Lecture slides:
Video podcasts:
- As PDF file | an addendum and summary
- As PowerPoint file | an addendum and summary
- A handout on the basic hardware of computing
- A handout on the architecture of software abstractions
Video podcasts:
Week III: Computer & Network
Architectures
Major Topics:
Major Topics:
- The basic hard- and software of computing
- Computing and information architectures
- Notions of layered abstractions
- The congruence between information systems and organizational systems; virtual vs. physical spaces/addresses
- From the box to the Net: computational and knowledge networks
Assigned Readings:
- Peter Burrows, "How Apple Could Mess Up, Again," Business Week (January 9, 2006)—an interview with Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator's Dilemma
- Janet Abbate, "Government, Business, and the Making of the Internet," Business History Review LXXV:1 (Spring 2001), 147-176.
- Danelle Barrett, et al., "Convincing the Military to Embrace Open Source," Linux Insider December 29, 2007).
- Sam Williams, "When Machines Breed ," Salon 2004-08-24.
Recommended Readings:
- Humor: What if operating systems were airlines?
- More humor: In many languages, nouns have genders. We must ask, "what gender is computer?"
- More humor still: A joke about operating systems, and two tech-support skits from SNL (1) (2) [requires a broadband connection and a RealMedia plug-in]
- A lightweight piece, "Get Me the Geeks!," from CBS' 60 Minutes on how confusing and poorly designed contemporary IT is; it features Don Norman, a fan of the School of Information and someone whose work we'll be reading later.
- Roy Rosenzweig, "Wizards, Bureaucrats, Warriors & Hackers: Writing the History of the Internet," American Historical Review CIII:5 (December 1998), 1530-52.
- Thomas P. Hughes and Jerry R. Sheehan, "What Has Influenced Computing Innovation?,"IEEE Computer (September, 1999), 33-43
- James W. Cortada, "Progenitors of the Information Age," Chapter 6 in Alfred D. Chandler Jr. and James D. Cortata, eds., A Nation Transformed by Information (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000), 177-216; this is a much more "pro-business" account than the one offered by Abbate, above.
- Probably the best piece on the philosophy and legal status of open source software is this: Yochai Benkler, "Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm." Yale Law Journal 112 (2002), non-paginated version.
- A quick summary of IT standards-making bodies.
- A passable explanation of how relational databases work.
- For those of you who want a good explanation of how Microsoft came to rule the software industry.
- Finally, entries from a blog on how IBM intended that its proprietary BIOS code become a chokepoint in the PC industry, giving IBM de facto monopoly power--and how that failed.