Education

Ph.D., History of Technology and Science, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, 1998.

M.A., History of Technology and Science, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, 1993.

M.B.A., Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, 2007.

B.A., Magna Cum Laude, History, Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1990.

Professional Background

Director, Charles Babbage Institute for the History of Information Technology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2018 to present.

Associate Director, Charles Babbage Institute for the History of Information Technology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1998 to 2018.

Researcher, Center for Regional Economic Issues, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, 1997-1998.

Consulting Historian, Winthrop Group, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1994-1997.

Faculty, Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 2010 to present (Research Professor 2019 to present).

Co-Editor, "Studies in Computing and Culture," book series Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021 to present.

Co-Editor, "History of Computing" book series Springer, 2019 to 2021.

Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 2008 to 2011.

Scientific & Professional Societies

My primary areas of research are the business, social, and cultural and intellectual history of computing, software, HCI, and AI. I am also a highly experienced science and technology oral history specialist.

My current research includes a history of computer security book I am currently writing under contract with MIT Press.  Additionally, I am co-authoring a privacy and cybersecurity short textbook with Gerardo Con Diaz.

I have also begun a major new research project in the history of medical automation and artificial intelligence, focused on expert systems but also comparative with different forms of machine learning and generative artificial intelligence. 

I have a deep interest in political economy, and societal implications of computing's structuring and use. With this, I am especially interested in interaction and user experiences, and power imbalances with regard to race, class, gender, disability, and the environment. This was the impetus to my conception of and co-organization (with Gerardo Con Diaz) of our Fall 2020 Symposium “Just Code: Power, Inequality, and the Global Political Economy of IT.”  In 2025, we published our Just Code Book with Johns Hopkins University Press in our series Studies in Computing and Culture.  The book has more than twenty authors, stellar scholars from a range of different disciplines (anthropology, history, media studies, sociology, and STS). In it, I authored a chapter on the history of IBM and systems services and systems engineering in punched card tabulation and digital computing, respectively. It examines labor, gender and antitrust. I also was lead author on a chapter length (9,000 word) essay surveying the history of neural networks and generative AI, entitled, "Artificial Intelligence: Braiding, Irony, Paradox and Possibility."

I joined with Con Diaz, Colette Perold, and Honghong Tinn to co-organize CBI's 2023 "Automation by Design: Politics, Culture, and Landscape in an Age of Machine That Learn" symposium.  Select historical articles from the interdisciplinary event are published in a special issue that Perold, Con, and I co-edited.

I published Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry (MIT Press, 2017), FastLane: Managing Science in the Internet World (w/ Thomas Misa; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), Computer: A History of the Information Machine, 3^rd Edition (w/ Martin Campbell-Kelly, William Aspray, and Nathan Ensmenger; Westview, 2014), and three earlier books. We are thrilled Gerardo Con Diaz and Honghong Tinn joined us as authors in publishing the fourth edition of Computer, which contains an entirely new final section of the book, with chapters drafted by Con Diaz, Tinn, and me.

On the editorial front, I am co-editor (w/ G. Con Diaz) on a new Johns Hopkins University Press book series, Studies in Computing and Culture and Culture. I also co-edit an essays journals (with Amanda Wick) Interfaces: Essays and Reviews in Computing and Culture. I am the PI on a recently completed 2022 to 2025 project for the National Science Foundation (NSF) entitled “Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes and Possibilities in Security and Privacy (co-PI is G. Con Diaz). I have been very active in sponsored research throughout my career and have been an investigator on more than a half dozen sponsored research projects, mostly for the National Science Foundation, but also for the Department of Energy, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, IBM, and the Association for Computing Machinery. Cumulative I have led/co-led more than $2,300,000 in projects as an investigator. I am currently collaborating on sponsored project proposal development with Prof. Roger Hart on quantum information science and oral history.

In addition to my research, I am the author and principal of the blog Blockchain and Society: Political Economy of Crypto, which provides critical analysis on blockchain history and sociology. It is both a blog and a resources site with annotated bibliographies and blockchain and crypto historical timelines.

Selected Publications

Yost, Jeffrey R. (March 2021). “Of Mice and Mentalité: PARC Ways to Exploring HCI, AI, Augmentation and Symbiosis, and Categorization and Control". Interfaces: Essays and Reviews in Computing and Culture Vol. 2, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, 12-26.

Jeffrey R. Yost (May 2020). “Where Dinosaurs Roam and Programmers Play: Reflections on Infrastructure, Maintenance, and Inequality.” Interfaces: Essays and Reviews on Computing and Culture Vol. 1, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, 1 - 8.

Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017).

Guest editor, two special issues of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing on the “History of Computer Security.” These are revised papers of an NSF-funded computer security history workshop I co-designed and co-led in July 2014. One issue was April-May 2015, the second October-December 2016.

“The March of IDES: The Advent and Early History of the Intrusion Detection Expert Systems.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 38:4 (October-December 2016): 42-54.

“The Origin and Early History of the Computer Security Software Industry.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 32:7 (April-June 2015): 46-58.

FastLane: Managing Science in the Internet World (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016) [Co-authored manuscript with Thomas J. Misa.]

Computer: A History of the Information Machine, Third Edition (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2014) [with Martin Campbell-Kelly, William Aspray, and Nathan Ensmenger].

“Appropriation and Independence: BTM, Burroughs, and IBM at the Advent of the Computer Industry.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 35:4 (October-December 2013): 5-17.

The IBM Century (Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2011).

“Airline Travel: A History of Information-Seeking Behavior by Leisure and Business Passengers.” [with Rachel D. Little and Cecilia D. Williams]. In William Aspray and Barbara M. Hayes, eds. Everyday Information: The Evolution of Information Seeking in America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011): 121-156.

“History of Computing Technology.” Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (Oxford, UK: UNESCO, EOLSS Publishers, 2011). [28,000 word history and historiographical article available at www.eolss.net]

“Materiel Command and the Materiality of Commands: An Historical Examination of the US Air Force, Control Data Corporation, and the Advanced Logistics System.” In Arthur Tatnall, ed. History of Computing: Lessons from the Past (London: Springer, 2010): 89-100.

“Programming Enterprise: Women Entrepreneurs in Software and Computer Services.” In Thomas J. Misa, ed. Gender Codes: Why Women Are Leaving Computing (New York: Wiley-IEEE Computer Society, 2010): 229-250.

“Manufacturing Mainframes: Component Fabrication and Component Procurement at IBM and Sperry Univac, 1960-1975” History and Technology 25:3 (September 2009): 219-237.

“Internet Challenges for Non-Media Industries, Firms, and Workers: Travel Agencies, Realtors, Mortgage Brokers, Personal Computer Manufacturers, and IT Services Professionals”. In William Aspray and Paul Ceruzzi, eds., The Internet and American Business (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008): 315-350.

“History of Computer Security Standards.” In Karl de Leuuw, ed., History of Information Security (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 2007): 595-621.

IBM Rochester: A Half Century of Innovation (IBM, 2007). [Co-written with Arthur L. Norberg].

“Maximization and Marginalization: A Brief Examination of the History and Historiography of the U.S. Computer Services Industry.” Entreprises et Histoire 40 (November 2005): 87-101.

“Computers and the Internet: Braiding Irony, Paradox, and Possibility.” in Carroll Pursell, ed. Companion to American Technology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2005): 340-360.

The Computer Industry (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2005).

“Reprogramming the Hippocratic Oath: The Early History of Medical Informatics and Privacy.” The History and Heritage of Scientific and Technological Information Systems (New Medford, New Jersey: Information Today for Chemical Heritage Foundation and American Society of Information Science, 2004): 46-55.

Bibliographic Guide to Resources in the History of Scientific Computing, 1945-1975 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2002).

Timken: From Missouri to Mars--A Century of Leadership in Manufacturing (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press, 1998) [Bettye H. Pruitt with the assistance of Jeffrey R. Yost].