Museums and the History of Computing

Simone Natale is an associate professor at the University of Turin, Italy, and an editor of Media, Culture and Society. He is the author of Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test (Oxford University Press, 2021). Petrina Foti is a museologist and scholar focused on the rise of digital information and technology and the resulting impact on both museums and the wider world. She is the author of Collecting and Exhibiting Computer-based Technology: Curatorial Expertise at the Smithsonian Museums (Routledge, 2018). Ross Parry is a professor of museum technology at the University of Leicester, and the inaugural Director of its Institute for Digital Culture. He is co-founder the UK’s Museum Data Service, and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication (Routledge 2019).

List of figures viii List of contributors ix Acknowledgments xvi Introduction: museums and the history of computing 1 SIMONE NATALE PART I Lives narrated through computer history 11 1 Unseen connections: exhibiting the global stories of cellular telephony at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History 13 JOSHUA BELL 2 Lives on shelves: constructing histories of computer in the museum store 24 SIMONA CASONATO Provocation no. 1: imparting the history of ‘intangible things’ 35 MAI SUGIMOTO PART II The life inscribed on computer technology 37 3 Restorations, replicas, and emulations in a museum of computing 39 MARTIN CAMPBELL-KELLY AND MARK PRIESTLEY4 Social media enters the museum: collecting WeChat at the Victoria and Albert Museum 49 NATALIE KANE, CORINNA GARDNER, AND JUHEE PARK Provocation no. 2: all of this belongs to us 59 ANDREA LIPPS PART III Living computing history collections 61 5 Mediators, media, and meaning: curating digital objects at the Science Museum 63 TILLY BLYTH AND RACHEL BOON 6 Unsettling the narrative: quantum computing in museum environments 74 PETRINA FOTI Provocation no. 3: why is the computer different? 82 KIMON KERAMIDAS PART IV Lived practice of computing history 85 7 The CHM stack: experimentation for digital and computing heritage 87 DAVID C. BROCK, HANSEN HSU, DAG SPICER, AND MARC WEBER 8 Beyond point and click: calling out expediency in museums’ histories of computing 98 LISA McGERTY Provocation no. 4: decolonizing computing histories in museums 108 LARA RATNARAJA Index 111