Museums and the History of Computing: Objects, Narratives and Practice

Museums and the History of Computing examines the critical role that cultural organisations, such as museums and galleries, play in shaping ’digital heritage’ the cultural heritage surrounding computer technology.

Focusing on digital technologies as objects and practices that museums collect, exhibit, and preserve for the future, this book highlights how and why museums play a crucial role in preserving the rich heritage of the digital world, constructing powerful narratives that help make it relevant to the public. It demonstrates that the museum can be a powerful means of safeguarding and interpreting ephemeral and continually changing digital technology, offering new pathways for rethinking the very meaning of digital objects and practices in contemporary societies. It provides practices and strategies for the preservation and exhibition of computing artefacts and ways to accommodate and respond to narratives about histories of computing that circulate in the public arena. Bringing together leading museum and university researchers and practitioners, and mobilizing cross-cutting debates and approaches in areas such as museum studies, cultural heritage, history of technology, anthropology, and media studies, this book challenges us to think critically about what ’digital’ is when examined not only as a tool, but as a cultural object deserving of attention and a place within the museum.

Museums and the History of Computing is for museum studies students and researchers as well as museum practitioners - especially those with an interest in digital technology and heritage. It will be of interest to researchers and students interested on histories of computing and digital media and on digital media studies.

Simone Natale is Associate Professor at the University of Turin, Italy and an Editor of Media, Culture and Society. Previous to taking up in 2020 a position in Turin, his hometown, he taught and researched at Columbia University in New York City, US, Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, Humboldt University Berlin and the University of Cologne in Germany, and Loughborough University in the UK. He is the author of two monographs, including Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test (Oxford University Press, 2021), which has been translated into Italian, Chinese and Portuguese, as well as articles published in leading peer-reviewed journals such as New Media & Society, Communication Theory, the Journal of Communication, Convergence, and Media, Culture & Society. His research has been funded by international organisations including the AHRC and the ESRC in the UK, MIUR in Italy, the Humboldt Foundation and the DAAD in Germany, and Columbia University’s Italian Academy in the US.

Petrina Foti is a museologist and scholar focused on the rise of digital information and technology and the resulting impact on both museums and the wider world. She is the author of Collecting and Exhibiting Computer-based Technology: Curatorial Expertise at the Smithsonian Museums (Routledge, 2018) and holds the honorary position of Science Museum Group Research Associate (SMGRA) at the Science Museum in London (UK).

Ross Parry is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a former Tate Research Fellow, and former chair of the UK’s national Museums Computer Group. He is one of the founding Trustees of the Jodi Mattes Trust - for accessible digital culture. In 2018 he was listed in the Education Foundation’s ’EdTech50’ - the fifty most influential people in the UK education and technology sectors. Ross served on the International Scientific Advisory Board for ’Learning 2.0’ managed by DREAM (the Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials) at the University of Southern Denmark, where in 2012 he was visiting professor. He now sits on the International Advisory Board for the 6mn, five-year, ’Our Museum’ project, funded by Nordea-Fonden and Velux Fonden, as well as the UK Research and Industry’s Steering Committee of its £19mn digital cultural heritage initiative ’Towards a National Collection’. His recent books include: ’Museum Thresholds: the design and media of arrival’ edited with Ruth Page and Alex Moseley (Routledge, 2018); and ’The Routledge Handbook of Media and Museums’ (2019), edited with Kirsten Drotner, Vince Dziekan, and Kim Schrøder. Ross is the author of ’Recoding the Museum: Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change’ (Routledge 2007), and in 2010 published ’Museums in a Digital Age’ (also with Routledge). Ross leads the ’One by One’ international consortium of museums, professional bodies, government agencies, commercial partners and academics, that together are working to build digitally confident museums. After a three-year national project in the UK (working with the Museums Association, Arts Council and National Lottery Heritage Fund), the consortium’s latest project (’structuring museums to deliver new digital experiences’) now brings partners including the V&A, Science Museum and the UK’s Museums Computer Group into an action research collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, American Alliance of Museums and Museum Computer Network.