William Aspray – författare

In this collection of essays that represent original and interdisciplinary work, respected scholars address a number of privacy issues. These include how governmental and private sectors develop and deploy technologies that can pose serious compromises to the privacy of individuals and groups; how information and communication system designs pose threats to privacy; how we manage private concerns (child care, job leave, and identity) as public issues amenable to political action and shared awareness; and the fundamental asymmetry of power that exists between individuals and small groups on the one hand and large governmental and corporate entities on the other.Arranged in three sections—law and policy; information technology; and information studies, history, and sociology—Privacy in America: Interdisciplinary Perspectives will be useful to scholars, practitioners, and students in a variety of fields, including information science, library science, and information systems.

Digital media has exploded over the past quarter century, and in particular the past decade. As varieties of digital media multiply, scholars are beginning to examine its origins, organization, and preservation, which present new challenges compared to traditional media. To examine issues from multiple perspectives, experts were invited to an invitation-only workshop on digital media. The participants were carefully chosen to represent a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, ranging from humanities and fine arts to communication theory. The papers collected here are the results of that workshop.Digital Media: Technological and Social Challenges of the Interactive World is organized in four parts, each representing a different perspective on digital media: preservation, humanities, organizational, and historical. The section on preservation considers the problems of archiving digital media for long-term preservation; the humanities section offers a human-centered view of digital media, focusing on the interaction between technological changes and cultural practices; the section dealing with organization goes beyond the study of digital artifacts in isolation to consider the context, collection, and arrangement of objects; and the historical section examines how our perspectives on digital media have changed over time, looking at how issues such as the digital divide and digital production have changed as technology has changed.The wealth of varied perspectives in Digital Media provides new light on this topic, beyond the media studies viewpoint that is the most common way of engaging these topics. This collection will be a valuable addition for students and faculty in information studies, communication studies, rhetoric, new media, and more.

History and Philosophy of Modern Mathematics was first published in 1988. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.The fourteen essays in this volume build on the pioneering effort of Garrett Birkhoff, professor of mathematics at Harvard University, who in 1974 organized a conference of mathematicians and historians of modern mathematics to examine how the two disciplines approach the history of mathematics. In History and Philosophy of Modern Mathematics, William Aspray and Philip Kitcher bring together distinguished scholars from mathematics, history, and philosophy to assess the current state of the field. Their essays, which grow out of a 1985 conference at the University of Minnesota, develop the basic premise that mathematical thought needs to be studied from an interdisciplinary perspective.The opening essays study issues arising within logic and the foundations of mathematics, a traditional area of interest to historians and philosophers. The second section examines issues in the history of mathematics within the framework of established historical periods and questions. Next come case studies that illustrate the power of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of mathematics. The collection closes with a look at mathematics from a sociohistorical perspective, including the way institutions affect what constitutes mathematical knowledge.

This organizational history relates the role of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the development of modern computing.Drawing upon new and existing oral histories, extensive use of NSF documents, and the experience of two of the authors as senior managers, this book describes how NSF's programmatic activities originated and evolved to become the primary source of funding for fundamental research in computing and information technologies.The book traces how NSF's support has provided facilities and education for computing usage by all scientific disciplines, aided in institution and professional community building, supported fundamental research in computer science and allied disciplines, and led the efforts to broaden participation in computing by all segments of society.Today, the research and infrastructure facilitated by NSF computing programs are significant economic drivers of American society and industry. For example, NSF supported work that led to the first widely-used web browser, Netscape; sponsored the creation of algorithms at the core of the Google search engine; facilitated the growth of the public Internet; and funded research on the scientific basis for countless other applications and technologies. NSF has advanced the development of human capital and ideas for future advances in computing and its applications.This account is the first comprehensive coverage of NSF's role in the extraordinary growth and expansion of modern computing and its use. It will appeal to historians of computing, policy makers and leaders in government and academia, and individuals interested in the history and development of computing and the NSF.

This organizational history relates the role of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the development of modern computing.Drawing upon new and existing oral histories, extensive use of NSF documents, and the experience of two of the authors as senior managers, this book describes how NSF's programmatic activities originated and evolved to become the primary source of funding for fundamental research in computing and information technologies.The book traces how NSF's support has provided facilities and education for computing usage by all scientific disciplines, aided in institution and professional community building, supported fundamental research in computer science and allied disciplines, and led the efforts to broaden participation in computing by all segments of society.Today, the research and infrastructure facilitated by NSF computing programs are significant economic drivers of American society and industry. For example, NSF supported work that led to the first widely-used web browser, Netscape; sponsored the creation of algorithms at the core of the Google search engine; facilitated the growth of the public Internet; and funded research on the scientific basis for countless other applications and technologies. NSF has advanced the development of human capital and ideas for future advances in computing and its applications.This account is the first comprehensive coverage of NSF's role in the extraordinary growth and expansion of modern computing and its use. It will appeal to historians of computing, policy makers and leaders in government and academia, and individuals interested in the history and development of computing and the NSF.

How rumors, lies, and misrepresentations shaped American historyAfter the election of Donald Trump as president, people in the United States and across large swaths of Europe, Latin America, and Asia engaged in the most intensive discussion in modern times about falsehoods pronounced by public officials. Fake facts in their various forms have long been present in American life, particularly in its politics, public discourse, and business activities – going back to the time when the country was formed. This book explores the long tradition of fake facts, in their various guises, in American history. It is one of the first historical studies to place the long history of lies and misrepresentation squarely in the middle of American political, business, and science policy rhetoric. In Fake News Nation, James Cortada and William Aspray present a series of case studies that describe how lies and fake facts were used over the past two centuries in important instances in American history. Cortada and Aspray give readers a perspective on fake facts as they appear today and as they are likely to appear in the future.

Deciding Where to Live: Information Studies on Where to Live in America explores major themes related to where to live in America, not only about the acquisition of a home but also the ways in which where one lives relates to one’s cultural identity. It shows how changes in media and information technology are shaping both our housing choices and our understanding of the meaning of personal place. The work is written using widely accessible language but supported by a strong academic foundation from information studies and other humanities and social science disciplines.Chapters analyze everyday information behavior related to questions about where to live. The eleven major chapters are:Chapter 1: Where to live as an information problem: three contemporary examples Chapter 2: Turning in place: Real estate agents and the move from information custodians to information brokers Chapter 3: The Evolving Residential Real Estate Information Ecosystem: The Rise of Zillow Chapter 4: Privacy, Surveillance, and the “Smart Home” Chapter 5: This Old House, Fixer Upper, and Better Homes & Gardens: The Housing Crisis and Media Sources Chapter 6: A Community Responds to Growth: An Information Story About What Makes for a Good Place to Live." Chapter 7: The Valley Between Us: The meta-hodology of racial segregation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin Chapter 8: Modeling Hope: Boundary Objects and Design Patterns in a Heartland HeterotopiaChapter 9: Home buying in Everyday Life: How Emotion and Time Pressure Shape High Stakes Deciders’ Information BehaviorChapter 10: In Search of Home: Examining Information Seeking and Sources That Help African Americans Determine Where to LiveChapter 11: Where to Live in Retirement: A Complex Information ProblemWhile the book is partly about the goal-directed activity of individuals who want to buy a house, and the infrastructure that supports that activity, it is also about personal activities that are either not goal directed or are directed at other goals such as deciding in which geographic location to live, personal entertainment, cultural understanding, or identity formation.

There are more than 50 million people age 65 or older in the United States, and over the decade 2010-2019 this was the fastest growing age sector in the United States – growing by 34% during that period. (US Census Bureau) As people age, they face a number of new challenges and opportunities, ranging from the shift from salary to Social Security and retirement funds, increasing issues with health, and opportunities for extended relaxation and second careers. While seniors bring a lifetime of experience and honed skills, they face a number of new situations that involved learning new information and new ways of doing things. Information Issues for Older Americans brings together faculty from the leading Information Schools to examine information needs, behavior, and policy related to older Americans. These scholars use a variety of lenses to understand the information issues that older Americans face in their everyday lives. These lenses include information literacy from both the consumer and provider sides; information behavior to understand search strategies, evaluation of information quality and relevance, sources used, questions raised, and how these change over time; the information ecologies in which an individual lives in his or her private and professional worlds; privacy issues that arise in everyday life; information and communication technologies (ICTs), including the skills of users with these technologies, the expected and unexpected uses of these technologies, and the technology’s positive and negative impacts; how ICTs can be used to augment human intelligence and physical skills (human-computer interaction and design); how ICTs, together with traditional information institutions such as libraries and museums and social clubs, have been used to build stronger communities (community informatics).This book is a contribution to the academic literatures on information studies and aging, but it is also intended to be generally readable and be accessible to the educated public and professionals who serve older Americans such as librarians, health care workers, and workers at community centers. While there is a growing literature on health informatics for the elderly, and occasional journal articles on various other topics about information and the elderly, this is the first comprehensive book on the various information aspects of the everyday activities and concerns of older Americans.

This book studies authenticity, which is a kind of truth to self, through the study of heritage tourism. When a heritage site is inauthentic, it leads to misinformation. Tourism scholars have been studying authenticity for about 50 years, and this book draws upon the theories and approaches of tourism studies to understand better misinformation, which has become a major topic of study since the US presidential elections in 2016. The book includes a discussion of common-sense and academic notions of authenticity, surveys a half century of scholarship on authenticity, and provides three case studies of heritage tourism sites: Lindsborg, KS (known as Little Sweden, USA), Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, and the Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania.

This book studies authenticity, which is a kind of truth to self, through the study of heritage tourism. When a heritage site is inauthentic, it leads to misinformation. Tourism scholars have been studying authenticity for about 50 years, and this book draws upon the theories and approaches of tourism studies to understand better misinformation, which has become a major topic of study since the US presidential elections in 2016. The book includes a discussion of common-sense and academic notions of authenticity, surveys a half century of scholarship on authenticity, and provides three case studies of heritage tourism sites: Lindsborg, KS (known as Little Sweden, USA), Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, and the Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania.

Deciding Where to Live: Information Studies on Where to Live in America explores major themes related to where to live in America, not only about the acquisition of a home but also the ways in which where one lives relates to one’s cultural identity. It shows how changes in media and information technology are shaping both our housing choices and our understanding of the meaning of personal place. The work is written using widely accessible language but supported by a strong academic foundation from information studies and other humanities and social science disciplines.Chapters analyze everyday information behavior related to questions about where to live. The eleven major chapters are:Chapter 1: Where to live as an information problem: three contemporary examples Chapter 2: Turning in place: Real estate agents and the move from information custodians to information brokers Chapter 3: The Evolving Residential Real Estate Information Ecosystem: The Rise of Zillow Chapter 4: Privacy, Surveillance, and the “Smart Home” Chapter 5: This Old House, Fixer Upper, and Better Homes & Gardens: The Housing Crisis and Media Sources Chapter 6: A Community Responds to Growth: An Information Story About What Makes for a Good Place to Live." Chapter 7: The Valley Between Us: The meta-hodology of racial segregation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin Chapter 8: Modeling Hope: Boundary Objects and Design Patterns in a Heartland HeterotopiaChapter 9: Home buying in Everyday Life: How Emotion and Time Pressure Shape High Stakes Deciders’ Information BehaviorChapter 10: In Search of Home: Examining Information Seeking and Sources That Help African Americans Determine Where to LiveChapter 11: Where to Live in Retirement: A Complex Information ProblemWhile the book is partly about the goal-directed activity of individuals who want to buy a house, and the infrastructure that supports that activity, it is also about personal activities that are either not goal directed or are directed at other goals such as deciding in which geographic location to live, personal entertainment, cultural understanding, or identity formation.

This is not a book about the history of computing or the history of information. Instead, it is a meta-historical book about the research and writing of these types of history. The formal presentation of historical research in the form of a publication often hides the process by which the topic was selected, boundaries were drawn, evidence was selected, analytic approach was chosen and applied, results were presented, how this work fits into a larger body of scholarship, the implicit goals and biases of the author, and many other similar issues. This process of learning about the various ways to carry out computer history or information history can be enriched by this collection of reflective essays by experienced scholars, discussing the craft that they practice. This is a book that concerns both computer history and information history. The first scholarship in computer history by professionally trained scholars began to appear in the 1970s, so we are approaching a half century of research and publication in this area. The field has generated numerous pieces of exemplary scholarship from various perspectives such as intellectual history of individual technologies, business histories of firms, economic histories of market sectors, externalist histories of funding and professionalization, and so on. However, the field continues to evolve, especially as computing and communication technologies have drawn together in the form of the Internet and social media; and with them a new set of scholars is participating, drawn not only from the history of science and technology, but also from the communication and media studies fields. Powerful theories, approaches, and frameworks are being increasingly drawn more widely from both the humanities and the social sciences to inform the practice of computer history. The scholars in this volume look at what’s happened, what’s happening now, and where historical scholarship in these disciplines is headed.

There are more than 50 million people age 65 or older in the United States, and over the decade 2010-2019 this was the fastest growing age sector in the United States – growing by 34% during that period. (US Census Bureau) As people age, they face a number of new challenges and opportunities, ranging from the shift from salary to Social Security and retirement funds, increasing issues with health, and opportunities for extended relaxation and second careers. While seniors bring a lifetime of experience and honed skills, they face a number of new situations that involved learning new information and new ways of doing things. Information Issues for Older Americans brings together faculty from the leading Information Schools to examine information needs, behavior, and policy related to older Americans. These scholars use a variety of lenses to understand the information issues that older Americans face in their everyday lives. These lenses include information literacy from both the consumer and provider sides; information behavior to understand search strategies, evaluation of information quality and relevance, sources used, questions raised, and how these change over time; the information ecologies in which an individual lives in his or her private and professional worlds; privacy issues that arise in everyday life; information and communication technologies (ICTs), including the skills of users with these technologies, the expected and unexpected uses of these technologies, and the technology’s positive and negative impacts; how ICTs can be used to augment human intelligence and physical skills (human-computer interaction and design); how ICTs, together with traditional information institutions such as libraries and museums and social clubs, have been used to build stronger communities (community informatics).This book is a contribution to the academic literatures on information studies and aging, but it is also intended to be generally readable and be accessible to the educated public and professionals who serve older Americans such as librarians, health care workers, and workers at community centers. While there is a growing literature on health informatics for the elderly, and occasional journal articles on various other topics about information and the elderly, this is the first comprehensive book on the various information aspects of the everyday activities and concerns of older Americans.

This is a volume of chapters on the historical study of information, computing, and society written by seven of the most senior, distinguished members of the History of Computing field. These are edited, expanded versions of papers presented in a distinguished lecture series in 2018 at the University of Colorado Boulder – in the shadow of the Flatirons, the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Topics range widely across the history of computing. They include the digitalization of computer and communication technologies, gender history of computing, the history of data science, incentives for innovation in the computing field, labor history of computing, and the process of standardization. Authors were given wide latitude to write on a topic of their own choice, so long as the result is an exemplary article that represents the highest level of scholarship in the field, producing articles that scholars in the field will still look to read twenty years from now. The intention is to publish articles of general interest, well situated in the research literature, well grounded in source material, and well-polished pieces of writing.The volume is primarily of interest to historians of computing, but individual articles will be of interest to scholars in media studies, communication, computer science, cognitive science, general and technology history, and business.

This is a volume of chapters on the historical study of information, computing, and society written by seven of the most senior, distinguished members of the History of Computing field.

This text presents an historical examination of political fact-checking, highlighting how this is part of a larger phenomenon of online scrutiny that manifests itself in multiple forms. Reflecting the long history of “fake facts” in America, the book discusses important developments in this area from the emergence of the public Internet in the 1990s to the start of the Trump-Clinton presidential election campaigns.Topics and features: describes how some of the major players in political fact-checking began with the purpose of scrutinizing and debunking of urban legends; considers how this was part of a wider culture, encompassing B-grade horror movies, truth-or-fiction television shows, and groups warning about computer viruses; explains how such developments are connected, revealing political fact-checking as one of many forms of scrutiny applied in the face of a complex, dangerous world; provides a range of detailed case studies, covering such topics as the rumors surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and academic interest in contemporary legends; discusses how pre-Internet technologies such as bulletin boards, Usenet, and proprietary online service providers such as CompuServe and AOL were used to both disseminate and debunk urban legends; examines the rise of political fact-checking, reviewing all of the major initiatives in this area undertaken in the United States.This timely study touches on issues of popular culture and major events, and offers profiles of colorful individuals and organizations, and as such will appeal to a broad audience interested in the history of fact-checking and efforts to protect the political process from falsehoods.

This text presents an historical examination of political fact-checking, highlighting how this is part of a larger phenomenon of online scrutiny that manifests itself in multiple forms. Reflecting the long history of “fake facts” in America, the book discusses important developments in this area from the emergence of the public Internet in the 1990s to the start of the Trump-Clinton presidential election campaigns.Topics and features: describes how some of the major players in political fact-checking began with the purpose of scrutinizing and debunking of urban legends; considers how this was part of a wider culture, encompassing B-grade horror movies, truth-or-fiction television shows, and groups warning about computer viruses; explains how such developments are connected, revealing political fact-checking as one of many forms of scrutiny applied in the face of a complex, dangerous world; provides a range of detailed case studies, covering such topics as the rumors surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and academic interest in contemporary legends; discusses how pre-Internet technologies such as bulletin boards, Usenet, and proprietary online service providers such as CompuServe and AOL were used to both disseminate and debunk urban legends; examines the rise of political fact-checking, reviewing all of the major initiatives in this area undertaken in the United States.This timely study touches on issues of popular culture and major events, and offers profiles of colorful individuals and organizations, and as such will appeal to a broad audience interested in the history of fact-checking and efforts to protect the political process from falsehoods.

and it gives greater attention to information-rich topics such as libraries and museums, schools and colleges, the financial services and office machinery industries, scientific research institutions, and management consultancies.

This manuscript is about an artifact, the Encyclopedia of Computer Science (ECS). From the time that computer science was mature enough to have its own reference book until printed reference books began to be eclipsed by online products—that is, roughly the final quarter of the 20th century—ECS was the premiere reference work for this field. A second purpose of this book is to introduce with this important case study a theoretical examination of how one can study the history of a professional field through a deep examination of its reference tools (encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, yearbooks, etc.). To better understand ECS, an examination was conducted on the extensive literature about the history of encyclopedias and then used it to ask probing questions about ECS.

This book examines food in the United States in the age of the Internet. One major theme running through the book is business opportunities and failures, as well as the harms to consumers and traditional brick-and-mortar companies that occurred as entrepreneurs tried to take advantage of the Internet to create online companies related to food. The other major theme is the concept of trust online and different models used by different companies to make their web presence seem trustworthy. The book describes a number of major food companies, including AllRecipes, Betty Crocker, Cook's Illustrated, Epicurious, Groupon, OpenTable, and Yelp. The book draws on business history, food studies, and information studies for its approach.​

Formal approaches are those taken by government bodies through laws, court decisions and actions of government regulatory bodies. Informal approaches are those taken by individuals, non profit organizations, industries working at self-regulation, etc. Because the formal means are tied to a particular legal system, this kind of approach is nation-specific and the book focuses on the United States. But many of the things the authors have to say about US food policy and the interactions between formal and informal approaches would also be of interest to policymakers and food industry professionals in other countries. Coverage includes the regulation of food advertising on children's television and the internet, regulation of school lunch programs and the influence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Michelle Obama.

This text examines in detail the issue of the underrepresentation of women, African Americans, American Indians, and Hispanics in the computing disciplines in the U.S. The work reviews the underlying causes, as well as the efforts of various nonprofit organizations to correct the situation, in order to both improve social equity and address the shortage of skilled workers in this area. Topics and features: presents a digest and historical overview of the relevant literature from a range of disciplines, including leading historical and social science sources; discusses the social and political factors that have affected the demographics of the workforce from the end of WWII to the present day; provides historical case studies on organizations that have sought to broaden participation in computing and the STEM disciplines; reviews the different approaches that have been applied to address underrepresentation, at the individual, system-wide, and pathway-focused level; profiles the colleges and universities that have been successful in opening up computer science or engineering to female students; describes the impact of individual change-agents as well as whole organizations.