The Reinvention of the Computer Utility

Congratulations to CSS PhD student Alex Mirowski on the publication of his article “At the Electronic Crossroads Once Again: The Myth of the Modern Computer Utility in the United States” in the most recent issue of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.   His article traces the long history of the concept of the “computer utility”  — which has been continuously invented and reinvented since the mid-1960s, most recently as “The Cloud” —and situates the concept of the utility in a larger economic and political history.