Richard G. Hull

Richard Hull was Senior Lecturer in Management with the University of Newcastle Business School. He has a BSc in Liberal Studies in Science (with Physics), and an MSc in Computation, specialising in CSCW. His PhD thesis (2001, Manchester University) combined historical and ethnographic studies of IT to develop an innovative identification of three distinct frameworks of computing, the Technical, Partnership and Benevolent. Each framework embodies different understandings of the actual and desirable relations between humans and machines. He has published research since 1992 on the social history of computing, the use of IT in organisations, public information systems, knowledge management, science communication, digital TV, Critical Management Studies and more broadly in the social theory and philosophy underpinning social and historical studies of science and technology. He has over 50 publications. In 1992 he self-published In Praise of WIMPS: A Social History of Computer Programming – some work in progress, reviewed in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. His current research areas include the social and managerial aspects of social enterprise, rural broadband and Fibre To The Home. He is the Chair of Calder Connect Co-operative (3-C) Ltd, a community-owned social enterprise providing broadband connections and services to over 400 residents of a semi-rural area of the UK.