[SIGCIS-Members] Thinking Machines event tomorrow, free online streaming

[thomas.haigh at gmail.com]

Hello SIGCIS,

 

I'll be talking tomorrow (remotely) at an event at the ZKM Center for Art
and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. The museum is displaying an iconic
Connection Machine 2, thanks in large part to the energy of artist and
former Thinking Machines designer Tamiko Thiel in getting the machines into
major museums. My talk "Why Did They Say The Machines Were Thinking?" will
provide some historical context for the 1980s regarding the AI brand, ARPA's
history of AI funding, and the Strategic Computing Initiative.

 

I noticed that the livestream links are right there on the event page with
no signup required, so thought I would circulate a last minute notification
to the list to see if anyone is interested The event runs from 2pm Central
European time on Friday, with two further sessions on Saturday. Full program
with streaming links at
https://zkm.de/en/2026/03/envisioning-ai-legacy-and-impact-of-the-connection
-machine. Other speakers include Danny Hillis, Brewster Kahle, and the MIT
Museum (is that you, Debbie Douglas?). 

 

Tamiko Thiel herself has an interesting website on the Connection Machine
and its legacy at https://tamikothiel.com/theory/cm_txts/ (particularly
https://tamikothiel.com/cm/cm-30th.html). One of the themes of my
forthcoming book The Brand That Wouldn't Die is that the technical
contributions of 20th century AI-branded research centers in the 1960s and
70s were considerable but were all incidental to its supposed mission of
achieving intelligence (e.g. timesharing systems, search algorithms,
electronic publishing and text editing, etc.) Documenting the longer-term
influence of ARPA's support for what looked at the time like a failed
investment is interesting as example of this continuing in the 1980s. 

 

Best wishes,


Tom

 

Thomas Haigh

Professor & Chair, UWM History Department

Chair, IEEE Computer Society History Committee

Director, ACM History Committee Turing Awards Project

See more at www.tomandmaria.com/Tom <http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom>  

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20260326/f2ade413/attachment.htm>