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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>Hello SIGCIS,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Hope everyone is having a pleasant holiday. I just wanted to let you all know that my short article “Defining American Greatness: IBM from Watson to Trump” just appeared in the Jan 2018 issue of Communications of the ACM. ACM agreed to make this one open access, in hopes of reaching a broader audience: <a href="https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2018/1/223891-defining-american-greatness/fulltext">https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2018/1/223891-defining-american-greatness/fulltext</a>. Thanks to Jim Cortada for comments, and to Bill Aspray who has recently stepped down from many years of editorial work helping to shepherd historical material into Communications. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The argument is that IBM founder Thomas Watson Sr. and Donald Trump have a surprising amount in common, including an obsession with “greatness,” but that the ways in which they differ tell us a lot about how America, and global capitalism, have changed over the past century. This seemed like a chance to make IBM’s long history seem more relevant, and, when the parallels become more explicit in the conclusion, to approach Trumpism from a relatively novel direction. Also, it finishes with Leonard Cohen, which may be another first for CACM. Hopefully the computer scientists are not going to complain.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>There is a SIGCIS connection: the piece is deeply informed by a pair of panels on IBM I organized via the SIGCIS list for the Business History Conference a few years ago (Frankfurt meeting). The argument that IBM had been a “model corporation” in different eras comes from the talk I developed for that panel. This argument is combined here with details from my ongoing work with Petri Paju on the history of IBM in Europe (our article “IBM’s Tiny Peripheral: Finland and the Tensions of Transnationality” should be out early next year in Business History Review).<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Best wishes,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Tom<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>