February 2015 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Google boss warns of 'forgotten century' with email and photos at risk
by Brian Randell 13 Feb '15

13 Feb '15

Hi Scott: The Guardian was for year famous for its typos: > The Grauniad is a nickname for the UK national newpaper, the Guardian, because of a now ill-founded reputation for typos. The name was given to it by the satirical magazine Private Eye. The Guardian newspaper earned its reputation for lots of misprints in the days of hot-metal printing when it was published in Manchester (it was originally called the Manchester Guardian), and the editions that appeared in London were very early editions brought down by train, before all the errors had been spotted. Cheers Brian On 13 Feb 2015, at 13:35, Scott Guthery <sbg(a)acw.com> wrote: >>>> Digital material including key historical documents could be lost forever because programs to view them will become defunct, says Vint Serf > > I wonder if he's any relation of Vint Cerf. Maybe it's the British spelling. There are lots of other possibilities all of which have already flashed through your head so there is no need to list them. > > Cheers, Scott > -- 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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CHM 2015 CORE magazine out now!
by Dag Spicer 11 Feb '15

11 Feb '15

Dear friends, CHM is happy to announce that the 2015 issue of CORE magazine—the Museum’s annual publication—is out today. This year’s focus is “Moore’s Law,” in recognition of the 50th anniversary of that law this year. You can pick up your PDF copy here: http://www.computerhistory.org/core/media/pdf/core-2015.pdf Enjoy! 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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Mahoney Prize - new article prize for 2015
by Andrew Russell 11 Feb '15

11 Feb '15

Greetings all - SIGCIS is happy to announce the inaugural call for submissions for the Mahoney Prize, a new article prize in the history of computing and information technology, broadly conceived. The following call for submissions is posted on our website at http://www.sigcis.org/mahoneyprize. Please share this announcement widely! The information below is also available from the SIGCIS website at http://www.sigcis.org/mahoneyprize, where you can find a pdf file of the prize announcement at the bottom of the page. The Mahoney Prize recognizes an outstanding article in the history of computing and information technology, broadly conceived. The Mahoney Prize commemorates the late Princeton scholar Michael S. Mahoney, whose profound contributions to the history of computing came from his many articles and book chapters. The prize consists of a $500 award and a certificate. For the inaugural 2015 prize, articles published in the preceding three years (2012, 2013, and 2014) are eligible for nomination. The Mahoney Prize is awarded by the Special Interest Group in Computers, Information, and Society (SIGCIS) and is presented during the annual meeting of our parent group, the Society for the History of Technology. The deadline for submission (electronic submissions preferred) to all three Prize Committee members is April 15, 2015. For more information, please contact the 2015 Mahoney Prize Committee Chair Prof. Jennifer Light, jslight(a)mit.edu <mailto:jslight@mit.edu>. 2015 Mahoney Prize Committee: Ross Bassett (term ends 2015) Associate Professor of History Director, Benjamin Franklin Scholars Department of History Box 8108 North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC 27695 ross(a)ncsu.edu <mailto:ross@ncsu.edu> Jennifer S. Light, Chair (term ends 2016) Professor of Science, Technology, and Society Professor of Urban Studies and Planning Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Ave., E51-173 Cambridge, MA 02139 jslight(a)mit.edu <mailto:jslight@mit.edu> James Cortada (term ends 2017) Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota 2917 Irvington Way Madison, Wisconsin 53713 jcortada(a)umn.edu <mailto:jcortada@umn.edu>

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Query: Legal history of the internet / Internet in Germany
by Janet Abbate 10 Feb '15

10 Feb '15

I'm forwarding a query about the history of Internet law and regulation. Most of what I'm familiar with is about standards, ICANN and IANA, and global governance issues; I sent him some references for Mueller and DeNardis. I don't know anything about the Internet in Germany. Suggestions? You can respond directly to Peukert, or to this list and I will collect and forward. thanks, Janet Begin forwarded message: > From: "Peukert, Alexander" <a.peukert(a)jur.uni-frankfurt.de> > Date: February 9, 2015 8:26:56 AM EST > To: "abbate(a)vt.edu" <abbate(a)vt.edu> > Subject: Legal history of the internet? > > Dear Professor Abbate, > > I am teaching IP law at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main/Germany, and I read with great interest your book “Inventing the Internet”. I am currently undertaking a search with regard to the legal history of the internet, that is to say the regulations that governed the evolution of the internet in the U.S. and other countries, in particular Germany. Aside of your book, I only came across few articles that partly address some issues, in particular the history of ICANN (Weinberg, 2000) and the privatization of the internet backbone network (Kesan and Shah, 2001). I did not find, however, an in-depth legal-historical study of one (let alone all) major steps in the evolution of the internet until the end of the 1990ies. > > Are you aware of such a study? Do you know someone who is dealing with these questions? > > Kind regards > Alexander Peukert > ________________________________________________________ > Prof. Dr. Alexander Peukert > Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main - Exzellenzcluster Normative Ordnungen > Grüneburgplatz 1, Hauspostfach EXC-12, D-60323 Frankfurt am Main > Tel: + 49 (0) 69 798 31477; Fax: + 49 (0) 69 798 31462 > http://www.jura.uni-frankfurt.de/peukert/ und http://ssrn.com/author=1244916 > >

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Fwd: Call for Papers -- SHOT 2015 in Albuquerque, N.M.
by Andrew Russell 08 Feb '15

08 Feb '15

Dear SIGCIS - I’m sure many of you already have seen the call for papers for the SHOT 2015 annual meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The meeting is October 8-11; the deadline for proposals is March 31. As always, please feel free to use the SIGCIS list to float ideas for panels or recruit extra panelists if you already have a theme or group of people in mind for a panel. Also - as always, you can contact me directly (arussell(a)stevens.edu <mailto:arussell@stevens.edu>) if you have an idea for a paper for a SIGCIS-sponsored session. I plan to continue our SIG tradition, where the Chair (Tom Haigh in the past; now it’s me) collects individual ideas for papers and weaves them together into a panel proposal, sponsored by SIGCIS. We have a very good track record of having these SIGCIS-sponsored sessions accepted by the SHOT Program Committee. If you would like to be a part of a SIGCIS-sponsored panel, please send me your ideas within the next two weeks. In sum, there are a great variety of ways you can participate in the Albuquerque meeting: 1. Contact me to be a part of a SIGCIS-sponsored session, on a topic or topics TBD by your collective interests. 2. Propose a paper for one of the 15 “open sessions” (listed below), many of which fit well with the interests of SIGCIS members. 3. Propose a paper or panel on your own, independent of options 1 and 2 above. 4. Propose a paper or panel for the annual SIGCIS workshop, which, as usual, will be held on the Sunday at the end of the SHOT meeting (this year it’s Sunday Oct 13). We have yet to issue to the call for papers for the SIGCIS workshop; that deadline is usually at least a month or two after the deadline for the main SHOT conference. If you have any questions or suggestions, please just send me a note - I’m here to help! Cheers, Andy > Begin forwarded message: > > Date: February 7, 2015 at 10:12:12 AM EST > From: Society for the History of Technology <shotsec(a)auburn.edu> > Reply-To: shotsec(a)auburn.edu > To: arussell(a)stevens.edu > Subject: Call for Papers -- SHOT 2015 in Albuquerque, N.M. > > > Society for the History of Technology > 7 February 2015 > Annual Meeting - Albuquerque, New Mexico > 8-11 October 2015 > > Call for Papers and Sessions (deadline: 31 March 2015) > > Formed in 1958, SHOT is an interdisciplinary and international organization concerned not only with the history of technological devices and processes but also with technology in history, the development of technology, and its relations with society and culture --that is, the relationship of technology to politics, economics, science, the arts, and the organization of production, and with the role it plays in the differentiation of individuals in society. > > Accordingly, the Program Committee invites paper and session proposals on any topic in a broadly defined history of technology, including topics that push the boundaries of the discipline. The Committee welcomes proposals for individual papers or complete sessions from researchers at all levels. We also welcome proposals from all researchers, whether veterans or newcomers to SHOT's meetings, and regardless of primary discipline. Submitters are encouraged to propose sessions that include a diverse mix of participants: multinational origins, gender, graduate students and junior scholars with senior scholars, significantly diverse institutional affiliations, etc. > > For the 2015 meeting the Program Committee welcomes proposals of three formats: > > 1-Individual papers > > 2-Sessions of 3 or 4 papers > > 3-Unconventional sessions > > > (Unconventional sessions have formats that diverge in useful ways from the typical 3 or 4 papers with comment, including round-table sessions and workshop-style sessions with pre-circulated papers.) > > > To submit a proposal, visit www.historyoftechnology.org <http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0015R8S6Pp-tX2G2o2Gp58ai5ubNELwnoXwIytB4B89LfGO…> and follow the links! > > > ***The deadline for proposals is 31 March 2015*** > > > NEW FEATURE FOR 2015: OPEN SESSIONS > > > This year the SHOT Program Committee inaugurated an Open Sessions process for the purpose of facilitating collaboration among scholars. Individuals interested in finding others to join panel sessions for the Annual Meeting proposed Open Sessions to the Program Committee in January. > > To join a proposed panel from the Open Sessions list, contact the organizer for that panel, not the Program Committee. 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. > > The 15 approved Open Session descriptions are listed below; for more information on each of these sessions, including the contact information for each, please visit http://www.historyoftechnology.org/call_for_papers/index.html <http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0015R8S6Pp-tX2G2o2Gp58ai5ubNELwnoXwIytB4B89LfGO…>. > > > 1-Legal Histories of Technology > Organizers: Meg Leta Jones, Georgetown University, USA > and Elana Zeide New York University, USA > > 2-Satellite Remote-sensing and Environment > Organizer: Gemma CIRAC CLAVERAS, Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris. > > 3-Through the Looking Glass: Virtual Reality in Historical Perspective > Organizer: Alexander B. Magoun, IEEE History Center at Stevens Institute of Technology, USA > > 4-Digital Histories of Technology > Organizer: Finn Arne Jørgensen, Umeå University, Sweden > > 5-Machine Tools and Precision Mechanics: Reliability, Quality, Standard > Organizer: Nadège SOUGY, University of Neuchatel, Switzerland > > 6-Whose History? Museum Collections, Public Display and Interpreting the History of Technology. > Organizer: Tilly Blyth, Science Museum, London > > 7-"Copie Non Conforme": Places, Practices, and Politics of Illicit Reproduction in the 20th Century > Organizer: Ksenia Tatarchenko, NYU Shanghai, China > > 8-Nature Transformation and Technology > Organizer: Paul Josephson, Colby College, USA & Tomsk State University, Russia > > 9-Outside Technologies: Instruments and their Users in the Field Sciences > Organizer: Philipp N. Lehmann, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin > > 10-Tinkering with Technology: Modification and Improvisation by User and Consumer > Organizer: Penelope Hardy, Johns Hopkins University, USA > > 11-Connecting Technology's Peripheries > Organizer: Joshua Grace, University of South Carolina, USA > > 12-A Vicious Cycle: Histories of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle > Organizer: Caroline R. Peyton, University of South Carolina, USA > > 13-Alternative Cultures/Alternative Technology: Conscious Construction of the Path Not Taken > Organizer: Pamela C. Edwards, Shepherd University, USA > > 14-Engineers, Technology, and Neoliberal Economic Doctrine and Practice > Organizer: Atsushi Akera, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA > > 15-Automation, Computerization, and Digital Manufacturing: The Past and the Future > Organizer: Ling-Fei Lin, Cornell University, USA > > + + + + + + + > > SHOT allows paper presentations at consecutive meetings but rejects submissions of papers that are substantially the same as previous accepted submissions. Submissions covering the same fundamental topic should explain the difference(s) with the prior presentation. > > The Program Committee has established a Facebook page to facilitate collaboration in establishing sessions: https://www.facebook.com/login.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fgr…. Alternatively, postings to the sci-med-tech listserv (http://www.h-net.org/~smt/) can also facilitate collaboration and session-forming. > > ***The deadline for proposals is 31 March 2015 *** > > 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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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Members Digest, Vol 56, Issue 6
by Erik Rau 06 Feb '15

06 Feb '15

Evan (and everyone else), I’m concerned about the business records for Radio Shack. Other than a small (117 lin ft) collection at the Fort Worth Library (unprocessed) there appears to be nothing available for historians from this business. Does anyone have a contact either in RS records management or in senior management. They may not have any power left to determine the disposal of the records, but at least they can give us the lay of the land. Anyone, please feel free to contact me offline about this. Best, Erik -- Erik P. Rau, PhD Director, Library Services Hagley Museum & Library P.O. Box 3630, 298 Buck Road Wilmington, DE 19807 302.658.2400, ext. 344 erau(a)hagley.org<mailto:erau@hagley.org> www.hagley.org<http://www.hagley.org> [cid:F2108ACC-8CFF-4DD6-8F15-CA650E686399] On 2015.Feb.06, at 12:00 , members-request(a)sigcis.org<mailto:members-request@sigcis.org> wrote: Send Members mailing list submissions to members(a)sigcis.org<mailto:members@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. Radio Shack (Evan Koblentz) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2015 15:11:09 -0500 From: Evan Koblentz <evan(a)snarc.net> To: Sigcis <members(a)sigcis.org> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Radio Shack Message-ID: <54D3CE5D.4010001(a)snarc.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Is anyone writing about the death of Radio Shack? A reporter for the Wall Street Journal interviewed me on RS's imminent death at World Maker Faire last fall (representing my user group). He called today and said it'll probably be in print tomorrow and online tomorrow or this afternoon. ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Members mailing list Members(a)sigcis.org http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members End of Members Digest, Vol 56, Issue 6 **************************************

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Radio Shack
by Evan Koblentz 05 Feb '15

05 Feb '15

Is anyone writing about the death of Radio Shack? A reporter for the Wall Street Journal interviewed me on RS's imminent death at World Maker Faire last fall (representing my user group). He called today and said it'll probably be in print tomorrow and online tomorrow or this afternoon.

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Radio Shack
by Evan Koblentz 05 Feb '15

05 Feb '15

Is anyone writing about the death of Radio Shack? A reporter for the Wall Street Journal interviewed me on RS's imminent death at World Maker Faire last fall (representing my user group). He called today and said it'll probably be in print tomorrow and online tomorrow or this afternoon.

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Query about non-English computing oral histories
by Janet Abbate 04 Feb '15

04 Feb '15

I am forwarding a query from Melissa Terras, who asks if anyone knows of oral histories of women in computing that are not in English. Does anyone know of any? Melissa has a blog with information about early women in computing in Italy (see link below) that may be of interest to SIGCIS members. "From 1949, an Italian Jesuit priest called Father Roberto Busa (November 13, 1913 – August 9, 2011) pioneered the use of computing for linguistic and literary analysis, teaming up with IBM to produce an index of the works of St Thomas Aquinas." http://melissaterras.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/for-ada-lovelace-day-father-bus… thanks, Janet Begin forwarded message: > From: Melissa Terras <melissaterras(a)gmail.com> > Date: February 3, 2015 6:21:12 AM EST > To: abbate(a)vt.edu > Subject: Oral History of women computer programmers > Reply-To: m.terras(a)ucl.ac.uk > > Dear Janet, > > I hope you dont mind me writing. I’m a big fan of your book, Recoding Gender, Women's Changing Participation in Computing, which has been an invaluable help as I work with a colleague on a slice of computing history in my discipline (humanities computing, now known as digital humanities): we have been undertaking an oral history of women in Italy that helped with the first major project in Humanities Computing in the 1950s. See my blog post http://melissaterras.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/for-ada-lovelace-day-father-bus… which kicked this all off - following putting these pics up, we managed to identify various surviving women in the pictures. We’re writing up our findings now, after a successful trip to Milan to meet with and interview them. > > My question is this - all the oral histories of women in the early days of computing I can find are in the English language. Would you know of any other set of oral histories in this area that are not undertaken in English? I have had a good look, but can’t dig anything up, and thought I would drop you a line! I know that you undertook some interviews with Estonian computer programmers - were those in English or Estonian? > > There are obviously methodological issues about using oral histories in translation, and comparing our approach to others in this area would be very useful. Any pointers gratefully received - or confirmation that you haven’t seen anything in any other language other than English would be useful, too! > > best, > > Melissa > > -- > Melissa M. Terras MA MSc DPhil CLTHE CITP FHEA > Director, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities > Vice Dean of Research (Projects), UCL Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Professor of Digital Humanities > Department of Information Studies > Foster Court > University College London > Gower Street > WC1E 6BT > > Tel: 020-7679-7206 (direct), 020-7679-7204 (dept), 020-7383-0557 (fax) > Email: m.terras(a)ucl.ac.uk > Web: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dis/people/melissaterras > Blog: http://melissaterras.blogspot.com/ > Twitter: @melissaterras Dr. Janet Abbate Associate Professor, Science & Technology in Society Co-director, National Capital Region STS program Virginia Tech www.sts.vt.edu/ncr www.linkedin.com/groups/STS-Virginia-Tech-4565055 www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS

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What does "programmable" mean?
by Thomas Haigh 01 Feb '15

01 Feb '15

Hello Brian, I understand that omitting the word "programmable" would incur the wrath of Iowans and Bulgarians by slighting Atanasoff and his ABC. Thus both would be electronic, but only Colossus qualifies as programmable. But can you help those of us struggling to follow the proper assignments of firsts to understand what it means to say that Colossus was "programmable." Particularly in the light of newer information, the reconstruction, etc. Any use of the term for older computers is somewhat problematic, as the idea that "programming" a computer meant the activity of configuring it to carry out a sequence of operations does not seem to surface before 1945, after the new ideas in the First Draft had begun to circulate. Within the ENIAC project the term "setting up" had been used consistently for this activity in 1943-44. It took a while for the new usage to standardize - Goldstine and von Neumann themselves called the activity the "planning and coding of problems" in their famous reports. Your groundbreaking paper on Colossus back in the 1980 Metropolis et al volume A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century called at least Mark II Colossus programmable, in as much as there was some way to set up logic conditions and to change the sequence of operations performed with pugboards and switches. You called it a "special-purpose program-controlled electronic digital computer." That definition seems basically to have stuck. Checking its rather detailed Wikipedia page I see that it is described as follows: Colossus was the first of the electronic digital machines with programmability, albeit limited by modern standards.[34] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer#cite_note-34> . It had no internally stored programs. To set it up for a new task, the operator had to set up plugs and switches to alter the wiring. . Colossus was not a general-purpose machine, being designed for a specific cryptanalytic task involving counting and Boolean operations. A Colossus computer was thus not a fully general Turing complete <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing-complete> machine. However, Professor Benjamin Wells of the Departments of Computer Science and Mathematics, University of San Francisco, has shown [35] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer#cite_note-35> that a Universal Turing Machine could have been run on the set of ten Colossus computers. This means that Colossus satisfies the definition of Turing completeness <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_complete> Many devices could be configured, for example the plugboards used with traditional IBM punched card machines like sorters or tabulators. So this idea of "limited programmability" seems potentially slippery. (Not to mention the idea that a computer "satisfies the definition of Turing Completeness" if it could be used to construct a 'Universal' Turing machine - one could say much the same about a huge pile of Lego or Meccano). So my question is: has anyone defined the minimum degree of configurability necessary to make something "programmable" in this sense? It's clear that a computer can be called programmable if it could be configured to carry out an arbitrary sequence of operations. So traditionally the paper-tape driven machines like the early Harvard or Zuse computers would be seen as programmable (without branching), as was ENIAC (with branching), and of course any EDVAC-type computer. "Special purpose" seems to denote some rather severe constraints, but I don't have a clear sense of what Colossus could and couldn't be configured to do. Likewise I understand that ABC, though not regarded as programmable, had some kinds of jumpers and switches, which presumably configured its operations in some way that falls short of "programmability." Of course, Colossus worked well enough to solve problems and the ABC didn't. That is perhaps a more instructive basis on which to separate their places in history than the concept of "limited programmability." Best wishes, Tom From: members-bounces(a)sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Brian Randell Sent: Sunday, February 01, 2015 4:43 AM To: Sigcis Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Royal Mail Postage Stamp commemorating Colossus Importance: High Hi: The Royal Mail has at last revealed details of their plans for a commemorative postage stamp featuring Colossus. I have known of this plan for some time as I was commissioned (in confidence) last year to write a section on Tommy Flowers for the chapter in the next Royal Mail Year Book about the new stamp series. (A rather brief press release by Royal Mail itself indicates that "each of the eight special stamps depict key inventions created by British inventors over the last century: Colossus, World Wide Web, Catseyes, Fibre Optics, Stainless Steel, Carbon Fibre, DNA Sequencing, i-limb" - see http://www.royalmail.com/personal/stamps-collectibles-gifts/look-forward-int o-2015.) The attached picture and text in fact comes from a scanned copy of the February 2015 British Philatelic Bulletin, rather than directly from the Royal Mail., which I received today. I had not seen the design of the stamp before, so only now - to my annoyance - do I find that it describes Colossus as "the first electronic digital computer" - my own text takes care to use the phrase "the first programmable electronic digital computer". I have pointed out this problem to the Royal Mail, but have been told that it is too late for it to be corrected - the stamps are to be issued next month. (I have learned that the Royal Mail were given some rather poor advice, so I don't blame them.) However I am nevertheless delighted that Colossus is being commemorated by the Royal Mail, and by the growing public recognition especially here in the UK of Tommy Flowers' great contribution. Cheers Brian Randell

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