Professor Honghong Tinn's book Island Tinkerers examines the rise of Taiwan’s tech industry

Knowledge of the history of science and technology is critical for contextualizing scientific and technical developments and connecting theory with practice. Their history sheds light on the discovery process, the value of persistence, the place of failure, and can help develop tools for ethical scientific and technical development. Written in that vein is Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan’s Computing Industry, a new book by Professor Honghong Tinn of ECE. Published by the MIT Press in January 2025, the book explores the transnational exchanges of computing technology and expertise between Taiwan and the United States. Tinn, who is a historian of information technology, challenges the myth that the West innovates and the East imitates and emphasizes the agency exercised by local Taiwanese engineers, scientists, technocrats, and computer users in bringing computing technology to and popularizing such technology in Taiwan. It is a narrative of Taiwan’s rise to global prominence in high tech manufacturing led by technology-savvy professionals, technocrats, technology users, and engineers-turned-entrepreneurs. 

We recently had the opportunity to discuss the book with the author. We asked her to take us through the book, draw out its highlights for the reader, and share with us the genesis of the book as well as her own path to being a historian of technology. 

Your book Island Tinkerers is about the birth and rise of Taiwanese high-tech manufacturing which of course was very transformative for the nation as a whole. If you had to distill your book down to a few key points, what would they be? What do you want your readers to walk away with when they finish reading the book?

First, I propose that tinkerers are a critical group for historians to investigate in writing a history of technology. The popular writing of the history of technology emphasizes innovators, but my book shows the importance of tinkerers. Tinkerers can shape how a society thinks of and uses a technology, and in some cases they can also change how a technology is designed. My definition of tinkering with technology is quite similar to developing hands-on experience with technology in today’s STEM education. In Island Tinkerers, I tell a history that includes voices of historical actors who were understated by historians of innovations: mainframe computer technicians, pioneering mainframe computer users, minicomputer-building graduate students, electronics assembly factory women workers and maintenance engineers, and personal computer hobbyists.

Second, my book aims to challenge the stereotype of “the West innovates and the East imitates.”  I would like to invite my readers to re-consider the histories of technology of countries beyond the United States and Western Europe. Is a history of technology diffusion the only way to understand the history of technology in these societies? My book tells the history of how Taiwanese hobbyists and enthusiasts tinkered with black-boxed imported computing technology and experimented with manufacturing their own versions. Their tinkering with computers led to Taiwanese computer manufacturers’ incremental innovations, powering the supply of high-quality digital products to the world. For example, two chapters of Island Tinkerers focus on Taiwan’s Acer Computer founder Stan Shih and his tinkering experience. Intel’s former CEO, Paul S. Otellini, noted in 2006, that Stan Shih is “a big reason why your PC costs $1,000, not $10,000” in a Time magazine article. 

Tell us about the genesis of the book. What was the trigger for this particular subject? 

When I was in graduate school, I became interested in writing a dissertation about the homebrew computer culture in Taiwan and in the United States. I was curious about why some “tinkerers” would like to build their own computers by putting together parts purchased in stores or online, instead of ordering a brand-new computer from companies such as HP or ASUS. After I described my preliminary research plan to my advisor Ron Kline [Professor in History and Ethics of Engineering, Cornell University], he said, “Let’s historicize it.” Taking Ron’s advice, I then scoured professional journals, newspaper articles, and trade journals. I soon realized that the first two available mainframe computers in Taiwan, an IBM 650 and an IBM 1620 computer, were installed on a university campus in the early 1960s under the auspices of a United Nations technical aid program. I then began to visit various archives in the United States and in Taiwan to know more about the technical aid program. Luckily, I was able to find a tinkering story in this program through oral history interviews, and that prompted me to write the history of computing in Taiwan through a perspective of tinkerers.

What are some of the challenges you faced as you worked on the book? And how did you work around or surmount them?

My definition of tinkering with technology is quite similar to developing hands-on experience in today’s STEM education. But it is challenging to use texts to describe hands-on experience. For historians of technology, it is often difficult to find written records about skills that are vanishing, hands-on experience, tacit knowledge, or bodily knowledge. Take bodily knowledge as an example. An athlete who knew how to play tennis well in the mid twentieth century might not decide to write their tips down. Another example is about cooking and recipes. One of my dissertation committee members, Trevor Pinch, liked to use making a soufflé as an example to discuss the concept of tacit knowledge. Even if one has a detailed recipe of soufflé and studies it thoroughly, and then closely observes how a chef makes a soufflé, it is still not easy for one to successfully make a fluffy soufflé. It is because making a soufflé involves several sets of tacit knowledge. When I began my archival research and oral history interviews, I found that it was not an easy task to identify the experience about historical actors’ engagement with technology or tinkering with technology. I went back and forth between texts and between my informants to reconstruct stories of tinkerers.

You wove a path from sociology to journalism and ended up being a historian documenting, analyzing and interpreting historical data. What has driven your interest in the history of science and technology in particular? 

I think sociology, journalism, and history share the same ambition—the exercise of critical thinking through telling stories of human experiences. I benefited greatly from all the three disciplines. I also like the detective elements of being a historian whose job is to identify historical evidence for an argument or thesis they would like to put forward. The history of science and technology is a “useful” discipline. For example, historians of science and technology are keen to shape the future of AI by sharing with the public how the relationship between AI and society was conceptualized in the past.

Your book was released on January 7, 2025. Have you given talks about your book? Are there any upcoming talks?

I have given book talks at the University of Arizona and National Taiwan University. I recently gave a talk to discuss collections at Pavek Museum of Electronic Communication in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, and I shared with the audience why I mentioned in my book some of the U.S. electronics manufacturers featured in the Pavek collections. 

I am looking forward to giving a talk at Macalester College on February 13. My book talk at the University of Washington in Seattle on March 6 will be live-streamed . I will also be giving a Zoom-based talk sponsored by Yale University's Critical Computing Initiative in late January. I have given work-in-progress talks in our department’s colloquium series in the past years, and the great questions and comments that I received were so useful for me to improve my manuscript and my talks! I really look forward to hearing comments from my readers and the audience of my forthcoming talks!