I dunno what I expect from a museum funded by a trust created by a computer corporation, but I'd love to see more serious engagement with the political forces acting on communication technology in the beautifully presented "History of the Future - A Journey Through the HNF" book.

It acknowledges that writing came about to track the surpluses created by an organised farming society in a fertile region and the impact that moveable type had on propagating the ideas of the Reformation, but is silent on the political imperatives pushing the creation of mass media and computation. A bit of Problematisation 101 wouldn't go amiss here. Who benefits? Who is harmed?

Still, I very much appreciate the long view taken by the museum, in the drawing together of representation systems for text and numbers, mechanised systems for computation and text reproduction, communications and computation, and the evolution of clerical work.

#HNF #hnfpb #HeinzNixdorfMuseumForum

Checking out the hastag #hnfpb on Mastodon that #HeinzNixdorfMuseumForum suggest you use, I find the wonderful virtual #ICT1301 #mainframe at https://ict1301.virtualcolossus.co.uk/ by @virtualcolossus.

The computer was a fully transistorised 48-bit word machine with core memory and drum backing store: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICT_1301

(Image in the public domain: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICT_1301_Gothenburg_1962.jpg#mw-jump-to-license)

The RoboX, built by #BlueBotics in #Switzerland was designed for fairs and trade shows.

The #robot, however, looks directly out of #Raumpatrouille Orion.

#hnf #hnfpaderborn #hnfpb #paderborn