Making Core Memory: Reimagining Communication-Technology History Through Design

• In Event: Design, Materiality and the Making of Communication Histories and Futures

Abstract

How might design practices help communication scholars intervene in gendered media narratives—helping us to tell new stories and build new kinds of understanding? The proposed paper reflects on “Making Core Memory,” a participatory design workshop that explores one of the most significant innovations in modern history: The Apollo Guidance Computer. Women hand made the Apollo’s computer memory (“core memory”) using a process similar to weaving. However, their hand work is startlingly absent from popular and scholarly accounts that center the cognitive work of the NASA engineers. The Making Core Memory workshop engages researchers and participants in collaboratively weaving a “core memory quilt.” Through highlighting weaving as a means of technology making, we seek to challenge entrenched ideas about who and how one participates in innovation. Collaborative acts of design have the capacity to inspire participants to critically consider how gendered, labor histories are entwined with material processes.

Authors

• Samantha Shorey, U of Washington

• Daniela Rosner, U of Washington