The Chilean Wide Web?
Salvador Allende’s attempt to network the national economy mirrored his government’s struggle to balance centralization and decentralization.
The Bug in the Computer Bug Story
Soon after a team of engineers discovered a moth in a machine at Harvard, the word "bug" became a standard part of the programmer's lexicon. Or did it?
How Computer Science Became a Boys’ Club
Women were the first computer programmers. How, then, did programming become the domain of bearded nerds and manly individualists?
Preprints, Science, and the News Cycle
Preprints are academic papers that haven't been peer-reviewed yet. When preprints make news, that's often overlooked.
The Fear That Synthesizers Would Ruin Music
A German musicologist complained in 1954 that they reminded him of "barking hell-hounds."
Ada Lovelace, Pioneer
Ada Lovelace wrote extensive notes on the world’s first computer. Her innovations foreshadowed those used in twentieth-century PCs.
Happy Birthday to Cyberspace!
The first message sent through the ARPANET was “LO.” It was supposed to be “LOGIN,” but the network crashed after the first two letters.
What Is a Quantum Computer?
Researchers claim to have turned back time inside a quantum computer. Meanwhile, most of us are still trying to wrap our minds around what that even means.
Bonnie Nardi
Welcome to Ask a Professor, our series that offers an insider’s view of life in academia. This month we interviewed Bonnie Nardi.
Meet Alan Emtage, the Black Technologist Who Invented ARCHIE, the First Internet Search Engine
Internet search has had a profound impact on our own internal makeup—on how we learn, and how we think.