remain, of course, complex, dynamic, and interactive objects, such as computer games, digital art, and Web pages generated from databases. This is because virtually every Web page is linked to every other and retaining the full complexity requires ultimately the whole Web to be preserved. Thomas J. Misa, “Organizing the History of Computing: ‘Lessons Learned’ at the Charles Babbage Institute,” in History of Nordic Computing 2, 8f.; Rosenzweig, “Scarcity or Abundance?” 742.

  50. 50.

    Rosenzweig, “Scarcity or Abundance?” 743f.

  51. 51.

    John Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History, 4th ed., with Seàn Lang (Harlow, 2006), 314f.

  52. 52.

    Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge, with a new epilogue by the author (Middletown, CT, 2005), chaps. 7 and 9.

  53. 53.

    See, for instance, Anders Brändström and Sune Åkerman, eds., Icke skriftliga källor: Huvudtema I (Umeå, 1991); Mats Burström, Samtidsarkeologi: Introduktion till ett forskningsfält (Lund, 2007); Ronald E. Doel and Thomas Söderqvist, eds., The Historiography of Contemporary Science, Technology, and Medicine: Writing Recent Science (New York, 2006); David W. Kingery, Learning from Things: Method and Theory of Material Culture Studies (Washington, 1996); Steven Lubar and David W. Kingery, eds., History from Things: Essays on Material Culture (Washington, 1993); Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (London, 1996); Bosse Sundin and Sverker Sörlin, “Landskapets värden: Kring miljö- och kulturmiljövård som historiskt problemfält,” in Miljön och det förflutna: Landskap, minnen, värden, ed. Richard Pettersson and Sverker Sörlin (Umeå, 1998), 3–19.

  54. 54.

    This distinction corresponds roughly to the difference between documentary and reported evidence. Seldon and Pappworth, By Word of Mouth, 4f. Cf. Howell and Prevenier, From Reliable Sources, chap. 1.

  55. 55.

    Other kinds of sources of this type could be the (re)constructions of artifacts and the like.

  56. 56.

    Seldon and Pappworth, By Word of Mouth, 13f.

  57. 57.

    Cecilia Hammarlund-Larsson, “Samlingarna och samlandet,” in Nordiska museet under 125 år, ed. Hans Medelius, Bengt Nyström and Elisabet Stavenow-Hidemark (Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag, 1998), 180–239; Mátyás Szabó, “Fältarbeten och forskning,” in ibid., 240–71.

  58. 58.

    Nationalmuseet in Denmark, Norsk Folkemuseum in Norway, Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland (The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland) and Finska Litteratursällskapet (The Finnish Literature Society) also acquired workers’ memories in a similar fashion. Charlotte Hagström and Lena Marander-Eklund, “Att arbeta med frågelistor,” in Frågelistan som källa och metod, ed. Charlotte Hagström and Lena Marander-Eklund (Lund, 2005), 11f.; Knut Kjeldstadli, Det förflutna är inte vad det en gång var, trans. Sven-Erik Torhell (Lund, 1998), 185; Sune Åkerman, “Mjukdata,” in Usynlig historie: Foredrag fra den 17. Nordiske fagkonferensen for historisk metodelære i Tranum Klit 19.–23. mai 1981, ed. Bjørn Qviller and Birgitte Wåhlin (Oslo, 1983), 47–54. An interesting parallel is the British mass-observation project, which ran between 1937 and the early 1950s. Dorothy Sheridan, “Ordinary Lives and Extraordinary Writers: The British Mass-Observation Project,” in Frågelist och berättarglädje: Om frågelistor som forskningsmetod och folklig genre, ed. Bo G. Nilsson, Dan Waldetoft, and Christina Westergren (Stockholm, 2003), 45–55.

  59. 59.

    See, for instance, Charlotte Hagström and Lena Marander-Eklund, eds., Frågelistan som källa och metod (Lund, 2005); Nilsson, Waldetoft, and Westergren, Frågelist och berättarglädje.

  60. 60.

    Dan Waldetoft, ed., Framtiden var vår: Civilingenjörer skriver om sitt liv och arbete (Stockholm, 1993).

  61. 61.

    Soraya de Chadarevian, “Using Interviews to Write the History of Science,” in The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology, ed. Thomas Söderqvist (Amsterdam, 1997), 54f.; Alistair Thomson, “Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History,” The Oral History Review 34, no. 1 (2006), 51.

  62. 62.

    The project had, for instance, to rely on human notetakers because there were no audio recorders. Linda Shopes, “Making Sense of Oral History,” History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/, February 2002 (accessed March 9, 2009).

  63. 63.

    Ibid.

  64. 64.

    Thomson, “Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History,” 49–70. See also Shopes, “Making Sense of Oral History.”

  65. 65.

    Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History (Oxford, 1978).

  66. 66.

    de Chadarevian, “Using Interviews to Write the History of Science,” 52; David Gaunt, “Oral history och levnadsöden,” in Icke skriftliga källor: Huvudtema I, ed. Anders Brändström and Sune Åkerman (Umeå, 1991), 64f.; Seldon and Pappworth, By Word of Mouth, 4; Tosh, The Pursuit of History, 334.

  67. 67.

    A good overview of the critical developments in oral history is given in Thomson, “Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History,” 49–70. See also Geoffrey Cubitt, History and Memory (Manchester, 2007), 70; Anna Green, “Individual Remembering and ‘Collective Memory’: Theoretical Presuppositions and Contemporary Debates,” The Journal of the Oral History Society 32, no. 2 (2004), 35–44; Alessandro Portelli, “The Death of Luigi Trastulli: Memory and the Event,” in The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories (Albany, NY, 1991), 1–26.

  68. 68.

    “Invisible” could here be replaced by “forgotten” or “hidden” without losing its essential meaning. Birgitta Odén, “Den ‘osynliga’ historien,” in Usynlig historie: Foredrag fra den 17. Nordiske fagkonferensen for historisk metodelære i Tranum Klit 19.–23. mai 1981, ed. Bjørn Qviller and Birgitte Wåhlin (Oslo, 1983), 9–24.

  69. 69.

    Seldon and Pappworth, By Word of Mouth, 6. See also Lewis Anthony Dexter, ed., Elite and Specialized Interviewing (Evanston, 1970); Eva McMahan, Elite Oral History Discourse: A Study of Cooperation and Coherence (Tuscaloosa, 1989).

  70. 70.

    “What Is a Witness Seminar?” http://www.ccbh.ac.uk/witnessseminars.php (accessed June 15, 2009).

  71. 71.

    Ibid.

  72. 72.

    Torbjörn Nilsson, personal communication, August 24, 2007; “Vittnesseminarier: Samtidshisto-riska institutet” (unpublished document). In 2004, Södertörn University also initiated a pilot project on elite oral history aiming at central political decision-makers. Ylva Waldemarsson, “Politiska makthavare som historisk källa,” Arkiv, samhälle och forskning 2007:2, 6–23; idem, “Den redi­gerade källan,” Arbetarhistoria 2008:1, 32–5.

  73. 73.

    Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, “Oral History and the History of Science: A Review Essay with Speculations,” International Journal of Oral History 10, no. 3 (1989), 270–85. See also de Chadarevian, “Using Interviews to Write the History of Science,” 51–70; Lillian Hoddeson, “The Conflict of Memories and Documents: Dilemmas and Pragmatics of Oral History,” in The Historiography of Contemporary Science, Technology, and Medicine: Writing Recent Science, 187–200; E. M. Tansey, “Witnessing the Witnesses: Potentials and Pitfalls of the Witness Seminar in the History of Twentieth-Century Medicine,” in ibid., 260–78.

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    de Chadarevian, “Using Interviews to Write the History of Science,” 51f.; Hoddeson, “The Conflict of Memories and Documents,” 187; Soojung-Kim Pang, “Oral History and the History of Science,” 271ff.; Tilli Tansey, “Telling Like It Was,” New Scientist, December 16, 1995, 49.

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    “Center for History of Physics,” http://www.aip.org/history/ (accessed June 10, 2009). See also “Sources for History of Quantum Physics,” http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/guides/ahqp/ (accessed June 10, 2009).

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    “Oral History Collection,” http://www.chemheritage.org/exhibits/ex-nav2.html (accessed June 10, 2009); Rasheedah S. Young, “Oral History at CHF,” Chemical Heritage 23, no. 2 (2005), 34–5.

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    Tansey, “Witnessing the Witnesses,” 260f.; “Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine,” http://www.ucl.ac.uk/histmed/publications/wellcome_witnesses_c20th_med (accessed June 10, 2009).

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    Seldon and Pappworth, By Word of Mouth, 14.

  79. 79.

    Arne Hessenbruch, “The Trials and Promise of a Web-History of Materials Research,” in The Science–Industry Nexus: History, Policy, Implications, ed. Karl Grandin, Nina Wormbs, and Sven Widmalm (Sagamore Beach, 2004), 397–413; idem, “‘The Mutt Historian’: The Perils and Opportunities of Doing History of Science On-Line,” in The Historiography of Contemporary Science, Technology, and Medicine, 279–98.

  80. 80.

    Hessenbruch, “‘The Mutt Historian,’” 279f.; Thomas Söderqvist, “Preface,” in The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology, vii.

  81. 81.

    Hessenbruch, “‘The Mutt Historian,’” 294.

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    Misa, “Organizing the History of Computing,” 2ff.; Arthur L. Norberg, “A Perspective on the History of the Charles Babbage Institute and the Charles Babbage Foundation,” IEEE Annals of History of Computing 23, no. 4 (2001), 12–23; Thomas J. Misa, personal communication, May 25, 2007.

  83. 83.

    “Oral History Database,” http://www.cbi.umn.edu/oh/index.phtml (accessed November 4, 2011).

  84. 84.

    See, for instance, the project on FastLane conducted at CBI. Misa, “Organizing the History of Computing,” 9; Thomas J. Misa and Joline Zepcevski, “Realizing User-Centered Computer History: Designing and Using NSF’s FastLane (1990–Present)” (paper presented at the SHOT meeting, October 12–14, 2008, Lisbon, Portugal).

  85. 85.

    Also CBI was initially supported by two organizations. The above-mentioned Charles Babbage Foundation (CBF) governed the institute together with the University of Minnesota until 1989 when the university assumed complete authority for CBI. Norberg, “A Perspective on the History of the Charles Babbage Institute and the Charles Babbage Foundation,” 20ff.

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    “Oral-History: IEEE Oral History Collection,” http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Oral-History:IEEE_Oral_History_Collection (accessed November 4, 2011); Frederik Nebeker, personal communication, May 22, 2007.

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    The list is not long, but quite impressive. “Computer History Collection,” http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/ (accessed June 10, 2009); “Oral History on Space, Science, and Technology,” http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/dsh/oralhistory.cfm (accessed June 10, 2009).

  88. 88.

    More precisely, the Institute Archives and Special Collections and the MIT Museum have them. “Oral History@MIT,” http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/oral-history/index.html (accessed October 17, 2007); Deborah Douglas, personal communication, October 25, 2007.

  89. 89.

    “Oral Histories Collection,” http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/ (accessed November 4, 2011); Kirsten Tashev and Dag Spicer, personal communication, May 25, 2007. Similar in approach is Silicon Genesis, a collection of oral history interviews with pioneers of the semiconductor industry hosted by Stanford University. “Silicon Genesis: An Oral History of Semiconductor Technology,” http://silicongenesis.stanford.edu/index.html (accessed November 4, 2011).

  90. 90.

    Andreu Veà, “Internet History and Internet Research Methods: Engineering the Worldwide WiWiW Project” (paper prepared for the SHOT meeting, October 12–14, 2008, Lisbon, Portugal); “WiWiW project,” wiwiw.org/(accessed November 4, 2011).

  91. 91.

    John Pickstone and Geof Bowker, “The Manchester Heritage,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 15, no. 3 (1993), 7–8; Geoffrey Tweedale, “The National Archive for the History of Computing,” Journal of the Society of Archivists 10, no. 1 (1989), 1–8; “UK National Archive for the History of Computing,” http://www.chstm.manchester.ac.uk/research/nahc/ (accessed June 10, 2009); James Sumner, e-mail, June 19, 2009. There are also a number of pilot projects that have been carried out in other European countries. The research project “Information Technology in Finland after World War II: The Actors and Their Experiences” that was completed between 2002 and 2005 collected, for instance, 744 stories with the help of an Internet questionnaire. Satu Aaltonen, “Tunteita, tulkintoja ja tietotekniikkaa: ‘Milloin kuulit ensimmäistä kertaa tietokoneista?’ -kyselyn tuloksia” (Turku, 2004), 21; Petri Paju, e-mail, June 22, 2009.

  92. 92.

    Dædalus 1978/79: Tekniska museets årsbok (Stockholm, 1978–1979), 171; “IT-ceum: Det svenska datamuseet,” http://www.itceum.se/ (accessed June 15, 2009).

  93. 93.

    The American historian Ronald J. Grele argues that the origin of oral history in the United States lay as an archival practice, while in Europe, it was the work of research-oriented social historians. Ronald J. Grele, “Oral History as Evidence,” in History of Oral History: Foundations and Methodology, ed. Thomas L. Charlton, Lois E. Myers, and Rebecca Sharpless (Lanham, 2007), 34–40.

  94. 94.

    A notable example of this shift is the large, pan-European research project Soft-EU that investigates computing in Europe from a transnational perspective. See, for instance, Gerard Albert’s introductory piece “Appropriating America: Americanization in the History of European Computing” to a number of thematic articles on the subject in IEEE Annals of History of Computing 32, no. 2 (2010).

  95. 95.

    Thomson, “Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History,” 68–70.

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Lundin, P. (2012). Background and Theoretical Assumptions. In: Computers in Swedish Society. History of Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2933-2_1

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