I wish to gratefully acknowledge the support of the Computers in Curricula program of the Department of Higher Education of the State of New Jersey for 1986 and the Council for the Improvement of Teaching of Rutgers University for 1987-88.
A. Background: What is the nature of Computers and the Humanities courses? The Vassar Conference of 1986 had made us aware of the importance of three local variables:
1) The faculty member who teaches the course, and the nature of his or her training, expertise, and research interests.
2) The curriculum pattern of the department and college, including how such a course fits into the student's degree-major-elective requirements and between any prerequisite courses and sequels.
3) The student audience and its size, level, enthusiasm, career motives, and prior competence. The announcement of the 1988 Oberlin conference queried us as to whether o rnot Computers and the Humanities had finally become a sub-discipline of its own. Indeed, in the field of humanistic computing the number of course offerings is growing healthily; we see a vital abundance of new specialist periodicals, books, and articles; and there is unexpected attention from the makers of microcomputer hardware, programming languages, and application packages. None of this could have been foreseen a decade or even five years ago. These currents of activity are exciting and challenging, but they produce patterns of diversity and pluralismÄnot one of unity and coherence. But I believe we should consider Computers and the Humanities not as a sub-discipline of its own but rather as a field for inter-disciplinary study.
My experience in the departments of and English and American Studies at the Newark campus of Rutgers made me keenly aware of issues of curricular structure. At a moderately small urban campus of a state university, where students commute from home and hold part-time jobs, non-standard elective courses must fill degree or major requirements if they are to survive. I have offered in the last five years Computers and Literature (English), Computers and the Humanities (American Studies) amd various Literary Topics and Technology & Culture courses. To obtain necessary enrollments, these courses had to meet some requirement, whether the traditional college humanities or literature requirement, the Education department technology requirement, or the college interdisciplinary course requirement.
My students came from English, Computer Science, Education, and related fields, and usually they had two questions: 1) Will I be forced to do programming, and 2) Will I have the chance to work hands-on with computers. In this mixed population, I feel I conduct not just a college course but rather an inter-disciplinary collision course: I wish to confront the hard-heads and the soft-heads with each other, to get Computer Science majors and English majors to discover basic things about each other's discipline. The courses I teach are one semester long and have no prerequisite and no sequel. I assign five or more whole books (usually no anthologies), each leading to a short paper. The student chooses to do a term reading paper, a computer program, or a supervised project. I expect students to master word processing and e-mail; I demonstrate software packages and simple programming for text analysis. A sampling of shareware programs is available to those who want them. There are both mid-term and final exams.
B. Thesis:
C. Clusters:
1) The physical sciences (computer science, mathematics, and physics)
2) The humanities (literature, foreign languages, linguistics, philosophy, history, and the fine arts)
3) The social sciences (psychology, cognitive science, sociology, anthropology, and economics).
4) Professional and vocational programs (library and information science, education, publishing, journalism, media)
5) Interdisciplinary areas (technology and society, history of science, American studies, women's studies, third world studies, environmental studies)
Over five hundred permutations and combinations can result from pairings of these academic, professional, and vocational contexts. But the actual clusters that are commonly found can be counted on the fingers of both hands. Each tends to define itself around a syllabus or short reading list.
Humanities computing is often in the news, and much information may be gleaned from general publications such as Business Week, High Technology, The New York Times, Newsweek, Psychology Today, Science, Science News, Scientific American, The Wall Street Journal, and The Whole Earth Review. Some aspects of the field, such as hypertext, multimedia, CD-ROM, networking, text scanning, and scholar's microcomputer workstations, are changing too rapidly for books alone to keep up. (See section 000 below).
D. The Bibliography:
1. Textbooks and Overviews of Computers in the Humanities
2. Beginners' Introductions to humanities computing
3. Human languages and computer languages
4. Literary and linguistic analysis in practice
5. Artificial intelligence and robotics
6. Current debates on humanistic and social issues
7. The image of computers in fiction
8. Collections and anthologies
9. Writing and the classsroom
10. Science, technology and society
11. Journals and newsletters
12. Bibliography and reference
13. Special Topics: Art, the Bible and classical studies, history, telecommunications
I have not included separate articles or books on using software packages. My annotation combines what interested undergraduate students think, what has been said in print, and my own responses. These lists can suggest course units, reading projects, reserve shelf plans, and ways of refreshing college libraries. They also provide suggestions for faculty summer reading.
For reasons of space I have omitted many background writings on technology, information, and society by such authors as Daniel Bell, Jacques Ellul, Sigfried Giedion, Thomas Kuhn, Leo Marx, Marshall McLuhan, Lewis Mumford, John Naisbit, Robert Pirsig, and Alan Toffler.
Each section is introduced by some admittedly subjective remarks for which I alone am responsible. I welcome responses and suggestions of any kind from readers.
Note: This bibliography was first compiled late in 1987, and a few 1988 items were added in time for the Oberlin conference in June 1988. Afterwards, some additional items for 1988-1990 were added, many of which have no annotation.
1. Overviews and Textbooks for Computers in the Humanities:
No standard textbook has emerged yet. The 132 teachers of computers and the humanities courses who responded to Joseph Rudman's recent survey in Computers and the Humanities adopted 91 different books. Only a handful agreed on any texts at all, namely the well-known texts by Hockey and Oakman, both of which were written before 1980. By contrast, more than fifty teachers relied on their own handouts and documentation. Perhaps the promising new texts by Feldman, Pfaffenberger, and Tannenbaum will establish themselves. Devotees of the improbable should consider Walter.
Feldman, Paula R. and Buford Norman. The Wordworthy Computer: Classroom and Research Applications in Language and Literature. New York: Random House, 1987. A handbook that moves upward from word processing to indexing, concordances, and literary analysis and text editing, using current microcomputer examples. Excellent bibliography and index; directed to teachers.
Forester, Tom, ed. Computers in the Human Context : Information Technology, Productivity, and People. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989. The third collection of its kind, taken from publications of the mid- and late-1980s, intended to supersede Forester's 1980 and 1985 anthologies, below.
Forester, Tom. High-Tech Society : The Story of the Information Technology Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987. Better known as the editor of anthologies of articles on information technology, Forester here weaves a continuous story in his own words.
Hockey, Susan. A Guide to Computer Applications in the Humanities. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. A well-established authority that treats the nature of literary and linguistic computing though the detailed discussion of selected mainframe procedures and software packages.
Kren, George M., and George Christakes. Scholars and Personal Computers: Microcomputers in the Humanities and Social Science. New York: Human Sciences, 1988. Practical applications on many different computer research applications and procedures, but much of the hardware and software described has been superseded.
Oakman, Robert. Computer Methods for Literary Research. Rev. ed., Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1984. A standard survey and introduction to computers and literary computing, still useful for discussions of problems and procedures and for its range, balance, and examples.
Rudall, B. H. and T. N. Corns. Computers and Literature: A Practical Guide. Kent: Tunbridge Wells and Boston: Abacus, 1987. Wide-reaching chapters that introduce computers and literary and linguistic computing procedures. No index or bibliography.
Pfaffenberger, Brian. The Scholar's Personal Computing Handbook: A Practical Guide. Boston: Little, Brown, 1986. An introduction and survey of software applications, communications, databases, and expansion hardware for teachers and scholars. A separate handbook, not reviewed, is for student use.
Tannenbaum, Robert. Computing in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Volume 1: Fundamentals. Rockville, MD: Computer Science Press, 1988. A general introductory textbook on computer science that systematically considers computer history, fundamentals, programming, and software applications. A discipline-based second volume has been announced.
Walter, Russ. The Secret Guide to Computers. 3 vols. Russ Walter, 1987. (Russ Walter, 22 Ashland Street, Somerville, MA 21434, telephone 617-666-2666). When computing books get ponderous and wearisome, the antidote is the zaniness of Russ Walter, whose tangible discussions of hardware, software, and languages contain an unexpectedly large number of humanistic applications.
2. Beginners' Introductions to Humanities Computing:
Bernstein, Jeremy. The Analytic Engine: ComputersÄPast, Present and Future. Morrow, 1985. Excellent historical essays on the development of computers, originally published in the New Yorker.
Crichton, Michael. Electronic Life: How to Think about Computers. New York: Ballantine, 1985. The science fiction novelist's thoughts, feelings, and suggestions about encounters with a personal computer.
Evans, Christopher. The Micro Millennium. New York: Viking Press, 1980. Although excessively euphoric, a panorama of a paperless future in education, home, offices, schools, factories, and professions.Very readable.
Hodges, Andrew. Alan Turing: The Enigma. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984. A remarkable biography written with both scientific understanding of the mathematics and politics of breaking the German code in World War II and with compassion for Turing's personal ordeal as a homosexual during a repressive era in England.
Kidder, Tracy. The Soul of a New Machine. New York: Avon, 1982. An account of the bonding and interaction of members a minicomputer design team at Data General, this book is deservedly the winner of its Pulitzer prize.
McWilliams, Peter. The Personal Computer Book. New York: Ballantine, 1983. Also The Word Processing Book. New York: Ballantine, 1984. Although becoming rather dated, these quirky books by a former best-selling poet present essentials with humor. McWilliams loves to name brand names and to find funny picture illustrations.
Sandberg-Diment, Eric. They All Laughed When I Sat Down at the Computer. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984. A chronicle of the microcomputer revolution of 1982-1984, collected from the author's columns in The New York Times, viewing industry events with welcome old fashioned wit and skepticism.
Understanding Computers. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1986--. A series of separate introductions to various computer basics, such as input and output, graphics, communications, artificial intelligence, and similar topics, each explored in depth in a few areas and accompanied by memorable graphics illustrations.
3. Human Languages, Number Languages, and Computer Languages:
Bar-Lev, Zev. Computer Talk for the Liberal Arts. New York: Prentice Hall, 1987. An unusual discussion of concepts in computer operations, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and computer languages.
Campbell, Jeremy. Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982. A brilliant book that uses Claude Shannon's communication theory to place information along with matter and energy as a third primary ingredient in the cosmos, in DNA, and in human and computer languages.
Goldenberg, E. Paul and Wallace Feurzeig, Exploring Language with LOGO. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987. A lively exploration, first of its kind, exploiting the verbal capability of LOGO in the linguistic study of poetry, prose, syntax, morphology, orthography, and phonology. Macintosh diskette available.
Heim, Michael. Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. A deep analysis of word processing using the language theories of Wittgenstein, Eric Holbrook, and Martin Heidegger.
Ifrah, Georges. From One to Zero: A Universal History of Numbers. New York: Viking Press, 1985. A fascinating account of number systems, number alphabets and signs, and the history of counting and reckoning all over the world.
Levine, Howard and Howard Rheingold. The Cognitive Connection: Thought and Language in Man and Machine. New York: Prentice Hall, 1987. Treatments of parallels between natural language, computer control, and standard computer programming languages.
Menninger, Otto. Number Words and Number Symbols. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969. The relation of numbers to non-numerical language and the emergence of counting and reckoning as languages of their own.
Shore, John. The Sachertorte Algorithm, and Other Antidotes to Computer Anxiety. New York: Penguin, 1986. When is a sachertorte recipe an algorithm? An offbeat introduction to computer technology, software, programming, languages, and artificial intelligence that becomes unexpectedly sophisticated.
4. Literary and Linguistic Analysis:
Abercrombie, John R. Computer Programs for Literary Analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. A collection of ready-made literary computer programs, each explained line-by-line, and repeated in BASIC, PASCAL, and IBYX. Diskettes available.
Burrows, J. F. Computation into Criticism: A Study of Jane Austen's Novels and an Experiment in Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Butler, Christopher. Computers in Linguistics. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985.
Butler, Christopher. Statistics in Linguistics. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985. A companion volume to the above that assumes some knowledge of mathematics and introduces the reader to fundamentals of textual statistics.
Conway, Richard and James Archer. Programming for Poets: A Gentle Introduction Using BASIC. Winthrop, 1979. In this case ``poets'' means ``non-programmers.'' Useful companion volumes, which also take a verbal rather than mathematical approach, were published on Pascal, Fortran, and PL/I.
Corr‚, Alan D. Icon Programming for Humanists. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1990. The first treatment of Icon for humanities users; intended for experienced programmers.
Griswold, Ralph E., and Madge G. Griswold. The Implementation of the Icon Programming Language. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. The official manual of the structured, public domain language that Griswold introduced to replace Snobol.
Harris, Mary Dee. Introduction to Natural Language Processing. New York: Reston, 1985. A consideration of human natural language processing, followed by a discussion of programming for advanced computer science undergraduates; uses pseudo-code based on PASCAL, with some elements of SNOBOL4.
Hockey, Susan. Snobol Programming for the Humanities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. An introduction to SNOBOL4 as a literary and linguistic programming language that assumes no prior knowledge of computing or mathematics.
Ide, Nancy. Pascal for the Humanities. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987. Systematic explanations of the problems in literary and textual analysis, taking the student step-by-step through programs of graduated difficulty in standard PASCAL.
Marcus, Jeffrey and Marvin Marcus. Computing without Mathematics: BASIC [and] Pascal Applications. New York: Computer Science Press, 1986. An introduction to programming in BASIC and Pascal for undergraduate humanities and social science students using the Apple II; programs published on diskette.
Nagao, Makoto. Machine Translation: How Far Can It Go? Trans. Norman D. Cook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Potter, Rosanne G., ed. Literary Computing and Literary Criticism: Theoretical and Practical Essays on Theme and Rhetoric. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
Spencer, Cynthia. Programming for the Liberal Arts. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allenheld, 1985. An informal and personal introduction to PL/C, a version of PL/I used at Cornell.
5. Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Media:
Much of the early euphoria of AI writers--and partisanship of AI critics--has disappeared in favor of a more skeptical but still positive attitude. For beginners in AI, the works of Dreyfus (1979), McCorduck, and Sacks are highly recommended.
Boden, Margaret. Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man. New York: Basic Books, rev 2d ed. 1987. A classic work on AI from the point of view of philosophy and psychology that has the virtue of unexpected clarity.
Brand, Stewart. The Media Lab : Inventing the Future at MIT. New York: Viking Press, 1987. A tour of the frontiers of media technology in the process of discovery and creation at MIT by the man tio whom we owe The Whole Earth Catalogue.
Dennett, Daniel C. Brainstorms: Philosophic Essays on Mind and Psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978. Analyses of problems of mind and brain, and computer models of thought, perception, and sensation.
Dreyfus, Hubert. What Computers Can't Do. New York: Harper & Row, rev ed. 1979. A sustained attack on the claims, methods and presuppositions of the AI field, especially cognitive simulation and semantic information processing.
Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Stuart E. Dreyfus. Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer. New York: Free Press, 1988. The updated case against AI, expert systems, and the misuse of computers in education, with a rebuttal to ``Fifth Generation'' enthusiasts and especially to Pamela McCorduck, whose Machines Who Think was, in turn, an answer to Dreyfus's own What Computers Can't Do.
Fjermedal, Grant. Tomorrow Makers: A Brave New World of Living-Brain Machines. New York: Macmillan, 1986. AI and robotics research frontiers in the labs of MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and Carnegie-Mellon, enthusiastically visited by a prize-winning science writer.
Gardner, Howard. The Mind's New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution. New York: Basic Books, 1985. The connections between computing, cognitive psychology, philosophy, psychology, information theory, linguistics, anthropology, mathematics, and theories of perception and representation.
Hofstadter, Douglas and Dennett, compilers. The Mind's I. New York: Basic Books, 1981. Bibliography. An inspiring collection of articles, fiction, and essays on mind, soul, and self in philosophy, literature, and artificial intelligence. Bibliography.
Hofstadter, Douglas. Goedel, Escher, Bach. New York: Random House, 1980. A stimulating, fascinating, but demanding book on self-referential loops in the mathematician Goedel, the painter Escher, and the composer J. S. Bach, with implications for mathematical logic, DNA, music, art, computer programming, and AI. Impressive bibliography.
Hofstadter, Douglas R. Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern. New York: Bantam, 1986. A gathering of notions, puzzles, and queries, alternately profound and capricious in the author's unique manner, originally published in the columns of Scientific American. Excellent bibliography.
Johnson, George. Machinery of the Mind: Inside the New Science of Artificial Intelligence. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1986. An unusually well-written and well-integrated survey of artificial intelligence, its movements, people, and controversies. Selective bibliography.
Johnson-Laird, Philip. The Computer and the Mind: An Introduction to Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. The case that while nothing has been as useful in creating models of the mind in the last three decades as the digital computer, at the same time, nothing has produced as much misunderstanding and unmet expectations.
McCorduck, Pamela. Machines Who Think. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1979. Delightfully written, full of enthusiasm for the potentialities of artificial intelligence, with eye-witness accounts of actual events as well as a fine survey of AI in literature and mythology.
Minsky, Marvin. The Society of Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988. Structured as a mosaic of self-contained pages, suggesting how the biological brain might operate locally but be transformed when it functions globally as mind.
Minsky, Marvin, and Seymour Papert. Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computer Geometry. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, rev. ed., 1988. An expansion of the classic on learning machines, which prints the 1972 corrections of the 1969 text with a survey of the progress and problems of the last two decades.
Sacks, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. As brilliant as short stories, these case histories of persons with brain damage reveal what we take for granted about mind in the perceptual and cognitive systems in the brain.
Schank, Roger and Peter Childers. The Cognitive Computer. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1985. A veteran of the AI movement reviews for the general reader what AI can and cannot do. Of special interest is Schank's interest in multiple levels of cognition in AI translation.
6. Current Debates on Humanistic and Social Issues:
Bolter, J. David. Turing's Man. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. An impressive account of the implications of computing, tracing the defining technology of several eras and showing the philosophical impact of the computer upon basic concepts of time, memory, quantity, creativity, and intelligence.
Durham, David. The Rise of the Computer State. New York: Vintage, 1983. A chilling account by a reporter for The New York Times of the threat to privacy of a unified national database of the NSA, FBI, Social Security, IRS, police, credit, health, and other organizations.
Garson, Barbara. The Electronic Sweatshop: How We Are Transforming the Office of the Future into the Factory of the Past. New York: Penguin Books, 1988. A provocative expos‚ alleging that data clerks are becoming dehumanized and managers are finding themselves undermined in the "second industrial revolution" now taking place in the high-tech workplace; portions of the book first appeared in Mother Jones.
Hardison, O. B. Disappearing Through the Skylight : Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century. New York : Viking, 1989. Profound queries into the arrival of modernism and technology in the twentieth century and the apparent result: the disappearance of traditional ideas of nature, history, language, art, and human self-identity. Highly recommended.
Marx, Leo. The Pilot and the Passenger : Essays on Literature, Technology, and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Essays spanning over one-third of a century, some of which develop themes in the author's well-knowm The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York: Oxford Ubiversity Press, 1964).
Nelson, Ted. Computer Lib/ Dream Machines. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, rev. ed., 1987. A re-issue with some revisions of the classic 1974 double-decker that introduced the notion of hypertext.
Penrose, Roger. The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and he Laws of Physics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. A distinguished scientist, Penrose moves mind-body inquiries that oppose the "strong AI" position to the high ground of the philosophy of science, cosmology, and quantum mechanics to explore what may be the natural limits of our physicial knowledge of human consciousness.
Roszak, Theodore. The Cult of Information. New York: Pantheon, 1987. A debunking book about the information glut, the menace of hidden agendas in computer literacy programs, and dangerous databanks that can curtail our civil liberties. Recommended as an antidote to computer and AI euphoria.
Steinman, Lisa Malinowski. Made in America : Science, Tech nology, and American Modernist Poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. How modernism brought with it the unusual philosophical acceptance of science and technology in the poetry of William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens in the period 1910-1945.
Stoll, Clifford. The Cuckoo's Egg: Inside the World of Corporate Espionage. New York: Doubleday, 1989. A fascinating first person documentary account of a search (unassisted by the FBI, CIA, or NSA) into several supposedly secured computers to eventually find a hacker in West Germany who broke into the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory mainframe.
Tichi, Cecelia. Shifting Gears : Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. The implications of "gear-and-girder" teachnology for American society, culture, and literature in the late 19th anc early 20th centuries.
Turkle, Sherry. The Second Self. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985. A remarkable and original book which applies six years of sociological and psychological research, as well as the principles of Piaget and Freud, to the question of what children, adolescents, adults, and professionals actually feel about computersÄand what they feel about themselves while using computers.
Zuboff, Shoshana. In the Age of the Smart Machine : the Future of Work and Power. New York: Basic Books, 1988. An unusual book, based on five years of field work by a faculty member of the Harvard Business School, that asks how the information revolution changes knowledge in the workplace, our sense of computer-mediated work, and the structure of managerial power.
7. The Image of Computers and Intelligent Machines in Fiction:
a.
The Asimov collection is excellent but expensive; the Mowshowitz book is quite good but not in print.
Asimov, Isaac et al. Machines That Think. Orlando, FL: Holt, Rinehart Winston, 1983. Twenty-nine classic tales, chiefly from 1932 to 1973.
Conklin, Groff. Science Fiction Thinking Machines. New York: Vanguard, 1954. An early collection of tales about robots, androids, and computers.
Dunn, Thomas P. and Richard D. Erlich, eds. The Mechanical God: Machines in Science Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982. Eighteen essays. Good bibliography.
Erlich, Richard D. and Thomas P. Dunn, eds. Clockwork Worlds: Mechanized Environments in SF. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983. Fifteen essays. Useful bibliography.
Mowshowitz, Abbe. Inside Information: Computers in Fiction. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1977. A collection of some three dozen works or excerpts from works of fiction that pertain to computers or computing; good bibliography.
Nicholls, Peter, ed. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: Doubleday, 1976. Informative articles on such science fiction subjects as computers, communications, linguistics, information, intelligence, and technology.
Porush, David. The Soft Machine: Cybernetic Fiction. New York: Methuen, 1985. A discussion of fiction about cybernetics and computers in such authors as Vonnegut, Burroughs, Pynchon, Barth, Beckett, and Barthelme. Bibliography.
Warrick, Patricia. The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985. A study of 225 works of science fiction written between 1930 and 1970. Useful bibliography.
Van Tassel, Dennie. Computers, Computers, Computers. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1977. A potpourri of tales, verse, limericks, and newspaper columns.
b. Selected Individual works
Beginners may start on works by Asimov, Clarke, Forster, and Shelley. The utopian-dystopian issue invites readings by Bellamy, Butler, Huxley, Orwell, and Wells.
Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams (1918). See ``The Dynamo and the Virgin,'' chapter 25.
Asimov, Isaac. I, Robot. New York: New American Library, 1956. Perhaps the best known cycle of tales on robots by a single author.
Barth, John. Giles Goat-Boy. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1987. A satire after Swift and Sterne on the alternate world of the computer as troll, mechanist universe, and author.
Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1888). Intended as a utopia of a thoroughly mechanized and bureaucratic world.
Beirce, Ambrose. ``Moxon's Master'' (1893). Do machines think?
Bruner, John. The Shockwave River. New York: Ballantine, 1984. Gives new meaning to the phrase ``computer-human interface.''
Butler, Samuel. Erewhon (1872). See ``The Book of the Machine,'' chapters 21-23.
Clarke, Arthur C. 2001. New York: New American Library, 1972. Based on the filmscript by Clarke and Stanley Kubrick. See also Clarke's sequels, 2010 (also a film) and 2061.
Forster, E. M. ``The Machine Stops'' (1909). A forecast in 1909 of the dystopian theme of twentieth century mechanized society as insect hive.
Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace, 1984. The novel that defined and became one of the first classics of cyberpunk.
Heinlein, Robert. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. New York: Ace, 1987. A moon civilization overthrows exploitation by earth when it is led by its computer.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World (1932). Original outcry against mechanization, genetic engineering, and mind control.
Orwell, George. 1984 (1949). The classic contemporary dystopia of the techno-totalitarian state and its impact on political thought, political language, and personal feeling.
Roszak, Theodore. Bugs. New York: Doubleday, 1981. The computer as insect by the author of The Cult of Information.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein (1818). Amazingly perfective anticipations of issues in bio-technology, the social responsibility of the scientist, and the psychology of double identity which will astonish readers who only know the movie versions.
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Player Piano.
ÄÄÄ. The Sirens of Titan. New York: Dell, 1959. The army as the ultimate human machine.
Wells, H. G. A Modern Utopia (1905). A professional-technocratic utopia, probably the occasion for Forster's satiric reply, ``The Machine Stops.''
ÄÄÄ. The Time Machine (1895). Unexpectedly thoughtful and provocative Marxian and Darwinian speculations into a far future in which human work roles, classes, races, and species have become redefined in radically unexpected ways.
8. Collections and Anthologies:
Dertouzos, Michael L., et al, eds. The Computer Age: A Twenty Year View
Ditlea, Steve, ed. Digital Deli. New York: Workman, 1984. A collage of items by Howard Rheingold, Steve Wozniac, Ted Nelson, Esther Dyson, Peter McWilliams, Robert A. Moog, Mitchell Kapor, Timothy Leary, and William F. Buckley, Jr.
Forester, Tom, ed. The Information Technology Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985. Material on telecommunications, artificial intelligence, the ``fifth generation,'' information technology in schools, factories, offices, banks, and hospitals, weapons systems, crime, and women's rights from periodicals of the early 1980s.
Forester, Tom ed. The Microelectronics Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980. Articles published before 1980 on computing and information technology, especially on aspects of its economic impact on industry, the office, employment, industry, and society.
Newman, James, ed. The World of Mathematics. 4 vols, New York: Simon & Shuster, 1956. Volume 4 contains Alan Turing's ``Can a Machine Think?'' and John von Neumann's ``The General and Logical Theory of Automata.''
Van Tassel, Dennie. The Compleat Computer. Chicago: SRA (Science Research Associates), 1976. Miscellanies by Norman Cousins, Claude Shannon, Michael Crichton, Ray Bradbury, Art Buchwald, Arthur C. Clarke, Stewart Brand, W. H. Auden, and John Kemeny.
9. Research, Writing, and Teaching:
Barrett, Edward, ed. Text, ConText, and HyperText: Writing with and for the Computer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988. Ignore the title: this is actually a collection of twenty-one conference-based articles on computer documentation, technical writing, natural language processing, writer training, and writing management.
Chicago Guide to Preparing Electronic Manuscripts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. An attempt to describe and standardize procedures in electronic text transmission.
Cole, Bernard. Beyond Word Processing. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985. Describes information storage in textbases, wordbases, and existing writing software.
Daiute, Colette. Writing & Computers. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1985. How computers should and should not be used at various levels of instruction, using the fine realization that writing is a cognitive and social process as well as a mechanical one.
James, Geoffrey. The Tao of Programming. Santa Monica, CA: Info Books, 1987. What began as one modest, pocketable book of humor acquired a sequel and then became a series, including The Zen of Programming (1988) and Computer Parables: Enlightment in the Information Age (1989).
Language, Writing, and the Computer: Readings from "Scientific American" Intro. William S.-Y. Wang. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1986.
Noble, David F. & Virginia Noble. Improve Your Writing with Word Processing. Carmel, IN: Que, 1984. Parallels between block moves in word processing and how the writer can rearrange phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and sections.
Olsen, Solveig, ed. Computer-Aided Instruction in the Humanities. New York: MLA, 1985. Essays on college level teaching in history, foreign languages, logic, and writing. Extensive bibliography and list of personnel and programs.
Seiden, Peggy, ed. A Directory of Software Sources for Higher Education: A Resource Guide for Instructional Applications. Princeton: Peterson, n.d.
10. Science, Technology and Society
Ermann, M. David, et al. eds. Computers, Ethics, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Ernste, Huib, ed. Information Society and Spatial Structure. New York: Belhaven, 1989.
Gilder, George. Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology. New York: Touchstone (Simon & Shuster), 1989. A bold, aggressively stated view that the impact of the microchip on the mind and the realm of information amounts to "the overthrow of matter.
Kennedy, Noah. The Industrialization of Intelligence: Mind and Machine in the Modern Age. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Lucky, Robert W. Silicon Dreams: Information, Man, and Machine. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. The executive director of research at Bell Labs presents a serious overview of and introduction to the study of information, from Shannon's information theory, to language, data, pictures, and how they are processed.
Mosco, Vincent. The Pay-Per Society: Computers and Communication in the Information Age: Essays in Critical Theory and Public Policy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1989.
Pagels, Heinz R. The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988. The philosophical problem of complexity and the role the computer plays in how we think about "the nature of physical reality, the problem of cognition, the mind-body problem, the character of scientific research, the nature of mathematics, and the role of instruments in research" (Preface).
Penzias, Arno. Ideas and Information: Managing in a High-Tech World. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989. Thoughtful and non-technical explanations and anecdotes of computation and information technology in the past, present, and future by a Nobel prize winner, enlived with his reflections on European history and art and events and his recollections of three decades at Bell Labs.
Schement, Jorge Reina, et al, eds. Competing Visions, Complex Realities : Social Aspects of the Information Age. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1987.
Simons, G. L. Eco-Computer: The Impact of Global Intelligence. New York: John Wiley, 1987.
Slade, Joseph W, ed. Beyond the Two Cultures : Essays on Science, Technology, and Literature. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1990. Fourteen essays, originally presented at a conference at Long Island University in 1983.
Warnier, Jean Dominique. Computers and Human Intelligence. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1986.
11. Journals, Newsletters, Research, Reference, Bibliography, Special Topics:
Vaughan, W. and A. Hamber, eds. Computers and the History of Art. Bronx, NY: Mansell (H. W. Wilson), 1989.
Prueitt, M. L. Art and the Computer. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985.
The Visual Computer (International Journal of Computer Graphics) 4.1 (1988)
Bibliography:
Caras, Pauline. ``Literature and Computers. A Short Bibliography, 1980-1987.'' College Literature 15 (1988) 69-82.
Ehrlich, Heyward. ``Information and Computer Science'' in Vol. 5 of The Reader's Adviser, ed. Paul T. Durbin, 13th ed., New York: R. R. Bowker, 1988.
Matsuba, Stephen N. "Computer Application inthe Humanities: A Reading List." In Canadian Humanities Computing 4 (May 1990), 1-8.
Two earlier bibliographies of computing books, Michael Nicita and Ronald Petrusha, The Reader's Guide to Microcomputer Books (1984) and Cris Popenoe, Book Bytes: The User's Guide to 1200 Microcomputer Books (New York: Pantheon, 1984 ) are still occasionally valuable.
Journals and Newsletters:
The well-established computing periodicals that are likely to have news of interest to humanists include Abacus, AI Expert, Bits and Bytes Review, Byte, Computer Language, Computers and the Humanities, InfoWorld, Library High-Tech News, Literary and Linguistic Computing, PC Magazine, and PC World.
Here are some less well-known or more recent computing periodicals and newsletters that specialize regularly in the humanities :
Academic Computing. Monthly. Academic Computing Publications, Inc. 200 W. Virginia, Box 804, McKinnet, TX 75069.
Bits and Bytes Review: Reviews and News of Products and Resources for Academic Computing. Nine times a year. 623 N. Iowa Ave., Whitefish, MT 59937.
Canadian Humanities Computing. Quarterly. Robarts Library, 14th Floor, 130 St. George St., Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A5. See especially "Computer Applications in the Humanities: A Reading List" in May 1990 issue.
Computers and Literature..........
Computers and Philosophy Newsletter. Carnegie Mellon University, CDEC Building. B, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.
History and Computing. Journals Subscription Dept. Oxford University Press, Pinkhill House, Southfield Road, Eynsham, Oxford OX8 1JJ, UK.
Humanities Communication Newsletter. Dr. May Katzen, Office of Humanities COmmunication, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK. Moving shortly to the Universoitu of Bath.
The Icon Newsletter. The Icon Project, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 85721.
REACH........
Periodicals of special interest to Macintosh users include MacUser, MacWorld, Minds in Motion, Wheels for the Mind, and Wings for the Mind.
The Apple Macintosh Book. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1988.
Goodman, Danny. The Complete HyperCard Handbook. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.
Networks, E-Mail, and Conferencing:
Critical Connections: Communications for the Future. U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Washington, DC., 1990
Quarterman, John. The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide. Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1990.
Research and Reference:
Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary. Ed. -in chief, John Sinclair. London: Collins, 1987. Produced by the Collins Birmingham University International Language Database project (COBUILD) where 20 million words were scanned and then managed on computer to determine actual contemporary English practices. See also ``Looking Up: An Account of the COBUILD Project''
Creasy, William C. Microcomputers and Literary Scholarship : Papers Read at Clark Library. Los Angeles, CA: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles, 1986.
Gould, Constance C. Information Needs in the Humanities: An Assessment Stanford, Research Libraries Group, 1988.
Hughes, John J. Bits, Bytes, and Biblical Studies: A Resource Guide for the USe of Computers in Biblical and Classical Studies. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1987.
Hockey, Susan and Nacy Ide, eds. Research in Humanities Computing Yearbook 1989/90. A new annual of based on papers presented at the joint annual ACH/ALLC conference. The first volume, of which the guest editor is Ian Lancashire, is based on the Dynamic Text conference held in Toronto in 1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press, announced 1990.
Lowry, Anita amd Junko Stiveras, comps. Scholarship in the Electronic Age: A Selected Bibliography on Research and Communication in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Washington, DC: Council on Library Resources, 1987.
Miall, David, ed. Humanities and the Computer: New Directions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Rahtz, Sebastian, ed. Information Technology in the Humanities. New York: Halstead (John Wiley), 1987. Recent teaching developments and academic applications in history, literature, music, art, languages, and archeology. Bibliography.
Schneider, Ben Ross, Jr. My Personal Computer and Other Family Crises. New York: Macmillan, 1984. Reflections by the head of the team that compiled The London Stage, begun in Travels in Computerland (1974), continued here with episodes of first turning to the microcomputer.
Williams, Frederick, Ronald E. Rice, and Everett M. Rogers. Research Methods and the New Media. New York: Free Press, 1988.