[SIGCIS-Members] Interfaces 2021 update

[Jeffrey Yost]

Dear SIGCIS Colleagues,

With *Interfaces, *we are now into our second calendar year/volume (started
the journal late last May) and wanted to give a quick update. Also we'd
like to encourage you to submit a short essay to us.  In our first ten
months our subscriber base (free) to get email alerts to new essays
(approximately 8 to 10 times a year) has expanded at a rapid rate from 465
shortly after launch to 1,335 subscribers today and it keeps growing
steadily! (Academics and graduate students from many fields and geographies
make up the greatest share of the base, which also includes industry and
government scientists, and others interested in computing--past, present,
and future).

Co-editor Amanda Wick and I are so grateful for the readership, many
encouraging comments, course/classroom use, and thousands of
views/downloads. We especially want to thank our authors, and the SIGCIS
community.

*Essays on all topics/themes/fields/approaches in the domain of computing
and culture are welcome*.  You can either email Amanda (abwick at umn.edu) or
me (yostx003 at umn.edu) with your essay submission or if you prefer, you can
bounce ideas off us first. The general ongoing call is at the site (click
on the journal title in the banner below or on any of the article links or
here <https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces> to go to the journal).

We have very exciting content in process, and offer a quick turnaround in
editorial review with short time spans from first submission to publication
(about a month) given a continuous publication of articles rather than
scheduled issues.

In case you missed something and are looking for some mid Spring reading,
below is a list of essay articles published, along with their abstract..

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy Spring!

Best, Jeff and Amanda, Co-Editors, *Interfaces*

*Interfaces: Essays and Reviews in Computing and Culture*
<https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces>



 *Volume 2 (2021) *

[Note: The link on the banner above and  on articles goes to the top of the
journal, essays, most recent to earliest, are on long scroll. There is a
button jump back to 2020]

Published March 2021 (Just published last week)

“Of Mice and Mentalité: PARC Ways to Exploring HCI, AI, Augmentation and
Symbiosis, and Categorization and Control”
<https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces>Jeffrey R. Yost, Charles Babbage
Institute, University of Minnesota
Abstract: This think piece essay comparatively explores history and
mindsets with human-computer interaction (HCI) and artificial intelligence
(AI)/Machine Learning (ML). It draws on oral history and archival and other
research to reflect on the institutional, and cultural and intellectual
history of HCI (especially the Card, Moran, and Newell team at Xerox PARC)
and AI. It posits the HCI mindset (focused on augmentation and
human-machine symbiosis, as well iterative maintenance) could be a useful
framing to rethink dominant design and operational paradigms in AI/ML that
commonly spawn, reinforce, and accelerate algorithmic biases and societal
inequality.

Published January 2021

“The Cloud, the Civil War, and the 'War on Coal'”
<https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces> Paul E. Ceruzzi, National Air and
Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution

Abstract: The term “The Cloud” has entered the lexicon of computer-speak
along with “cyberspace,” the Matrix,” the “ether,” and other terms
suggesting the immateriality of networked computing. Cloud servers, which
store vast amounts of data and software accessible via the Internet, are
located around the globe. This essay argues that this “matrix” has an
epicenter, namely the former rural village of Ashburn, Virginia. Ashburn’s
significance is the result of several factors, including northern
Virginia’s historic role in the creation of the Internet and its
predecessor, the ARPANET. The Cloud servers located there also exist
because of the availability of sources of electric power, including a grid
of power lines connected to wind turbines, gas-, and coal-fired plants
located to its west—a “networking” of a different type but just as
important.

*Volume 1 (2020) [launched the journal in late May 2020]*


Published September 2020“Cultural Networks: Infrastructural Implications of
AT&T’s Picturephone <https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces>” *Malinda
Dietrich, University of Colorado, Boulder*Abstract: In 2020, video
telecommunications seem ubiquitous. Between work and play, many people use
a range of software to connect them with other people all around the world.
This short essay begins to explore how we arrived at this seemingly
universal technology by exhuming a failed technology: AT&T’s Picturephone.
Through this historical exploration, we will come to see that
infrastructure and culture are closely related, and that future work must
be done to explore the social inequities that become apparent.

*Published August 2020*
“From Telecommuting to Mobile Work: The IBM Experience, 1890s-2020”
<https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces> *James W. Cortada, Senior Research
Fellow, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota*

*A*bstract: IBM was an early practitioner of remote working, beginning in
the 1890s, but expanding this way of working in the 1980s. Customer
engineers, programmers, systems engineers, salesmen, and consultants
participated. Mobile work posed its own operational problems but offered
benefits for improved service, productivity, and employee morale. However,
its motives and practices remained controversial.


Published July 2020

*“A Preface to Charles Babbage’s Ninth Bridgewater Treatise”
<https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces>* Amanda Wick, *Interim Archivist,
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota*
“*Charles Babbage’s Ninth Bridgewater Treatise”
<https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces>* *Margaret Dykens, Curator and
Director of the Research Library San Diego Natural History Museum* Abstract:
As a foundational figure in the history of science, Charles Babbage is best
known for his contributions to computing. In fact, his mechanical,
programmable calculating machines are considered precursors to modern
computers. These accomplishments were the primary reason for the naming of
the Charles Babbage Institute, and its archivists have sought to honor its
namesake through the purchase of rare books authored and inscribed by him.
One such book is a fragmentary oddity, the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, and
a copy owned by the San Diego Natural History Museum that was recently
examined by curatorial staff and prominent Babbage scholar, Dr. Doron
Swade, holds curious clues to Babbage's approach to natural philosophy.

*Published June 2020*
“Of Bugs, Languages and Business Models: A History
<https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces?fbclid=IwAR0B1KQ0lqEF0t9exsaaMRXsJCaoULnrPH9m3x-XbLIzDH9dJtNFaqipx3g>”
*Alejandro Ramirez**, Sprott School of Business, Carleton University*Abstract:
A series of wrong decisions precipitated the Y2K crisis: adopting the
6-digit date format, using COBOL as the standard in business computing and
discontinuing COBOL-teaching in many American universities shortly after it
was adopted. Did we learn anything from this crisis?

Published May 2020
“Where Dinosaurs Roam and Programmers Play: Reflections on
Infrastructure,Maintenance, and Inequality”
<https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces?fbclid=IwAR0B1KQ0lqEF0t9exsaaMRXsJCaoULnrPH9m3x-XbLIzDH9dJtNFaqipx3g>
*Jeffrey
R. Yost, Charles Babbage Institute, HSTM, University of Minnesota*Abstract:
This short essay examines two temporally separated crises (current
unemployment system failures and Y2K), focusing on connections between
infrastructural (largely COBOL-based) IT systems, maintenance, and societal
inequality.





*"Injustice wears the same harsh face wherever it shows itself."*-Ralph
Ellison

Jeffrey R. Yost, Ph.D.
Director, Charles Babbage Institute
Research Professor, Program in the History of Science, Technology, and
Medicine

222  21st Avenue South
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455

612 624 5050 Phone
612 625 8054 Fax
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