Devin Kennedy

Biography

Devin Kennedy is Assistant Professor of History and the Evelyn and Herbert Howe Bascom Professor of Integrated Liberal Studies. Trained as a historian of science, Kennedy’s work focuses on the history of digital technology, computer science. He also works on the history of capitalism broadly, with particular interest in the history of US financial markets, management science, and labor.

His book, Coding Capital: Computing and the Remaking of the US Economy, 1947-1987 will be published by Columbia University Press in Spring 2026. Since the invention of the computer at the end of World War II, manufacturing businesses, economic researchers, and the US military saw the machines as tools to control and coordinate the complex US economy. Their efforts spurred early developments in the application of digital technologies, and the science of computing itself. Describing the consequences of computing machinery and ideas on the arc of capitalism in the US and the entanglement of basic computer research with the needs of industry, the book offers a new account of computing’s history.

On campus, Kennedy is involved in groups working to study artificial intelligence and its social and cultural dimensions. He is the co-lead of the Uncertainty and AI Group at the Institute for Research in the Humanities and the 2025-26 Borghesi-Mellon Seminar on AI and Responsibility.

Professor Kennedy regularly teaches a course on the history of computer technology and its social consequences (HS 150: The Digital Age), and the second half of the History of Science survey (ILS/HS 202). He is interested in working with graduate students working in topics related to 20th century technology and science (especially computing and data) as well as the history of capitalism and business.

Education

Ph.D., M.A., Harvard, History of Science
AB Princeton, Comparative Literature

Selected Publications

• “Silent Partners: Indirect Investment and Financialization in the United States, 1950- 1975.” Journal of American History 111, No. 4 (March 2025): 712-734.
• “Introduction to Computing Capitalisms” [Special Series, Issue 1 of series] IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 42, no. 3 (July-September 2020): 5-10. (With Gerardo Con Diaz).
• “The Machine in the Market: Computers and the Infrastructure of Price at the New York Stock Exchange, 1965–1975.” Social Studies of Science 47, no. 6 (December 1, 2017): 888–917.

Invited Talks & Research Presentations

• [upcoming] “The Nature of the Problem: Computational Complexity from Factories to Theoretical Computer Science 1954-1976” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, November, 2025.
• “Wired for Profit: Computing and the Decentralized Firm, 1955-1970” Business History Conference. Atlanta, March 14, 2025.
• “The Boundary of Responsibility” Computer Scientists and Societal Vulnerability to Technology,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting. New York, January 3, 2025.
• “NonStop: Catastrophe and the Always-on Economy, 1976-1993,” Society for the History of Technology Annual Meeting. Los Angeles, October 27, 2023.
• “Labor Surveillance and Database Management: Industrial Origins of the Computer Database,” Data (re)Makes the World Conference, Yale University Law School Information Society Project. New Haven, April 1, 2023.

Advisor To

• Yu-Hsuan Wang
• Yuji Xu

Selected Awards

• Appel Fellowship in History and Technology, New-York Historical Society
• 2017 IEEE Life Member’s Fellowship in the History of Electrical and Computing Technology
• 2017 John E. Rovensky Fellowship in U.S. Business or Economic History, Business History Conference

History Courses

• History 201 – The Historian’s Craft: “The History of Data and Data Science” – Syllabus 2021 (pdf)
• History of Science 150 – The Digital Age – Syllabus 2024 (pdf)
• History of Science 202 – The Making of Modern Science – Syllabus 2022 (pdf)
• History of Science 350 – Special Topics—Science and Technology in the Global Cold War – Syllabus 2020 (pdf)
• History of Science 555 – Undergraduate Seminar in History of Science – “Digital Capitalism” – Syllabus 2021 (pdf)
• History of Science 720 – Methods and Historiography in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology – Syllabus 2025 (pdf)
• History 952 – The Atomic Bomb in American, Japanese & Global History – Syllabus 2025 (pdf)