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The purpose of this paper is to conduct a UK-based assessment of oral history technology and to identify the most important features that should be available in any oral history search system.

A co-design approach involving interviews and focus groups was adopted. The framework approach with elements of grounded theory was used to analyse transcripts to identify themes.

The analysis found that “ethics, consent and control”, “accessibility and engagement”, “publicity and awareness”, and “innovative technologies” were the four major themes identified. It was also established that there is limited understanding of oral history in the digital age, numerous interests, ethical concerns, lack of publicity and several key attributes that those designing an oral history search system or archive should strive for. The findings also identified that further exploration into sampling selected technologies on different user groups is required in order to develop software that would benefit the field.

Participants were all recruited from one geographic region. The qualitative methodology utilised could be deemed to have elements of subjectivity.

This study has identified important features of any oral history search system and offered design recommendations for any developer of an oral history search systems.

This research has validated some previous findings for oral history search systems from more limited user studies. New issues for consideration including usability, software development and marketing have also been identified.

Virtual reality (VR) technology invaded various domains including architecture practice and education. Despite its high applications in architecture design education, VR has a high potential to be used in architectural history courses as well. This paper aims to examine the effect of using VR technology on the students’ learning abilities of history of architecture.

The experimental approach was used. Two experiments were designed by creating virtual environments for two selected architectural examples from the Modern Architecture course. The participants who were students of Modern Architecture class had to complete two questionnaires, one for each example. The first one was based on Bloom’s taxonomy, and the other was prepared to test the participants’ analytical and critical skills. Besides, participants had to fill out satisfaction and ease-of-use survey on a five-step Likert scale.

Participants in the VR condition achieved better grades in knowledge gain compared to those in the traditional conditions. Their analytical and critical thinking skills were improved in the VR conditions. Gender has a significant impact on analytical and critical thinking skills. Participants recorded a high level of satisfaction; however, male students were more satisfied than female students who reported concerns about the weight of the used tools and nausea symptoms.

This study informs architecture education and provides insights into the potentials of using advanced technology in architectural history education. Teaching the various history of architecture courses will be improved, shifted toward a more student-centered curriculum, and may acquire more excitement and conscious curiosity.

Using VR in architectural education is rigorous in architectural design courses and students’ design projects’ presentations. This research expands architectural education research by examining other ways of teaching history of architecture courses and its effect on the students’ knowledge gain and performance.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the emerging challenges of cybersecurity governance by analyzing the internet’s early history.

Tracing the design and management of early internet and network security technologies in the USA in the 1970s and 1980s.

The US Department of Defense separated the research and management regimes for networks and network security, with the latter restricted to military networks. As such, the absence of cybersecurity technologies on the early internet was not an oversight, but a necessary compromise. This ordering of networks and security had enduring technological, political and even cultural consequences, which are breaking down today.

Political, technological and metaphoric distinctions between networks and security should be challenged; cybersecurity will transform internet governance.

New historical sources and analysis provide a novel perspective on contemporary challenges of cybersecurity governance.

Brain and behavioral research is a hallmark of knowledge and understanding within modern society and has taken on greater importance in the commercial context; as this area unfolds, the intersection of the science, technology and marketing is an important and topical area for exploration.

This work tracks the parallel history of the technologies and science of the brain because it grows in relevance for the study of marketing and consumer behavior. It is an historical review of the usage of technologies to measure brain activity and behavior, parallel to the development of psychological theories created to account for human decision-making from the 1940s until the present.

This essay presents a new conception of “closure” and “momentum,” as envisioned by social construction of technology and technological momentum theories, arriving at a new concept for inclusion called “convergence” which offers a multifactor explanation for the acceptance, technical implementation and its commercial application.

It is an original adaptation of theories from across several fields that yields insight into the integration of science, technology, society and business.

Information science has been convincingly characterised as a response to developments in information and communications technologies and as part of the gestalt of the computer. Despite this, it has had a limited understanding of information technology and has repressed or disguised its origins. Its understanding of itself and its potential for contribution to other discourses has thereby been restricted. The paper develops an understanding of information technology. The idea that the computer as a machine is concerned with the transformation of information, not material or energy, is extended to other information technologies. Technology is regarded as a radical human construction, in a position derived from Marx and mediated by economics. On these bases, an understanding of information technology as a form of knowledge concerned with the transformation of signals from one form or medium into another is proposed. Invention, innovation, and diffusion are distinguished as stages in the development of technologies. For modern information technologies, the history of copyright can provide indicators for innovation and diffusion. The mid‐ to late 19th century, in the United States and between the United States and Europe, is identified as the critical period for diffusion. An explanation for this is proposed in terms of the dynamism of the period, its hospitality to innovation, and in the United States continental expansion and developing links with Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to produce a critical history of MP3 technology in an effort to show how its stature as the digital music format of choice had nothing to do with music or associated industries and that its configuration as a product to be bought and sold was unintended.

The approach is reminiscent of Michel Foucault's critical histories, which sought to problematise our current understanding of existing cultural arrangements by unearthing the conditions that made the production of knowledge and their accompanying artefacts possible.

The paper documents how MP3s emerged by outlining the conditions that made its production viable, showing how before MP3s were profiled as commodities to be bought and sold online, the composite of technologies making up the standard MPEG1‐Layer III were objects of knowledge within the fields of electrical engineering and psychoacoustics, and later a process of compression used mainly by audio broadcasting professionals. The paper concludes by examining MPEG1‐Layer III's reconstitution as MP3: its formal configuration and valuation, first as a license for the broadcasting industry to compress sound and then as a “free‐ware” application distributed online.

The paper problematises the taken for granted status of commodities, in this case, MP3s, as digital music to be bought and sold, by revealing how they emerged. At a more parochial level, it produces a competing history of MP3 technology which until now has not been told.

As a discipline, the history of science is comparatively young. Although Baden‐Powell's Historical view of the progress of the physical and mathematical sciences from the earliest ages to the present time and Whewell's History of the inductive sciences from the earliest to the present times, both pioneer works in the field, were published in 1834 and 1837 respectively, the history of science as a subject in its own right may be said to have only come into existence in this century. Interest in the history of individual sciences, particularly mathematics and medicine, began much earlier and quite a few periodicals devoted to them were inaugurated during the last century. On the other hand, most of the periodicals dealing with the history of science as a whole were begun during the last two decades and only a few go back to the beginning of this century. The first volume of Mitteilungen zur Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften was published in Leipzig in 1902; Archiv für die Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik followed in 1909, and Rivista di Storia (critica) delle Scienze mediche e naturali in 1910. Isis, originally subtitled Revue consacrée à l'histoire de la science (now An international review devoted to the history of science and its cultural influences), was founded in 1912 by George Sarton, the first number appearing in March 1913. It began its life in Belgium, but after the invasion of that country moved with its first editor to the United States. Volume 2, begun in June 1914, was completed in September 1919. From the beginning an international review, it changed its ‘editorial language’, as it were, from French to English in 1920, but it continued to publish articles and papers in the main European languages. From the first issue, one of its principal features was a bibliography of the literature of the history of science.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergent field of information history (IH) and to move towards a definition of IH. Some of the more traditional historical approaches to information science are challenged in their claims to be information history.

The historiography of the field is discussed, and an analysis of the continuing development of IH is explored.

IH is a field that has been attracting increasing attention in recent years from historians and information scientists alike. Although still a relatively young area, this paper argues that IH has the potential to develop into a highly relevant and dynamic field of research. The paper concludes with a look at the future for this area of research, with some suggestions as to how IH needs to develop in order to gain the credence and recognition it deserves.

This paper attempts to augment the debate on IH and to encourage a broader recognition of this young and dynamic field within LIS.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

Historians of technology have for the past decade begun to recognize the important role that technology plays in nation-building. From the development of the steam locomotive in Britain in the early 19th century that was integral to the Industrial Revolution to America’s emphasis on its technological progressiveness in its national narratives in the 20th century, studies have shown that the history of technology is necessarily the history of nations as well. While the majority of previous research focuses primarily on Western nations (and unsurprisingly so, considering that a greater proportion of technological advancements have happened in these countries in the recent past centuries), less have studied how other countries have dealt with the rise of modern technologies in the development and maintenance of their national identity. This paper seeks to expand the critical scope by examining Brunei’s stance on technology in the 1960s – just after the 1959 Constitution was established declaring the nation an independent, sovereign Sultanate – a time when Brunei was still in the early stages of defining its own identity. I propose that Brunei used modern technologies in order to further solidify its Muslim identity as a response to modernization and globalization, which is distinct to many previously-studied countries that focus more on boosting their military and/or industrial prowess. Brunei’s approach, then, notably counters oft-perceived contradictions between religion and technology. This study will focus on Brunei’s first film, Gema Dari Menara (1968), which was tellingly commissioned by the Religious Affairs Department, and will examine the portrayal of modern technologies that seek to break the binary between religion and modernity to show an image of Islam that is compatible with a developing Brunei.