Historical Interpretations of the IS Discipline: An Introduction to the Special Issue

In the Information Systems (IS) discipline, past and present existing phenomena point to the need to learn about the history of the discipline. For example, why is it difficult for IS researchers to provide a single answer when colleagues inother disciplines ask “What is IS?” Why are there different labels for the same IS discipline? The question of why we call the discipline (or its sub-fields) IT, IS, MIS, ICT, DSS, e-government or eanything, and so on is one that can be addressed histor- ically, and the articles in this special issue illustrate this. More fundamentally, is it possible that questions about the discipline (in fact, challenges) arise from a lack of understanding the history of IS? The position taken here assumes it is, which is the