As an experiment, I created a wordle map of my introductory lecture. It turns out be a good reflection of the course content -- and quite good looking as well.

Click on the image for a larger version. The course syllabus can be found here.

Instead of teaching the HSSC 677 seminar on careers in science, technology, and medicine, I will be offering instead HSSC 550: The Information Sciences. This seminar will meet on Monday afternoon from 12:30-3:30 in Claudia Cohen (formerly Logan) Hall, room 362.

HSSC 550: The Information Sciences

This graduate seminar explores the emergence and widespread adoption in the early Cold War-period of a set of interrelated tools, techniques, and discourses organized around the concept of ``information.'' These emerging information science included not only new disciplines such as cybernetics, information theory, operations research, and ecology, but also some traditional physical sciences -- such as biology and chemistry -- as well as a broad range of social sciences, including economics, political science, sociology, and urban planning. The focus of the course will be on tracing the important structural changes in post-war science that encouraged the adoption of the rhetoric of information (if not its substance), as well as on extending the relevance of these developments to a wide range of topics in the history of science, medicine, and technology.

Download the HSSC 550 syllabus in PDF form

I will be presenting a paper called "Making Programming Masculine."

Registration for the conference is open until 20 May 2008. More information can be found here.

This Tuesday, March 4, I will be giving a talk called "Cyborgs, Artificial Intelligences, and Meat Machines: Computers and the Reinvention of the Body" at Drexel University as part of their Great Works Symposium. The talk is from 3:30-4:50 in Curtis Hall, Room 340

The video of this talk is now available.

My contribution is called "Resistance is Futile? Reluctant and Selective Users of the Internet." It explains why a series of industries -- including healthcare and higher education -- have not yet been radically transformed by the Internet.

Free speech, free software, MOOS, MUDs, anime and cyberpunk. All of these are elements of a broad set of social, technical and political phenom- ena generally associated with the emergence of a nascent "cyberculture." In this seminar we explore the ways in which recent developments in information technology -- the computer and the Internet in particular -- relate to changing contemporary notions of community, identity, property, and gender. By looking at an eclectic collection of popular and scholarly resources, including film, fiction and the World Wide Web, we will situate the development of "cyberculture" into the larger history of the complex relationship between technology and Western society.

STSC 260 Syllabus

"We shape our technologies; thereafter they shape us."

This course surveys the ways in which technology has shaped our societies and our relations with the natural world. We will examine the origins and impact of technical developments throughout human history and across the globe— from stone tools, agriculture, and cave painting to ancient cities, metallurgy, and aque- ducts; from windmills, cathedrals, steam engines and electricity to atom bombs, the internet, and genetic engineering. We will pay attention to the aesthetic, religious, and mythical dimensions of technological change, and consider the circumstances in which innovations emerge and their effects on social order, on the environment, and on the ways humans understand themselves.

STSC 003 Syllabus

Download the pdf.

One of our recent graduates is on television! Will was actually a CS major, but he minored in our Science, Technology, and Society program and was a regular around the department. The semester he participated in my Cyberculture seminar was one of my best teaching experiences ever.

No doubt Will will do us all proud in his appearance Beauty and the Geek this fall.

I just finished filming a segment for a documentary by local film-maker LeAnn Erikson. I was just one of the talking-head historians. The real heroes of the film are the women who worked as mathematicians and "human computers" during the Second World War (including those who programmed the ENIAC computer right here at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering).

View the trailer online.

This is the second in a series of symposium hosted by the Franklin Institute and the History & Sociology of Science department celebrating the opening of a new section of the electronic case files archives.

The focus of the presentation was on the early history of the computing industry, featuring key individuals including Hollerith, Burroughs, Eckert, Mauchly, Bardeen, Brittain, and Shannon. Professor Ensmenger provided a general overview of the history of computing.

The full video can be is running on the Research Channel.

A few years ago, in the middle of a snowstorm, a peacock showed up on our side porch. He has been living in our backyard ever since. When I work outside on my laptop, he displays for me for hours at a time. My kids gave him a first name, but that seemed to familiar for such a formal guy, so now we just call him Mr. Peacock.

Here he is in his full glory.

Certain new technologies are greeted with claims that, for good or ill, they must transform our society. The two most recent: the computer and the Internet. But the series of social, economic, and technological developments that underlie what is often called the "Information Revolution" include much more than just the computer. In this course, we examine what made this series of develop- ments seem so revolutionary, who said what about them, and why. We chart changing perceptions of information technologies as people begin to experience them as a part of everyday life and work. We will explore both the technologies themselves as well as their larger social, economic, and political context.These perspectives will inform our discussion of current issues such as life and censor- ship in 'cyberspace'.

STSC 160 Syllabus

Technological enthusiasm has served as a cornerstone of American economic, social, and political life since the founding of the Republic. From Thomas Edison to Bill Gates, the inventor hero has achieved an almost mythical stature in contemporary culture. In this course we will explore the history of the "nerd" -- and the central role of technology in American life past and present -- from a variety of historical and popular culture perspectives.

Download the pdf of the draft version of this paper.

On February 20th, 2007, Dr. Ensmenger will be giving a talk at the University of Wisconsin entitled "Neither Luddites nor Sages: Physicians and Professors as Reluctant Users of the Internet."

The seminar is funded by the UW-Madison Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, and sponsored by the UW-Madison School of Library and Information Studies.

See the full poster.

This course will explore the various social implication of information technology: social, cultural, political, and economic. By considering by a wide variety of perspectives on the Information Revolution, we will examine the relationship between new information technologies and changing notions of community, identity, property, and democracy. Topics will include intellectual property rights, Linux and the free software movement, cyber libertarianism, and the rise and fall of the dot.com economy.

Online syllabus

Download the STSC 465 syllabus in PDF form

STSC 352 Syllabus

This paper was based on some research that I am currently developing on the history of decision technologies.

From the paper:

"It is also clear that no-one quite knows what to do with software; computer science focuses on software as algorithm; history of computer science is often told as old-style intellectual history; this is obviously insufficient, software sits uncomfortably between science technology; not a thing, an yet clearly constructed; invisible, ethereal, often ephemeral; also not clear what exactly constitutes software; programs, practices, people; software is perhaps the ultimate heterogenous system...

"And so his paper represents an attempt to think seriously about software as a material artifact, as a technology embedded in systems of practice, networks of exchange..."

The Franklin Institute offers an electronic presentation of its Case Files, a collection of primary source documents that exists as an unknown repository of the history of science and technology. The University of PennsylvaniaÕs Department of History and Sociology of Science hosted a Symposium to discuss the historical, scientific, and educational merit of the Case Files, which date from the 1820s, as a modern day resource for undergraduate, graduate, and professional scholars, as well as K-12 students.

Research Channel

Free speech, free software, MOOS, MUDs, anime and cyberpunk. All of these are elements of a broad set of social, technical and political phenom- ena generally associated with the emergence of a nascent "cyberculture." In this seminar we explore the ways in which recent developments in information technology -- the computer and the Internet in particular -- relate to changing contemporary notions of community, identity, property, and gender. By looking at an eclectic collection of popular and scholarly resources, including film, fiction and the World Wide Web, we will situate the development of "cyberculture" into the larger history of the complex relationship between technology and Western society.

STSC 213 Syllabus

McCarthy and his colleagues in AI this metaphor was appropriate because they saw chess, like the drosophilia, as an ideal vehicle through which to reveal objective truths about the natural world. Historians of science, however, view the drosophila from a different perspective. Building on the work of Robert Kohler, this paper explores the moral economy of the AI community and the unique ways in which the experimental technology of chess shaped the program of AI research in the decade of the 1970s.

Paul Edwards -- Associate Professor, School of Information; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Nathan Ensmenger -- Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania

As rapidly as computer technology has changed, so have our hopes for -- and fears about -- its potential. How do we imagine the place of computers in our lives?

Historians of science and technology Nathan Ensmenger and Paul Edwards join Chicago Public Radio's Gretchen Helfrich for the discussion. Ensmenger writes and researches on the history of software, artificial intelligence, and the information age. Edwards is author of The World in a Machine: Computer Models, Data Networks, and Global Atmospheric Politics.

Listen online

Download the pdf.

Download the pdf.

Nathan Ensmenger teaches courses in the history of technology in the History and Sociology of Science department. He also teaches courses on engineering ethics and professionalism in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

His current research interests are aimed at reintegrating the history of the "information revolution'' -- very broadly defined to encompass a wide range of 19th and 20th century scientific, technological and social developments -- into mainstream American social and cultural history.

In addition to his work on the social and cultural history of software and software workers, he has studied the disciplinary history of artificial intelligence and artificial life; the formation of a distinctive computing subculture and programming "aesthetic;'' and the crucial and often misunderstood role of women in computing. He has also developed and taught courses on the computer and internet "revolutions,'' and on the relationship between technological innovation and social change.

For more information, see his curriculum vitae.

Download the pdf.

Download the pdf of the draft version of this paper.

Download the pdf.