January 2013 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

another book by Knuth which is not another volume of TAOCP
by Dave Walden 08 Mar '13

08 Mar '13

See my review at <http://www.tug.org/books/reviews/tb103reviews-knuth9-walden.html>http://www.tug.org/books/reviews/tb103reviews-knuth9-walden.html It will be published in the upcoming issue of the TeX User Group's journal. As the review says, I think this will be a useful volume for computing historians whose research brings them toward Knuth's life and publications.

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CFP : ASIS&T History Fund Awards 2013
by Lai Ma 26 Jan '13

26 Jan '13

The ASIS&T History Fund Advisory Board announces the following two competitive awards for 2013: 1) The ASIS&T History Fund Research Award This award will be for a maximum of $1,000 and will be awarded for the best research proposal submitted by May 15, 2013. All topics relevant to the history of information science and technology may be proposed. The proposal should include: the central topic or question to be researched and an extended abstract, qualifications of the researcher (brief vita should be included), a budget and how the funds will be expended. All funds must be expended by June 30, 2014. Submit proposal to http://www.softconf.com/asist2/History/ (choose the "Research Award" category) by May 15, 2013. The winner will be notified by June 30 if an award is made. 2) The ASIS&T History Fund Best Paper Award This award will be for a maximum of $500 and will be awarded for the best paper submitted by May 15, 2013. All topics relevant to the history of information science and technology will be considered. The paper should not have been previously published or submitted to a journal. The paper should not exceed 30 pages double-spaced, including notes and references, using APA Style Manual. The winner is expected to present the paper at the 2013 ASIS&T Annual Meeting and to give first rights of refusal for publication to the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Submit paper to http://www.softconf.com/asist2/History/ (choose the "Research Award" category) by May 15, 2013. The ASIS&T History Fund was established by the ASIS&T Board of Directors in June 2000 for the purposes of supporting and encouraging research and publication in the history of information science and technology. The Fund is supported by donations (including book loyalties) from ASIS&T members and others. The Fund Advisory Board encourages further donations from anyone interested in supporting historical study of information science and technology. Members of the ASIS&T History Fund Advisory Board for 2013 are: Sarah Buchanan, Chair Lai Ma, Chair-Elect Michael Buckland Samantha Hastings Trudi Bellardo Hahn For further information please contact Lai Ma at malai0008(a)gmail.com. Sincerely, Lai Ma Chair-Elect, SIG-HFIS ASIS&T

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Paper Call for New SIG: EDITH (Exploring Diversity in Technology’s History)
by Marie Hicks 24 Jan '13

24 Jan '13

Folks, Please see below for the SHOT call from the newest SIG. EDITH (Exploring Diversity in Technology’s History) is a new SIG that aims to institutionalize a space for the study of diversity and alterity in the history of technology and connect scholars working on projects concerned with these issues. I am not highly involved with EDITH so I can't really answer questions about it, but the contact info for those who can is listed in the call below. Best, Marie ______________________ Marie Hicks, Ph.D. Asst. Professor, History of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL USA mhicks1(a)iit.edu | mariehicks.net | @histoftech _________________________________________________________________________ Special call for panels addressing diversity issues at the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology, October 10-13, 2013 The next SHOT (Society for the History of Technology) meeting will be in Portland, Maine, USA, October 10-13, 2013. The Society for the History of Technology has long been interested in the history of technology defined at its broadest, from baby bottles and cellphones to duct tape, architecture, automobiles, and much, much more. Our organization is particularly interested in the intersections of technology, society, and culture. Our research and teaching has long emphasized studying the ways in which gender, race, class, and other human factors both reflect and shape the development of machines, devices, the built environment, and other technologies. EDITH (Exploring Diversity in Technology’s History) is a newly formed special interest group of SHOT, designed to expand dialogue about the importance of understanding diversity/ alterity when thinking about the history of technology and culture. This special interest group has the dual aims of supporting scholars and scholarship currently underrepresented in the history of technology and SHOT. We look forward to incorporating insights from expanding studies of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and disability – and growing attention to intersectionality of such categories -- into the scholarship of the history of technology, and to provide an intellectual home within SHOT to a broad range of scholars.Our goal for this year's meeting is to arrange several sessions addressing these issues. We would love to have papers by researchers in the history of art and architecture, the history of disability studies, gender history, the history of sexuality, the history of race, and other diversity-studies areas, as long as this research has some meaningful connection to the history of technology writ broadly. If you might be interested in convening or participating in a session, please contact Tisha Hooks (Tisha.hooks(a)yale.edu) and Ruth Cowan (rcowan(a)sas.upenn.edu) by February 15th, 2013. For more about the Society for the History of Technology, please see the SHOT website at: http://www.historyoftechnology.org/ SHOT offers meeting participants the chance to apply for travel funds, through the SHOT Travel Grant Program. Priority funding goes to graduate students, independent scholars, and young professionals just beginning their careers, as well as scholars residing outside the US, Canada, and Western Europe. (see http://www.historyoftechnology.org/travel_grants.html) In addition, the SHOT interest group Women in Technology History (WITH) provides its own travel-grant program (see http://women-in-technological-history.net/) Eligibility for the WITH Travel Award is open to individuals who are giving a paper at the SHOT annual meeting. Priorities for the WITH award go to: (1) a scholar or graduate student new to SHOT who belongs to a group underrepresented in SHOT, whose paper addresses issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and/or difference in the history of technology; (2) a non-US, non-Western graduate student or scholar new to SHOT presenting on any topic.

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High Performance Computing in China
by Jon Lindsay 20 Jan '13

20 Jan '13

Dear Colleagues, I'm part of a project at UCSD, now in its very early stages and funded through Lawrence Livermore NL, to assess Chinese progress and prospects in High Performance Computing. As you probably know, China has recently exploded onto the HPC scene with 13% of the Top500 systems and growing, including a brief showing at the top with the Tianhe-1A. An article in the most recent Science even suggests that China may be the first to hit the exascale mark. (Incidentally, if this happens and if it happens on Moore's timeline, it will raise some very interesting questions about just how the heck Moore's Law is working across international boundaries and quite different cultural approaches to S&T). We are very much interested in the institutional context & drivers of Chinese HPC growth, and in comparing this with the history of supercomputing elsewhere (US, Europe, Japan). I would be very interested in any work you might recommend on this history. On the US experience I am aware of MacKenzie's excellent 1991 and 1994 articles, books on Pentagon support by Norberg & ONeill 1996 and Akera 2008, NRC volumes on HPC from 1999 and 2004, and Edwards 2010 is certainly relevant too. I also see that there's a volume on the history of the Top500 by Meuer et al coming out later this summer which appears to emphasize mainly technical milestones. What other key texts on the evolution of supercomputing am I missing, especially beyond the American case? Thanks very much for any and all suggestions! Best, Jon

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CFP: Ada Lovelace Conference at Stevens
by Andrew Russell 13 Jan '13

13 Jan '13

Hi everyone - Stevens Institute of Technology will be hosting a conference on Ada Lovelace on October 18, 2013 - 1 week after the SHOT meeting in Portland, Maine. Note that the CFP includes, but is not restricted to, Lovelace and women in computing. Please distribute this CFP to any interested colleagues, and of course consider a paper submission yourself. Thanks, Andy *************** CALL FOR PAPERS Celebrating the Achievements and Legacies of Ada Lovelace 18 October 2013 Stevens Institute of Technology, College of Arts and Letters An interdisciplinary conference celebrating the achievements and legacies of the poet Lord Byron's only known legitimate child, Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852), will take place at Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, New Jersey) on 18 October 2013. This conference will coincide with the week celebrating Ada Lovelace Day, a global event for women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). All aspects of the achievements and legacies of Ada Lovelace will be considered, including but not limited to: -Lovelace as Translator and/or Collaborator -Technology in the Long Nineteenth Century -Women in Computing: Past/Present/Future -Women in STEM- Past/Present/Future -Ada Lovelace and her Circle Please submit proposals or abstracts of 250-500 words by 14 May 2013 to: Robin Hammerman (rhammerm(a)stevens.edu) ***************

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Charles Babbage Institute --> Norberg travel-grant and Tomash fellowship deadline = 15 January
by Thomas J. Misa 08 Jan '13

08 Jan '13

Hi all, Just a reminder that our annual deadline for both the Norberg travel grant and the Tomash fellowship is coming up next week, 15 January. Please see: <http://www.cbi.umn.edu/research/tfellowship.html> or <http://www.cbi.umn.edu/research/ntravelfund.html> Best, Tom Misa

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Wally Feurzeig, rest in peace (from Dave Walden)
by Thomas Haigh 07 Jan '13

07 Jan '13

[Forwarded from Dave Walden] Subject: Wally Feurzeig, rest in peace According to the exBBN mailing list Wally died Friday night. Wally was an early AI researcher and spent most of his career working in the area of application computers in education and training. The programming language LOGO was one of his projects (along with Dan Bobrow, Dick Grant, Cynthia Solomon, and Seymour Papert). [some more] Bits and pieces about Wally and his activities at BBN are on pages 38, 57, 62-63, and 402 and in his own chapter 13 (pages 281-351) at <http://walden-family.com/bbn/bbn-print2.pdf>http://walden-family.com/bbn/bb n-print2.pdf (Wally is also listed in many biblio entries, cross-references, etc., in that volume, but the above pages are the main places he is mentioned.) A couple of the above pages mention Wally's career before BBN.

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FW: History of Computing conference at the Science Museum 2013
by Petri Paju 07 Jan '13

07 Jan '13

Hello all, I hope this isn't repetitive to too many sigcis members. Best, Petri CFP from Arthur Tatnall [mailto:Arthur.Tatnall@vu.edu.au]<mailto:[mailto:Arthur.Tatnall@vu.edu.au]>, as Chair, IFIP WG9.7 - History of Computing Making the History of Computing Relevant IFIP WG9.7 and Computer Conservation Society History of Computing Conference Science Museum, 17th - 18th June 2013 Displaying and examining the remains of old mainframe and mini computers is of considerable interest to those who were involved in building or using them. For many other people, however, displays or descriptions of this technology are of little relevance and of little interest. For a start they have trouble appreciating where we have come from in electronic digital computing over the last 70 years when they understand (or care) little about details of the configurations of these machines and how they differ from modern computers. So what if a Ferranti Mk 1 stored 20-bit word as a single line of dots on a Williams Tube, with its eight tubes, each storing one a page of 64 words? This information needs to be turned into a form that people today can understand and appreciate. The aim of this conference is to discuss what needs to be done to make the history of computing relevant and interesting to the general public today. Would shifting the emphasis from the technology itself to how it was used make a difference? What about stories about the designers and builders of these computers? Would the use of replicas and simulations make this history more interesting? The conference aims to consider some of these issues. It is hoped that the conference will be of interest to academic historians of computing, museum curators involved in displaying the history of computing, members of IFIP Working Group 9.7 (History of Computing), members of the British Computer Conservation Society, and others with a concern to make this history more relevant to people of today. Possible topics for discussion include (but are not restricted to): * Relating details of the uses of early (or more recent) computers, and what difference they made to business, industry, education, government and people's lives * Sharing stories about the inventors and builders of these computers * Using simulations and replicas to illustrate the history of computing. * How distinct national perspectives embody different histories of computing and communities of practice * Displays of computing history as representing narrative or technical histories of computing * How museums around the world are handling the issue of better presenting the history of computing as well as conserving it * The importance of education in making history of computing relevant It is our intention to publish presentations and papers in the form of a book to be published by Springer, and possibly in a history of computing journal. If, however, you do not feel like writing a paper your contribution will still be very welcome. Pre/post conference activities will include an excursion to Bletchley Park. Papers and expressions of interest in participation are requested by 1st February 2013.

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Wally Feurzieg, rest in peace
by dave.walden.family＠gmail.com 07 Jan '13

07 Jan '13

According to the exBBN mailing list Wally died Friday night. Wally was an early AI researcher and spent most of his career working in the area of application computers in education and training. The programming language LOGO was one of his projects (along with Dan Bobrow, Dick Grant, Cynthia Solomon, and Seymour Papert).

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History at "Computing Conversations"
by William McMillan 06 Jan '13

06 Jan '13

Greetings, SIGCIS members. I'm not sure how many on this list are aware of the historical content presented by the University of Michigan's Charles Severance in his "Computing Conversations" for IEEE's *Computer* magazine and web site: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/computing-conversations Severance frequently includes historical content, even for relatively modern technologies. At the above site you'll find a link to a very well done video on Bletchley Park and some other topics that might be of interest. His column in the November *Computer* on the origins of PHP seems not to be linked yet on the site above, but can be read or heard at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olqMW78GVcs http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber=6353438&punumber=2 Nothing Earth-shaking about these presentations, but I find it interesting to see how history is presented to practicing computing professionals and what they seem to be interested in. - Bill

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