Did the Computer Drive Science? Hardware Development and Digital Complexity in the 20th Century – Ulf Hashagen (Munich)

Abstract:

The assumption that economic, technological and scientific development is driven by technological
determinism is widespread in politics, business, and society, as well as among scientists and
engineers. A notable example of this belief is the current notion that advances in scientific
knowledge are inextricably linked to the development of AI technology. Since the AI boom in the
2010s was based on the particular potential of graphics processing units (GPUs) for implementing
deep learning algorithms, the question arises as to what extent modern science in the 20th century
was already based on computers and driven by hardware innovations.

A historical review should enable a critical examination of this assumption from a broader historical
perspective. The lecture addresses the question of the extent to which the development of computer
hardware and scientific development have influenced each other since the invention of the computer
in the 1940s. Historical research has shown that the design and development of the first computers
was primarily driven by scientific problems in war research. From the mid-1950s onwards,
universities and non-university research institutions increasingly entered into “alliances with
industry” in the planning and production of new computers and eventually became customers of the
computer industry. How this bilateral producer-customer relationship and the trilateral relationship
between the computer industry, the state, and science have developed since the 1950s in terms of
research funding, the equipping of scientific institutions with computers, and their use by scientists
from various disciplines is a question that has received relatively little attention in historical research
to date.

These questions are discussed against the backdrop that, since the 1970s, the history of technology
has been committed to a model of contextualized historiography and has sought to prove in
numerous studies that the assumption that technology is an autonomous factor in the continuous
transformation of the human environment is a naïve idea.

This event is part of our winter term 2025/26 Lecture Series Digital Complexity: Beyond Human Understanding.

If you would like to attend, please register with events@khk.rwth-aachen.de.