November 2013 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Op-Ed on Obamacare
by Ceruzzi, Paul 08 Nov '13

08 Nov '13

Thanks to everyone for their kind words about the op-ed piece. Some of you mentioned that a word "problems" was somehow dropped from the quote form the 1968 NATO conference report. Sorry. Too bad the Times & Washington Post cannot be persuaded to think again about their headlines and op-ed pieces on Obamacare (I sent it to the Post but they turned it down). Maybe one of us could send a note to the Times? If not to the op-ed page, then to John Markoff or Steve Lohr? I really like Andrew's last note. I did not have the space to mention it, but the person NASA sent to Draper Labs to look at the Apollo software was John Norton. He later worked on a TRW contract, programming a complex networking of PDP-10 computers for the Bonneville Power Administration. Among the young programmers that he mentored was Bill Gates, who I think was still in high school at the time. Gates later cited Norton as a big influence on his career. At Draper Labs, John's comments on the Apollo code were known as "Nortran." I remember him showing me a voluminous print-out of such comments, and he made sure that I understood that "we did all this on an electric typewriter, there were no word processors back then!" To everyone's credit, the MIT programmers came around & produced code that fit in to the AGC, and that had very few "anomalies." Paul E. Ceruzzi

2 1

ACM History Committee ---> 2014 Program for Research in ACM History --> deadline 15 January 2014
by Thomas J. Misa 07 Nov '13

07 Nov '13

Hi all, An update on ACM's History Committee activities: 1. We will once again have a research fellowship competition for 2014 (see announcement below). To keep the fellowship program amply funded, ACM HC needs lots of great proposals rolling in . . . so please think about an ACM-related research topic! ACM HC has supported straight-up research projects as well as oral history interviews; dissertation chapters, conference presentations, parts of books . . . . The key for funding is making a meaningful connection to ACM. See list of previous projects <http://history.acm.org/public/public_documents/acm_history_fellows.php> 2. This spring, 21-22 May 2014, ACM HC will sponsor a two-day *archiving* centered workshop at CBI. For further details, please see the call for projects <http://history.acm.org/public/public_documents/acm_hc_2014.php>. This workshop is aimed at archive projects being <created> by ACM members and also archivists working with ACM related materials --- /not/ at historians who are <using> archives. Please send research-oriented projects to the "research" program instead. 3. In spring/early summer of 2015, ACM HC intends to hold a research-oriented workshop (which had been tentatively scheduled for this spring). Each of the 2013 fellowship winners -- Amy Bix, Irina Nikivincze (Saint Petersburg), Joseph November, and Andrew Russell -- will, in due time, receive an invitation to this 2015 research workshop, as will the winners of the 2014 fellowships. Thanks, Tom Misa ================================== ACM History Committee 2014 Program for Research in ACM History The Association for Computing Machinery, founded in 1947, is the oldest and largest educational and scientific society dedicated to the computing profession, and today has more than 100,000 members around the world. The ACM History Committee is preparing groundwork for a special history workshop in 2015. Aiming at the workshop, we will support research projects related to ACM’s professional and educational activities and/or to ACM’s rich institutional history including its organization, publications, SIG activities, and conferences. We may also support synthetic projects that analyze existing historical research on ACM, identify topics needing future research, and outline themes to illuminate ACM’s nearly seven-decade history. We will support up to four projects with awards of up to $4,000 each. Successful candidates may be of any rank, from graduate students through senior researchers. All awardees must be willing to present their work to a two-day ACM History Committee-sponsored workshop, tentatively scheduled for the late spring or early summer of 2015. Workshop travel, lodging, and meals for that event will be paid by ACM History Committee, in addition to this project award. To Apply: Applicants should send a 2-page CV as well as a 750-word project description that [a] describes the proposed research or synthetic project; [b] identifies the importance of specific ACM historical materials, whether traditional archival collections or online historical materials (oral histories, digitized conference papers, ACM organizational records, et al.); [c] discusses any additional project outcome besides the ACM history workshop (e.g. journal article, book or dissertation chapter, teaching resource, museum exhibit, website); and [d] outlines a timeline for completing the project—including, specifically, your willingness to contribute a 10-page (2500-word) paper to a 2015 ACM history workshop. Workshop papers will be pre-circulated to workshop attendees; revised versions may be published afterwards. In preparing a proposal, applicants should examine the document “ACM Research Materials” posted at <history.acm.org/content.php?do=links> as well as “Sources for ACM History,” CACM 50 #5 (May 2007): 36-41 <doi.acm.org/10.1145/1230819.1230836>. Other materials relating to ACM history may also be used. Applicants should include a letter of endorsement from their home institution or an external scholarly reference. Proposals are due by 15 January 2014. Proposals should be submitted as a single pdf-format document to <history-webmaster(a)acm.org>. Notification of awards will be made within eight weeks. ======================================

1 0

VCF East 2014 speaker line-up -- Part 1
by Evan Koblentz 06 Nov '13

06 Nov '13

Hello SIGCIS, The next edition of Vintage Computer Festival East is scheduled for April 4-6, 2014, once again at the all-volunteer, grassroots InfoAge Science Center, in Wall, New Jersey. This edition will be VCF East "9.1" because we canceled last year's planned 9.0 edition due to lingering impact of Hurricane Sandy. We thought about keeping the 9.0 label, or jumping to 10.0, but mostly we thought 9.1 is funny .... it's the 9.0 edition with bug fixes. So far, the confirmed speakers include: - Paul Lasewicz (IBM's corporate archivist) - Maris Graube (founder of IEEE 802 LAN/MAN committee) - Dave Haynie (Commodore Amiga executive) - Bill Cheswick (Bell Labs firewall pioneer) There will be much more! We're working on a Scelbi activity, a couple of film screenings, a fun AT&T presentation, a really awesome technical workshop, and one more keynote speaker who is MIND-BLOWINGLY FAMOUS. (Sorry, I can't reveal the name yet...) There will also be our hands-on exhibit hall, consignment sale, book sale, museum tours, food, and prizes. Also new this time, all day on Friday April 4, is VCF East University. That's a separate admission event with eight technical classes in hardware/software tracks. We just started posting details; most of the speakers (and schedules) are not yet decided. We expect a couple of dozen exhibitors to start registering around the new year. Our web site is http://www.vintage.org/2014/east and we're social at http://www.facebook.com/vcfeast. This is a hobbyist celebration of computer history, not a professional conference, so anyone in a tie is considered suspicious. However, if SIGCIS members attend, we won't tell anyone what you do for work. :) Local endorsements: SIGCIS's Peter Meyer attended VCF East 8.0 and so enjoyed himself that he joined us afterward for drinks. CHM's Al Kossow and Dag Spicer have also both joyfully attended several VCF events. So: be like Indiana Jones! Exit the library, enter the hands-on laboratory that is the Vintage Computer Festival East. You won't die but you probably will have an exciting adventure.

1 0

CfP: Little Data and the Big Picture (ACLA 2014, NYU, 20-23 March)
by Andrew Russell 04 Nov '13

04 Nov '13

Perhaps of interest to SIGCIS folks? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The following call for papers (viewble at http://bit.ly/H79K6q) may be of interest to readers with inclinations to literary studies. "Little Data and the Big Picture: What Everyday Literature Can Do for Comparison" a seminar to be held at the Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association New York University 20-23 March 2014 Abstract deadline: 15 November 2013 The broad claims of Big Data hide the continued importance of the specific, individual, and random. This seminar examines the contributions that Comparative Literature has made and can make for understanding the stories that are written and read against the background of “digital humanities,” “new media,” and the “information society.” Prospective participants are invited to problematize these key terms and explore how textual cultures have evolved alongside, been shaped by, and resisted successive fantasies of a data-driven society. There has always been an everyday literature of letters, memos, telegrams, and notes. How are the forms of today’s everyday literature analogous repetitions of past forms and how do they represent something qualitatively different? How do we judge? In some fashion, the papers in this seminar will explore ways that the specific, the particular, the analog, and the banal persist in the face of the general, the aggregate, the digital, and the grand arc. Possible topics include (but are not limited to): Histories and counter-histories of the information society; everyday digital textuality; computer and human languages; networked social media; Tweet poetics; posting addiction; life writing; comparative media and textual cultures; reception; censorship; quantitative historiography; textual geographies; platforms (computer and otherwise); analog/digital tensions; political action; lacunae; interface; objects (virtual and/or tangible); participation and/or non-participation; material and immaterial conditions of reading and writing. Submit a paper proposal at http://www.acla.org/submit (be sure to select "Little Data..." in the Seminar drop-down menu). Learn more about the meeting and its "distinctive structure" at http://www.acla.org/acla2014. Any questions about the seminar, inquiries about topic suitability, or nominations of possible participants may be directed to scott.kushner(a)gmail.com. ___________________________

1 0

First Issue of Archives for the Philosophy and History of Soft Computing (APHSC)
by Rudolf Seising 04 Nov '13

04 Nov '13

[ please distribute - apologies for multiple postings ] Dear collegues and friends, the first issue of the Archives for the Philosophy and History of oft Computing (APHSC) is online! For your access go to: http://www.aphsc.org/index.php/aphsc and click the button "Current". Then you will reach the web-page http://www.aphsc.org/index.php/aphsc/issue/current There you will find the first issue of our International Online Journal with open access. You can read in the journal online or you can download a pdf of every part in the journal. We hope that all readers take much pleasure in reading the Archives for the Philosophy and History of Soft Computing and we hope that we will receive many interesting submissions of contributions for the future issues! We would be very glad to receive your comments, letters to the editors, etc. With many thanks to my colleages and friends in the Editorial Team -- especially to Marco Tabacchi for his enormous help using the web-technology -- to the reviewers of the submitted articles, and to the authors of the submitted articles, and with best regards on behalf of the Editorial team (Alejandro Sobrino, Rudolf Seising, Marco Elio Tabacchi, Martin Pereira-Fariña) Rudolf Seising PD Dr. Rudolf Seising European Centre for Soft Computing Adjoint Researcher Edificio de Investigación, 3ª Planta. C Gonzalo Gutiérrez Quirós S/N 33600 Mieres, Asturias, Spain Telephone: +34 985456545 FAX: +34 985456699 e-mail: rudolf.seising(a)softcomputing.es -- Aviso legal: http://www.softcomputing.es/legal_ES/ --- Legal warning: http://www.softcomputing.es/legal_EN/

1 0