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James W. Cortada is Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He formerly worked at IBM Corporation in a variety of sales, consulting, research, management, and executive positions. His research and writing have focused on the business history of information technology and in the role of information in modern societies. He is the author or editor of more than three dozen books and serves on the editorial board of key journals devoted to the history of information and its technologies. Most recently he co-authored with William Aspray, Fake News Nation: The Long History of Lies and Misinterpretations in America (R&L, 2019) and From Urban Legends to Political Fact-Checking (Springer, 2019); and authored Building Blocks of Society: History, Information Ecosystems, and Infrastructures (R&L, 2021).

Intro -- Preface -- Introduction: Why Listen to Me? Why You Should Take Seriously Your Own Knowledge of Computers -- Contents -- Chapter 1: What Is Computing? -- Chapter 2: How Did We Get Here? -- How Humans Invented Computers -- It Took Money and Organizations to Make IT Possible -- Computers Were Put to Good Use -- IT Was First and Foremost All About Creating and Using Information -- How Computers Spread Around the World So Quickly -- Reflections on What Happened -- Chapter 3: Early Views of Computing -- Early Reactions to Computers -- How Corporations Responded -- Sensors and the Hard Sciences Join Forces -- Society Debated the Role of Computers -- Management's Evolving Views -- Work Changed Because of Computers -- Some Lessons to Consider -- Chapter 4: How People View Computing Today -- What the Public Thinks in "Emerging" Economies -- What IT Gurus Think -- What Business and Government Leaders Think -- Making Sense of the Wizards -- Is There More to This Story? -- Chapter 5: How We Might See the End of the Information Age -- The Concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) -- The Case That We Live in the Information Age -- The Case That We Do Not Live in the Information Age -- Why the Issue Is Important -- Emerging Types of AI Tools -- So, Does This Mean We Might See the End of the Information Age? -- Chapter 6: Life in a Post-information Age Era? -- What Makes Emerging AI a Controlling Force -- Limits and Problems of AI as Shaping Forces -- Putting Information Back into Its Historic Place -- Why Humans Cannot Soon Become Cyborgs -- Biological Computers? -- What Does God Think About Computers? -- Chapter 7: Is It the End of Our World? How to Think About Implications and Challenges -- Forecasting, Hype, and Evolution -- Terms in Turmoil: Revolutions, Revolutionary, and Evolutions -- Thinking in an Evolutionary Way -- What Do We Want?.

Information history as a research topic -- How to understand information ecosystems and infrastructures in firms and industries -- Studying history as it unfolds: computing's history, 1970-2017 -- The information ecosystems of national diplomacy: Spain, 1815-1936 -- Information ecosystems of American homemakers in Madison county, Virginia, 1950-1995 -- International sales information ecosystems: IBM, 1920s-1980s -- How people and organizations learned about information: computer science and their users, 1945-1975 -- Tiny information ecosystems and infrastructures: genealogists and family historians -- The case for information ecosystems and infrastructures and lessons learned.

A history of one of the most influential American companies of the last century. For decades, IBM shaped the way the world did business. IBM products were in every large organization, and IBM corporate culture established a management style that was imitated by companies around the globe. It was "Big Blue", an icon. And yet over the years, IBM has gone through both failure and success, surviving flatlining revenue and forced reinvention. The company almost went out of business in the early 1990s, then came back strong with new business strategies and an emphasis on artificial intelligence. In this authoritative, monumental history, James Cortada tells the story of one of the most influential American companies of the last century. Cortada, a historian who worked at IBM for many years, describes IBM's technology breakthroughs, including the development of the punch card (used for automatic tabulation in the 1890 census), the calculation and printing of the first Social Security checks in the 1930s, the introduction of the PC to a mass audience in the 1980s, and the company's shift in focus from hardware to software. He discusses IBM's business culture and its orientation toward employees and customers; its global expansion; regulatory and legal issues, including antitrust litigation; and the track records of its CEOs. The secret to IBM's unequalled longevity in the information technology market, Cortada shows, is its capacity to adapt to changing circumstances and technologies.

"All the Facts presents a history of the role of information in the United States since 1870, when the nation began a nearly 150-year period of economic prosperity and technological and scientific transformations. James Cortada argues that citizens and their institutions used information extensively as tools to augment their work and private lives and that they used facts to help shape how the nation evolved during these fourteen decades. He argues that information's role has long been a critical component of the work, play, culture, and values of this nation, and no more so than during the twentieth century when its function in society expanded dramatically. While elements of this story have been examined by thousands of scholars---such as the role of radio, newspapers, books, computers, and the Internet, about such institutions as education, big business, expanded roles of governments from town administration to the state house, from agriculture to the services and information industries---All the Facts looks at all of these elements holistically, providing a deeper insight into the way the United States evolved over time. An introduction and 11 chapters describe what this information ecosystem looked like, how it evolved, and how it was used. For another vast layer of information about this subject the reader is directed to the detailed bibliographic essay in the back of this book. It includes a narrative history, case studies in the form of sidebars, and stories illustrating key points. Readers will find, for example, the story of how the US postal system helped create today's information society, along with everything from books and newspapers to TV, computers, and the Internet. The build-up to what many today call the Information Age took a long time to achieve and continues to build momentum. The implications for the world, and not just for the United States, are as profound as any mega-trend one could identify in the history of humankind. All the Facts presents this development thoroughly in an easy-to-digest format that any lover of history, technology, or the history of information and business will enjoy"--

Before the Computer fully explores the data processing industry in the United States from its nineteenth-century inception down to the period when the computer became its primary tool. As James Cortada describes what was once called the "office appliance industry," he challenges our view of the digital computer as a revolutionary technology. Cortada interprets reliance on computers as a development within an important segment of the American economy that was earlier represented largely by such instruments as typewriters, tabulating machines, adding machines, and calculators. He also describes how many of the practices of the office appliance industry evolved into those of the computer world. Drawing on previously unavailable industry archives, the author adds to our understanding of IBM's early history and offers short corporate histories of firms that include NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand. Focusing on the United States but also including comparative material on Europe and Asia, Before the Computer will be a unique source of knowledge about the companies that built office equipment and their enormous impact on economic life.Originally published in 1993.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905

In the third volume of 'The Digital Hand', James W. Cortada completes his sweeping survey of the effect of computers on American industry, turning finally to the public sector, and examining how computers have fundamentally changed the nature of work in government and education

This text provides a historical perspective on how some of the most important American industries used computing over the past half century, describing their experience, their best practices and the role of industries and technologies in changing the nature of American work