Mahoney argues machine-centred computing history reads the computer's contingent path as inevitable because 'hype hides history'

whig-historyhistoriography-of-aihistory-of-computingmahoneypresentismtechnological-determinism

Michael Mahoney names the target of his 2005 critique directly: histories of computing "centred on the machine," tracing a lineage from the abacus through mainframe, mini, and micro, in which "its progress is inevitable and unstoppable, its effects revolutionary." He ties this pattern to the field's own promotional habit — "because they have always been surrounded by hype... and hype hides history" — citing Edmund Berkeley's 1962 declaration of a "computer revolution" as an early instance of a recurring genre of "instant historical analysis aimed at declaring a new epoch, a radical disjuncture."

Functionally this is a presentism/teleology critique — the actual, contingent path a technology took gets read as its only possible path, and later triumph gets projected back onto earlier, more open moments — even though Mahoney does not use Butterfield's vocabulary to name it (see claim-mahoney-2005-essay-omits-whig-and-butterfield). It is the mechanism half of his critique; the agency half — what he proposes instead — is claim-mahoney-impact-theory-critique-restores-agency-to-communities-of-computing.