Transnational Pathways to the Digital Age. Computers and Societies in North-South Perspective, 1950s–2000s

Organizer: Priv.-Dr. Michael Homberg (ZZF Potsdam) & Prof. Dr. Debora Gerstenberger (Universität Köln)

Digital technologies and online social networks profoundly shape our 21st-century world. However, it’s crucial to recognize that digital technologies have a considerable history already. From its inception in the 1950s, the digital computer has become a global phenomenon with far-reaching social, cultural, economic, ecological, and political implications. Yet, while existing studies have primarily focused on developments in industrialized centers, the changes in the Global South and their transnational connections still remain underexplored. Thus, there is a pressing need to shift the conventional computer history narratives and adopt a new North-South perspective. In particular, we lack comprehensive studies that investigate how various national and regional paths into the digital age were globally interconnected.

This conference, therefore, embarks on a mission to establish a fresh historiographical perspective, delving into the transformative influence of computers and digital data processing on the living conditions and work environments of both the Global North and the Global South from
1950 to 2000. With that, it aims to illuminate the intricate interplay between digital advancements and societal transformations in 20th and early 21st centuries, nurturing comparative and entangled history perspectives.

Program and Time Schedule 

Thursday, August 1st 2024 

Opening Session (9:30 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.) 

Frank Bösch: Welcome Reception | Introductory Remarks 
Debora Gerstenberger: Bringing the Global South in! How to write a “Decentered” History of Computing? 
Michael Homberg: Transnational Pathways to the Digital Age – Concepts, Perspectives, Questions 

Panel I: 
Building Bridges and Hierarchies: Academic Experts, Knowledge Exchange and Computer Education
Chair: Rüdiger Graf (10:30 a.m. – 12.00 a.m.) 

Karin Priem: Between Education and Mass Communication: UNESCO and Its Vision of Technological Egalitarianism as a Social and Cultural Good 
Barbara Hof: Data Sharing, Big Science, and the Western “Advantage” in the Creation of the World Wide Web (1970s-1990s) 
Anna Osterlow: “A Computer Speaking Wolof”: Computer Education and the Trans¬national Networks of Early Computing Pioneers in Senegal and Nigeria, 1960-1990

 Lunch (12 a.m. – 1 p.m.) 

Panel II: 
Developing Computer Nations: (Geo-)Politics, Nation Building, and the Struggle for Digital In(ter)dependence Chair: Frank Bösch (1 p.m. – 3.30 p.m.) 

Marcelo Vianna: Authoritarian Modernization and Technological Autonomy: In-for¬mation Technology Advertising during the Civil-Military Dictatorship in Brazil 
Bo An: “Post-Maintenance”: The Disconnected Chinese Software Crisis 
Dwai Banerjee: Computing in the Time of Decolonization: India in the 20th Century Honghong Tinn: Tech CEOs, Diplomacy, and Geopolitics in 21st Century Taiwan: Taiwanese Semiconductor Industry Pioneer Robert H. C. Tsao’s Battles (Zoom) 

Coffee break (3.30 p.m. – 4.00 p.m.) 

Panel III:
World Wide Web? Information Infrastructures, Virtual Networks and Digital Divides in a “Globalized” World Chair: Isabella Löhr (4.00 p.m. – 6 p.m.) 

Deborah Barcella: “The Web and the Internet are different”, says CERN. A short History of Promoting the WWW in the mid-1990s 
Nathan Ensmenger: Fundamentally Digital: Commerce & Computing in the New Millenia 
Sophie Toupin: Tricontinental Computer-Based Resistance in the Struggle Against South African Apartheid (Zoom) 

Keynote: 
Anita Say Chan: The Myth of Digital Universalism: Datafication, Technology and Power in the 20th and 21st Century Chair: Katharina Loeber (6.30 p.m. – 8.00 p.m.)

Friday, August 2nd 2024 

Panel IV:
Shaping the Digital Economy: Computer Work and Global Trade Regimes Chair: Martin Schmitt (9 a.m. – 11.00 a.m.)

Timo Leimbach: From Body-shopping to Offshoring: The Continuous Evolution of Control and Autonomy in the IT Service Industry 
Felix Herrmann: Economic Entanglements in the Socialist Computer Cooperation Colette Perold: The Continental Computer: Free Trade and U.S. Corporate Power in Cold-War South America Coffee break (11.00 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.) 

Panel V: Digital Futurism: Computer Cultures and Popular Perceptions of the ‘Information Age’ Chair: Dick van Lente (11.15 a.m. – 1.15 p.m.) 

Kanyinsola Obayan: Pioneering Progress: Aspiration and Technological Agency in the Lagos Personal Computer Boom 
Sandeep Mertia: From Software Parks to Data Centers: A Spatial History of Digital Future-Making in India 
Wang Hongzhe: Silicon River, Cybernetic Tower, and Information Qigong: A Study on Computational Futurism in North-East Asia and China in the 1980s 

Lunch (1.15 p.m. – 2.00 p.m.) 

Networking | Concluding Session 
Digital Histories in North-South-Perspectives – Shared and Divided Chair: Debora Gerstenberger / Michael Homberg (2.00 a.m. – 2.45 p.m.)