Research Catalog
The government machine : a revolutionary history of the computer
- Title
- The government machine : a revolutionary history of the computer / Jon Agar.
- Author
- Agar, Jon.
- Publication
- Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2003.
Available Online
Items in the Library & Off-site
Filter by
1 Item
Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
---|---|---|---|---|
Text | Request in advance | JSE 04-41 | Offsite |
Details
- Description
- viii, 554 pages : illustrations; 24 cm
- Summary
- "In The Government Machine Jon Agar traces the mechanization of government work in the United Kingdom from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. He argues that this transformation has been tied to the rise of "expert movements," groups whose authority has rested on their expertise. The deployment of machines was an attempt to gain control over state action - a revolutionary move.
- Agar shows how mechanization followed the popular depiction of government as machine-like, with British civil servants cast as components of a general-purpose "government machine"; indeed, he argues that today's general-purpose computer is the apotheosis of the civil servant."--Jacket.
- Series Statement
- History of computing
- Uniform Title
- History of computing.
- Subjects
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 433-533) and index.
- Contents
- The state of knowledge -- The machineries of government -- "The parent of a totally different order of things" : Charles Trevelyan and the civil service as machine -- "Chaotic England" and the organized world : official statistics and expert statisticians -- "One universal register" : fantasies and realities of total knowledge -- The office machinery of government -- An information war -- The military machine? -- Treasury organization and methods and the computerization of government work -- Privacy and distrust -- Computers and experts in the hollowed-out state, 1970-2000.
- Call Number
- JSE 04-41
- ISBN
- 0262012022
- 9780262012027
- 9780262533881 (pbk.)
- 026253388X (pbk.)
- LCCN
- 2003042121
- OCLC
- 51534863
- Author
- Agar, Jon.
- Title
- The government machine : a revolutionary history of the computer / Jon Agar.
- Imprint
- Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2003.
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Series
- History of computingHistory of computing.
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 433-533) and index.
- Connect to:
- Research Call Number
- JSE 04-41