Making Core Memory: Design Inquiry Into Gendered Legacies of Engineering and Craftwork Daniela K

Making Core Memory: Design Inquiry into Gendered Legacies of Engineering and Craftwork Daniela K. Rosner1, Samantha Shorey2, Brock Craft1, Helen Remick3 1Dept. of HCDE 2Dept. of Communication 3Seattle, WA University of Washington University of Washington [email protected] Seattle, WA Seattle, WA {dkrosner, bcraft}@uw.edu [email protected] ABSTRACT This paper describes the Making Core Memory project, a design inquiry into the invisible work that went into assem- bling core memory, an early form of computer information storage initially woven by hand. Drawing on feminist traditions of situated knowing, we designed an electronic quilt and a series of participatory workshops that materialize the work of the core memory weavers. With this case we not only broaden dominant stories of design, but we also reflect on the entanglement of predominantly male, high status labor with the ostensibly low-status work of women’s hands. By integrating design and archival research as a means of cultural analysis, we further expand conversations on design research methods within human-computer interaction (HCI), using design to reveal legacies of practice Figure 1: Close up view of the Core Memory Quilt. elided by contemporary technology cultures. In doing so, this paper highlights for HCI scholars that worlds of hand- broadened, too. From establishing the Jacquard loom as a work and computing, or weaving and space travel, are not precursor to the Babbage Analytical Engine [66] to re- as separate as we might imagine them to be. calling that the first “computers” were young women [11,19,31,40], gendered narratives of craftwork and engi- Author Keywords neering both haunt and inform HCI’s ideas of technological Woven memory; gendered labor; craft; handwork; compu- belonging, participation, and differentiation [44]. ting history; participatory workshops. Our focus in this paper is the gendered forms of craftwork ACM Classification Keywords underlying digital production and their valuation as tech- K.4.0 Computers in Society: general. nical work. We explore our own handwork as HCI design- INTRODUCTION ers in relation to the people we acknowledge as central con- Our methods of inquiry shape not only how we do design tributors to engineering innovations. We describe our pro- and technology development but also how we come to un- cess of collaboratively making a historically-informed de- derstand who counts as a designer and what counts as design artifact that reconstructs the story of magnetic-core sign practice, extending the very definition of design. Just memory. Core memory constitutes one of the principal as HCI’s methodological toolkits have continued to expand mechanisms by which computers stored and retrieved in- — enrolling a wider array of instruments, techniques, and formation during the first two decades of the Cold War. The frameworks for data collection and analysis Apollo mission computers, for example, stored information [3,17,18,58,60,67] — our definitions of technology have in core memory ropes: threaded wires, passed through or around magnetized rings. NASA engineers nicknamed this Paste the appropriate copyright/license statement here. ACM now supports hardware “LOL memory” for the “Little Old Ladies” who three different publication options: carefully wove wires around small electro-magnetic ferrite • ACM copyright: ACM holds the copyright on the work. This is the cores by hand. Later versions of hardware required even historical approach. smaller weaving instruments and microscopes. But scholars • License: The author(s) retain copyright, but ACM receives an exclu- sive publication license. still know little about the core memory weavers: what their • Open Access: The author(s) wish to pay for the work to be open ac- work looked like or what they contributed to space travel. cess. The additional fee must be paid to ACM. This text field is large enough to hold the appropriate release statement Drawing on feminist, historical, and designerly approaches assuming it is single-spaced in Times New Roman 8-point font. Please do [18,27,53,55,63], this paper details the development of not change or modify the size of this text box. Making Core Memory, a project of design inquiry that un- Each submission will be assigned a DOI string to be included here. folds in two parts: first, the making of an electronic quilt (Figures 1 and 2) composed of core memory planes that act as quilt patches; and second, the presentation and engage- ment of the quilt in workshops. During three workshops across the west coast of the United States (Mountain View, CA, Seattle, WA, and Los Angeles, CA) we asked a range of historians of technology, design educators, and members of the public to help us materialize the work of the core memory weavers by weaving core memory “patches” and revisiting the weavers’ history together. We gave partici- pants “patch kits” comprising a simple metal matrix, beads Figure 2: Plugging a woven patch onto our Quilt. and conductive threads (in place of ferrite core and wire). Plugging the completed patch kits into the electronic quilt the disruption of women’s exclusion from science and tech- (Figure 2) triggered the quilt to play firsthand accounts of nology cultures, both presently and in historical narrative. 1960s core memory production while sending tweets via Notably, women have encoded critical messages during our @lolweavers account. This approach allowed us to times of distress, particularly around quilting [43,64,68]. bring hidden stories of innovation work to the people build- Using handwork as a device for encryption frames textile ing tools, histories, and pedagogies for design—re- artifacts as complex forms through which to catalyze tech- contextualizing their own practices within stories of hand- nical and strategic innovations. work heretofore eclipsed. Within CSCW and HCI, similar techniques for technical The paper that follows contributes to HCI scholarship along invention and encoding through craft have informed a ro- three key dimensions. First, by recognizing the hidden, bust body of work on digital manufacturing. One strand of feminized work involved in specific contexts of 1960s core this work examines the forms of human-machine collabora- memory production, we comment on the particular legacies tion that emerge with the introduction of digital fabrication of expertise and knowledge on which core memory work tools within studio-based arts practice [10,16] and other relied. This analysis moves beyond HCI’s dominant focus sites of traditional craftwork [3,35,54,57,59]. Devendorf on material capacities (what a technology can do) to focus and Ryokai’s Being the Machine project [16], for instance, instead on the histories of practice that make those capaci- challenges a stable division of labor between maker and ties possible. Second, our work contributes new perspec- machine by altering the coordination between them. In oth- tives on the process of building embodied, experiential er work, HCI researchers explore contributions of craft knowledge. Specifically, we offer a different conceptual within emerging forms of digital cultural heritage frame that broadens ongoing HCI conversations on digital [24,51,52], including core memory [15]. Work by Petrelli, labor and handwork. We shift debates from an assumed Ciolfi and others [12,51,52] draws on textile traditions to separation between cognitive (masculine, innovative, high- explicitly identify embodied practices as key modes of HCI status) and manual (feminine, menial, low-status) labor research. toward an active examination of their entanglement. Third, A related strand of HCI work has examined techniques of this paper highlights the centrality of feminist historical textile production as innovation work, broadening the his- perspectives, and argues for historical-participatory inquiry torical resonances and present-day possibilities of dexterous as a core approach by which different practices, ideas, and handwork traditions. While some position historical ma- ethical stances get recognized and examined. Sites of digital chines such as the groundbreaking Jacquard loom running manufacturing require new forms of inquiry that challenge on punch card technology as important sites for investigat- the current valorization of individual innovators and users. ing embodied interaction [21], others consider platforms for This observation acts as a direct call for HCI scholars to electronic-textiles making as mechanisms for intervening take up new collective methods that expand the ethical and into [48–50] and even improving [7,8] environments of historical horizons of contemporary design research. STEM learning. Leah Buechley, for example — known for LITERATURE REVIEW her origination of a sewable microcontroller that connects Craft practices like weaving, sewing and other forms of circuitry with conductive thread instead of wire — has ar- textile making embody processes of creative production gued that sewing circuitry provides a case for shifting met- historically associated with women [2]. Within public nar- aphors of engineering development from brittle and me- ratives of technology and engineering, journalists and pun- chanical solutions toward open-ended possibilities [8]. This dits tend to depict craft expertise as menial labor tradition- is especially true for women, 40% of whom come to tech- ally associated with women that is inherently different from nology innovation spaces from a background in arts & (and often less valuable than) the sophisticated cognitive

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