April 2015 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Diagrammatic models of human computing
by Paul Fishwick 22 Jun '15

22 Jun '15

I recently listened to a podcast on Pickering's human-intensive computing for processing astronomical data. Here is a wiki page that contains an overview and photograph from 1890: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Computers I am seeking diagrammatic workflow models of the types of computation that occurred under Pickering's direction, but more generally, any articles or texts that contain such diagrams for human computing. I am familiar with modern formalisms such as BPMN: http://www.bpmn.org/ in which business workflows might be formalized. I also have read Grier's excellent book: http://www.amazon.com/When-Computers-Human-David-Grier/dp/0691091579/ref=sr… The history and cultural context is interesting to me, and most appropriate for engaging readers, however, the main end-point in this story-telling process, for me, is for people to appreciate the path toward the diagrammatic formalisms with their nodes, merges, branches, and connections. If I need to, I can embark on a path toward creating some models with the written historical accounts as a guide, but I thought that checking here would be the best starting location in this quest for diagrammatic evidence. -paul 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 Lab Blog: creative-automata.com SIGSIM Blog: modelingforeveryone.com

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Raymond Dudley, unsung inventor of parallel processing and digital spreadsheet?
by Janet Abbate 18 May '15

18 May '15

I got an odd letter recently from someone named Raymond Dudley, who claims he invented a chess-playing computer in 1973. Apparently he thought that as a member of the SHOT Editorial Committee, I was in a position to "correct the historical record" by alerting the "scientific establishment" of this "important breakthrough." He has a website at http://www.chessilluminated.com/ The device is an electronic chessboard hooked up to a minicomputer. The "digital spreadsheet" he refers to is the illuminated chessboard and a corresponding program that keeps track of the state of each cell on the board. Supposedly the program is implemented in parallel, though I think the underlying processor is not. The chess pieces are electronically encocded so that when they are placed on the board, the machine recognizes each unique piece. The squares on the board will light up to indicate which moves a given piece can legally make; the pieces themselves light up to warn when they are in danger of being captured. It's not clear to me from my brief survey of the site whether the machine actually plays against the human player or simply provides the player with useful information to aid them in playing against another person. Dudley got a patent on the machine in 1983. Anybody heard of this? He seems to have kept a lower profile than some of our other cranks--er, unsung inventors. A google search for "Raymond Dudley chess computer" only turned up his patent information. Janet 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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Antikythera Dy at CHM!
by Dag Spicer 28 Apr '15

28 Apr '15

Hello friends, We have a fantastic day of events and lectures about the Antikythera Mechanism on May 13 at the Computer History Museum. See Announcement below. If you don’t know what the Antikythera Mechanism is, I especially encourage you to attend. This unique object is forcing historians of early technology to drastically revise received wisdom about technological development in the West. The world’s oldest computer? You decide! Best, Dag PS The lectures will be available on YouTube after the event if you can’t make it in person to Mountain View, California. I will send a link to the group when ready. LECTURE ANNOUNCEMENT: Secrets of the Antikythera Mechanism In 1900, sponge divers off the coast of the tiny Greek island of Antikythera made an astonishing discovery: the wreck of an ancient Roman ship lay 200 feet beneath the water, its dazzling cargo spread out over the ocean floor. Among the life-size statues and amphorae was an encrusted piece of metal, which after nearly a century of investigation, is finally revealing its secrets. Called the Antikythera Mechanism, study has shown that this improbably preserved object is actually an ancient Greek astronomical computer of a technical sophistication not seen until the clock making traditions of Medieval Europe—1,500 years after the Mechanism is believed to have been made (about 200 BC). Recent advances in computer imaging as well as painstaking scholarship have finally elucidated nearly all details of the Mechanism. Join us as we dive into the mysterious history of the Antikythera Mechanism, guided by several world experts: marine archeologist Brendan Foley will describe his 2014 diving expedition to the original Antikythera wreck site; Michael Wright, former curator of mechanical engineering at the Science Museum in London, will describe the structure and recreation of the Mechanism at University College London and will be bringing a model of the device to the Museum for audience members to explore; and professor Nicolaos Alexopoulos will discuss sociology, engineering, and science in Ancient Greece. For a schedule of the day’s activities and lectures, as well as to reserve seating, please see: http://www.computerhistory.org/events/upcoming/#secrets-antikythera-mechani… -- 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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Fwd: Pam Laird Research Grant - 2015
by Andrew Russell 27 Apr '15

27 Apr '15

See below - perhaps it will be of interest to those of you working on the history of communication technologies, broadly defined. Andy Begin forwarded message: From: Andrew Butrica <abutrica(a)earthlink.net<mailto:abutrica@earthlink.net>> Subject: Pam Laird Research Grant - 2015 Date: April 27, 2015 at 1:16:02 PM EDT To: Mercurians(a)googlegroups.com<mailto:Mercurians@googlegroups.com> Reply-To: mercurians(a)googlegroups.com<mailto:mercurians@googlegroups.com> The Mercurians once again is offering the Pam Laird Research Grant (US$1,000) to defray the cost of travel and housing to use a research collection to pursue research in the history of communication technologies. We have added this new initiative to encourage and reward high-caliber research in the history of communication technologies, broadly defined. One of the Mercurians' missions is to encourage scholarship in the history of communication technologies. There is no research grant program (either within or outside SHOT) that we are aware of dedicated to supporting scholarship on the history of communication technologies. While the history of communication technology literature is vast and always growing, the quality of the research effort or resulting publication too often falls short of scholarly expectations. In general, the research grant is awarded in alternating years. We awarded two such grants during the 2011 SHOT annual meeting in Cleveland. The winners were Carmen Krol, a PhD candidate in the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University, and Michael Lemon, a PhD student in Latin American History at Indiana University (Bloomington). Subsequently, The Mercurians announced during the 2013 SHOT meeting in Portland, Maine, that Ian Johnson, a PhD student in the History Department at Ohio State University, had won. This year's winner will be made known during the 2015 SHOT meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this October. Eligibility. The grant is intended for and limited to junior scholars-meaning either current graduate students or recent postgraduates (no more than three years beyond the terminal degree in their field). Requirements and Application. Only travel to an appropriate archival collection to carry out research on an aspect of the history of communication technology, broadly defined, will be supported. The archive can be open to the public, private, or even closed, provided that necessary permissions have been obtained from the archive. Complete the application form (available at: http://www.mercurians.org/grant-form.doc) and e-mail it and a curriculum vitae (no longer than 3 pages) as attachments to the Mercurians c/o abutrica(a)earthlink.net<mailto:abutrica@earthlink.net> Your curriculum vitae should include pertinent publications, fellowships, or accomplishments relevant to your proposed research, and professional societies and affiliations. The deadline for submitting an application for the grant is June 1, 2015. For further information or questions, please contact Andrew Butrica at abutrica(a)earthlink.net<mailto:abutrica@earthlink.net> or visit our website: http://www.mercurians.org/Prize-Grant.htm Good luck! Andrew J. Butrica MERCURIANS ANTENNA Newsletter mercurians(a)earthlink.net www.mercurians.org

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REMINDER: Computer History Museum Prize 2015 - Deadline, 15 May
by david nofre 22 Apr '15

22 Apr '15

*REMINDER: Computer History Museum Prize 2015 - Deadline, 15 May** * The _Computer History Museum Prize_ is awarded to the author of an outstanding book in the history of computing broadly conceived, published during the prior three years. The prize of $1,000 is awarded by SIGCIS, the Special Interest Group for Computers, Information and Society. SIGCIS is part of the Society for the History of Technology. *2015 Call for Submission** * Books published in 2012-2014 are eligible for the 2015 award. Books in translation are eligible for three years following the date of their publication in English. Publishers, authors, and other interested members of the computer history community are invited to nominate books. Send one copy of the nominated title to each of the committee members listed below. To be considered, book submissions must be postmarked by _May 15, 2015_. For more information, please contact Prof. Joseph November, the 2015 prize committee chair, at november(a)sc.edu. Current information about the prize, including the most recent call and a list of previous winners, always may be found at http://www.sigcis.org/chmprize.

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a while back, this list was discussing...
by dave.walden.family＠gmail.com 18 Apr '15

18 Apr '15

...getting accurate computing history to a larger audience. The following article in today's Boston Globe is perhaps a little bit relevant to that discussion: http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2015/04/17/lab-work-starting-online-ne…

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Taking about the past of the Internet as the future
by sigcos＠bobf.frankston.com 17 Apr '15

17 Apr '15

In my talk at IFTF this coming week (http://rmf.vc/IFTF2015) I plan to present a my own take on the history of the Internet as I watched it evolve as a byproduct of shifting intelligence into our devices. Some sense of this is in http://rmf.vc/IEEERefactoringCE. I realize that the "Institute For the Future" framing seems to be the opposite of history but the first step is to revisit the last fifty years in light of what we've learned since. We tend to fit the Internet into the story of telecommunications rather than recognizing that it a discontinuity and part of a very different story. For those in the New Jersey area I'm going to be at http://www.vintage.org/2015/east/ this weekend. Where do vintage computer fit into the mission of SIGCOS? BTW, for those of us without MUSE access how do we read http://www.infoculturejournal.org/abstracts/50.2? Bob Frankston http://Frankston.com @BobFrankston

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Fwd: Special issue of Information & Culture: Histories of the Internet
by Andrew Russell 17 Apr '15

17 Apr '15

Hi everyone - This new issue of Information & Culture on “Histories of the Internet” will be of interest to many of you, featuring six fresh and original accounts of the history of the Internet (and other networks), as well as an introductory essay by Tom Haigh, Bill Dutton, and me. Cheers, Andy Begin forwarded message: Information & Culture Volume 50, Issue 2, Spring 2015 ARTICLES Forging Histories of the Internet: Introducing a Special Issue of Information & Culture Thomas Haigh, Andrew L. Russell, and William H. Dutton “Singing the Strong Light Works of [American] Engineers”: Popular Histories of the Internet as Mythopoetic Literature Merav Katz-Kimchi >From Virtual to Social: Transforming Concepts and Images of the Internet Christian Oggolder >From the Mainframe to the Masses: A Participatory Computing Movement in Minnesota Education Joy Rankin Part of a Whole: RENATER, a Twenty-Year-Old Network within the Internet Valérie Schafer “If You Build It, They Will Come”: Lusk, Wyoming, and the Information Highway Imaginaire, 1989–1999 Nadine I. Kozak Professional Work for Nothing: Software Commercialization and “An Open Letter to Hobbyists” Kevin Driscoll http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/journals/information-culture Sheila Scoville Journals Promotion Coordinator University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 | Austin, TX 78731-7819 P: (512) 232-7618

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Fwd: [Asis-l] Call for I-Stories: SIG History and Foundations of Information Science
by Andrew Russell 14 Apr '15

14 Apr '15

Perhaps of interest to the information historians on the list…. Begin forwarded message: Date: April 11, 2015 at 10:19:35 AM EDT From: IBEKWE-SANJUAN Fidelia <fidelia.ibekwe-sanjuan(a)univ-amu.fr<mailto:fidelia.ibekwe-sanjuan@univ-amu.fr>> To: <sighfis-l(a)asis.org<mailto:sighfis-l@asis.org>>, <asis-l(a)asis.org<mailto:asis-l@asis.org>> Subject: [Asis-l] Call for I-Stories: SIG History and Foundations of Information Science +++ Please circulate widely via your mailing lists (SIGs and student chapters) and to your masters students+++ Call for I-Stories SIG History & Foundations of Information Science http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGHFIS/ Information and communication phenomena are at the heart of our daily lives. They are how we know things and yet our understanding of these concepts and underlying phenomena are at best slippery. Just when we think we’ve pinned or penned them down nicely with a few well chosen phrases, we discover that those phrases are inadequate, that others disagree with our definitions or that many other conceptions abound. Not to bore you with the many varied conceptions of information, the aim of this call for I-Stories is to bring forth, through everyday experience, the many different things information can mean to different people or to the same person in different circumstances in a lively and entertaining manner. The SIG History & Foundations of Information Science solicits stories on how information and its understanding affect our daily lives, be it in work situations, in our private lives, in our research. The stories of information and around information should showcase how effective or ineffective the concept may be, how it can mean different things to different people, how that may have got you into misunderstandings and how that has got you thinking about information in general. The stories may concern an event, something that happened to you or to someone you know, a talk you heard or involve well known scholars and how they have grappled with this open-ended question. We encourage scholars, practitioners, and especially students to send us a text of at most, 1000 words which can be illustrated with drawings. A jury chosen from SIG HFIS members will choose 5 stories that shed startling, informative and unexpected insights into our understanding of the phenomenon we call information and of the field we call information science/studies. Stories by students will receive particular attention and if selected, their authors will receive a 1 year free membership to ASIST and to HFIS. Membership benefits are varied and can be consulted at http://www.asis.org/. Stories written by practitioners or faculty members if selected will receive a gift card of $30 as well as 1 year free membership to SIG HFIS. Please send your stories to fidelia.ibekwe-sanjuan(a)univ-amu.fr<mailto:fidelia.ibekwe-sanjuan@univ-amu.fr> by 30th may. The jury will render the result of its deliberation by 30th June. Fidelia Ibekwe-SanJuan HFIS chair (2014-2015) -- ----------------------------------------------------- Fidelia Ibekwe-SanJuan (Ph.D.) Full Professor (Professeur des Universités) School of Journalism & Communication (EJCAM) http://ejcam.univ-amu.fr/ Aix-Marseille University - France. Homepage: http://fidelia1.free.fr/ IRSIC research team: http://irsic.univ-amu.fr/ -----------------------------------------------------

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Fwd: The Extraordinary Growing Impact Of The History Of Science
by Brian Randell 12 Apr '15

12 Apr '15

Hi: Begin forwarded message: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Hendricks Dewayne" <dewayne(a)warpspeed.com<mailto:dewayne@warpspeed.com>> Date: Apr 10, 2015 11:36 AM Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Extraordinary Growing Impact Of The History Of Science To: "Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net" <dewayne-net(a)warpspeed.com<mailto:dewayne-net@warpspeed.com>> Cc: The Extraordinary Growing Impact Of The History Of Science Old scientific papers never die, they just fade away. Or they used to. Now electronic publishing has made old papers as easy to find as new ones, and the effect on science is profound By The Physics arXiv Blog Nov 13 2014 <https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-extraordinary-growing-impact-…> Walk through the archives of any academic library and you will find dusty shelves of scientific journals dating back to the early 20th century and sometimes beyond. It’s hard to know the last time many of these volumes were opened or whether the information they contain has long been forgotten. That’s in stark contrast to the way most scientists access scientific papers today; in a matter of seconds after a straightforward web search. Never has it been so easy to look up a circuit diagram, learn about gene therapy or read the latest papers about black holes. That’s why many scientific publishers have digitised their archives to make the entire history of their publications available online and as easy to search as modern papers. That raises an interesting question — if old papers are now as easy to find as modern ones, are they having as great an impact? Today we get an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Alex Verstak and pals at Google. These guys have studied how often older articles are cited in modern papers and how this has changed since the advent of electronic publishing in the 1990s. Their conclusion is that older papers are having an increasingly important impact on modern science — that the distinction between old and new, between the historical and the modern, no longer creates a division in science. These guys base their work on a database of citations in scientific papers published between 1990 and 2013 in 9 broad areas of research subdivided into 261 subject areas. For each discipline, they then plotted the percentage of citations to papers that were at least ten years old. The results show a clear trend. “Our analysis indicates that, in 2013, 36% of citations were to articles that are at least 10 years old and that this fraction has grown 28% since 1990,” say Verstak and co. What’s more, the increase in the last ten years is twice as big as in the previous ten years, so the trend appears to be accelerating. The results solve an ongoing conundrum among researchers involved in scientometrics, the study of science and scientific research. Some of these researchers have long argued that the ongoing digitisation of historical papers should automatically ensure that they are cited more often. Others point out that there has been a huge increase in the number scientific papers published in recent years so historical papers should be a smaller proportion of the total and therefore cited less. The work of Verstak and co shows that the former effect has won out. “Now that finding and reading relevant older articles is about as easy as finding and reading recently published articles, significant advances aren’t getting lost on the shelves and are influencing work worldwide for years after,” they say. There are one or two interesting wrinkles in the data. These trends appeared in 231 out of 261 subject areas. But many of the subject areas that experienced a decline in older citations were part of two broader areas: chemical and materials sciences, and engineering. Consequently, these broad disciplines show almost no increase in old citations. Just why citation trends should differ in these disciplines isn’t clear. Nevertheless, that’s a fascinating result. Instead of fading into the past, the history of science is becoming a growing influence on current practice. That’s clearly no bad thing. But here’s the thing — if the history of science can have a bigger impact on the present, why not history in general? Could it be that this work is the first sign that the digital age is likely to make history a much more important part of everybody’s present because it will be just as easy to access electronically as the recent past? Answers in the comments section please. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1411.027<http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.0275>5 : On the Shoulders of Giants: The Growing Impact of Older Articles Cheers Brian Randell -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk<mailto:Brian.Randell@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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