December 2015 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Planning for SHOT meeting in Singapore, June 26-29, 2016
by Andrew Russell 10 Nov '16

10 Nov '16

Colleagues - It was nice to see so many of you for the SHOT and SIGCIS meetings this past weekend in Albuquerque. From my point of view things went extraordinarily well, and I don’t have words to express how happy I am about the quality of scholarship and spirit of camaraderie that I felt throughout the weekend. I think we all owe Nathan Ensmenger a special thanks for such a fantastic keynote presentation on computing’s environmental history - throughout the day people were calling it powerful, moving, transformative, etc. Also on Sunday, we celebrated the achievements of our colleagues, including: - the ten young scholars who were awarded travel grants from MIT Press, the Computer History Museum, and the Mahoney Fund. - Rebecca Slayton, winner of the 2015 CHM Prize for her book Arguments that Count - David Nofre, Mark Priestley, and Gerard Alberts, winners of the inaugural Mahoney Prize for their article “When Technology Became Language” - Sarah McLennan, winner of SHOT’s 2015 Robinson Prize for her paper “Computing and the Color Line,” presented in a session organized jointly by SIGCIS and EDITH, thanks to Marie Hicks and Ruth Cowan. The main purpose of this message is to reinforce and amplify my call on Sunday morning for proposals for SHOT in Singapore in June 2016. SHOT will issuing its call for papers very soon, with a deadline in late 2015. In anticipation, please be thinking about participating in one of the following ways: 1. Put forth an Open Panel Proposal for the main SHOT meeting. SHOT will place a special emphasis on “open panel” topics that SHOT will circulate widely as it publicizes the CFP. 2. Organize a Complete Panel Submission of 3 or 4 papers for the main SHOT meeting. Please feel free to use the list or to contact me (or anyone on the SIGCIS Exec) if you want to float ideas and/or find extra panelists. 3. Submit a paper or panel for the SIGCIS 2016 Workshop that will be held, as usual, at the end of the SHOT conference in Singapore on Sunday, June 26. We expect to issue the CFP for the SIGCIS Workshop well after the SHOT CFP is issued; watch this space in mid-November or early December for details. As you contemplate your participation in the Singapore meeting, please keep 2 additional things in mind: 1. This is a terrific opportunity to forge new bonds with colleagues working on computing and information-related history and STS topics in Asia and the Pacific. To that end, if you have contacts there who have not been active in SIGCIS or SHOT, please do encourage them to join the SIGCIS list and to reach out to me if they want to join or help organize a session. 2. If you are in North America or Europe, try not to be too put off by the expense of the trip - particularly if you are in the early stages of your career. SHOT and SIGCIS have been raising funds for this conference for some time, and the generosity of our communities has been nothing short of inspiring. Travel support will be available! In summary: SHOT and SIGCIS 2015 were fantastic; it’s now up to us to make SHOT and SIGCIS 2016 even better. Please get in touch with me (or the list) if you have questions, suggestions, etc. about making the most of our opportunities at the Singapore meeting! Cheers, Andy Russell SIGCIS Chair

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Marvin Minsky quotation
by Mary Murrell 21 Mar '16

21 Mar '16

I was hoping that the list might help me with the source of a quotation. Marvin Minsky is often quoted as having said the following: "Can you imagine that they used to have libraries where the books didn't talk to each other?" I have not been able to find any actual source for this. Citations, if they exist, are circular, citing back to a source that itself provides not citation. Does anybody know of a published source for this quotation? Thanks, Mary -- Mary Murrell marymurrell(a)fastmail.fm

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Silicon City
by John Impagliazzo 20 Dec '15

20 Dec '15

Dear Colleagues, If you are in New York City and would like to see a slice of computing history, consider visiting the New-York Historical Society exhibit called Silicon City: Computer History Made in New York. The exhibit ends 2016 April 17. A link to exhibit information is http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/silicon-city-computer-history-made-new… The exhibit is at 170 Central Park West (77th Street), next to the American Museum of Natural History. I wish you all a pleasant holiday season. John John Impagliazzo, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus, Hofstra University IEEE Life Fellow ACM Distinguished Educator

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PhD student position at Chalmers, deadline 7 January 2016, now with correct link
by Gustav Sjöblom 17 Dec '15

17 Dec '15

Dear SIGCIS members, Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, is looking for a PhD student in the history of technology, deadline 7 January 2016. http://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/vacancies/Pages/default.aspx?rmpag… The recruitment is part of the build-up of a research group in the history of technology and science at Chalmers. Current members of the group include SIGCIS members Per Lundin (author of Computers in Swedish Society) and Gustav Sjöblom (SIGCIS Vice Chair for Europe), so this is a great opportunity to do history of computing. If you have any queries, please contact me or Per. Best wishes, Gustav ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gustav Sjöblom Assistant Professor, PhD (Cantab) Teknikens ekonomi och organisation| Department of technology management and economics Innovationsteknik | Innovation Engineering and Management +46(0)31 772 1232 +46(0)70-2014011 (mobile) [cid:image001.jpg@01CC2F3C.8093B9D0] Chalmers tekniska högskola | Chalmers University of Technology Vera Sandbergs allé 8A SE-412 96 Göteborg, Sweden http://www.chalmers.se/tme/SV/organisation/personliga-sidor/sjoblom-gustav9… http://gustavsjoblom.blogspot.com/

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PhD student position at Chalmers, deadline 7 January 2016
by Gustav Sjöblom 17 Dec '15

17 Dec '15

Dear SIGCIS members, Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, is looking for a PhD student in the history of science and technology, deadline 7 January 2016. http://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/vacancies/?rmpage=job&rmjob=3425 The recruitment is part of the build-up of a research group in the history of technology and science at Chalmers. Current members of the group include SIGCIS members Per Lundin (author of Computers in Swedish Society) and Gustav Sjöblom (SIGCIS Vice Chair for Europe), so this is a great opportunity to do history of computing. If you have any queries, please contact me or Per. Best wishes, Gustav ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gustav Sjöblom Assistant Professor, PhD (Cantab) Teknikens ekonomi och organisation| Department of technology management and economics Innovationsteknik | Innovation Engineering and Management +46(0)31 772 1232 +46(0)70-2014011 (mobile) [cid:image001.jpg@01CC2F3C.8093B9D0] Chalmers tekniska högskola | Chalmers University of Technology Vera Sandbergs allé 8A SE-412 96 Göteborg, Sweden http://www.chalmers.se/tme/SV/organisation/personliga-sidor/sjoblom-gustav9… http://gustavsjoblom.blogspot.com/

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NPR - When Women Stopped Coding
by Nathan Ensmenger 17 Dec '15

17 Dec '15

> > On Dec 14, 2015, at 4:08 PM, Dag Spicer <dspicer(a)computerhistory.org> wrote: > > Interesting piece… would be interesting in people’s thoughts… > > http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/17/356944145/episode-576-when-wom… I have been thinking about the 1984 decline in CS enrollments among women a fair bit lately. I have a piece in the recently published volume of *Osiris* on “Scientific Masculinities” that provides my take on what happened. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/682955?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents The short version is that although the 1980s PC culture is significant, what is really important is the late 1970s and the emergence of the “computer bum” culture in academic computing centers in places like MIT and Stanford. It is in these almost exclusively male domains (which differed considerably in their gender composition from their corporate counterparts) that many of the cultural practices that later will be associated with “hacker” culture are constructed and disseminated. The media picks up on the “computer hacker” in about 1982, and it is this set of narratives about who does (and does not) “belong” in computer that influence enrollments in academic computer science programs. The "PC is a boy’s toy" interpretation has some validity, but 1984 seems a little early for that effect to be significant, and I have found the PC ads from the early years (say 1977-1983) to be surprisingly gender inclusive. That being said, by the end of the 1980s the hacker/nerd as white, adolescent male is firmly established, and no doubt strongly discouraging to women. But I think the causal chain implied the NPR piece is not quite right. -Nathan --- Nathan Ensmenger Associate Professor of Informatics School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University, Bloomington homes.soic.indiana.edu/nensmeng/

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CFP SHOT2016: "Game History and the Local"
by Melanie Swalwell 17 Dec '15

17 Dec '15

Hi SIGCIS, I am keen to hear from people interested in being involved in a traditional session on "Game History and the Local" at SHOT2016 - see draft blurb below. I'm delighted that Corinna Schlombs has agreed to act as a respondent, which should bring computer history and game history into conjunction in some interesting ways. Please be in touch if you would like to discuss ideas. Regards, Melanie Game history did not unfold uniformly and the particularities of space and place matter. Yet many digital game and software histories are silent with respect to geography. The orthodoxy that the U.S. and Japan - and to a lesser extent the U.K. - constituted the 'centres' at the outset of the industry has enjoyed such legitimacy that many accounts do not even bother to mention the 'where' that their material or statistics pertain to (eg. Campbell-Kelly). In many ways this parallels the North American default perspective in computer history, critiqued by Schlombs (2006). That many histories have been written by journalists and 'insiders' - comprising what Huhtamo calls the "chronicle era" of game history - largely accepting the game industry's 'global' rhetoric has no doubt also contributed to this situation. However, it means that locality has largely been left out of game history, at least until recently (Saarikoski et al and Kirkpatrick constitute exceptions). Given the great historic diversity of games and contexts for their play, an appreciation of socio-cultural and geographic specificity is important to develop, particularly if other histories are to be told, for instance, from the 'periphery' rather than the 'centre'. There is a burgeoning interest in discussing locality with respect to game history, as evidenced by the Localgamehist listserv, which has 99 members (co-founded by the session proposer). Whilst this degree of interest is welcome, the local needs to be critically-situated if it is not to simply become a new orthodoxy, celebrated for its own sake. This panel seeks contributions from scholars who are interested in reflecting on locality and geography in relation to Game History. Papers might engage with the shape and detail of local game histories, present comparative snapshots of game history/technologies/industries/practices across diverse locales, or reflect on production, distribution, consumption, magazines, cultural memory, etc with a local underpinning. Many approaches are possible and these suggestions are not intended to be definitive, but the panel might work best if each paper incorporates some reflection on the critical potential of such historical work. Where are the audiences for locally focused scholarship? Do such approaches have explanatory power beyond the local, or will they forever remain on the margins? What does such work have to contribute and how might it encourage a maturation of historical work around games? Please send a one page abstract (max 500 words) and a one page short CV with current contact information (max 300 words) to Melanie Swalwell melanie.swalwell(a)flinders.edu.au by 27th December. -- Assoc. Prof. Melanie Swalwell ARC Future Fellow Screen and Media, Flinders University GPO Box 2100 Adelaide SA 5001 Ph: +61 8 8201 2619 278 Humanities Bldg www.flinders.edu.au<http://www.flinders.edu.au/> http://www.flinders.edu.au/people/melanie.swalwell Researching Creative Micro-computing in Australia: https://youtu.be/hR8-10qjoiI Popular Memory Archive: http://playitagainproject.org<http://www.playitagainproject.org/> Play It Again blog: http://blogs.flinders.edu.au/play-it-again/ Digital Heritage blog: http://blog.ourdigitalheritage.org<http://blog.ourdigitalheritage.org/> CRICOS Provider: 00114A This email and any attachments may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please inform the sender by reply email and delete all copies of this message.

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NPR - When Women Stopped Coding
by Dag Spicer 15 Dec '15

15 Dec '15

Interesting piece… would be interesting in people’s thoughts… http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/17/356944145/episode-576-when-wom… Dag

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] NPR - When Women Stopped Coding
by Nathan Ensmenger 14 Dec '15

14 Dec '15

> On Dec 14, 2015, at 4:08 PM, Dag Spicer <dspicer(a)computerhistory.org> wrote: > > Interesting piece… would be interesting in people’s thoughts… > > http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/17/356944145/episode-576-when-wom… I have been thinking about the 1984 decline in CS enrollments among women a fair bit lately. I have a piece in the recently published volume of *Osiris* on “Scientific Masculinities” that provides my take on what happened. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/682955?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents The short version is that although the 1980s PC culture is significant, what is really important is the late 1970s and the emergence of the “computer bum” culture in academic computing centers in places like MIT and Stanford. It is in these almost exclusively male domains (which differed considerably in their gender composition from their corporate counterparts) that many of the cultural practices that later will be associated with “hacker” culture are constructed and disseminated. The media picks up on the “computer hacker” in about 1982, and it is this set of narratives about who does (and does not) “belong” in computer that influence enrollments in academic computer science programs. The "PC is a boy’s toy" interpretation has some validity, but 1984 seems a little early for that effect to be significant, and I have found the PC ads from the early years (say 1977-1983) to be surprisingly gender inclusive. That being said, by the end of the 1980s the hacker/nerd as white, adolescent male is firmly established, and no doubt strongly discouraging to women. But I think the causal chain implied the NPR piece is not quite right. -Nathan --- Nathan Ensmenger Associate Professor of Informatics School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University, Bloomington homes.soic.indiana.edu/nensmeng/

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ACM History Committee --> oral history workshop 12-13 May 2016
by Thomas J. Misa 13 Dec '15

13 Dec '15

Hello all, Please let colleagues you may know who are contemplating oral-history projects know about this ACM sponsored oral history workshop. Deadline for application is 15 January. Thanks, Tom Misa ACM Workshop on Oral History, May 12-13, 2016 ACM History Committee Call for Participation 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 sponsoring an oral history workshop to help diffuse knowledge of professional oral history practices into ACM’s membership and others with an active interest in preserving our computing heritage through the medium of oral histories. Applications are invited to a 1.5 day oral history workshop, to be held Thursday and Friday, May 12-13, 2016 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. For each successful application, one person’s expenses for workshop travel, lodging, and meals will be paid by the ACM History Committee. The workshop will be led by Mary Marshall Clark, director of the Columbia Center for Oral History (CCOH), see <http://library.columbia.edu/locations/ccoh.html>. Practice and Tutorial Who should attend? ACM members and others who are planning or actually doing oral history projects. The audience is people who are performing interviews for oral histories, or thinking about doing so. The workshop should be of special interest to ACM officers and staff, SIG leaders, historically minded ACM members, and others working on oral history projects. Priority will be given to ACM members and members of other national computer societies affiliated with the ACM, but some places have been reserved for non-affiliated individuals who are actively engaged in oral history projects. Workshop topics and activities include: [a] developing an oral history program; [b] presentation and training on oral history processes and principles; [c] hands-on exercises interviewing each other; [d] analysis and discussion of the exercises; [e] how to analyze results, findings and evaluate an oral history project; [f] practical considerations: lessons learned and best practices; and [g] ample networking time, including lunches and the workshop dinner. Participants will leave with a “tool kit” of practical, useful procedures as well as insight into professional oral history practices. Small workshop format will permit maximum hands-on experience and personal interaction. We are planning for 16 participants. The ACM History Committee will fund travel, hotel and meals for accepted invitees. Applicants should send a 2-page CV as well as a 250-word proposed project and/or oral history interest description that [a] explains the significance of a proposed oral history project (if applicable), potential uses of the techniques learned, and its importance; and [b] affirms your willingness to participate fully in the 1.5 day agenda. Project proposals are due by Friday, January 15, 2016. Proposals should be submitted as a single pdf-format document to <history-webmaster(a)acm.org>. Notification of project acceptance will be made within eight weeks. (Questions about the workshop or requests for clarification may be directed, at any time, to <history-webmaster(a)acm.org>.) ===============================================

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