My search for the mysterious missing secretary who shaped chatbot history

By Rebecca Roach, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature, University of Birmingham

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Distinctive Collections archive is quiet while the blizzard blows outside. Silence seems to be accumulating with the falling snow. I am the only researcher in the archive, but there is a voice that I am straining to hear.

I am searching for someone – let’s call her the missing secretary. She played a crucial role in the history of computing, but she has never been named. I’m at MIT as part of my research into the history of talking machines. You might know them as “chatbots” – computer programmes and interfaces that use dialogue as the…

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