[SIGCIS-Members] Diagrammatic models of human computing

Paul Fishwick metaphorz at gmail.com
Sat Apr 18 14:34:24 PDT 2015


I recently listened to a podcast on Pickering's human-intensive computing
for processing astronomical data. Here is a wiki page that contains an overview and
photograph from 1890:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Computers

I am seeking diagrammatic workflow models of the types of computation that occurred
under Pickering's direction, but more generally, any articles or texts that contain such
diagrams for human computing.  I am familiar with modern formalisms such as 
BPMN: http://www.bpmn.org/ in which business workflows might be formalized. I also have 
read Grier's excellent book:

http://www.amazon.com/When-Computers-Human-David-Grier/dp/0691091579/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429392009&sr=8-1&keywords=when+computers+were+human

The history and cultural context is interesting to me, and most appropriate for engaging
readers, however, the main end-point in this story-telling process, for me, is for people to 
appreciate the path toward the diagrammatic formalisms with their nodes, merges, branches, and
connections.

If I need to, I can embark on a path toward creating some models with the written historical 
accounts as a guide, but I thought that checking here would be the best starting location in this 
quest for diagrammatic evidence.

-paul






Paul Fishwick, PhD
Chair, ACM SIGSIM
Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology 
   and Professor of Computer Science
Director, Creative Automata Laboratory
The University of Texas at Dallas
Arts & Technology
800 West Campbell Road, AT10
Richardson, TX 75080-3021
Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick
Lab Blog: creative-automata.com
SIGSIM Blog: modelingforeveryone.com




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