April 2016 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

IBM 610
by John Impagliazzo 25 Apr '18

25 Apr '18

Hi All, Allegedly, some consider the IBM 610 Auto-Point computer (1959) the ‘first personal computer’. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/plugboard.html Is this true – even slightly true?? John John Impagliazzo, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus, Hofstra University IEEE Life Fellow ACM Distinguished Educator

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

10 Nov '16

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

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Media Archaeology Summer Program, Uni of Pisa, July 4-8
by david parisi 29 Apr '16

29 Apr '16

Hi SIGCISers, Passing along details for a summer program I'm involved with in Pisa this July. Details below. Happy to answer questions, or contact the program coordinator for particulars. Thanks for looking, David Media Archaeology summer school University of Pisa July 4-8 350 € (300 € for registration by May 2) Includes course materials, lunches, and coffee breaks Program description: Rather than a discipline, Media Archaeology may be seen as a perspective which addresses different practices and methodological approaches. Media culture – including the culture of the so-called “new media” – is investigated as a product of stratification of different social and historical processes. The aim of the Summer school is double: on one hand to draw a map of contemporary Media Archaeology; on the other hand, to discuss about open fields of research from the perspective of Media Archaeology. The course will be held by European and North American experts from different disciplines who will illustrate the complexity and potentialities of this perspective. Faculty staff includes: James Hay (University of Illinois, Vincenzo Mele (University of Pisa), David Parisi (College of Charleston), Jeremy Packer (University of Toronto), Jussi Parikka (University of Southampton), Wanda Strauven (University of Amsterdam). For further details, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/Summer-School-Media-Archaeology-Pisa-Italy-2057268… <https://owa.cofc.edu/owa/UrlBlockedError.aspx> http://mediarchaeology.hosting.unipi.it/ <https://owa.cofc.edu/owa/UrlBlockedError.aspx> For questions, please contact program coordinator Anita Paolicchi ( ssma.pisa(a)gmail.com <https://owa.cofc.edu/owa/redir.aspx?REF=W3OOQBo1YErjF1Mh4qoOtgX6hHOEOORW7XZ…..> ). === David Parisi, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Communication Faculty Affiliate, Computer Science Department College of Charleston parisid(a)cofc.edu <https://owa.cofc.edu/owa/UrlBlockedError.aspx> http://communication.cofc.edu/about/faculty-staff-listing/parisi-david.php <https://owa.cofc.edu/owa/UrlBlockedError.aspx> Twitter: @Dave_Parisi <https://owa.cofc.edu/owa/UrlBlockedError.aspx>

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Adele Goldberg Paper - Now Available
by Dag Spicer 28 Apr '16

28 Apr '16

Dear SIGCIS friends, The Adele Goldberg papers are now open for research. Goldberg co-developed Smalltalk while at Xerox PARC and her papers relate to the development and licensing of that programming language. View the collection guide at http://tinyurl.com/j85xl9v. Thank you to the Council on Library and Information Resources’ Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant for providing the funds that made processing this collection possible. Best wishes, 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

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test- please ignore
by Subramanian, Ramesh Prof. 27 Apr '16

27 Apr '16

test, please ignore --------------------------------------------------------------------- Ramesh Subramanian, Ph.D. Gabriel Ferrucci Professor of Computer Information Systems Quinnipiac University Hamden, CT 06518. Phone: 203-582-5276 Email:rameshs@quinnipiac.edu Web: http://www.quinnipiac.edu/about/directory/faculty-detail/?Dept=16&Person=23… & Fellow, Yale Law School - Information Society Project New Haven, CT 06511 Email: ramesh.subramanian(a)yale.edu Web: http://www.law.yale.edu/intellectuallife/9841.htm

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] 24th International Congress, Rio, July 2017
by Evan Hepler-Smith 26 Apr '16

26 Apr '16

Dear James and all, On James's final point re: other proposals: Geert Somsen (historian of science at Maastricht) and I are putting together a symposium on modes of international collaboration in science. From our abstract: When the universality of scientific knowledge was taken for granted, the international dimensions of scientific practice often followed as a corollary. Today, historians have transformed these assumptions into research questions. In what senses has past science been universal and international? How has it come to be so, or to appear so? We now see the international character of science as an accomplishment, requiring various kinds of work, and connecting rather than transcending the localities in which knowledge is produced – internationalism is itself necessarily local. This symposium examines how the internationality of science has been achieved, what forms it has taken, how it has been idealized, and what on-the-ground practices and technologies have sustained it. We're planning on breaking this up into a half-dozen or so sub-themes, including communications and information technology, capitalism, international institutions, environment, and ideology. If we're accepted, and depending on the amount of room the program committee gives us, we may have a few extra spots for presenters. If anyone here might be interested, let me know! Thanks, Evan On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 4:14 PM, James Sumner <james.sumner(a)manchester.ac.uk > wrote: > Dear SIGCIS members > > I'm writing -- inevitably, far too close to the deadline -- to gauge > whether there is interest in offering a symposium submission to the 25th > International Congress of History of Science and Technology in Rio de > Janeiro, Brazil, 23-29 July 2017, <http://www.ichst2017.sbhc.org.br/>. > > This is the successor to the 24th Congress held in Manchester in 2013, > for which I co-chaired the Local Organising Committee and which was the > single largest conference in the field to date, with over 1750 > participants. The 2013 programme was strong on computing and related > themes -- see > <http://www.ichstm2013.co.uk/programme/guide/m/discipline.html#a3> -- > and included > a mathematical, algorithmic and machine-focused symposium, organised by > Maarten Bullynck, Liesbeth De Mol and Marie-José Durand-Richard; a > symposium on COMECON technology, put together by Helena Durnova and > Slawomir Lotysz for ICOHTEC (whose annual meeting occurred as a > satellite to the Congress, as will again happen in Rio); and a symposium > on computing applications in various contexts which I organised along > with Miguel Garcia-Sancho. > > The Congress has a more global reach than most forums in the history of > science and technology, and tends to be inclusive in its programming > selection. There will be a separate call for stand-alone papers, but the > call for symposia closes relatively soon, on Saturday 30 April. A > "symposium" in Congress parlance is a 90-minute thematic session, or > group of linked sessions (the largest symposia run for four sessions a > day over several days!) consisting of papers and, optionally, commentaries. > > The symposium call does not require individual paper titles/abstracts, > or a definite list of contributors, but does require an indicative > contributor list and a short general abstract. One inviolate rule is > that the organisation of the symposium must be a collaborative effort > between at least two contributors representing different countries. > > If anyone is interested in contributing or collaborating, I'd be > grateful if you would let me know directly. (I'd also be interested to > hear news of any proposals for Rio which have already been settled, > whether for the Congress or ICOHTEC call.) > > All best > James > > > _______________________________________________ > This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion > list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member > posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list > archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and > you can change your subscription options at > http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org -- Evan Hepler-Smith Doctoral Candidate, History of Science Princeton University 339.203.1096 evanheplersmith.com

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Fwd: Dot-Dash-Ring tone app, per Gene Abbey
by Susan Sherwood 25 Apr '16

25 Apr '16

I thought that all of the dots were used up by the dotcom era and that was why Morse code is no longer used. -- Gene Abbey, Link's Lunar Module Simulator Project Manager (1964-1968) and TechWorks! Lunar Module Simulator Restoration Project Manager (2016 -- completion) Enjoy and spread the word! - -.-- Susan PS Morse Code Day is on Wednesday, 27 April, birthday of Samuel B. Morse -- Susan Sherwood, Executive Director Center for Technology & Innovation 321 Water Street, Binghamton, NY 13901 Future home of TechWorks! Experience Innovation - past, present, & future Telephone 607-723-8600 Website www.ctandi.org Please send this version (with correct dates) and vintage image of station and antenna tower. Chuckling too hard to pay attention to the details. Susan -- Susan Sherwood, Executive Director Center for Technology & Innovation 321 Water Street, Binghamton, NY 13901 Future home of TechWorks! Experience Innovation - past, present, & future Telephone 607-723-8600 Website www.ctandi.org

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Dot-Dash-Ring tone app per Gene Abbey
by Susan Sherwood 25 Apr '16

25 Apr '16

I thought that all of the dots were used up by the dotcom era and that was why Morris code is no longer used. -- Gene Abbey, Link's Lunar Module Simulator Project Manager (1966-1968) and TechWorks! Lunar Module Simulator Restoration Project Manager (2016 -- completion) Enjoy and spread the word! - -.-- Susan PS Morse Code Day is on Wednesday, 27 April, birthday of Samuel B. Morse -- Susan Sherwood, Executive Director Center for Technology & Innovation 321 Water Street, Binghamton, NY 13901 Future home of TechWorks! Experience Innovation - past, present, & future Telephone 607-723-8600 Website www.ctandi.org

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2015 Algorithm Auction
by Jonathan Coopersmith 24 Apr '16

24 Apr '16

Catching up (partly) on a backlog of journals, I ran across a small piece on the March 27, 2015 Algorithm Auction, an art auction of computer code: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/30/beautiful-code File away for a future small project. Jonathan Jonathan Coopersmith Associate Professor Department of History Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-4236 979.845.7151 979.862.4314 (fax) http://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/author/42 : latest post on Osama bin Laden and NASA is http://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/153671 * FAXED. The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine* is available from Johns Hopkins University Press.

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just published: Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing
by Matthew Kirschenbaum 22 Apr '16

22 Apr '16

Hi all, In keeping with what I understand to be acceptable list policy, I am posting this one-time book announcement: Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing, published by Harvard University Press/Belknap Press http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674417076 I'm especially excited to post it here, not just to sell a book or two, or even because it draws on the published work of some people here, but because I've followed the last couple of years of discussion about the growing popular and interdisciplinary academic interest in the history of computers and technology, including the satisfaction of seeing this work reach a wider audience but also some of the frustrations (and abuses) that have followed. I've tried very hard in the book to be respectful, both to the history and to the community of historians who have been working in it for a lot longer than I have. I can't be the one to judge how well I've succeeded, however. My own background is in English literature, and so Track Changes is an example of what literary history looks like when it meets the history of computing. Besides many stories about writers and their computers, the book includes extended accounts of IBM's MT/ST and other early word processors, such as the Redactron Data Secretary. It draws on original oral history interviews I conducted with Evelyn Berezin, Charles Simonyi, Seymour Rubinstein, Andy van Dam, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Tesler, and many others. Here's a very brief excerpt (citations omitted); I've also attached the book flier. Best, Matt PERFECT On March 20, 1981, the *New York Times* Op-Ed page carried a brief item musing that historians and biographers might soon be in for “slim pickings.” What precipitated this pronouncement was a report that Jimmy Carter, just months out of office and hard at work on his memoirs for Bantam, had lost several pages of text after hitting the wrong keys on his brand new $12,000 Lanier word processor. Word processing, the *Times* speculated, threatened to put historians—“those bloodhounds of the paper trail”—out of business. “Archivists,” meanwhile, “will be deprived of words scratched out, penciled in and transposed with wandering arrows. They will have to make do with electronically perfect texts.” *Perfect.* No other word so encapsulates the aspirations as well as the anxieties that s accrued around word processing. We remember WordPerfect, of course, the software that rose to dominate the market after WordStar (from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s), but there were also now largely forgotten programs like LetterPerfect and Perfect Writer. Etymologically, “perfect” comes to us from the Latin *perfectus,* by way of Old French; the original Latin meaning encompassed the idea of completeness, the state of fullness or of being finished. The familiar hand gesture, index finger bent to touch tip of thumb, other fingers stiffened in accent, is a way of visualizing that condensed state of ripeness, the attainment of closure and completion. In word processing’s parlance, “perfect” was meant to connote a finished document, flawlessly formatted and printed, cleanly and clearly expressed. The sense of completion, meanwhile, also spoke to the desire for efficiency and productivity, a zeal for getting the job done. Could a single invention both improve the quality of the work being performed and accelerate the pace at which it was completed? It seemed too good to be true, yet this dual ideal—the quest for flawless efficiency and effectively flawless results—was present from the very inception of word processing as a concept and technology. In 1974 a consultant named Walter A. Kleinschrod produced a report on word processing for the American Management Association. “The touch of a button,” he wrote, “triggers a perfect final copy.” A second AMA text echoed and embellished this language: “The typist can push a button and the machine, tirelessly and flawlessly, chugs out a perfect draft—once, twice, a hundred times if required, without fatigue or the errors fatigue can bring.” Whatever else it was then, word processing was also a form of futurism that, as Thomas Haigh deftly notes, was of a piece with a push-button lifestyle and, indeed, food processing, which was introduced to consumers by Cuisinart at just about the same time. As word processing continued to mature and also transition from dedicated stand-alone systems to early personal computers, this original ideal lost none of its appeal. “With a word processing system,” wrote computer scientist Ivan Flores a decade later in 1983, “you can actually produce a perfect document.” Error was the archenemy of perfection: typos, misprints, mistakes, caked-up layers of correction fluid, and patches of paper rubbed raw by erasures—all of these disrupted the smooth, homogeneous surface of an impeccably presented text. So obsessed were early office managers with the pernicious influence of error on efficiency that entire studies were commissioned; the habits of typists were scrutinized at the most minute levels. It was known, for example, that a secretary making a mistake in the first few lines of the page was likely to remove it and feed in a fresh sheet and start anew; a mistake introduced farther down the page, however, would be attacked by the eraser. It was known how long the rubbing and retyping would take, along with the erasure and correction of any carbons associated with the original page. And, of course, it was known how much this all cost—in paper, in carbons, in erasers, and above all, in time. Word processing promised to change all that. “Errors,” proclaimed the Kleinschrod report, “are no longer sins of incompetence, destroyers of confidence.” Indeed, they were so “easily rectified” that “first-time perfection” was no longer demanded, marking an astonishing shift in attitude. “Recording on magnetic tape is just as easy as typing at your fastest speed,” assured a roughly contemporary manual prepared by IBM’s Office Products Division in support of its most advanced word processing product at the time, the Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter (see Chapter 8). “Typographical errors are corrected merely by backspacing and typing over the incorrect character. A perfect tape is created which gives you a perfect copy . . . and no erasing!” -- Matthew Kirschenbaum Associate Professor of English Associate Director, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) University of Maryland http://mkirschenbaum.net or @mkirschenbaum on Twitter

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