July 2015 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Amiga 30th Anniversary Event - History from Below
by Dag Spicer 26 Aug '15

26 Aug '15

Hello friends, If any of you are exploring microcomputers, computer graphics or the rise of personal computing in your work and would like see a unique world-class collation of (mostly functioning) Amiga and other microcomputers, please consider attending this upcoming CHM event. Former Amiga, Apple, and Atari employees in attendance make this a great ‘guerrilla oral history’ opportunity too! Dag --------- The Amiga 30th anniversary event at the Computer History Museum will be the ultimate tribute to the Amiga Computer. Consisting of a two day exhibit hall complete with massive historical display, game zone, presentation area, and exhibitors such as A-Eon, Friend Software Labs, CastAR from Technical illusions, Amiga Forever, Individual Computers, Jim Drew of CBMStuff, and others. In addition to the Amiga systems present, the show will also have a collection of Atari, Apple, Commodore, and other retro computer systems. The creators of the Amiga have been involved in some of gaming and computing's most notable projects like Defender, Atari 2600, Macintosh, Atari Lynx, 3D0, and more. Come join us for a weekend of Amiga and retro computing fun! Starting on July 25th, the event features 2 days of exhibit hall and a banquet Saturday evening with panel discussion. Tickets and more details are available on www.amiga30.com<http://www.amiga30.com>. ----------- -- 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

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GMO biology transformed by "Inventor of Email"
by Thomas Haigh 29 Jul '15

29 Jul '15

Dear SIGCIS, There's been an interesting new development in the long-running story of the self-proclaimed "Inventor of Email" V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai ( <http://www.sigcis.org/ayyadurai> www.sigcis.org/ayyadurai) Since last year's big push ( <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140903/18514728409/huffington-post-fina lly-responds-stands-its-completely-bogus-totally-debunked-history-email-seri es.shtml> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140903/18514728409/huffington-post-final ly-responds-stands-its-completely-bogus-totally-debunked-history-email-serie s.shtml) just before his wedding to The Nanny we hadn't heard too much from him. Luckily for us, his new publicity campaign takes place on an entirely different front. Read all about it at <http://kfolta.blogspot.com/2015/07/munich-is-not-by-florida-no.html> http://kfolta.blogspot.com/2015/07/munich-is-not-by-florida-no.html (Kevin Folta) and <http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/07/29/ayyadurais-formaldehyde-in -gmos-claim-challenged-engineer-refuses-verification-offer/> http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/07/29/ayyadurais-formaldehyde-in- gmos-claim-challenged-engineer-refuses-verification-offer/ (Kavin Senapathy). Short version: he's published a paper, in a reportedly predatory open access journal, which is being aggressively promoted as proof that GMOs cause cancer. The highlight of this was a launch event where he was flanked by Neil Young and the Governor of Vermont. What the paper actually claims, according to the above links, is that he has produced a computer model that predicts elevated levels of formaldehyde in GMO soybeans. However it does not report any attempt to test whether such levels are found in actual soybeans. Ayyadurai's center is promoting some kind of "raw food certification" and testing service which would require non-GMO content. <http://www.integrativesystems.org/research/food-research/> http://www.integrativesystems.org/research/food-research/ <http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&ua ct=8&ved=0CAcQjRxqFQoTCKm07r6ngccCFVHygAodSKsIOA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtub e.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DpUBo9efuSk8&ei=2Ui5VenjKdHkgwTI1qLAAw&bvm=bv.99028883,d. eXY&psig=AFQjCNHUqgX843yhtRkLpFP7_ZqnE0Kb4A&ust=1438292568288536> The journal in question, Agricultural Sciences, is one of hundreds published by Scientific Research Publishing, which specializes in author pays open access publication. One of its other journals became famous after accepting a computer-generated nonsense paper: http://thatsmathematics.com/blog/archives/102. Debunking this claim is the job of biologists, not historians, but it will be interesting to see how it goes for them. On the one hand academic scientists still hold a clearer and stronger public mandate to speak for natural processes than academic historians do to speak for the past. On the other hand, there is a huge preexisting constituency primed for putatively scientific validation that GMOs are dangerous and will kill them. Whereas few people initially felt strongly about who invented email, and Ayyadurai's attempt spread a conspiracy theory (by invoking the evils of corporate-backed big business in collusion with corrupt historians and racist Americans) has enjoyed only limited success. I do think that the way he is making his claim might prove interesting to science studies scholars. To me it is an exaggerated parody of the arrival of physicists in other fields, most notably biology, after WWII. The focus on "systems" also has a retro, 1950s RAND Corporation kind of feel to it. Here's the relevant part of Senapthay's report: Ayyadurai has side stepped the invitation [to test actual soybeans]. On Tuesday, he said he would only agree to testing if there were new across-the-board standards - that he personally set up. He modestly proposed that he is willing to meet with "big agribusiness" himself to draw up these new standards. Why would Ayyadurai need to be involved in setting up "new" standards? Because, he said, only he has the expertise to establish the evaluation protocol, not the geneticists and scientists who have been working in the field for decades. "The biologists that are approaching this have no knowledge of modern biology, and that biology is used in a lot of the [pro-GE] articles we're seeing," he stated. Explaining that systems biology, which he characterized as taking into account all of the complex metabolic interactions in a living cell, integrates and aggregates big data from a vast number of experiments, he continued, "These people don't really know what biology is. Systems biology basically says you aggregate experiments." To paint all geneticists and biotechnology scientists with a "they don't know what biology is" brush is simultaneously arrogant and brilliant. It casts Ayyadurai as the lone independent expert in this area of scientific inquiry. So to those of us pondering the evolution of computer simulation as an experimental technique within the natural sciences (which I've been thinking about in the context of the use of ENIAC for the first computerized Monte Carlo simulation: <http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/Writing/LosAlamosBetsOnENIAC.pdf> http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/Writing/LosAlamosBetsOnENIAC.pdf) this has some interesting resonances. As Paul Edwards argued in A Vast Machine (winner of the SIGCIS Computer History Museum Prize), in areas of science such as climate modelling there is no such a thing as raw data that can usefully be examined without an enormously complex computer model. Measuring the concentration of a particular organic chemical in a crop is not usually considered to be one of those areas, but perhaps Ayyadurai can convince environmentalists that his model trumps the outmoded pre-systems world of physical experiments. Talking of climate modelling, this reminds me of a recent article by William Saletan, <http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/are_gmos_s afe_yes_the_case_against_them_is_full_of_fraud_lies_and_errors.html> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/are_gmos_sa fe_yes_the_case_against_them_is_full_of_fraud_lies_and_errors.html, which makes a persuasive case that the anti-GMO lobby is basically the climate change denial campaign of the left and is just as dangerous. Best wishes, Tom

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Codebreaking
by Daniel Ferrell 24 Jul '15

24 Jul '15

SIGCIS members: What are some good resources on the topic of codebreaking during WWII? -Daniel Ferrell Home Acceptance Corporation (NMLS #1151715). 65 S. Outer Rd. P.O. Box 72 Benton, MO 63736

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interview with Internet pioneer John Day
by Lori Emerson 24 Jul '15

24 Jul '15

Dear all, perhaps some of you will be interested in this interview I did with John Day - Day is a computer scientist who has been involved developing the communication protocols of the Internet and Arpanet since the 70s. I've given it the hyperbolic title of "What's Wrong With the Internet and How We Can Fix It." http://loriemerson.net/2015/07/23/whats-wrong-with-the-internet-and-how-we-… The discussion is more technical than I would have liked, but still, I'd be grateful to hear any suggestions you might have about where we could publish it (other than my blog). yours, Lori -- Lori Emerson Associate Professor | Director, Media Archaeology Lab Department of English and Intermedia Arts, Writing, and Performance University of Colorado at Boulder Hellems 101, 226 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0226 loriemerson.net | mediaarchaeologylab.com

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CFP>The 11th Annual Social Informatics Research Symposium: The Impacts of Social Informatics Research
by Thomas Haigh 16 Jul '15

16 Jul '15

This half-day event (below) may be of interest to some SIGCIS members. It’s not the best venue for conventional historical work, but could be a good fit if you are more oriented towards the “iSchool” world or the theme of community engagement. Both ASIS&T and its workshops tend to have high registration costs (IIRC around $600 and $150 respectively in previous years), but I understand that if attending only the workshop it is not necessary to register for the conference. Tom From: Sigtis-l [mailto:sigtis-l-bounces@asis.org] On Behalf Of Fichman, Pnina Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2015 10:36 AM To: Fichman, Pnina Subject: [Sigtis-l] CFP>The 11th Annual Social Informatics Research Symposium: The Impacts of Social Informatics Research Second Call for Papers and Participation The 11th Annual Social Informatics Research Symposium: The Impacts of Social Informatics Research Sponsored by: ASIS&T SIG Social Informatics and the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, Indiana University Saturday, November 7, 2015, 8:30 AM - 1:00 PM Hyatt Regency St. Louis at the Arch, USA Organizers: Pnina Fichman, Indiana University (fichman(a)indiana.edu <mailto:fichman@indiana.edu> ) Howard Rosenbaum, Indiana University (hrosenba(a)indiana.edu <mailto:hrosenba@indiana.edu> ) Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics -and- School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University, Bloomington This year we are celebrating the start of our second decade of successful and vibrant SIG-SI Research Symposia. Since 2004, established scholars, young researchers and doctoral students interested in the study of people, ICT and work and play have gathered at the SIG-SI ASIS&T Annual Research Symposium to share their work and ideas. Approximately 110 papers, posters and panels have been presented and for the past three years, we have given awards for the best papers published by Social Informatics (SI) faculty and students in the preceding years. This year we gather to celebrate a decade of intellectually challenging and engaging work in SI and hope that you will join us. Our goal remains the same: to disseminate current research and research in progress that investigates the social aspects of information and communication technologies (ICT) across all areas of ASIS&T. Building on the success of past years, the symposium includes members of many SIGs and defines “social” broadly to include critical and historical approaches as well as contemporary social analysis. It also defines “technology” broadly to include traditional technologies (i.e., paper), state-of-the-art computer systems, and mobile and pervasive devices. Submissions may include empirical, critical and theoretical work, as well as richly described practice cases and demonstrations. We are particularly interested in work that assumes a critical stance towards the Symposium’s theme but are also soliciting research on other related social informatics topics. We encourage all scholars interested in social aspects of ICT (broadly defined) to share their research and research in progress by submitting an extended abstract of their work and attending the symposium. Papers that take social informatics further in theoretical conceptualization or empirical grounding are of particular interest to SIG-SI this year as we celebrate a decade of Symposia in ASIS&T. This year’s conference theme is “Information Science with Impact: Research in and for the Community.” In keeping with this theme, the symposium is also soliciting work from Social Informatics researchers that focuses on the impact of their work on industry, government, local/national/global community groups, individuals, information systems, GLAMs, and on other practice contexts. We are interested in work that addresses questions and issues such as the following: • What are the social, political, economic, and legal implications of social informatics research? • What are the ways in which social informatics research impacts various organizations, groups, and communities of practice? • How can social informatics researchers work more closely with members of these communities? • What can a social informatics approach tell us about roles of information and communication technologies in the work and social practices of people in these communities? • What are the challenges and opportunities of engaging in SI work that seeks to understand and improve the work and social lives of people in these communities? The schedule for the workshop will involve the presentations of papers and the best social informatics paper awards for 2013 (call to follow). We expect an engaging discussion with lively interactions with the audience. Deadlines: August 9, 2015: Submit a short paper (2000 words), a poster (500 words), or a panel (1000 words) by email to Kiotta Marshall (kiomarsh(a)indiana.edu <mailto:kiomarsh@indiana.edu> ) September 2, 2015: Author notifications (in time for conference early registration (NOTE: this timeline may be adjusted when the registration dates are announced). Fees: To be determined

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The Cultural Legacies of Ada Lovelace
by david nofre 14 Jul '15

14 Jul '15

Dear colleagues, The following CfP might be of interest for members of this list. David Nofre ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CfP: Texts and Contexts - The Cultural Legacies of Ada Lovelace <https://networks.h-net.org/node/9782/discussions/75276/cfp-texts-and-contex…> [discussion] by Carsten Timmermann <https://networks.h-net.org/users/carsten-timmermann> *Texts and Contexts: The Cultural Legacies of Ada Lovelace* /“That brain of mine is more than merely mortal; as time will show.”/ A workshop for graduate students and early career researchers Tuesday 8th December 2015 Mathematics Institute and St Anne’s College, Oxford The mathematician Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), daughter of poet Lord Byron, is celebrated as a pioneer of computer science. The notes she added to her translation of Luigi Menabrea’s paper on Charles Babbage’s analytical engine (1843) are considered to contain a prototype computer program. During her short life, Lovelace not only contributed original ideas to the plans for this early computer; she also imagined wider possibilities for the engine, such as its application to music, and meditated on its limitations. Lovelace leaves a legacy not just as a computer scientist, but also as a muse for literary writers, a model to help us understand the role of women in science in the nineteenth century, and an inspiration for neo-Victorian and steampunk traditions. As part of the University of Oxford’s celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of Lovelace’s birth, this one-day workshop will bring together graduates and early career researchers to discuss the varied cultural legacies of this extraordinary mathematician. The day will feature an expert panel including graphic novelist *Sydney Padua* and biographer *Richard Holmes*. The day will conclude with a reception and buffet when there will be opportunities to meet with speakers from the Ada Lovelace 200 Symposium, which will also take place in the Mathematics Institute on the following two days (9th-10th December). Researchers from all disciplines are invited to submit proposals for papers on the influences of Lovelace’s work, on topics including, but not limited to, literature, history, mathematics, music, visual art, and computer science. This might include: * Lovelace’s place in the study of the history of science. * Lovelace and *women in science* in the nineteenth century * Early nineteenth-century *scientific networks*, including Lovelace’s relationship with such individuals as Charles Babbage and Mary Somerville. * Lovelace and discussions about the *role of the imagination in scientific practice* in the nineteenth century. * Lovelace as *translator and commentator*. * *Mathematics and music*, and the musical possibilities Lovelace envisaged for Babbage’s engine. * Lovelace’s own *textual legacies*, such as her correspondence, childhood exercises and mathematical notes held in the Bodleian. * Lovelace’s *technological legacies*, from her seminal work on Babbage’s Analytical Engine to her impact on computer programming today. * Lovelace’s role in the *steampunk tradition*, from Gibson and Sterling’s /The Difference Engine/ to Sydney Padua’s /The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage/, and neo-Victorian fashion. * Efforts and activities to *commemorate and memorialise *Lovelace, from the recent Google Doodle to the annual Ada Lovelace Day. Proposals, not exceeding 250 words, for 15-minute papers should be submitted to adalovelaceworkshop(a)ell.ox.ac.uk <https://owa.nexus.ox.ac.uk/owa/adalovelaceworkshop@ell.ox.ac.uk/redir.aspx?…> by *5pm, Friday 28th August 2015*. Those who are accepted to speak at this graduate workshop will also be offered free registration for the Ada Lovelace 200 Symposium taking place on the following two days. For more information, please visit https://adalovelaceworkshop.wordpress.com <https://owa.nexus.ox.ac.uk/owa/adalovelaceworkshop@ell.ox.ac.uk/redir.aspx?…>.

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Query: the psychology of mood and emotion in HCI
by Luke Stark 13 Jul '15

13 Jul '15

Hello all, Long-time lurker, first-time poster here - thank you for maintaining a community that feels open and welcoming to queries from humble grad students! My doctoral research at NYU involves, in part, exploring how concepts and techniques from psychology around emotion and mood have been engaged with and incorporated into HCI scholarship, curricula, and design projects over the past 30 years (or haven't been, as the case may be). I've looked at many of the core texts applying cognitive psychology to HCI in the 80s (Card, Moran and Newell, the edited volume by Gardiner and Christie, and others) and of course Ros Picard's more recent work on affective computing, Phoebe Sengers writing on the subject, etc. But I can't help but feel like I'm missing things, particularly from the last century, that are a little more off the beaten track As such, I would hugely value leads or references to work in human factors or HCI from the 80s and 90s that looks explicitly at emotion, and bucked the prevalent information-processing mode of human cognition. This work might not exist (which will shape my argument in of itself) but I thought I would appeal to the SIGCIS hive mind. No reference is too obscure! I'm also curious as to how and where folks might have engaged with the psychological sciences in your own research on computation, and how you teach about emotion and mood in the computational context to your students (both those of you who are historians, and those of you who do more practical UX work). Any contributions (including thoughts via email, course syllabi, or insights) would be valuable research material (for which you'd get full credit) and much appreciated. Many thanks in advance! All the best, Luke Stark Ph.D. Candidate Department of Media, Culture, and Communication The Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development New York University 239 Greene Street, 8th Floor New York, NY 10003 tel: (1) 646.530.0400 fax: (1) 212.995.4046 email: luke.stark(a)nyu.edu

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CBS and Henry Ford Museum laud the "Inventor of EMAIL"
by Thomas Haigh 11 Jul '15

11 Jul '15

Dear SIGCIS, Maybe we shouldn't have particularly high expectations for a daytime TV science show fronted by a comedian. Maybe I should just learn not to care. But is CBS's snappily named "The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation With Mo Rocca" really without the services of anyone who knows how to work Google or crank up Wikipedia? Gerard Alberts was kind enough to send me footage from some kind of branded video screen at the Henry Ford Museum, which claims "14 year old boy" the correct answer to the question "The MO you know. Who invented email?" Mo Rocca's narration explains helpfully that "Shiva Ayyadurai built the email system that is largely what we use today. While some people dispute this claim, since electronic communications started with the telegraph and Morse code, you can't argue with a government patent. In 1982, Shiva was granted the US copyright on the word 'email.'" For those of you new to this list, or who have blanked the whole thing out, Ayyadurai's relentless campaign to convince journalists to call him "the inventor of email" has been running since 2010. Many technologies feature people who claim to have been the true inventors, whose pioneering work was unjustly marginalized by the later efforts of large corporations. Ayyadurai is unusual because his claimed invention happened many years after electronic mail was already in widespread use. So rather than simply having to prove that the program he wrote was "email" his quixotic mission is to prove that lots things we all thought were email actually weren't. I evaluated his claims at www.sigcis.org/ayyadurai <http://www.sigcis.org/ayyadurai> and discussed the media lessons of the original 2012 outbreak in a Communications of the ACM article (http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/CACM-SevenLessons.pdf) (One of my observations, proven again here, was that almost nobody seems to understand the difference between copyright and patent, or what each protects). I found the corresponding TV segment at http://cbsdreamteam.com/the-henry-fords-innovation-nation/episodes/inventor- of-email/. The broadcast narration calls Ayyadurai "hugely responsible" for the decline of postal mail, having "almost single handedly made that glue-licking face extinct." There follows a short interview Ayyadurai which calls himself "one of the best realizations of the American Dream." Lots of images from Ayyadurai's own website, and a moving conclusion praising Ayyadurai's humanitarian efforts. Ayyadurai has uploaded the clip as http://cbsdreamteam.com/the-henry-fords-innovation-nation/episodes/inventor- of-email/. The show is part of its morning entertainment lineup of, which the network calls "THE CBS DREAM TEAM, IT'S EPIC!". The segment is reportedly "FCC educational/informational compliant, targeted to 13- to 16-year-olds and appealing to all viewers." I've come to view Ayyadurai as an inadvertent public servant, a kind of mystery shopper to check the baseline competence of journalists and media outlets. Journalists who repeat his claims fail that test. In this case, for example by advertising to the world that they believe that a copyright is the same thing a patent. Or by making it clear that they don't scroll down the first screen of Google results to evaluate the credibility of the person they are interviewing, or to check the Wikipedia article about the technology he claims to have invented to see if it assigns him a significant role. As the Columbia Journalism Review urged after the Washington Post embarrassed itself back in 2012, <http://www.cjr.org/darts_and_laurels/darts_and_laurels_mayjune2012.php> "Google it, Man." In a better world that kind of professional failure would have consequences, such as having to find a line of work that doesn't involve explaining the history of technology to the public. Sometimes, alas, less is Mo. Best wishes, Tom

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CfP: The power of algorithms. Digital technologies and power relations in the 20th and 21st century
by Enrico Natale 09 Jul '15

09 Jul '15

//sorry for cross-posting// Dear community, The 4th Swiss Congress of Historical Sciences (9th-11th of June 2016 at the University of Lausanne) has launched a call for papers on the following topic: ”The power of algorithms. Digital technologies and power relations in the 20th and 21st century.” Contributions with an historical approach from all fields of the humanities and social sciences are welcome. Argument: Unlike individual and collective agents, technological developments are often perceived as being neutral, when it comes to their intentions or effects. This panel questions this notion considering the recent history of digital technologies and the Internet. The panel’s subject is the power of algorithms, namely the role of digital technologies in power relations from the second half of the 20th century up to the present. The panel is interested in concrete case studies that demonstrate how the development or implementation of digital technologies modified established power balances. These case studies might also focus on the power struggles surrounding the development of digital technologies. From their very beginning, in particular during their first years of existence, digital technologies have been complex and expensive. Are they therefore first and foremost reserved for an elite? What consequences does the generalized digitization of communications have for the relations between producers and users of digital technologies? Is the growing mass of users and data producers increasingly at the mercy of monopolizing technology suppliers? Who are possible mediators between these two parties? Growing amounts of available data volumes are exploited more and more, typically by organizations, and then re-used in numerous ways. Analyses of the role of computer science in the management and decision-making process of enterprises are thus very welcome; in particular those questioning the effects of said technologies on hierarchic relationships. In this context research might also focus on hijackings of digital technologies for subversive purposes and their mobilization by anti-establishment movements. Among the most widespread demands surrounding digital technologies are free access and global exchange of information. These demands circumvent and challenge numerous traditional power spheres, be it by the targeted publication of confidential information, by the analysis of huge volumes of data or by the open interpretation of copyright legislation. At this crossroads of global exchanges and national interests, one encounters strong tensions and a re-nationalization of cyberspace, when it comes to issues such as surveillance and the control of the Internet. Submissions of paper suggestions: The deadline for paper suggestions is August 25th 2015. Submissions can be made in French, German, Italian or English. Selected contributions will be published in the Journal “Histoire et Informatique” in 2017. Paper suggestions without presentation are also eligible for the publication. Please submit your suggestion for a paper (max. 500 words) to Christiane Sibille (christiane.sibille(a)dodis.ch) and Enrico Natale (enrico.natale(a)infoclio.ch) via e-mail. Links: 4th Swiss Congress of Historical Sciences Panel: The power of algorithms. Journal “Histoire et Informatique” Best regards, Enrico Natale infoclio.ch Hirschengraben 11 Postfach 6811 3001 Bern Tel: +41 31 311 75 72 Follow infoclio.ch on Twitter / Facebook.

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*Extended Deadline July 24th* - CFP: “Critical Data Studies” – Big Data & Society Special Theme
by Andrew J Iliadis 07 Jul '15

07 Jul '15

*Extended Deadline July 24th* - CFP: “Critical Data Studies” – Big Data & Society Special Theme Guest Editors: Andrew Iliadis (Purdue University) and Federica Russo (Universiteit van Amsterdam) Critical Data Studies (CDS) is a growing field of research that focuses on the unique theoretical, ethical, and epistemological challenges posed by “Big Data.” Rather than treat Big Data as a scientifically empirical, and therefore largely neutral phenomena, CDS advocates the view that data should be seen as always-already constituted within wider data assemblages. Assemblages is a concept that helps capture the multitude of ways that already-composed data structures inflect and interact with society, its organization and functioning, and the resulting impact on individuals’ daily lives. CDS questions the many assumptions about data that permeate contemporary literature on information and society by locating instances where data may be naively taken to denote objective and transparent informational entities. CDS may be viewed as an emerging field connected to Information Ethics, Software Studies, and Critical Information Studies in that it seeks to question the ethical import of information and Big Data for society. Problems of causality, quality, security, and uncertainty concern CDS scholars. Recent articles outlining the theoretical program of CDS offer a new platform from which to question data in this manner. We seek essays for this special volume that broaden these latest commitments in CDS to include new empirical research projects on information and communication technologies (ICTs) that fall under the umbrella of Big Data, while also seeking to question their attendant epistemological shifts. Through the critical lens of ethics and morality, this special volume opens up CDS to localizations where Big Data can no longer be seen as neutral, and where an ethics of Big Data might emerge. Issues of interest include (but are not limited to): - Causality: how should we find causes in the era of ‘data-driven science?’ Do we need a new conception of causality to fit with new practices? - Quality: how should we ensure that data are good enough quality for the purposes for which we use them? What should we make of the open access movement; what kind of new technologies might be needed? - Security: how can we adequately secure data, while making it accessible to those who need it? How do we protect databases? - Uncertainty: can Big Data help with uncertainty, or does it generate new uncertainties? What technologies are essential to reduce uncertainty elements in data-driven sciences? Proposals of 1000 words are invited for consideration and inclusion in the Special Theme to be published in Big Data & Society (BD&S), an open access peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes interdisciplinary work principally in the social sciences, humanities and computing and their intersections with the arts and natural sciences about the implications of Big Data for societies. Manuscripts should be 8,000 words for an Original Research Article, 3,000 words for a Commentary, and 1,000 words for an essay in the Early Career Research Forum section. All submissions of Original Research Articles to BD&S are double-blind, and triple peer-reviewed. Commentaries and ECR submissions are reviewed by the Guest Editors. Proposals should be sent to the Guest Editors: ailiadis(a)purdue.edu and f.russo(a)uva.nl Manuscript Guidelines: http://www.uk.sagepub.com/msg/bds.htm#PEERREVIEWPOLICY Style Guidelines: http://www.uk.sagepub.com/repository/binaries/pdf/SAGE_UK_style_guide_short… Proposal Deadline: July 10, 2015 *Extended Deadline July 24th* Notification of Acceptance: end of July Paper Deadline: October 4, 2015 Reviews Returned: end of December Revised Paper Deadline: February 29, 2016 Anticipated Publication Date: Spring/Summer 2016 CFP link: http://bigdatasoc.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/call-for-proposals-special-theme-o…

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