PUBLISHED BITS COURSE · 13
Companies & institutions
The institutions that shipped the future
What this course develops
Follow the laboratories, firms, public funders, standards bodies, supply chains, and open-source communities that turned technical possibilities into dependable infrastructure, and learn where power accumulated.
- Data processing
- Research laboratories
- Architecture & services
- PCs & semiconductors
- Open software & web
- Cloud, mobile & AI
Scope
20 chronological lessons · 1890 → present
Public reading index
- 1890: Tabulating the state
- 1925: Build a research engine
- 1946: A prototype is not a company
- 1957: Lower the unit of access
- 1964: Compatibility becomes capital
- 1968: Sell coordination, not a product
- 1969: Fund a network nobody can own
- 1969: Software separates from the machine
- 1972: Encode the enterprise
- 1975: From kit to platform
- 1976: No nation builds a chip alone
- 1983: Make code a commons
- 1989: Keep the Web one Web
- 1995: Turn participation into a market
- 1999: The mobile Internet before the iPhone
- 2006: Rent the machine by the request
- 2007: Put a market inside the phone
- 2007: Build for the infrastructure people have
- 2012: AI reindustrializes software
- 2020: When a platform becomes infrastructure