[SIGCIS-Members] CHM Prize 2011 Winner: Paul Edwards for A Vast Machine

[Thomas Haigh]

Hello everyone,


We will be following up soon with more news from out annual meeting &
workshop last weekend.  However, I did want to make sure that we make a
timely announcement for those who could not be in Cleveland of the winner of
our Computer History Museum book prize. This was awarded on Sunday for the
third time, during our SIGCIS Workshop (http://www.sigcis.org/workshop11).

 

Here’s the announcement from the prize committee:

 

The SHOT SIGCIS/Computer History Museum Prize is awarded this year to Paul
N. Edwards' A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics
of Global Warming (The MIT Press, 2010). This book was selected out of a set
of more than 15 excellent candidates. Paul Edwards’ insightful, ambitious
and theoretically-sophisticated study addresses hotly debated political
issues of our time through a methodical historical analysis. It traces the
construction of climate sciences over two centuries, from weather forecasts
to highly mathematized simulation models, from local observation to
worldwide networks. Epistemological reflections on the relationship between
data and models are interwoven with the institutional and political
narrative of the development of a global knowledge infrastructure,
particularly in the context of the Cold War. Computers and
telecommunications then made it possible not only to digitalize more data
and process more elaborate models, but also to produce standard
representations of the world.  We trust that this book, written at a high
level of historiographical quality for a wide, non-specialized readership,
will find a large audience.

 

Thanks to the 2011 prize committee: Pierre Mounier-Kuhn (Chair) -- CNRS &
Université Paris-Sorbonne, Jennifer S. Light -- Northwestern University
School of Communication, and Jonathan Coopersmith -- Texas A&M University.

 

Links:

Prize website: http://www.sigcis.org/chmprize

Paul Edwards website: http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/

A Vast Machine page: http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/vastmachine/index.html

At MIT Press: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12080>
&tid=12080

At Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Vast-Machine-Computer-Climate-Politics/dp/0262013924 

 

Background:

The Computer History Museum Prize is awarded to the author of an outstanding
book in the history of computing broadly conceived, published during the
prior three years. The prize of $1000 is awarded by SIGCIS, the Special
Interest Group for Computers, Information and Society. It is established
through the generosity of an anonymous donor who wishes to honor the
Computer History Museum. SIGCIS is part of the Society for the History of
Technology.

 

Previous winners:

*	2009: Christophe Lécuyer <http://www.sigcis.org/node/89> , Making
Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970 (MIT
Press, 2006)
*	2010: Atsushi Akera <http://www.sigcis.org/node/133> , Calculating a
Natural World: Scientists, Engineers, and Computers During the Rise of U.S.
Cold War Research (MIT Press, 2007)

Congratulations go also to MIT Press, which published the first three books
to win the prize.

 

Best wishes,


Tom

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