Actors, Visions and Developments in the History of Computer Communications

Abstract

The history of technology has concerned itself so far to only a minor extent with the linking of computers, terminals and other teleconnections, or with the genesis of special data communications networks and information systems, despite the fact that these have been under development for over 40 years. While some interesting work has been produced on specific issues and network types, large areas of computer communications history have not been subjected to any major treatment as yet. There is a consequent lack of any comprehensive overview of the so-called "merger" of information and communications technology. The reasons for this abstinence seem to be a product firstly of the intermediate position that this technology occupies between telecommunications and computer technology. Secondly, however, the fixation on the part of historians on the early phases of computer technology and the relative lack of attention paid to systemic aspects of the origins and development of computer technology, or to more complex sociotechnical applications concepts such as timesharing or distributed processing has also played a role here. The history of computing is still the history of hardware and not data processing as such. In view of these gaps in research and the lack of specialization and controversy in this field, I should like in the following to outline the development of computer communications, whereby the central focus should be on questions relating to the explanatory power, the limits and the shortcomings of more recent technohistorical approaches such as the "genesis of technology", the analysis of technological visions [Technikleitbilder] and especially "large system theory".