December 2014 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

SIGCIS public presence / media page
by Rebecca Slayton 14 Jan '15

14 Jan '15

Hello everyone, Several of us have been talking about how SIGCIS can better reach its various publics, and we are looking for feedback on the following options. I have bolded some questions that we hope you will address, ideally in a message to me (rs849(a)cornell.edu<mailto:rs849@cornell.edu>) rather than the whole list, so that we don’t subject everyone to a deluge! I will compile responses after one week or so, so if possible please reply by November 28. Since SIGCIS is a volunteer organization, and therefore can’t do anything too labor-intensive, we will likely start small. In addition to the bolded questions below, please also let us know which of the following options you think should have the greatest priority. 1. We are considering creating a media page that would trumpet our collective expertise a bit, and be directed to (at least) three potential constituencies: journalists and other popular writers; lawyers seeking expert witnesses; and contractors looking for professional historians. At a minimum, it would include a keyword searchable “experts directory” which would link to the profiles generated and maintained by the SIGCIS membership. For an example, see http://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/people/mediaguide Note that this would rely upon members keeping their profiles up to date! Should we create this media page and send periodic reminders that members should update their profiles? 2. The media page could include a menu of “topics” linked to specific experts. This menu could be a simple dropdown (as shown here http://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/people/mediaguide ) or a page displaying all areas at once, ideally with images (as shown here http://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/research ) This prompts (at least) two questions. o Would you like the media page to include a topics list or not? If so, what topics would you suggest? o How should members be linked to topics? If members are allowed to link themselves to the topics of their choosing, we risk the occasional person claiming more expertise than is warranted. Alternately, members could request an administrator or group of administrators to add links to specific topics, vetting the requests very lightly. This latter option would ideally include an explicit basis for creating and/or refusing a linkage (even if refusals were very occasional). A relevant peer reviewed publication (PhD dissertations included) is one potential criterion; others could be proposed. 3. The media page could include a field in which individuals could pose questions, which would be vetted by an administrator and then sent to the list if appropriate. We would want to include explicit language to deter high schoolers and others looking a quick answer to homework questions, etc. 4. The media page could include a link to a page on “Popular controversies in computer history,” which Evan Koblentz has generously volunteered to help create and manage. This would give the membership some opportunity to address factual questions or clear problems in the popular literature, hopefully without appearing too pedantic and without obscuring the very real ambiguities that come up in historical records and interpretation. If you would like to see this page created, what controversies would you like to see included, and what content could you contribute? 5. We could make the SIGCIS homepage AND the media page more visually appealing by scrolling through some pictures related to our topics (for an example of a homepage that scrolls through automatically, see http://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/ the difference is we’d want something that represents our topics; pictures of ourselves would likely go elsewhere on the site). Do you have any images that we could use without running into expensive copyright issues? Obviously there are many other options and models out there, but hopefully this can get the conversation started. Please let us know your thoughts on which of these options we should, and should not, be pursuing (and with what priority). Thanks! Rebecca (with the help of Evan Koblentz, Tom Haigh, Andy Russell, Ramesh Subramanian, and Chris Leslie) Rebecca Slayton Assistant Professor, Cornell University Department of Science & Technology Studies Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies 334 Rockefeller Hall | Fax 607-255-6044

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Fwd: Society for the History of Technology, Call for Open Panel Proposals, Albuquerque 2015
by Andrew Russell 13 Jan '15

13 Jan '15

Hi everyone - Many of you may have seen the message below, SHOT’s call for proposals for Open Sessions for the annual meeting in Albuquerque on October 8-11 2015. SHOT is encouraging creative and/or provocative proposals for these Open Sessions - especially sessions that can bring history into conversation with other disciplines. For more information, see below and http://www.historyoftechnology.org/call_for_papers/2015_submit_unconvention… <http://www.historyoftechnology.org/call_for_papers/2015_submit_unconvention…>. Please feel free to write to me directly if you have an idea that you think SIGCIS could propose. And, as always, feel free to use the SIGCIS list to bounce ideas around… Finally, keep in mind that this is the first of many opportunities to propose panels or papers for the meeting in Albuquerque - both for the main SHOT meeting on Friday and Saturday as well as for the Sunday SIGCIS workshop. Thanks! Andy > Begin forwarded message: > > Date: December 15, 2014 at 5:10:04 PM EST > From: Society for the History of Technology <shotsec(a)auburn.edu> > Reply-To: shotsec(a)auburn.edu > Subject: Call for Open Panel Proposals, Albuquerque 2015 > > > Society for the History of Technology > 15 December 2014 > Call for Open Panel Proposals for the Albuquerque Meeting, 8-11 October 2015 > > The SHOT Program Committee is inaugurating an Open Sessions process for the purpose of facilitating collaboration among scholars. > > How it works: > > Individuals interested in finding others to join panel sessions for the Annual Meeting may propose Open Sessions to the Program Committee on or before January 15, 2015. (Submission format details are available at www.historyoftechnology.org. <http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0018LTimUHI0J0FmSdsQ-farlh0WVB2G9-8ks3tiu1BAjJo…>) > > The Program Committee reviews and approves Open Session proposals that show promise of quality and feasibility, notifying applicants by February 2, 2015. Accepted applicants then become the session organizer. > > The approved Open Sessions descriptions, along with organizer contact information, will be widely publicized in the official SHOT Annual Meeting Call for Papers in late January. Those with an interest in a given panel will then contact the Open Session organizer. > > Open Session organizers will then assemble full panel sessions and submit them to the Program Committee by the end of the regular call for papers on March 31, 2015. The Program Committee will review the resulting Open Sessions panels for quality and adherence to SHOT standards of gender, geographic, and institutional diversity with an assumption of inclusion in the final Annual Meeting program. > > For more information, or to submit an Open Panels proposal, please visit the SHOT webpage at www.historyoftechnology.org <http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0018LTimUHI0J0FmSdsQ-farlh0WVB2G9-8ks3tiu1BAjJo…> and follow the link! > > David Lucsko > Society for the History of Technology > > Forward this email <http://ui.constantcontact.com/sa/fwtf.jsp?llr=ieifeldab&m=1103106318472&ea=…> > > <http://visitor.constantcontact.com/do?p=un&m=001Xz26gWD0CDOi01mES8w44A%3D%3…> > > This email was sent to arussell(a)stevens.edu by shotsec(a)auburn.edu <mailto:shotsec@auburn.edu> | > Rapid removal with SafeUnsubscribe <http://visitor.constantcontact.com/do?p=un&m=001Xz26gWD0CDOi01mES8w44A%3D%3…>™ | Privacy Policy <http://ui.constantcontact.com/roving/CCPrivacyPolicy.jsp>. > <http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp?cc=TEM_BusLet_003> > > Society for the History of Technology | David Lucsko | Department of History | 310 Thach Hall | Auburn University | AL | 36849-5207 >

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NY Review of Books: The Imitation Game -- a question
by Dave Walden 24 Dec '14

24 Dec '14

Hi, With all this emphasis on Turing these days, including the 100th anniversary celebration a couple of years ago and opinions about how fundamental Turing was to how much that came later, I am curious if anyone knows what the ACM people were thinking when they named their award after Turing only a decade or so after his death. Did they already see him as important historically as he is seen today? Did they think he had been a brilliant many whose life ended badly and who thus deserved memorializing? ...? I suppose there may have been some writing in the CACM when the award was named or first awarded, and I can go try to find that. In any case, I am wondering if anyone knows what the committee members (or whomever) who decided on this name for the award were thinking. Dave At 11:54 AM 12/21/2014, Dag Spicer wrote: >http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/19/poor-imitation-alan-turing/ > >Best, > >Dag >-- >Dag Spicer >Senior Curator >Computer History Museum >Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing >1401 North Shoreline Boulevard >Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 > >Tel: +1 650 810 1035 >Fax: +1 650 810 1055 > >Twitter: @ComputerHistory > >_______________________________________________ >This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion >list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member >posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The >list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you >can change your subscription options at >http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members -- home address: 12 Linden Rd., E. Sandwich, MA 02537 home ph=508-888-7655; cell ph = 503-757-3137 (often don't carry it) email address: dave(a)walden-family.com; website: <http://www.walden-family.com/bbn/>http://www.walden-family.com/

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Fwd: Who are these people with Grace Hopper
by christina dunbar-hester 23 Dec '14

23 Dec '14

A query re. photo of Grace Hopper with UNIVAC that some folks on this list might be able to answer? ** Christina Dunbar-Hester Author of *Low Power to the People* <http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/low-power-people>, MIT Press ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sarah Stierch <sarah.stierch(a)gmail.com> Date: Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 1:21 PM Subject: [Adacamp Alumni] Who are these people with Grace Hopper To: AdaCamp Alumni <Adacamp-alumni(a)lists.adainitiative.org> Perhaps you can help! See this tweet: https://twitter.com/SmithsonianArch/status/547456611988824069 Please post your response to Twitter if you can (and if you can't, then just let me know and I'll post it on your behalf) -Sarah -- Sarah Stierch www.sarahstierch.com

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Members Digest, Vol 54, Issue 18
by Edgar Daylight 23 Dec '14

23 Dec '14

Hi Dave & Gerard, My central question when I interview Turing Award winners is indeed: Did the interviewee actually read the work of Turing? That's what Naur and Knuth talk about at length in my Lonely Scholar booklets. The work of E.F. Moore, 'A simplified universal Turing machine', is discussed in my book `The Dawn of Software Engineering: from Turing to Dijkstra,' as are several other early writings and Dijkstra's (non-)reception of Turing's work. Dave's question about the origins of the Turing Award is addressed in the following two publications: + E.G. Daylight, Towards a Historical Notion of "Turing — the Father of Computer Science, http://www.dijkstrascry.com/TuringPaper + M. Bullynck, E.G. Daylight, L. De Mol, Why Did Computer Science Make a Hero out of Turing? Accepted for publication in the Communications of the ACM. Best wishes, Edgar. On Tuesday, December 23, 2014 6:00 PM, "members-request(a)sigcis.org" <members-request(a)sigcis.org> wrote: Send Members mailing list submissions to members(a)sigcis.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to members-request(a)sigcis.org You can reach the person managing the list at members-owner(a)sigcis.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Members digest..." Today's Topics: 1. NY Review of Books: The Imitation Game -- a question (Dave Walden) 2. Re: NY Review of Books: The Imitation Game -- a question (Alberts, Gerard) 3. Re: Origin of the Tablet (Elizabeth Petrick) 4. Re: Origin of the Tablet (Evan Koblentz) 5. 12 Days of YouTube (adam spring) 6. Re: NY Review of Books: The Imitation Game -- a question (Brian Randell) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 11:39:47 -0500 From: Dave Walden <dave.walden.family(a)gmail.com> To: Dag Spicer <dspicer(a)computerhistory.org>,members <members(a)sigcis.org> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] NY Review of Books: The Imitation Game -- a question Message-ID: <5498495e.c918e00a.54b7.4ef9(a)mx.google.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Hi, With all this emphasis on Turing these days, including the 100th anniversary celebration a couple of years ago and opinions about how fundamental Turing was to how much that came later, I am curious if anyone knows what the ACM people were thinking when they named their award after Turing only a decade or so after his death. Did they already see him as important historically as he is seen today? Did they think he had been a brilliant many whose life ended badly and who thus deserved memorializing? ...? I suppose there may have been some writing in the CACM when the award was named or first awarded, and I can go try to find that. In any case, I am wondering if anyone knows what the committee members (or whomever) who decided on this name for the award were thinking. Dave At 11:54 AM 12/21/2014, Dag Spicer wrote: >http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/19/poor-imitation-alan-turing/ > >Best, > >Dag >-- >Dag Spicer >Senior Curator >Computer History Museum >Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing >1401 North Shoreline Boulevard >Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 > >Tel: +1 650 810 1035 >Fax: +1 650 810 1055 > >Twitter: @ComputerHistory > >_______________________________________________ >This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion >list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member >posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The >list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you >can change your subscription options at >http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members -- home address: 12 Linden Rd., E. Sandwich, MA 02537 home ph=508-888-7655; cell ph = 503-757-3137 (often don't carry it) email address: dave(a)walden-family.com; website: <http://www.walden-family.com/bbn/>http://www.walden-family.com/ ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 18:07:46 +0000 From: "Alberts, Gerard" <G.Alberts(a)uva.nl> To: Dave Walden <dave.walden.family(a)gmail.com>, Dag Spicer <dspicer(a)computerhistory.org>, members <members(a)sigcis.org> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] NY Review of Books: The Imitation Game -- a question Message-ID: <B7AEF8DE01BF884C9498D6FD489F190242978329(a)MBX04.uva.nl> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear Dave, let us ask Edgar Daylight what he has to say on this. He and I did work on precisely this question for a while, but our findings did not yet reach the stage of formal publication. Basically the impression is that the Perlis and Carr gang, busy in creating a venue for exchange of software ideas (Communications of the ACM), went on to create a professional identity. Part of such effort, of course, is to name one's heroes. Probably from the US perspective pointing at the Englishman Turing was a safe choice. There is no indication that Turing was in any way the cult figure he is today. Edgar's bold entry question at the time was how many of the Turing awardees would have actually read the work of Turing. An exceptionally early, and to my knowledge the earliest explicit computer science continuation on Turing's 1936 article is by E.F. Moore, 'A simplified universal Turing machine', in Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery; Meeting at Toronto, Ont. Sept 8-10, 1952 (Washington, ACM, 1952), 50-55. Christmas thoughts, Gerard ________________________________________ Van: members-bounces(a)sigcis.org [members-bounces(a)sigcis.org] namens Dave Walden [dave.walden.family(a)gmail.com] Verzonden: maandag 22 december 2014 17:39 Aan: Dag Spicer; members Onderwerp: [SIGCIS-Members] NY Review of Books: The Imitation Game -- a question Hi, With all this emphasis on Turing these days, including the 100th anniversary celebration a couple of years ago and opinions about how fundamental Turing was to how much that came later, I am curious if anyone knows what the ACM people were thinking when they named their award after Turing only a decade or so after his death. Did they already see him as important historically as he is seen today? Did they think he had been a brilliant many whose life ended badly and who thus deserved memorializing? ...? I suppose there may have been some writing in the CACM when the award was named or first awarded, and I can go try to find that. In any case, I am wondering if anyone knows what the committee members (or whomever) who decided on this name for the award were thinking. Dave At 11:54 AM 12/21/2014, Dag Spicer wrote: >http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/19/poor-imitation-alan-turing/ > >Best, > >Dag >-- >Dag Spicer >Senior Curator >Computer History Museum >Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing >1401 North Shoreline Boulevard >Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 > >Tel: +1 650 810 1035 >Fax: +1 650 810 1055 > >Twitter: @ComputerHistory > >_______________________________________________ >This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion >list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member >posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The >list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you >can change your subscription options at >http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members -- home address: 12 Linden Rd., E. Sandwich, MA 02537 home ph=508-888-7655; cell ph = 503-757-3137 (often don't carry it) email address: dave(a)walden-family.com; website: <http://www.walden-family.com/bbn/>http://www.walden-family.com/ _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 12:51:46 -0700 From: Elizabeth Petrick <elizabeth.petrick(a)gmail.com> To: members <members(a)sigcis.org> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of the Tablet Message-ID: <CALwHdbbZhDTFXEq7RGyQajfX=CnqCEwkcyXpY=zjBBAhAHFEGQ(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" This discussion on early tablet histories is very timely for me. I'm just starting a large project on the history of tablet computer interfaces and I was hoping someone on this list might be able to help me track down some materials. I'm particularly interested in some of these attempts at Apple during the late 1970s and 1980s to build tablets, including two that aren't mentioned in the CHM article: the Pocket Crystal and Magic Slate. Steven Levy has mentioned these projects a little bit in some of his writing, but otherwise I've never seen anything on them. I know that Bill Atkinson was involved with both. Does anyone have any ideas on where I might be able to find materials on these projects? There doesn't appear to be anything at Stanford's Apple archive. Alternatively, is anyone in contact with Atkinson? Thanks everyone! Elizabeth Petrick Assistant Professor Federated Department of History New Jersey Institute of Technology On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 11:45 PM, Chuck House <housec1839(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I would certainly confirm this version about Alan. He used my HP1300A > vector graphics CRT for the Flex machine, which was an electrostatic CRT > built on a 14? TV bottle salvaged from an electromagnetic TV display. We > in the HP Colorado Springs ?scope lab were experimenting with the Plato > plasma display at the time also since my boss, John Strathman, was a U of I > grad still very connected. Alan did not see our work, but he did see the U > of I work. He did not start the Dynabook until PARC, more like 1972 as > indicated. > > Sutherland knew of our display in 1966. I had visited his MIT lab after > the IBM Share Design conference in May 1965 in New Orleans, and came away > much impressed after seeing Sketchpad and Project MAC. > > My partner in the US Forestry (summers while we were in college) was at > the U of Utah (Irving McQuarrie). His uncle Don McQuarrie (MD, head of the > local AMA) teamed with Homer Warner at the U to create Beehive Medical > Electronics long before Evans and Sutherland was founded. Beehive became a > key raster graphics terminal for computer interaction in the late 1960?s, > building terminals for HP, Cromemco, and Harris among others, and even for > the Altair later on. Beehive was Alan Kay?s first employer, summers while > he was a U of Utah undergraduate. > > I built the HP1300A as the display for HP?s new minicomputer, the 2116 in > 1966, but marketing and HP Labs insisted that an ASR-33 was ample for user > interface. Packard ordered the HP 1300A canceled in prototype form, hence > the later ?Medal of Defiance? because we built and sold it anyway. We > introduced in spring 1967, selling the first one to Doug Engelbart at SRI. > and I think the one for U of Utah was in the first forty. By 1970, Carl > Machover later estimated only 1,000 interactive computer terminals existed > in the world, a fair number of them that HP box for $2,000. The IBM > vector graphics box introduced eighteen months or so earlier, was more like > $200,000. They did not sell particularly well. > > So Alan was plenty versed in the notion of graphical as well as textual > display on CRTs?recall that the Culler-Fried graphics terminals had been > ?widely? available by the early 1960s (certainly predating the IBM machine > that gets the credit). Success has a thousand creators?Alan has also given > credit (his ?aha? moment) to the day he saw the HP 35 handheld scientific > calculator, since he had loved the HP 9100A and long considered it ?the > first personal computer" > > > On Dec 19, 2014, at 8:32 PM, Brian Dear <brian(a)platohistory.org> wrote: > > > Interesting piece! Didn't know about this U of I student project -- cool! > > > > One minor tidbit in the article got my attention -- dating Alan Kay's > "Dynabook" being from 1968. I would suggest it dates more officially from > 1972, not 1968. In '68-'69 he was working in Utah on his PhD dissertation > about the FLEX machine. In '68 he'd visited the U of I to attend an ARPA > conference of grad students, and while at the U of I he'd seen a demo of > the prototype of the upcoming PLATO plasma display panel (PDP), which, he > once told me, was his "aha" moment, the realization that personal computing > devices of the future could truly be portable as they wouldn't require > lugging around a CRT. But judging from his output in '68-'69, especially > his dissertation, seems to me the Dynabook concept was still a gleam in his > eye and it wouldn't be until he'd arrived at Xerox PARC and settled in that > he'd have time to fully flesh it out, culminating in the famous 1972 > published article. > > > > - Brian > > > > > > Brian Dear > > PLATO History Project > > La Jolla, California > > brian(a)platohistory.org > > www.platohistory.org > > www.friendlyorangeglow.com > > @platohistory > > > > > > > > > > > >> On Dec 18, 2014, at 9:46 AM, Dag Spicer <dspicer(a)computerhistory.org> > wrote: > >> > >> A nice piece today on the CHM Blog by Assistant Curator Alex Lux. > >> > >> Enjoy: > http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/yesterdays-tomorrows-the-origins-of-th… > >> > >> Best, > >> > >> Dag > >> -- > >> Dag Spicer > >> Senior Curator > >> Computer History Museum > >> Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing > >> 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard > >> Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 > >> > >> Tel: +1 650 810 1035 > >> Fax: +1 650 810 1055 > >> > >> Twitter: @ComputerHistory > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion > list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member > posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list > archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change > your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members > > > > _______________________________________________ > > This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion > list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member > posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list > archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change > your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members > > _______________________________________________ > This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion list > of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and > are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at > http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription > options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members >

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12 Days of YouTube
by adam spring 23 Dec '14

23 Dec '14

Dear all, Please find my latest post, 12 Days Of YouTube, now up: http://remotely-interested.com/12-days-of-youtube/ It features several links, including one related to Walter Isaacson'c book The Innovators, that might be of interest to the group. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Adam -- Adam P. Spring Skype: adampspring

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Origin of the Tablet
by Dag Spicer 22 Dec '14

22 Dec '14

A nice piece today on the CHM Blog by Assistant Curator Alex Lux. Enjoy: http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/yesterdays-tomorrows-the-origins-of-th… Best, Dag -- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 Tel: +1 650 810 1035 Fax: +1 650 810 1055 Twitter: @ComputerHistory

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NY Review of Books: The Imitation Game (The Movie)
by Dag Spicer 21 Dec '14

21 Dec '14

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/19/poor-imitation-alan-turing/ Best, Dag -- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 Tel: +1 650 810 1035 Fax: +1 650 810 1055 Twitter: @ComputerHistory

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Polanyi's Paradox
by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo 20 Dec '14

20 Dec '14

Might be of interest Season’s greetings Bernardo (Bangor University - Wales) Polanyi's Paradox and the Shape of Employment Growth Date: 2014-09 By: David Autor URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20485&r=his In 1966, the philosopher Michael Polanyi observed, "We can know more than we can tell... The skill of a driver cannot be replaced by a thorough schooling in the theory of the motorcar; the knowledge I have of my own body differs altogether from the knowledge of its physiology." Polanyi's observation largely predates the computer era, but the paradox he identified--that our tacit knowledge of how the world works often exceeds our explicit understanding--foretells much of the history of computerization over the past five decades. This paper offers a conceptual and empirical overview of this evolution. I begin by sketching the historical thinking about machine displacement of human labor, and then consider the contemporary incarnation of this displacement--labor market polarization, meaning the simultaneous growth of high-education, high-wage and low-education, low-wages jobs--a manifestation of Polanyi's paradox. I discuss both the explanatory power of the polarization phenomenon and some key puzzles that confront it. I then reflect on how recent advances in artificial intelligence and robotics should shape our thinking about the likely trajectory of occupational change and employment growth. A key observation of the paper is that journalists and expert commentators overstate the extent of machine substitution for human labor and ignore the strong complementarities. The challenges to substituting machines for workers in tasks requiring adaptability, common sense, and creativity remain immense. Contemporary computer science seeks to overcome Polanyi's paradox by building machines that learn from human examples, thus inferring the rules that we tacitly apply but do not explicitly understand. JEL: J23 J24 J31 O3

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water computing
by Paul Fishwick 18 Dec '14

18 Dec '14

This is a project we just finished (incarnation #1 of a 2 column water computer). Historical references to select water computers from the past. This design was engineered to be both analog and digital. http://creative-automata.com/2014/12/18/hybrid-water-computer/ Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Blog: creative-automata.com

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