This exhibit will show how the individual actors and organizations are left to engage in unpaid labour to reveal the truth of matters that the governments have historically hid behind a false curtain of transparency. Key subsections will feature artefacts from the Vietnam War, womens’ involvement in computing during World War II, as well as the rise of the black computer professional.

The Vietnam War was a key moment in US history that caused the American population to truly question if the government was being honest about its intentions and reality of the war overseas. Here, visual evidence provided by and through the American media journalists that detailed the horrors of the war ran in stark contrast the positive outlook held by wartime officials (Hallin, 1986). The truth presented by the American government was exposed to be a false truth, one that failed to tell the full story of the war. American media during this time presented uncensored journalism covering the war effort, which the American public was able to use as ammunition to demand the truth and reality of the situation from the government officials (Hallin, 1986). However, such a case was only possible because of the evidence provided through the media – what about when that evidence is not so easily provided? It certainly is not in the government’s interest for the public to easily uncover the truth, as evidenced historically with eugenics research as one example, and the impact and aftermath of the Trinity test during World War II. Here, the onus is on the public to sift through published documents and communications in the form of unpaid labour to reveal the truths hidden behind a layer of false transparency.

In the United Kingdom during World War II, women were essential workers that helped the war effort – both in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) as well as across the intelligence and information work being done Bletchley Park (Hicks, 2017). These highly skilled women and their stories in working with the secret Colossus computers found themselves undervalued, pushed aside, and quickly forgotten – erased from the history they were an essential, thriving component of. The United Kingdom’s government made sure to make these women feel unwelcome, providing reduced benefits for women compared to men after the war, as well erasing the work and effort of women who operated Colossus computers in favour of praising the technological brilliance of the machines (Hicks, 2017). With the history of the women largely erased by the U.K government, both back in the 20^th century and even in the 21^st century in modern exhibits honouring the war efforts (Hicks, 2017), the history of these women would have been truly forgotten if not for the work of individual actors and efforts by researchers. Especially when documents and reports of the efforts at Bletchley Park presented a truth that was not reality, it was up to the public to uncover the truth themselves.

Additionally, the history of computing has worked to reproduce not only biases against women, but also biases against people of colour as well. As Gibbons’ (2022) discusses, historically computing history has focused on the individual success of ‘great white men’ (p. 259). The contribution of black computer professionals was ignored in the history of computing, and to a certain extent black culture had to be created to make its own space on an internet that is white by default (Gibbons, 2022). Going back to the 20^th century, even after World War II despite the need and demand for skilled jobs that black professionals could qualify for, was outweighed by the existing prejudice against black workers via tradition. The truth was that employers at the time still were prejudiced against hiring black workers, and in addition to the issue of attitude, there was also a lack of proper training programs in place for black workers to potentially learn the skills for a skilled position (Gibbons, 2022). Through the 1940’s and 50’s it was up to social organizations to rise against these prejudices and seek to provide better opportunities and change the attitudes towards placing black workers in skilled positions.

Bibliography

Gibbons, K. (2022). Inventing the Black Computer Professional. In Abstractions and Embodiments: New Histories of Computing and Society (pp. 257–276). John Hopkings University Press.

Hallin, D. C. (1989). The “Uncensored War” the media and Vietnam. Univ. of California Press.

Hicks, M. (2018). War Machines: Women’s Computing Work and the Underpinnings of the Data-Driven State, 1930-1946. The MIT Press.