[SIGCIS-Members] “Please Read the Article”? Please Cite Women Academics.

[Sarah T. Roberts]

Colleagues -

You may find this interview that I conducted with Stephanie Ricker Schulte of interest, on the occasion of the publication of her book. 

http://illusionofvolition.com/2013/04/19/how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess-an-interview-with-stephanie-ricker-schulte-author-of-cached/

Best,
Sarah

---

S a r a h  T.  R o b e r t s, P h. D. 
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS) 
Western University
http://fims.uwo.ca/index.htm

Blogging periodically at
http://illusionofvolition.com

> On Feb 25, 2016, at 3:11 PM, Kevin Driscoll <kdriscoll at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hello all--
> 
> Paul, your instinct is right regarding the use of the lowercase-i "internet" in Schulte's book. She is principally concerned with the everyday use of "internet" as it is understood and discussed in popular culture rather than the particular family of networks running TCP/IP. (The subtitle of Cached is "Decoding the Internet in Global Popular Culture.") Her book makes a compelling case that early representation of computers and networks in films like WarGames shaped how non-specialists, including policy-makers, would later make sense of the information infrastructures being assembled around them.
> 
> As to the fictional exploits of young Broderick, there is no packet-switched Internet. Just the plain old telephone service. Broderick's character finds NORAD by accident while "war-dialing" for a computer game company [1]. Otherwise, his on-screen hacking is limited to social engineering [2]. That underpowered IMSAI wasn't brute forcing any passwords-- just shuttling characters from the modem to the display. :)
> 
> [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb1r_uKOew4
> [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UqEg1cFqig
> 
> Big thanks to Meryl for opening up this important and engaging discussion!
> 
> Kevin Driscoll
> 
> 
> 
>> On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 2:23 PM, Ceruzzi, Paul <CeruzziP at si.edu> wrote:
>> I’ve been reading this discussion with great interest. I hope people don’t mind if I go off track and share some impressions I have of the film War Games as it related to my own work.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> The first is that you can see from the photo that Matthew Broderick is hacking into NORAD through an IMSAI 8080 computer. The IMSAI was basically a clone of the Altair, only with a decent power supply. The few Altairs that I ever saw in use typically had an external power supply bolted on, as the original power supply was not up to the demands placed on it. If indeed he could hack into NORAD with an 8-bit IMSAI, that was a heck-of-a programming job!
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> After the movie came out, Ed Fredkin, a Cambridge, Mass. computer pioneer, told me that his colleagues would come up to him and say, “I am so sorry to hear about your son.” People thought that he was the inspiration for Prof. Falken, since Fredkin owned an island. But Fredkin never lost a son, he was not a recluse but quite accessible, and it is much more likely that Claude Shannon, not Fredkin, was the inspiration for Falken (note the scene where Broderick goes to the library & looks up a cover story of a Scientific American article—Shannon published just such an cover story, on mazes, I think). Shannon was a bit of a recluse.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> I had to order Schulte’s paper from Interlibrary Loans, so I haven’t had a chance yet to read it.
>> 
>> However, in the abstract, she talks about the “internet” in War Games. Is that right? I don’t recall Broderick using the “internet” to hack into NORAD, but I could have missed it. In 1984, with the IMSAI, he probably did not have internet access. Of course, there’s the internet, and there’s the “Internet.” See Quarterman’s book on “The Matrix” for more on this.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> I am having your blog post forwarded to Larry Lasker, through a mutual friend. Let’s see if he responds!
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> As I said, I do not mean to ignore the important issues brought up by Meryl & others. It was just that reading about War Games brought back a flood of memories of the 8-bit world in those days.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Paul Ceruzzi
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Paul Ceruzzi
>> 
>> ceruzzip at si.edu
>> 
>> 202-633-2414
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> From: Members [mailto:members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Meryl Alper
>> Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 2:42 PM
>> To: members at lists.sigcis.org
>> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] “Please Read the Article”? Please Cite Women Academics.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Over the weekend, journalist Fred Kaplan published an article in the New York Times, entitled "'WarGames' and Cybersecurity's Debt to a Hollywood Hack" (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/movies/wargames-and-cybersecuritys-debt-to-a-hollywood-hack.html?_r=0).  
>> 
>> The core argument -- that WarGames culturally influenced the Reagan administration's cyberpolicy -- sounded a great deal like communication scholar Stephanie Ricker Schulte's work.  When I brought this reference to Kaplan's attention on Twitter, he was super dismissive and minced my words.  So, naturally, I wrote a blog post about the incident, situating it within a broader trend of tech journalists (mostly men) minimizing the work of academics (mostly women), and capitalizing on this sin of omission in promoting their own books and other works:  https://merylalper.com/2016/02/22/please-read-the-article-please-cite-women-academics/  
>> 
>> I'm really interested to know the thoughts of this community, both as one that knows the history of cyber law/policy inside and out, but one with many members committed to egalitarian principles.
>> 
>> Best,
>> Meryl
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> Meryl Alper
>> 
>> Assistant Professor
>> 
>> Department of Communication Studies
>> 
>> Northeastern University
>> 
>> Holmes 217
>> 
>> m.alper at neu.edu
>> 
>> merylalper.com
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
> 
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20160225/ece1d250/attachment.htm>