The Commodity and the Computer

On the Relation Between the Abstraction of Labor and the Genesis of Computing Science

Abstract

In this work we analyze the genesis of computing, which took place between 1830 and the end of World War II, when the first universal computers were actually built. For this, we refer to several key texts by the founders of computer science (Babbage, Lovelace, Boole, Hollerith, Turing and Shannon) analyzing their relationship with the development of commodity and capital, mainly from the theory of Marx and his successors, such as Sohn-Rethel and Adorno. The different notes present aspects in which computing and market development intertwine, in a process in which social reality becomes increasingly mathematized.