A New History of Modern Computing
Source: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262542906/a-new-history-of-modern-computing/ ↗
Haigh and Ceruzzi rebuilt the classic "History of Modern Computing" from the ground up rather than simply appending new chapters.
The result is better organized, more attentive to the global dimensions of computing history, and extended through the smartphone, cloud computing, and the platform economy.
Haigh, a historian of information technology with a particular interest in the social construction of technical categories, brings a sharper analytical framework than the earlier Ceruzzi-only edition.
The book treats computing not as a single thread of invention but as a convergence of business machines, communication systems, scientific instruments, and consumer electronics, each with its own institutional logic.
It is the most comprehensive single-volume academic survey currently available, covering hardware, software, networking, and the organizational contexts in which all three evolved.
Where the original was a narrative, this is closer to an argument about how to periodize and interpret the history of a technology that resists simple chronology.
Central argument
Haigh and Ceruzzi argue that computing history cannot be told as a single linear narrative of invention, but must be understood as the collision and convergence of distinct technological lineages — business machines, communications infrastructure, scientific instruments, and consumer electronics — each governed by its own institutional and commercial logic. The book's central thesis is that how we periodize and categorize computing is itself a historical construction, not a neutral reflection of technical reality. This reframing challenges triumphalist accounts of Silicon Valley innovation and situates familiar milestones within broader organizational and global contexts that shaped which technologies succeeded and how they were interpreted.
Critique
A work this architecturally ambitious risks trading narrative momentum for analytical comprehensiveness, and critics could reasonably argue that the global dimensions Haigh and Ceruzzi claim to foreground remain thinner than promised — the non-Western computing history still orbits the American and European core rather than genuinely decentering it. The social-constructionist framework Haigh brings is powerful for explaining categorization and institutional context, but it can underweight the role of specific engineering constraints and material affordances in shaping what was actually possible, making some technological transitions feel more contingent than they were.
Why it matters for product
The book's core argument — that competing institutional logics shaped which technical architectures won — is directly applicable to CPOs navigating platform strategy decisions, where the temptation is to treat the current stack as inevitable rather than as a particular settlement among business, engineering, and market forces that could have been otherwise. Understanding that categories like 'the smartphone' or 'the cloud' are constructed convergences rather than natural kinds should make product leaders more skeptical of roadmaps built on stable category assumptions, particularly as AI is actively redrawing the boundaries between device, application, and service.