Black Software

McIlwain's book is unlike other history books that I've read. It incorporates McIlwain's own writing, long quotes from oral histories, and direct reproduction of some primary documents from the time period that McIlwain is covering. Yet while the writing style is idiosyncratic, the stories he tells are amazing. He has tracked down remarkable Black pioneers in computing and gotten them to share their stories. All aspects of computing get covered: retail, repair, programming, building online communities, and so on. In the concluding section of the book McIlwain explores how computers have been used against Black communities, thus giving us a comprehensive picture of computing and Black America at the dawn of this new technology.

I enjoyed this book a lot. If you, like me, have a visceral reaction to fragmentary sentences, you may find it difficult to get into, but the writing remains gripping and the topics discussed are absolutely fascinating; throw out your grammar purism and learn.

I've been involved with high technology, especially networked technology, my whole life, but I hadn't heard of most of the people this book discusses, nor their projects. I think any technologist could benefit from being more informed about the intersection of racial politics and technology, and this book does a good job bringing that intersection into the spotlight.