ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we turn back to the period before networks connected the world together. By revisiting early software and its interfaces, we can see how design decisions made in a pre-internet era continue to influence contemporary tools, habits and expectations. Social-shaping scholars have long warned that what “wins” is rarely the technically best option. What comes through and predominates is more often the software that is the most compatible with other existing software, established institutions, prevailing standards, sales incentives and the sets of skills that are already in circulation. Aiming to be the most imaginative, most effective or even an entirely new paradigm should act as a warning as much as it is a trigger for excitement. These observations are at the heart of the lesson taught by the social shaping of technology tradition (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1999) and confirm Winner’s argument that artefacts have politics and are completely sensitive to the economics of path dependence (Winner 1980).
