Spreading the word to demystify: The First Brazilian Symposium on Electronic Computers (1961)

Abstract

This study provides an analysis of the first event on Informatics in the country, the 1st Brazilian Symposium on Electronic Computers, held in Rio de Janeiro in April 1961. Organized by the Executive Group for the Application of Electronic Computers (GEACE), with the support of a new association organized to disseminate technological contributions in data processing, Brazilian Association of Electronic Computers (ABRACE), the event was attended by the main manufacturers and specialists in the new field of Informatics. Our analysis involves understanding the organization, implementation, and repercussions of the seminar, looking at the role of its participants. Preliminarily, in a context in which computers were touted as essential for processing data related to the Target Plan (Plano de Metas), the event was an attempt to represent computer technologies as examples of the modernization of activities, within a perspective of technological optimism of the period - which included a public exhibition of the "electronic brains". This is an opportunity to understand an uncritical position, without concern for the technological dependence that was imposed, in favor of a modernity linked to Information Technology, as well as what issues surrounded the computer world of the early 1960s in Brazil.