Take Back the Net: Joy Rankin’s A People’s History of Computing in the United States

Should I post a tough parenting question on Twitter, ask my Facebook community, or email a few friends who are most likely to have useful suggestions? What would be the best place to reach people to share an intriguing job announcement? These days, we have a multitude of network options, and we assume that computers will facilitate our networked communities. Until I read Joy Lisi Rankin’s new book, A People’s History of Computing in the United States (Harvard University Press, 2018), I assumed I should attribute all these ways of connecting with my communities to the work of Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the self-proclaimed Silicon Valley heroes who have taken credit for our increasingly networked world.

A People’s History of Computing in the United States by Joy Lisi Rankin. (Harvard University Press)

Rankin shows, in contrast, that it was the hippie ‘60s and ‘70s, not the corporate and consumerist ‘80s and ‘90s, that first gave shape and possibility to connectedness via computing. She gives us a new origin story for computer-based connectedness…

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