DESIGN DISASTERS IN THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING

The timelines of computing history, as with any constructed histories, are littered with hugely successful products or important technological developments, which are stated by various bodies to have changed the course of computing history.

In the earlier years of these timelines, the focus tends to be on the development of the technology itself – the invention of the first working transistor in 1947 by William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at Bell, or the creation of the first integrated circuit in 1958 by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments, which were clearly significant keystones of the computer industry. Later years of these timelines focus more on artefacts such as the 1977 Apple II computer in conjunction with the 1978 spreadsheet software VisiCalc, which changed business accounting work practices overnight, and the first IBM PC in 1981 which due to its open architecture formed the basis of almost every personal computer for many years afterwards.

These timelines present prima facie evidence of technological developments in isolation, suggesting a smooth, unproblematic developmental progress of an industry and rarely giving any indication of the possible reasons why the items discussed were so successful. In addition these same timelines are biased to successful products rather than the design disasters that disappeared from view, although these can tell us just as much about the consumption of technology as the successes.

Design disasters in the computing industry were legion, as numerous companies competed for sales. Why did products hailed as a significant breakthrough fail to maintain a place in the market? The pace of technological development regularly meant a coup for one company, but sounded the death knell for another. Other failures were the result of poor marketing or manufacturing decisions, or economic and business difficulties. The archives of manufacturers brochures present us with computers from large and small manufacturers no longer in existence, and show products which in many cases were years ahead of the competition but for one reason or another failed to make a mark with the right audience.

This paper explores how these developments have been analysed in the past, and presented from the perspectives of different theories, including technological determinism, social constructionism and actor network theory. Using a number of case studies of the design disasters of computing history, this paper explores the connections and interactions between these differing viewpoints, highlighting the limitations of each when applied to such complex technological products.