February 2015 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Minorities and privacy/surveillance (Rebecca Slayton)
by Sarah T. Roberts 24 Feb '15

24 Feb '15

I’d like to recommend this article for some historical grounding in COINTELPRO, which strikes me as particularly apropos. Saito, N. T. “Whose Liberty? Whose Security? The USA PATRIOT Act in the Context of COINTELPRO and the Unlawful Repression of Political Dissent.” Oregon Law Review 81, no. 4 (2002): 1051–1132. —Sarah --- S a r a h T. R o b e r t s, P h. D. Assistant Professor Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS) Western University http://fims.uwo.ca/index.htm Blogging periodically at http://illusionofvolition.com > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2015 15:41:29 +0000 > From: Rebecca Slayton <rs849(a)cornell.edu> > To: sigcis <members(a)sigcis.org> > Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Minorities and privacy/surveillance > Message-ID: > <BY1PR0401MB11600FACD43C62620EB7E73DE1160(a)BY1PR0401MB1160.namprd04.prod.outlook.com> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > Hello everyone, > > One of my students would like to do a term paper on minority attitudes towards privacy/surveillance, but we are finding very little literature on this (maybe two articles that address the issue directly). His focus is on African Americans and U.S. government surveillance, but I think information on the attitudes of any minority group, in any country, towards any type of surveillance, would be helpful in at least framing the issues. Does anybody know of good resources? > > Thanks in advance for any tips! > > Best, > Rebecca > > 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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Might be of interest
by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo 23 Feb '15

23 Feb '15

“…then came Cisco, and the rest is history”: a ‘history friendly’ model of the Local Area Networking industry Date:2015-02By:R. Fontana L. ZiruliaURL:http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp993&r=his We study the role that switching costs, compatibility, and mergers and acquisitions, play in influencing the evolution of a multi-market industry. By looking at the case of the Local Area Networking industry, we propose a ‘history friendly model’ to replicate its evolution during the 1990s. Our model explains how a firm can start from a dominant position in one of the existing markets and exploit switching costs and compatibility to enter a new market when it opens. Mergers and acquisitions also play an important role as the new market is pioneered by a new start-up, which is soon acquired by the dominant incumbent. As a result of the acquisition, the acquiring firm becomes leader also in the new market. JEL:O30 L10 L63 -- ================== Twitter @BatizLazo Technological Innovation in Retail Finance: International Historical Perspectives Edited by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, J. Carles Maixé-Altés, Paul Thomes http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/books/details/9780415880671 Home page: http://www.bangor.ac.uk/business/staff/bernardo_batiz-lazo.en.php Working papers: http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba14.html

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History of Computing in Middle East/Northern Africa?
by Laine Nooney 20 Feb '15

20 Feb '15

Hi SIGCIS, I'm sending out a request for info on behalf of a computer scientist/artist friend of mine who is currently attempting to do some research in this area. Can anyone provide resources for the history of computing/computer science and/or in the Middle Eastern peninsula and/or Northern Africa? He's specifically interested in the period ranging from the fall of the Ottoman Empire (1910s) to the 1950s-60s, but would be happy to be pointed to broader texts as well. English or Arabic language ideal, but pass along whatever! Thanks all! Best, Laine Nooney www.lainenooney.com ISTC <http://socialcomputing.uci.edu/> @ MCC <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> @ NYU <http://www.nyu.edu> Postdoctoral Associate

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Royal Mail issues Colossus stamp
by Brian Randell 20 Feb '15

20 Feb '15

Hi: The Royal Mail’s own press release about their Colossus stamp is now at last available, at: http://www.royalmailgroup.com/royal-mail-commemorates-colossus-giant-achiev… The summary section of its text is as follows: > • Royal Mail has issued a stamp to commemorate Colossus - the world’s first electronic, digital and programmable computer. This is part of the Inventive Britain Special Stamps issued on 19 February 2015 > • The stamps are on sale now from Royal Mail by phone on 03457 641 641 or from www.royalmail.com/inventivebritain and available from 8,000 Post Offices nationwide > • The Colossus machine was designed and built by General Post Office (GPO) employee Tommy Flowers MBE and his team at the GPO Research Station in Dollis Hill, north-west London, during the Second World War to decipher messages being sent between German High Command > • These messages used a more advanced cipher machine, called Lorenz, than those from the Enigma machine that Alan Turing OBE decoded using his Bombe machine > • The first Colossus machine was completed in December 1943 and it became operational at Bletchley Park in February 1944. A total of 10 machines were in use by the end of the war > • Most of the original machines were dismantled after the war, and all involved with Colossus were sworn to secrecy under the Official Secrets Act. > • Full information was only declassified by the British Government in 2000, two years after Flowers’ death in October 1998 > • A fully functioning rebuild of Colossus was completed in 2007. It is now on display in The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park > • The site of the old GPO Research Station was converted into flats, and has an access road named Flowers Close in honour of Tommy Flowers Cheers Brian Randell -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell

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Materialities of the Digital ~ open panel at 4S
by Amy Johnson 18 Feb '15

18 Feb '15

Hi all, A colleague and I are running an open panel at this year's annual 4S meeting, called Materialities of the Digital. I've included the abstract and submission info below. If you know of anyone who might be interested, could you pass it on? Or if YOU'RE interested, send something our way. (Submission info here: http://www.4sonline.org/meeting; deadline is March 29, 2015.) Really excited about this year's 4S theme of making and doing. Lots of interesting open panels. You can check them out here: http://www.4sonline.org/meeting/open_sessions. Thanks, ~Amy Materialities of the Digital Much popular discourse positions digital technologies as either phantom or prosthetic—presence without substance, or extension that enables new experience of the world. Think: Twitter and Google Glass. This phantom/prosthetic dichotomy is a curious one, one that demands scrutiny and challenge. What are the materialities of the digital? And what do we embrace—and hide—when we position them so? We investigate materiality broadly here. We include hardware and network materialities such as data centers and undersea cables, transistors and LCD crystals. Such materialities are often transmuted by metaphor: the cloud, the highway, the screen. Why are these materialities treated as elusive? What details are visible without this obscuring/illumination? We include classic bodily materialities—bodies themselves, but also physical extension through tactile interfaces and digital sex toys like RealTouch. What are the material practices of the digital? How do the shapes of bodies—and selves?—change as digital technologies transform boundaries and surroundings? As bodies/objects cross from one material channel to another? And we include relative materialities, such as language and script, bits and pixels, avatars and alts. Materialities that arise from their use as building blocks and tools, from their use as faces and agents that speak and remember. Components that undergird everything from affective emoji play to bots that shop the darknet. What does it mean to understand materiality as relative and relational? For this panel we invite papers drawing on diverse methodologies, from media studies and digital anthropology to feminist and queer theory, biomedicine, crip theory and disability studies, critical race studies, and neuroscience and neuroeconomics. Open session list here: http://www.4sonline.org/meeting/open_sessions Submissions info here: http://www.4sonline.org/meeting (deadline: March 29, 2015) --- Amy Johnson PhD candidate<http://web.mit.edu/hasts/graduate/johnson.html>, MIT HASTS Berkman Center for Internet & Society<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/ajohnson>, Harvard Keio International Project for Internet & Society<http://kipis.sfc.keio.ac.jp/people/amy-johnson/>, Keio University @shrapnelofme<https://twitter.com/shrapnelofme>

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Understanding Code Forking in Open Source Software
by Brian Randell 17 Feb '15

17 Feb '15

Hi: I’ve just been sent details of a PhD dissertation by Linus Nyman, "Understanding Code Forking in Open Source Software”, that I think will interest a number of SIGCIS members (across the historian of science - computer scientist spectrum), and which I don’t recall being discussed here before. The abstract: > Open source software is everywhere. From phones, tablets, TVs, and game consoles to less self-evident examples like cars, washing machines, and the International Space Station. However, what makes open source software remarkable is not where it can be found, but rather what can be done with it. One of the most astounding rights guaranteed by all open source software licenses is the right to fork the source code. In other words, the right to copy any program, either in part or in its entirety, and use that program to create a new, modified version of it. > > The right to fork has an enormous impact on both the development and governance of open source software. Despite its significance, code forking has seen little academic study. This dissertation examines the right to fork, its impact and significance, and how it is viewed and practiced by developers. > > The study draws on data consisting of hundreds of forks, interviews with open source software programmers, and an in-depth analysis of the birth of the MariaDB fork. This dissertation is relevant to anyone seeking a greater general understanding of how open source works and why it is considered a superior software development model. It may also serve as a useful resource for firms seeking to harness the power of open source software. Furthermore, it offers important insights to those who want to better understand how code forking is practiced and viewed by developers. > > This study finds that forks are primarily started for non-competitive reasons, with unique features or goals that distinguish them from their parent projects. Competitive forks are rare but do exist, with some motivating factors being to ensure the freedom of the code and the community’s ability to contribute to it. Furthermore, though developers may not always agree with the forking of a project, they nonetheless consider the right to fork to be of vital importance, and a cornerstone of free and open source software. > > In many ways, open source can be thought of as a return to how software was developed before the emergence of proprietary licensing. The same freedoms of development and sharing that thrived back then can be found today in the open source community. Indeed, in many ways the right to fork is synonymous with freedom: the freedom to explore and experiment, the freedom to benefit from the work done by others, and the freedom to keep any project relevant and vibrant even when faced with leadership decisions that are deemed unsupportable. In short, the right to fork is open source software’s guardian of freedom and watchdog of meritocracy. Full text available at: https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/153135 Cheers Brian Randell -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell

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NSA putting spyware on the world's hard disk drives...
by Dag Spicer 17 Feb '15

17 Feb '15

Does this Leviathan know no bounds? Chilling news... http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/16/us-usa-cyberspying-idUSKBN0LK1QV2… 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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Reading lost data
by Christine Finn 17 Feb '15

17 Feb '15

Hello, Good to see this is being discussed. It's a bit ancient in itself, but I talked about excavating hard drives, and the issue of how to read old data, in a chapter in Artifacts: an archaeologist's year in Silicon Valley (MIT Press 2001). There's a related paper, which I gave with Sellam Ismail at a computer and tech conf in Vienna that year: 'The Valley of Lost Data: Excavating Hard Drives and Floppy Discs'. It should be archived in proceedings online http://www.vintage.org/content.php?id=004 The issue of lost data has preoccupied computer collectors for a long while. and I celebrate their forward-thinking in a chapter on Silicon Valley in the Oxford Handbook to the Archaeology of the Contemporary World (OUP, 2013) eds Harrison, Graves-Brown, Piccini. I also talk about it in a 4-episode BBC Radio 3 doc series, "It"s Big and it's Beautiful" about the rise of retro tech. It should be out there somewhere - on bit torrent? And the issue of lost manuscripts, especially with regard to writing future biographies, in a programme on BBC Radio 4, "Tales from the Digital Archive" http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010m9sw all best, Christine

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Coleman Prize
by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo 16 Feb '15

16 Feb '15

Aplogies if you have already received this but will appreciate if you circulate DEADLINE APPROACHING: If anyone knows of a recently completed PhD in Business History (broadly defined) from a British institution or on a British topic, please pass along this call for the Coleman Doctoral Prize in Business History. The deadline is 20 February, it is a great opportunity, not to be missed! http://www.abh-net.org/docs/conf/Call%20for%20Papers%20Coleman%20Prize%2020… -- ================== Twitter @BatizLazo Technological Innovation in Retail Finance: International Historical Perspectives Edited by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, J. Carles Maixé-Altés, Paul Thomes http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/books/details/9780415880671 Home page: http://www.bangor.ac.uk/business/staff/bernardo_batiz-lazo.en.php Working papers: http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba14.html

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Google boss warns of 'forgotten century' with email and photos at risk
by Brian Randell 14 Feb '15

14 Feb '15

Hi: >From The Guardian: > Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Serf > > Piles of digitised material – from blogs, tweets, pictures and videos, to official documents such as court rulings and emails – may be lost forever because the programs needed to view them will become defunct, Google’s vice-president has warned. > > Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians, Vint Cerf told the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in San Jose, California, warning that we faced a “forgotten generation, or even a forgotten century” through what he called “bit rot”, where old computer files become useless junk. > > Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians because the electronic files that describe the story will not run on their computers. > > Cerf pushed for the development of “digital vellum” to preserve old software and hardware so that out-of-date files could be recovered no matter how old they are. > > “When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets, and all of the world wide web, it’s clear that we stand to lose an awful lot of our history,” he said. > > “We don’t want our digital lives to fade away. If we want to preserve them, we need to make sure that the digital objects we create today can still be rendered far into the future,” he added. <snip> Full story at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/google-boss-warns-forgott… Cheers Brian Randell -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell

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