Lecture 5

Silicon Valley

EU valleys

academics & high tech companies have time sharing facilities
utopian city planning (e.g. Sophia-Antipolis) didn’t work much
Twente polytechnic in Enschede — “let’s have a valley of our own“
but no interest from youth Hippie movement, not like in the US where they wanted to take computers from the government and into their own hands
the thing is, in the US it just emerged, in the EU they were trying to force it

Appropriating computers

Altair 8800 was the machine that everyone wanted, it was simple with lights as output
Homebrew computer club in the US (1975), exchanged information and programs, shared computer time
no academic setting for Information Science in NL
others used computers for: mining, railroad, tax office, bank, insurance
Hobby Computer Club, 1977, NL
- activities for members, shared knowledge and software
- did not want to pay for software, hacked and produced their own
- programs in newsletters, radio broadcasting
- no political agenda, but identity
- you had to know your shit to join
- Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX Spectrum (1982)
VisiCalc, Teleac TV for programming courses, SSAA study group for automating administration
Squatter movement, 1980s
- started in Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam
- politically active
- taking from American hippie movement
computers in education — curriculum psychology, educational process
- two problems: how to educate such a high amount, how to make them think
- academics wanted to teach students how to program
- binary arithmetic, flowcharts
- programming École, BASIC
- learning to do exercises vs learning to think
- Skinner machine
- programmed instruction (non-linear book, custom pace, immediate feedback on answers)
- influenced the philosophy around learning

TOC: History of Science