The Meanings of Musics and Technologies in the Twentieth Century: Case Studies in Postwar Pop, Afrofuturist Jazz, and Chilean Electronic Music

This thesis analyzes Les Paul and Mary Ford’s high-tech pop, Sun Ra’s proto-afrofuturist jazz, and Chilean electronic music to explore how new modes of musical expression and technological advances were shaped in relation to gender, race, and political policy. Les Paul’s development of new recording techniques reflected postwar attitudes toward scientific progress, and the way he presented these “New Sounds” with his wife Mary Ford reinforced gendered notions of domestic space. Sun Ra’s appropriation of Space Age themes with the Arkestra was a synthesis of 1950s Black radicalism and racial uplift initiatives from his early life in Birmingham, Alabama that subverted dominant narratives of technological agency. The rapid development of electronic music in Chile was made possible by government support of educational and cultural institutions, which quickly evaporated when dictator Augusto Pinochet rose to power. These case studies reveal how both music and technology are woven into the tapestry of history and culture that gives them meaning

Frictions: Inquiries into Cybernetic Thinking and Its Attempts towards Mate[real]ization

'Frictions' is a collective invitation to embrace the space of difference that both connects and separates techno-scientific discourses from their actual implementations - or even, from their non-implementations. Through a series of case studies focused on cybernetics, systems research, and some of their more contemporary inheritors, this book argues that such a middle space, the topology of frictions, offers significant insights to assess the historical and epistemological relevance of these interconnected fields. Characterized here as cybernetic thinking, this broad area of theoretical and applied projects would conceal, precisely within its frictions, the operational principles of our present

Enquadramento preliminar da história do computador no ensino superior em Portugal: o caso da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa (1959-1984)

Tese de mestrado, História e Filosofia das Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2015O objeto de estudo desta dissertação é a análise da apropriação do computador para fins científicos e de educação e a sua relação com a emergência da disciplina da informática no âmbito da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa (FCUL). A investigação efetuada assenta em grande parte no estudo de fontes primárias, escritas e orais, representando uma abordagem preliminar a uma temática até hoje pouco abordada. Colocam-se como limites temporais os anos de 1959 e 1984. Em 1959, é instalado em Lisboa no Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC) o primeiro computador em Portugal dedicado ao cálculo técnico e científico abrindo um capítulo na colaboração entre o LNEC e a FCUL. Em 1984, estão atingidos na FCUL dois marcos relevantes, a instalação de um computador central e a autonomia da informática como disciplina científica de pleno direito. Entre 1959 e 1984 assiste-se a uma inserção faseada na FCUL do computador e das temáticas com este relacionadas. A interação inicial com o computador, via LNEC, aprofunda-se na década de 1960 através da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian e do seu centro de cálculo científico. No final da década de 1960 os meios externos já são insuficientes para as necessidades. A incapacidade de adquirir um computador, situação singular entre as faculdades de ciências do país, redunda na instalação de uma solução que se pretendia temporária, terminais time-sharing, em uso na FCUL a partir de 1971. O panorama político e económico da década de 1970 coloca entraves adicionais à aquisição de meios informáticos, dificultando o ensino e a investigação nas disciplinas que deles poderiam tirar partido. Apenas na década de 1980, com influência indireta do incêndio ocorrido na FCUL em 1978, se atinge a autonomia nos meios computacionais. É também esse o momento de autonomização da informática como área do conhecimento de pleno direito na FCUL.The subject and scope of this dissertation is the appropriation of the computer for scientific and education purposes and its relationship to the emergence of the computer science discipline within the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (FCUL). The research conducted is based largely on the study of primary sources, written and oral, representing a preliminary approach to a subject until now mainly untouched. The time frame of the study is 1959-1984. In 1959, the first computer in Portugal dedicated to technical and scientific computing is installed in Lisbon, at the National Civil Engineering Laboratory (LNEC). This opens a chapter of cooperation between the LNEC and the FCUL. In 1984, two major milestones are achieved in FCUL, namely the installation of a central computer and the autonomy of computer science as a scientific discipline in its own right. The study analyses and discusses the phased integration of the computer in FCUL between 1959 and 1984, as well as the relations established with related disciplines. In the 1960s, the initial cooperation with LNEC is expanded to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and its scientific computing center. In the late 1960s, the available external resources are largely insufficient for all the internal needs. The inability to get its own computer, a unique situation when compared with the other faculties of sciences in Portugal, is overcome through the installation in 1971 of time-sharing terminals, a solution intended to be temporary. The 1970s political and economic landscape creates additional obstacles to the acquisition of computing equipment, hindering teaching and research in the disciplines that would benefit from them. Only in the 1980s, with the indirect influence of a fire which occurred in FCUL in 1978, is autonomy achieved in computational terms. This is also the moment of full autonomy of computer science in FCUL