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Digital Phoenix: Why the Information Economy Collapsed and How It Will Rise Again (review)

designers’ attentions. Fourth, in an era before widespread development of general-purpose computers, firms first chose to develop separate lines of scientific and commercial hardware systems before recognizing that a single multipurpose platform, accompanied by specialized software, could fit their clients’ needs. Written by the founding director of the Charles Babbage Institute, this book’s strength lies in its use of archival sources from Babbage Institute collections, and it is peppered with organizational charts and photographs of people and machines. Its engagement with secondary materials, particularly from the last decade, is less robust. Many of the ideas Norberg presents intersect with the ideas of other scholars about scientific and technological innovation both within the computer industry and in scientific and technological industries more broadly. Some reflection on the role of the military-industrial-academic complex—how it affected the computer industry in ways that reinforced or undermined other scholars’ claims—would have been useful. Nonetheless, Norberg’s meticulous account of the early genealogy of the American computer industry—spin-offs, buyouts, mergers, and the history of forgotten firms—will be of great interest to scholars seeking to expand the early history of the computing industry beyond the current paradigm in which IBM continues to dominate.