Documenting the History and Memory of Informatics in Brazil - first initiatives

Abstract

One of the difficulties in organizing the memories of the field of Informatics in Brazil is the loss of many existing documentary records. This is due to a number of reasons: in a more general sense, the dynamics of Informatics, being oriented towards the continuous production of new technologies, contributes to previous experiences being relegated to oblivion. There is also the situation of technological dependence of countries to the south, such as Brazil, which influences the lack of incentives for the proper cataloging and safekeeping of documentary collections (projects, academic publications, periodicals, legislation), especially when they involve developmental periods, considered “failed” by common sense and the mainstream press. In this way, this paper aims to present the first advances of the project “Documenting the History and Memory of Informatics in Brazil”, an initiative of the Federal Institutes of Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo to identify, catalog, discuss and make available to researchers and the public a series of documents relating to the development of Informatics in the country. To this end, sources will be located, analyzed and disseminated that dialogue with a social history of Information Technology in Brazil, observing the role of different social agents, such as the State, academia, manufacturers and users, in establishing priorities for the computerization of society. The research aims to gather public and private documents that represent the process of computerization of Brazilian society, in order to disseminate them through commented thematic ebooks, duly contextualized for the reading public.