Due: Sunday, Feb. 1, 11:59 pm

I’d like to challenge you to focus closely on a specific piece of technology, gaining enough familiarity with it to begin to understand how it might matter in historical terms. I hope this gives you a chance to practice reading broadly and creatively, in order to bring a historian’s sensibility to a technical phenomenon.

Choose a technology you’ve encountered (or will encounter) during this class but don’t feel you understand. Your task will likely be easier if, rather than choosing an entire category of technology (such as relational database management systems), you choose some small aspect of it (such as an entity-relationship diagram). Answer the following questions about the technology you’ve chosen.

You can find a blank template for this assignment here. You can find an example completed assignment here.

• What is the name of the technology you’re investigating? (Does it also go by other names?)
• Would you describe this technology as software, hardware, a philosophy/methodology/approach, a programming language, a programming library, or something else? Or is it a combination? 
• To the best of your knowledge, when did this technology come into use? (You can always edit this as you learn more.)
• When the technology was released (developed, invented, conceived), what problem did its authors bill it as addressing?
• As best you can tell, is the technology in wide current use?
• Was this technology proposed to succeed or replace an alternative technology? If so, what was it?
• According to its authors/proponents, why is it important to solve this problem?
• At a very high level, what technical reason did its authors give for why this technology was a better solution than previous or alternative efforts?
• Do the authors/proponents make assumptions that strike you as noteworthy?
• Is this technology a component of other technologies? If so, what are these technologies?
• At a very high level, what components make up this technology?
• In a general sense, what do each of these components do?
• Do other terms arise in connection with this technology that confuse you? What are these terms?
• Does scholarly literature exist that analyzes this technology, in whole or in part, from a critical historical perspective (i.e., secondary sources)?
• What primary sources (e.g., contemporaneous news coverage, blog posts, YouTube videos, LinkedIn posts, etc.) have been helpful to you in understanding how the technology works? How is each source helpful?
• Jot down some keywords that help to explain why you think this technology is interesting.
• Other things that are interesting

Tips on understanding a new technology

I understand that this can be challenging! When I’m investigating an unfamiliar technical phenomenon, I often find it helpful to read press coverage of the product’s initial release. Because the product is (obviously) new at that time, its developers often make a special effort to convey the purpose and value of the product in terms consumers can understand. It’s also more likely that journalists will pay attention to the technology, and journalists tend to be very good at simplifying complex phenomena.

When reading a complicated artifact like a journal article or software manual, try to understand the technology in chunks. First, work on understanding what the product is supposed to do. Then try to get your head around its major components. That way, when you encounter a term you don’t understand, you can “file” it under one of those components and come back to it later. Work your way down the tree, as deeply as you think is helpful.

Finally, if one source doesn’t explain the technology clearly, try another. And another, and another. I often find that I need someone to explain a technology in several different ways before it starts to penetrate. Use whatever’s helpful—videos, press releases, blog posts—initially, and then go back when you have a better understanding of the technology in order to verify what you’ve learned.