Join us on March 6, 2025 at 3:30 (Pacific) for a talk by Honghong Tinn on her latest book ‘Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan’s Computing Industry‘.
How did Taiwan, a former Japanese colony and the last fortress of the defeated Chinese Nationalists, ascend to such heights in high-tech manufacturing? In Island Tinkerers, Honghong Tinn tells the critical history of how hobbyists and enthusiasts in Taiwan, including engineers, technologists, technocrats, computer users, and engineers-turned-entrepreneurs, helped transform the country with their hands-on engagement with computers. Rather than engaging in wholesale imitation of US sources, she explains, these technologists tinkered with imported computing technology and experimented with manufacturing their own versions, resulting in their own brand of successful innovation.
Honghong Tinn is Assistant Professor in the Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She received her Ph.D. in Science & Technology Studies from Cornell University. Her research interests are in the areas of the history of electronic digital computing, Cold War, and econometrics. Her work on these topics has appeared in Technology and Culture, Osiris, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, and East Asian Science, Technology and Society. She is the author of Island Tinkerers: Emulation, Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan’s Computing Industry (MIT Press, 2025), and a co-author of Computer: A History of the Information Machine, 4th edition (Taylor & Francis, 2023). She was on the Executive Council of the Society for the History of Technology (2017-2019), chaired the Society’s Internationalization Committee (2013-2014) and the International Small Grants Committee (2017-2019), and is an elected member of the Nominating Committee (2023-2025).
Attend either ONLINE or IN-PERSON. Free and open world-wide. Register at the link below.
Sponsored by the UW Taiwan Studies Program with funding from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation