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This thesis is focused upon the development of the computer as a communication medium in history. To accomplish this, the computer is understood as constructed by language and technology where these are in turn grounded upon their roles as forms of cultural mediation. As methodology is of paramount importance, the digital medium is heuristically employed to discuss the epistemic and phenomenological significance of communications media. The more general inference therefore concerns the role of socially constructed media in the fabric of cultural development. In addressing this concern, the paper finds that communications media stand as the repositories of knowledge in the form of artificial memory and figurative technique. The computer then, as a medium in history, may arguably be declared as a paradigmatic instantiation of this role.

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Cyberhistory is a thesis presented at The University of Western Australia for the Degree of Master of Science. Computer history is its prime field of focus. Cyberhistory pursues four key themes in computer history. These are, gender, the notion of the periphery, access and the role of the proselytiser. Cyberhistory argues that, gender issues are significant to computer history, culture ascribes gender to computing, and culture has driven computer development as much as technological progress. Cyberhistory identifies significant factors in the progress of computer technology in the 20th century. Cyberhistory finds that, innovation can occur on the periphery, access to computers can liberate and lead to progress, key proselytisers have impacted the development of computing and computing has become decentralised due to a need for greater access to the information machine. Cyberhistory traces a symbolic journey from the industrial periphery to the centres of computing development during WWII, then out to a marginal computer centre and into the personal space of the room. From the room, Cyberhistory connects into cyberspace. Cyberhistory finds that, despite its chaos, the Internet can act like a sanctuary for those seeking to bring imagination and creativity to computing.

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這項研究探討信息科技在中國的技術政治。研究試圖書寫電子計算機作為一種新的電子信息科技在中國早期設置過程的技術政治社會史，並在理論層面上尝试构建一個拓展了的「技術、社會、與勞動」的進路。源於冷戰的地緣政治結構，不像韓國、台灣、或香港等其他亞洲國家和地區 ，在1980年代改革開放以前，中國大陸的計算機工業已經經歷了近30年（1955-1984）連續且激進的獨立發展。特別需要指出的是，中國社會主義時代的計算機發展不僅僅是爲了滿足冷戰中的國防需要和技術民族主義意識形態下社會動員的需要，同時高度嵌入了有關階級政治和技術哲學的社會主義「社會實驗」當中。而隨著文革群眾運動的終結和中國的「改革開放」，鄧小平為首的國家決策層爲了回應來自外部的壓力和來自社會主義內部的危機，用實用主義的技術發展觀取代了社會主義的技術民主實踐。1984年，隨著阿尔文.托夫勒（Alvin Toffler）的《第三次浪潮》（The Third Wave）風靡中國大陸，革命中國的計算機工業和技術政策逐步被隨新自由主義全球化而來的「信息社會」和「矽谷模式」所取代。 / 作為一個技術和文化的雙重物件，電子計算機及其衍生科技（臺式計算機、筆記本電腦、智慧手機、平板電腦等）是理解當代資本主義生產、消費、與勞動關係的指標性科技。然而在社會主義中國的革命現代化進程中，它卻曾經一度拐入了一條另類的發展路徑。中國的信息化（informationalization）或曰計算機化（computerization）過程中的技術路線鬥爭和轉型是如何發生的，這一進程與中國「從毛到鄧」的獨特現代化道路之間是怎樣的關係？時至今日，批判的傳播研究對這段歷史依然所知甚少。本文試圖重訪這個歷史轉折，探查計算機在中國的早期技術政治史。通過追蹤關鍵的歷史事件、人物、思潮、和政策，論文試圖探尋冷戰架構下東西方技術政治之間的交鋒，如何在被計算機仲介的生產與勞動關係中顯影。從這個「閃回」中得到的知識，有助我們將對今日中國信息產業和信息勞動的理解，重新納入中國革命現代性的潮起潮落之中。 / This paper traces the political and social history for the installation process of digital technology in China, in order to shed light on the ways in which computer interacted with the transformation of Chinese socialism. Due to geopolitical structure of the Cold War, unlike other East Asian countries, before 1980s China had developed its independent computer industry for more than 30 years. This development was not just under the rubric of techno-nationalism, which mainly helps to fulfill military and national defense aims, but also embedded into proletariat political debates. Maoist China developed a dialectical approach to technology, in which the most powerful productive power is the revolutionary proletariat class per se, not the machine or technology. So the process of socialist technology development, like the process of socialist culture and arts development is also a dialectical process, which must follow mass line to not just develop productive force, but also transform production relations and create socialist subjectivity. Instead, the post-Mao leadership under Deng Xiaoping responded to external Cold War pressures and the profound internal crises of state socialism by a massive market-oriented "reform and open-up" process. It is during the same period that the self-reliant computer industry system was replaced step-by-step by a western-oriented system, signified by the popularity of Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave. In this context, computer became a machine for labor control and scientific management, no longer a machine for people’s emancipation. / With a focus on technology politics of computer in China during 1955-1984, this study examines how the concept of computer was introduced into the country and conceived by key players at the time, how such discourses led to the production and consumption of computer by different actors, and how this process triggered the transformation of hegemony and practice related to computer-mediated labor relationship, and finally how such a historical formation was conditioned by the post-cold war structure in East Asia, as well as struggles between Maoist socialist legacy and transborder neo-liberalism ethic. This dissertation revisits this transformation, traces its Key Figures and several historical moments, which shows debates and struggles on computer as the articulation of technology and class politics. Reflections from this flashback will rehistorize China’s working-class formation in its electronic industry nowadays into the ebbs and flows of China’s revolutionary modernity. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / 王洪喆. / Thesis (Ph.D.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2014. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 336-360). / Abstracts also in English. / Wang Hongzhe.