Computer-Mediated Anthropology

An Online Resource Center

CMA Introduction, Part 2: A BRIEF HISTORY OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED ANTHROPOLOGY

by Noah Porter, July 2004

Some histories of computing have started as far back as the abacus in 3000 B.C., although this is beyond the scope of this historical review (cf Triumph of the Nerds).

"Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, completes the first general purpose progammable calculator in 1941. He pioneers the use of binary math and boolean logic in electronic calculation" (Triumph of the Nerds). From 1943 to 1952, a number of computers were created, including the ENIAC, SSEC, EDSAC, ERA 1101, SEAC, UNIVAC, and IAS. These computers were a far cry from the technology of today in terms of computing power, size, and affordability; this 1953 example demonstrates who bought computers in this era: "IBM shipped its first electronic computer, the 701. During three years of production, IBM sold 19 machines to research laboratories, aircraft companies, and the federal government" (Computer History Museum 2004) "Back then, computers were still rather mysterious, hidden away in giant corporations and university laboratories" (Steele 1992: ix). Personal computers did not yet exist, so simply gaining access to a computer usually involved a process of social negotiation for those whose jobs did not grant them access (p. x-xi); "[i]n the 1960s and 1970s hackers congregated around any computer center that made computer time available for play...Because universities tend to be more flexible than corporations in this regard, most hacker's dens arose in university laboratories" (p. xii-xiii).

The Internet grew out of ARPANET, as this report notes:

A climate of pure research surrounded the entire history of the ARPANET. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was formed with an emphasis towards research, and thus was not oriented only to a military product. The formation of this agency was part of the U.S. reaction to the then Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957. (ARPA draft, III-6). ARPA was assigned to research how to utilize their investment in computers via Command and Control Research (CCR). Dr. J.C.R. Licklider was chosen to head this effort. Licklider came to ARPA from Bolt, Beranek and Newman, (BBN) in Cambridge, MA in October 1962... "Lick was among the first to perceive the spirit of community created among the users of the first time-sharing systems... In pointing out the community phenomena created, in part, by the sharing of resources in one timesharing system, Lick made it easy to think about interconnecting the communities, the interconnection of interactive, on-line communities of people, ..." (ARPA draft, III-21)...As early as 1963, a common question asked of the IPTO directors by the ARPA directors about IPTO projects was "Why don't we rely on the computer industry to do that?", or ocassionally more strongly, "We should not support that effort because ABC (read, "computer industry") will do it - if it's worth doing!" (ARPA draft, III-23) This question leads to an important point - this ARPA research was different from what the computer industry had in mind to do - or was likely to undertake. Since Licklider's creation of the IPTO, the work supported by ARPA/IPTO continued his explicit emphasis on communications. The Completion Report explains, "The ARPA theme is that the promise offered by the computer as a communication medium between people, dwarfs into relative insignificance the historical beginnings of the computer as an arithmetic engine." (ARPA draft, III-24)...Various research outside of ARPA had been done by Paul Baron, Thomas Marill and others... This led Lawrence Roberts and other IPTO staff to formally introduce the topic of networking computers of differing types (incompatible hardware and software) together in order to share resources to the early 1967 meeting of ARPA's Primary Investigators (PI). ...In the spring of 1967 at the University of Michigan, ARPA held its yearly meeting of the "principle investigators" from each of its university and other contractors. (ARPA draft, III-25) Results from the previous year's research was summarized and future research was discussed, either introduced by ARPA or the various researchers present at the meetings. Networking was one of the topics brought up at this meeting. (ARPA draft, III-25)...ARPA's Program Plan for the ARPANET was titled "Resource Sharing Computer Networks". It was submitted June 3, 1968, and approved by the Director June 21, 1968....The Completion Report explains that the Program Plan was, "an interesting document. The stated objectives of the program were to develop experience in interconnection computers and to improve and increase computer research productivity through resource sharing. Technical needs in scientific and military environments were cited as justification for the program objectives. Relevant prior work was described. It was noted that the computer research centers supported or partially supported by IPT provided a unique testbed for computer networking experiments, as well as providing immediate benefits to the centers and valuable research results to the military. The network planning that had gone on was described, the need for a network information center was noted, and the network design was sketched. A five year schedule for network procurement, construction, operation, and transfer out of ARPA was presented. (It was noteworthy that IPT had initially had in mind eventual transfer of the operational network to a common carrier.) Finally a several-million-dollar, several-year budget was stated." (ARPA draft, III-35)

From this, the Internet grew substantially, as Figures 1-4 demonstrate. After ARPANET, "[t]he hacker community became larger and more closely knit" (Steele 1992: xiii), resulting in a "worldwide hacker's community" (p. xiii). However, it took decades for the Internet to trickle down to the less technically literate.

FIGURE 1: Map of ARPANET, 1969 (from http://som.csudh.edu/cis/lpress/history/arpamaps/). It was scanned by Larry Press from the ARPANET Completion Report, Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Burlington, MA, January 4, 1978.

FIGURE 2: Map of ARPANET, July 1977 (from http://som.csudh.edu/cis/lpress/history/arpamaps/). It was scanned by Larry Press from the ARPANET Completion Report, Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Burlington, MA, January 4, 1978.

FIGURE 3: (from http://www.pbs.org/nerds/timeline/network.html)

FIGURE 4: The Internet, January 1999. (from http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/mids_intrworld9901_large.gif) ©Matrix Internet and Directory Services (MIDS) "The cartographic approach employed by MIDS is to map the geographic locations of the Internet hardware (networked computers, known as hosts) as symbols on a world map. The number of hosts is aggregated for major cities and countries and then represented on the map by the coloured circles. The circles are proportionally sized so the larger the circle becomes, the greater the value it represents, which is intuitive and a widely used convention in cartography and statistical graphics" (http://mappa.mundi.net/maps/maps_007/). Used with permission.

In 1971, the first personal computers were briefly sold: "The Kenbak-1, the first personal computer, advertised for $750 in Scientific American. Designed by John V. Blankenbaker using standard medium-scale and small-scale integrated circuits, the Kenbak-1 relied on switches for input and lights for output from its 256-byte memory. In 1973, after selling only 40 machines, Kenbak Corp. closed its doors" (Computer History Museum 2004).

Don Pollock (University of Buffalo) had this to say in his CMA survey response: "We have been doing, literally, computer-mediated anthropology for decades -- I used a big mainframe computer to analyze the HRAF database on punch-cards more than 30 years ago as an undergraduate." He later added: "32 years ago [in 1972]...I wrote my undergrduate honors thesis on the use of computers in anthropology, and not many people apart from the archaeologists were finding much value in it, or were simply scared off. I had been a programmer for a couple of years and in fact had written my first program on the old paper tape (which you probably don't remember) so I was perfectly comfortable with the machines. "

Triumph of the Nerds writes: "Popular Electronics features the MITS Altair 8800 on its cover, January 1975. It is hailed as the first 'personal' computer. Thousands of orders for the 8800 rescue MITS from bankruptcy." (Apparently, the Kenbak-1 was ignored or forgotten.)

Several new personal computers entered the market from 1977 to 1981, including the Commodore PET, the Apple II, the TRS-80, and the IBM PC. These PCs would prove to be more much more successful than the Kenbak-1. (Computer History Museum 2004)

In 1978-1979, Aaron Podolefsky worked on a large-scale project to study how urban communities react to criminal activities. He writes: "In 1979, Chris McCarty ans I began developing a way to manage qualitative data on a mainframe computer using a text editor… Our goal was to develop a means of handling large bodies of qualitative data without sacrificing the richness, unique perspective, and flexibility which…are the hallmarks of qualitative methods" (1987: 15).

Dow (1999) wrote: "Sometime in 1979, I used a 300 baud teletype terminal to connect to a conference system at the University of Michigan. It was my first experience with electronic communication." There were few other anthropologists using computer-mediated communications (CMC) at this time. However, by 1985, along with future-SfAA-president Ted Downing, Dow saw the value of anthropologists being able to communicate over vast distances. "...[C]omputer to computer electronic communication was far more difficult at that time than it is today...The Internet did not exist, but there were dozens of ideas, and implementations, for computers to talk to each other. One of these, ARPA Net, was destined to grow into the Internet, but without lucrative military contracts, anthropologists could not connect to it. It was reserved for the scientific elite" (Dow 1999). Anthropologists did have a number of options available to them for social networking over long distances, such as BITNET, FIDO, and BBSs. Dow (1999) notes that Marc Feldesman at Portland State University started ABBS, the Anthropologist's Bulletin Board System, in July 1986.

From 1984 to 1989, Computer-Assisted Anthropology News was put out by Lee Sailer, Rodney Kirk, and James Dow. The first issue has been described as follows: "Vol 1. No. 1 contains an editorial, a discussion of field note management by Lee Sailer, and a section of short notes called 'Hunting and Gathering Tales' 'devoted to what anthropologists are doing with computers'. It will be a permanent feature of the newsletter. In this issue it contains sixteen items ranging from an account by an archaeologist of how he uses Apples to assist in planning and controlling excavations, to an announcement of funds available from the National Science Foundation. There's a note by a graduate student who has taken a computer to the field (he studied staff interaction on an archaeological field school 'in the South-West'), and a note on a Fortran program which compares representations of three-dimensional objects (e.g. skulls). Most of the lively and friendly notes concern personal computers."

In 1985, "The modern Internet gained support when the National Science foundation formed the NSFNET, linking five supercomputer centers at Princeton University, Pittsburgh, University of California at San Diego, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Cornell University. Soon, several regional networks developed; eventually, the government reassigned pieces of the ARPANET to the NSFNET" (Computer History Museum 2004).

In October 1987, Podolefsky wrote "New tools for old jobs: Computers in the analysis of field notes." He predicted that a fundamental transformation in qualitative research because of comuters. His assessment of computer-usage by anthropologists at the time is noteworthy: "Just a few years ago we were amazed at the 48K capacity of microcomputer memories. Now we think in terms of 20 and even 40 or 50 million bytes of data storage capacity. Anthropologists are taking these machines to the most remote corners of the globe; generally to be used a word processors or for statistical analysis" (p. 16).

White and Truex wrote an article in 1988 entitled: "Anthropology and Computing: The Challenges of the 1990s." In the article, they write: "Computing in anthropology has had an uneven history. Anthropology has been slow to develop its own software and even slower to reward those who have made major and foundational contributions. Development has been encouraged as much from outside the discipline as from within. Computing in anthropology has built on the contributions many people from the 1960s on, but change, in a field often highly resistant to it, for both good and questionable reasons, has been painful" (p. 494). Their article was forward-looking in many respects, but they focued primarily on the possibilities of data analysis rather than communication with colleagues and informants.

By 1989, Fido Boards began to disappear because of BITNET; Dow (1999) writes: "Anthropologists took to BITNET rather than to the nascent Internet or the UNIX newsgroups primarily because it was still an academic discipline and tied to the apron strings of the universities that had nourished it" (Dow 1999).

Meanwhile, "Microsoft's sales for 1989 reach $1 billion, the first year to do so" (Triumph of the Nerds).

In 1990, "The World Wide Web was born when Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, the high-energy physics laboratory in Geneva, developed HyperText Markup Language. HTML, as it is commonly known, allowed the Internet to expand into the World Wide Web, using specifications he developed such as URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). A browser, such as Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer, follows links and sends a query to a server, allowing a user to view a site" (Computer History Museum 2004).

In 1991, "The NSF allowed commercial use of the Internet for the first time" (Computer History Museum 2004). Also, "CERN releases the first Web server in 1991" (Triumph of the Nerds).

Attempts to establish a new subsection of the AAA were undertaken "...at the 1992 annual meeting of the society for the Social Studies of Science, where a group of American anthropologists (Michael Fischer, Sharon Traweek, Rayna Rapp, David Hess, Lisa Handwerker, Shirley Gorenstein, and Daivd Hakken) met to discuss strategies for establishing a Committee on Science and Technology within the AAA." (Escobar 1994: 215 n.10).

In 1992, Brenda Farnell wanted to find a way to represent the motion of her informants without reducing it to text or a static photograph. She writes: "I wandered into the Second Look Computing at the University of Iowa one day in the fall of 1992. With an almost audible sigh, I asked director Joan Huntley if she could perhaps assist me to make some still photographs from my video-tapes. Her response was immediate. 'But you deal with human movement, don't you? Why the heck do you want

to make photographs? Why not make a CD ROM?' 'A CD what?' I replied" (Farnell and Huntley 1995: 9). And that is in fact what they did.

Also in 1992, "the number of hosts breaks 1,000,000." The following year, "The World Wide Web sports a growth rate of 341,634% in service traffic" (Triumph of the Nerds).

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