Mahoney frames machine-centred computing history as technological determinism ('impact theory') and argues for restoring human agency to the 'communities of computing'

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Michael Mahoney argues that machine-centred, revolution-chronicling history of computing "reinforces the hype and with it what one might call the 'impact theory' of the relation of technology and society. There is society strolling along, minding its own business, and, wham!, it gets impacted." He names this "a form of technological determinism" that "leaves people reacting to technology, rather than actively shaping it," and aligns his own approach with recent history-of-technology scholarship aimed at "getting people back into the picture or... into the driver's seat."

His proposed alternative is not to abandon narrative but to relocate its subject: trace how distinct "communities of computing" — scientists and engineers, data processing, management science, industrial automation, communications, military command-and-control, human–computer interaction, computer science — each negotiated with the computer's own indeterminacy (what he calls its "protean" character) to build the specific tool their own agendas needed. Agency, contingency, and disciplinary context become the organizing categories in place of the machine's own "evolution." This is the companion half to claim-mahoney-machine-centred-history-hides-hype-as-inevitability — one diagnoses machine-centred history's epistemics, this one diagnoses its politics.