Hello! I am a professor in the History Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara where I research, write, and teach about the histories of technology, science, and the environment.

I recently finished a new book which The MIT Press will publish in late 2025. Titled README: A Bookish History of Computing From Electronic Brains to Everywhere Machines, it is a “book about books about computing.” In it, I take a selection of about a dozen books (some famous, others not) about computers and computing and use them to tell a larger story about the history of information technologies since 1945. At its heart is the question: how did computers become popular, popularized, and pervasive?

I have two new projects underway. One of them, with funding from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, explores how space exploration, astronomy, and the environment intersected and coalesced in the 20th century around the rubric of “habitability.” I am especially interested in this topic as it makes connections between extreme life, natural and built environments, and exoplanets.  I also have a new effort underway which looks at the idea of “mountain cultures” as they relate to outdoor recreation and natural history in the western United States. Linked to this is an examination of outdoor recreation, 1850-1950, as seen through the lens of the histories of natural history, technology, and the environment.

I was originally trained as a scientist (Ph.D., 1996, University of Arizona). As an undergraduate, I studied an interdisciplinary field known as “materials science and engineering” (it used to be called metallurgy). I figured I would learn lots of basic math, physics, and chemistry and get a foundation for other areas of science and technology. Although my career path followed a different trajectory, my schooling gave me some insights into how research communities function which has proven useful when interviewing scientists and technologists. Since then, I have authored and edited six books. My 2013 book The Visioneers: How an Elite Group of Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future won the Watson Davis Prize in 2014 from the History of Science Society as the “best book written for a general audience.”

Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to have many opportunities offered to me. In addition to several grants from the National Science Foundation – including $15 million to co-found a national center for exploring the societal implications of new technologies – I have been awarded fellowships from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the American Council of Learned Societies, the California Institute of Technology, and (twice) the Smithsonian Institution. In 2016 and 2017, the World Economic Forum invited me to speak at their annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. I am also an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Physical Society (APS).

On a personal note: I grew up in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. When I saw movies like Poltergeist or ET, they seemed odd as West Coast suburban living looked really different from my own experiences. I find this ironic as I now live part-time a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean in a tract-style house built c. Sputnik. I didn’t fly in an airplane until I was 19. But I visited the National Air and Space Museum when I was a kid and loved it (there is a tattoo of Sputnik’s launch on my right arm and the splashdown of Apollo 17 on my left.) When not working at UCSB, I am in Colorado. Hiking, mountain biking, and waving a stick at trout in local streams all get me out of the house and away from screens.

Photo credit: Mark Hanauer