May 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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Forbes speculates that Peter Thiel may be underwriting Ayyadurai's lawsuit
by Thomas Haigh 05 Jul '16

05 Jul '16

Interesting news updates. The Times this morning reported speculation that the lawsuits of Hulk Hogan and others against Gawker were underwritten by someone intent on bankrupting the company. The report suggests that Hogan’s case is being pursued in a very unusual way, designed to maximize the hit to Gawker rather than the size of the award. It notes that “Several legal experts said that it was particularly unusual for a plaintiff using a lawyer being paid on a contingency basis not only to turn down settlement offers (several sizable settlements were proffered by Gawker) but also to pursue a strategy that prevented an insurance company from being able to contribute to a settlement.” Also that “Mr. Harder has brought two new cases against Gawker that seem puzzling. One is a defamation case on behalf of Shiva Ayyadurai, who claimed to have invented email. Gawker had written an article challenging his argument, similar to an article from The Washington Post and others on the same topic.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/business/dealbook/gawker-founder-suspects… Now Forbes reports that Hogan’s case is underwritten by Peter Thiel, the guy who was paying people to drop out of college. Ayyadurai’s lawsuit is filed by the same lawyer as Hogan’s, but according to Forbes “It is unclear if Thiel is helping to fund Ayyadurai or Terrill’s cases against Gawker.” https://archive.is/5G63D. Best wishes, Tom NB: If you haven’t been following all this, for background see www.sigcis.org/ayyadurai <http://www.sigcis.org/ayyadurai> and www.tomandmaria.com/tom/emailgrab <http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/emailgrab> .

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New journal of interest — Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture and Society
by Paul N. Edwards 31 May '16

31 May '16

This new Taylor & Francis journal <http://explore.tandfonline.com/page/ah/internet-histories> is edited by Niels Brügger (Managing Editor), Gerard Goggin, Valérie Schafer, Megan Ankerson, and Ian Milligan (Review Editor). I’m on the editorial board; I expect that some of you are too, or soon will be. First issue in 2017 — consider a submission! The journal is casting a broad net: Contributions might include but not be limited to: • History of the internet and the web • Web histories • History of networks • Alternative, marginal, or subcultural histories • Feminist, queer, and disability histories • Local and regional internet histories • Gender and race studies of digital cultures • Histories of digital recording, production, distribution, file formats and sharing • Internet and digital music and sound histories • Infrastructure studies • National paths to digitalization • Telecommunications and computing convergence • History of code, protocols, services, interfaces, graphical representation and interactivity • History of online communities • History of digital uses, users and cultures • Internet governance, regulation and policy history • Historical cross-media studies • Pedagogy and teaching of internet histories • Methodological approaches to study digital and network histories • Histories of internet policy, law, and regulation Best, Paul ————————————————— Paul N. Edwards, Professor of Information <http://www.si.umich.edu/> and History <http://www.lsa.umich.edu/history/> Terse replies are deliberate <http://five.sentenc.es/>. Here's why! <http://emailcharter.org/> University of Michigan School of Information <http://www.si.umich.edu/> 4437 North Quad 105 S. State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285 Twitter: @AVastMachine <https://twitter.com/avastmachine> Web: pne.people.si.umich.edu <http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/>

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Workshop at Siegen U. "Beyond ENIAC: Early Digital Platforms & Practices" June 9-11.
by Thomas Haigh 31 May '16

31 May '16

Hello SIGCIS, Those of you in proximity to Northern Germany might be interested in an event Ive organized for Siegen University the weekend after next. It will be a cozy little workshop intended to reexamine the early history of electronic computing from new perspectives, and to explore the potential of this history to contribute to media studies and computer science. It also marks the start of my association with Siegen University, where Im supposed to be a visiting professor part time for the next few years in conjunction with its research training group Locating Media, its research center Media of Cooperation, and its new iSchool (a joint venture between computer science and media studies). Over the next few years I should be organizing events, contributing to research, and helping to integrate the history of information technology into the curriculum for the iSchool degrees. Details on the workshop are at www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Workshop16 <http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Workshop16> . Im also pasting the current program below. If you are interested in coming then let me know. As far as I know there is no registration fee, though you would have to pay for meals and accommodation if needed. Best wishes, Tom Title: Beyond ENIAC: Early Digital Platforms & Practices Dates: June 10-12, 2016 Location: Ludwig Wittgenstein House, Unteres Schloß 3, 57072 Siegen, Germany <https://www.google.de/maps/place/Ludwig+Wittgenstein+Haus,+Campus+Unteres+S chloss,+Universit%C3%A4t+Siegen,+Unteres+Schlo%C3%9F+3,+57072+Siegen/(a)50.873 4858,8.0196467,16z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x47bc1c921a7894a3:0xd8fc3f688116cc03> (map link) . Organizer: Thomas Haigh ( <mailto:thomas.haigh@gmail.com> thomas.haigh(a)gmail.com) Sponsor: Collaborative research center "Media of Cooperation" of <http://www.uni-siegen.de/start/index.html.en?lang=en> Siegen University. The publication of <http://www.eniacinaction.com/> ENIAC In Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer (Haigh, Priestley & Rope, 2016) provides an opportunity to showcase new work on the history of computing and explore the place such work within media studies and computer science, the two key components of Siegen Universitys new <http://ischool.uni-siegen.de/home/> School of Media and Information. During the workshop many of Europes leading scholars of computing history will present their latest research to each other and participate in a series of roundtable discussions structured to provide lively interdisciplinary engagement. Early work on the history of computing was carried out by computers scientists and pioneers. It focused on technical analysis of the computers of the 1940s and 50s. As the history of computing has matured as a scholarly field its focus has shifted to social and cultural analysis and to later time periods. The shift reduced computer scientist Donald Knuth to tears, shed because <http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/Writing/CACMKnuthTears.pdf> history was being dumbed down." Now a new generation of scholars is returning to explore the world of early digital platforms and practices, combining careful attention to materiality and technical concerns with the broader perspectives of scholarly history. This trend creates new opportunities to situate studies of the early digital within media studies, where scholars recognize that the modern world is mediated by the affordances of digital platforms, and within computer science where more scholars may come to share Knuth's sense that historical knowledge is the foundation of deep technical understanding. Friday June 10 1:00-4:00 Afternoon social event TBA 5:00-7:00 Roundtable discussion: "What does the history of IT have to say to media studies and computer science?" * Liesbeth de Mol, CNRS/STL, Université de Lille * Carolin Gerlitz, University of Amsterdam * Sebastian Gießmann, Siegen University * Thomas Haigh, University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee & Siegen University (Moderator) * Volkmar Pipek, Siegen University * Erhard Schüttpelz, Siegen University * Matti Tedre, Stockholm University 8:00 Dinner: Restaurant Bar (the name of the restaurant, not just a generic description). Löhrstraße 51, 57072 Siegen. <http://www.restaurant-bar.de/> http://www.restaurant-bar.de Saturday June 11 9:00 11:00 ENIAC in Action * Thomas Haigh, University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee & Siegen University: The Lost Labors of ENIAC * Mark Priestley: A History of ENIAC in Three Programs * Discussion 11:30 1:00 Roundtable: Origins of the Operating System * Gerard Alberts, University of Amsterdam * Maarten Bullynck, SPHERE, Paris 8 * Pierre Mounier Kuhn, CNRS & Paris-Sorbonne 1:00 2:30 Lunch, Wirtshaus am Oberen Schlos. Oberes Schloss 1, DE-57072 Siegen. <http://www.wirtshausamschloss.de/> www.wirtshausamschloss.de 2:30 4:30: Works in Progress Session * Liesbeth De Mol, CNRS/STL, Université de Lille, A Small History of Small Machines. * Ksenia Tatarchenko, Geneva University, The Computer Does Not Believe in Tears: Soviet Programming, Professionalization and Gendering of Authority. * Edgar Daylight & G. Primiero, Category Mistakes in Computer Science. * Mark Priestley, "The Origins of Programming Language Styles". 5:00-6:30 Public talk by Campbell-Kelly, University of Warwick, "The Evolution of Programming Practice on the EDSAC: Insights from the National Museum of Computing Replica Project" followed by discussion. 7:00 Dinner, Restaurant Münzwerk.Morleystr. 4, 57072 Siegen. <http://restaurant-muenzwerk.de/> http://restaurant-muenzwerk.de Sunday June 12: 9:00-11:00: Works in Progress Session * Tristan Thielmann, Siegen University, "Appresenting Digits: The ENIAC Display" * Pierre Mounier Kuhn, CNRS & Paris-Sorbonne, "Programming CUBA: The evolution from 'coding' to 'anguage' on the first French computer (1949-1955)" * Thomas Haigh & Mark Priestley, "What Was Colossus, and Why Should We Care?" * Matti Tedre, Stockholm University, title TBA 11:30-1:00: Round table: Computing and the History of Science * Edgar Daylight * Maarten Bullynck, SPHERE, Paris 8 * Ksenia Tatarchenko, Geneva University 1:00 to 2:30: Lunch, Wirtshaus am Oberen Schloss. Oberes Schloss 1, DE-57072 Siegen. <http://www.wirtshausamschloss.de/> www.wirtshausamschloss.de Informal post-lunch discussion of possible follow-up activities for those who can stay longer.

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"Secret German WW2 code machine found on eBay"
by Brian Randell 30 May '16

30 May '16

Hi: >From BBC News: A historic machine used to swap top secret messages between Hitler and his generals has been found languishing in a shed in Essex. Volunteers from The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park used eBay to track down the keyboard of the Lorenz machine. It was advertised as a telegram machine and was for sale for £9.50. The museum, in Buckinghamshire, is now asking people to search for the motor, another key piece of the equipment. <snip> Full story at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36401663 The headline is misleading, but this article on BBC news about the Lorenz cipher machine that The National Museum of Computing has (on long term loan from the Norwegian Armed Forces Museum) and the teleprinter which was used with it, is otherwise good - and well-illustrated. The Lorenz cipher machine is to be formally unveiled at TNMOC on Feb 3, and the whole sequence, from encipherment of messages using the Lorenz, their interception by the Y service, through to code-breaking at Bletchley Park using the Colossus, and then deciphering messages using Tunny (Bletchley Park’s electro-mechanical equivalent of the Lorenz machine), demonstrated. I plan to be there. (The article mentions the museum’s interest in having a replica of the missing motor built - this seems a minor problem compared to building a replica Colossus! :-) 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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history of GPIO pins and standards
by maxigas 29 May '16

29 May '16

dear list, i am looking for information on the history of GPIO pins, especially if they are standardised. i find it hard to search for such books/articles because it is a kind of strange keyword and most scholarly literature i find it of a technical and not historical character. here is a documentation page showing the artefact: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/usage/gpio/ thanks for your assistance, -- maxigas, kiberpunk FA00 8129 13E9 2617 C614 0901 7879 63BC 287E D166 http://relay70.metatron.ai/ In Solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-hub http://custodians.online Share this letter - read it in public - leave it in the printer. Share your writing - digitize a book - upload your files. Don't let our knowledge be crushed. Care for the libraries - care for the metadata - care for the backup. Water the ❀❀❀❀❀ - clean the volcanoes.

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Artefacts conference CFP
by Jonathan Coopersmith 20 May '16

20 May '16

This CFP may be of interest: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/about-us/collections-and-research/news-and-… Jonathan Coopersmith 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* (Johns Hopkins University Press) is the co-recipient of the 2016 Business History Conference Hagley Prize for best book in business history.

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SIGCIS 2016 Program: Now Online!
by Gerardo Con Diaz 19 May '16

19 May '16

Dear SIGCIS, We are pleased to announce that we have posted the program for our meeting in Singapore. You may find it here: http://www.sigcis.org/workshop16. As always, our annual meeting promises to be a wonderful event! Best regards, Con Diaz on behalf of the Program Committee -- Gerardo Con Diaz PhD Candidate, Yale University Website: www.condiaz.com

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Shiva Ayyadurai Wants My Emails!
by Thomas Haigh 14 May '16

14 May '16

Hello SIGCIS, I've got a new post up at http://tomandmaria.com/Tom/emailgrab. The text is pasted below. It documents an attempt by Shiva Ayyadurai to obtain my emails though the Wisconsin open records. In other cases, this tactic has been widely condemned as an attack on academic freedom. Please forward to any other communities you think might be interested. Best wishes, Tom Shiva Ayyadurai Wants My Emails Thomas Haigh. www.tomandmaria.com/tom <http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom> thomas.haigh(a)gmail.com <mailto:thomas.haigh@gmail.com> Shiva Ayyadurai really, really wants to look through my emails. Remember Shiva Ayyadurai <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Ayyadurai> ? The man who has been engaged for five years on a quixotic but energetic public relations campaign to convince the world that he, and he alone, is the true "inventor of email"? Ayyadurai literally wrote the book on internet publicity <http://www.amazon.com/Internet-Publicity-Guide-Marketing-Cyberspace/dp/1880 559609> . His big problem is that you can't invent something that's already in widespread use. Ayyadurai said that he <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/30/email-turns-29-infographi_n_941699 .html> "designed and deployed" a prototype in 1980, but historians knew very well that electronic mail had been around since <http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/06/20/opinion/20110620-who-invented -email.html?_r=0> at least 1965 and by the mid-1970s was the main source of traffic <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET> on what evolved to become the Internet. I'm a historian of information technology, working in the School of Information Studies of the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee. As chair of SIGCIS <http://www.sigcis.org/> , the group for historians of information technology, I coordinated the response of the historical community to his bizarre claim. This included creating a report (www.sigcis.org/Ayyadurai <http://www.sigcis.org/Ayyadurai> ) documenting what Ayyadurai was saying and comparing it to what we knew about actual email history. He rarely names me or any of the other historians who have worked on documenting the actual history of email, though his campaign has denounced the members of SIGCIS as paid stooges for Raytheon, revisionists, a cabal, and <http://sophisticated%20public%20relations%20agents%20that%20manufacture/> "sophisticated public relations agents that manufacture and package 'histories,' no different than clever propaganda, to perpetuate lies of the pre-eminence of the military-industrial-academic complex." By this theory the entire academic history of computing community is "unconsciously cutting and copying" the work of Gizmodo blogger Sam Biddle, "believing Biddle's sensationalistic article to be the truth." According to Ayyadurai's recent lawsuit <http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160511/10135934407/guy-who-didnt-invent- email-sues-gawker-pointing-out-he-didnt-invent-email.shtml> , Biddle's pesky meddling has cost him at least $35 million. As I wrote in <http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/Writing/CACM-SevenLessons.pdf> Communications of the ACM, this is a fascinating case with many lessons to teach about public history, modern journalism, and the myths of invention. Anyway, I guess Ayyadurai has noticed me after all because now he now wants to read my emails. That's not a superuser perk that you get for having invented email. Your emails are perfectly safe from him. He's actually invoking the Wisconsin open records laws. These were originally passed in the Progressive Era <http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/a-brief-history-of -open-records-in-wisconsin/article_dbcad02a-3da7-572c-a38a-ed82bbb2dc57.html > to make sure that corrupt politicians couldn't hide their misdoings. Our current crop of politicians have made efforts to rewrite <http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/robin-vos-keeps-trying-to-gut-open-rec ords-law-b99573434z1-326754041.html> and reinterpret <http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/scott-walker-admin istration-finding-new-way-to-deny-public-records/article_16594fd9-4547-5c89- 9dc1-bc0395417f63.html> them to exclude themselves from scrutiny, but as the state Republican Party has found them a useful tool for harassing academics who have dared to comment on political issues <http://news.wisc.edu/chancellors-message-on-academic-freedom-and-open-recor ds/> they have been left in place for faculty in the University of Wisconsin system. <http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/documents/AyyaduraiRequestRedacted.pdf> His records request (http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/documents/AyyaduraiRequestRedacted.pdf) passed to me for action by UWM's public records custodian, demanded "a complete and thorough search of all filing systems and locations for all records maintained by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee pertaining to Dr. Thomas Haigh." The specific demand was for "all email correspondence - including email attachments - to or from Dr. Haigh containing" words such as Smithsonian, Shiva, and Raytheon. I dutifully searched through my university email account (thaigh(a)uwm.edu <mailto:thaigh@uwm.edu> ) for matching documents and passed them on to our university records custodian for vetting. The resulting stack of paper was quite large, but conspicuously failed to provide the salacious material Ayyadurai was fishing for. It included a student paper misspelling the name of Siva Vaidhyanathan <http://mediastudies.virginia.edu/people/sv2r> , numerous job posting emails mentioning the Smithsonian, the annual merit review filings of my school's faculty, and an entire sample issue of History Research spammed to me by its reportedly predatory publisher <https://scholarlyoa.com/2015/10/15/david-publishing-company-a-massive-spamm er-from-china/> . (Ayyadurai reportedly favors such journals <https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/gmos-junk-science-by-henry-i-- miller-and-kavin-senapathy-2015-09> for his own publications, so maybe he should send his work on email history there.) When the emails of another Wisconsin historian, William Cronon, were requested by the state Republican Party, Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/opinion/28krugman.html> that The hard right - which these days is more or less synonymous with the Republican Party - has a modus operandi when it comes to scholars expressing views it dislikes: never mind the substance, go for the smear. And that demand for copies of e-mails is obviously motivated by no more than a hope that it will provide something, anything, that can be used to subject Mr. Cronon to the usual treatment... After all, if you go through a large number of messages looking for lines that can be made to sound bad, you're bound to find a few. Legally, Republicans may be within their rights: Wisconsin's open records law provides public access to e-mails of government employees, although the law was clearly intended to apply to state officials, not university professors. But there's a clear chilling effect when scholars know that they may face witch hunts whenever they say things the G.O.P. doesn't like. Someone like Mr. Cronon can stand up to the pressure. But less eminent and established researchers won't just become reluctant to act as concerned citizens, weighing in on current debates; they'll be deterred from even doing research on topics that might get them in trouble. What's at stake here, in other words, is whether we're going to have an open national discourse in which scholars feel free to go wherever the evidence takes them, and to contribute to public understanding. Republicans, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, are trying to shut that kind of discourse down. It's up to the rest of us to see that they don't succeed. Anthony Grafton, writing in the New York Review of Books <http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/04/04/academic-freedom-cronon-affair/> , argued that Again and again in recent times, Republican operatives have used fragments snatched out of context from emails-as they have used fragments snatched out of context from recorded conversations <http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/mar/18/embattled-public-radio/> -to smear scientists, scholars and activists of whom they disapprove. Biddie Martin, then chancellor of the University of Wisconsin--Madison issued a statement <http://news.wisc.edu/chancellors-message-on-academic-freedom-and-open-recor ds/> noting that in processing Cronon's emails We are excluding exchanges that fall outside the realm of the faculty member's job responsibilities and that could be considered personal pursuant to Wisconsin Supreme Court case law. We are also excluding what we consider to be the private email exchanges among scholars that fall within the orbit of academic freedom and all that is entailed by it. Academic freedom is the freedom to pursue knowledge and develop lines of argument without fear of reprisal for controversial findings and without the premature disclosure of those ideas. Scholars and scientists pursue knowledge by way of open intellectual exchange. Without a zone of privacy within which to conduct and protect their work, scholars would not be able to produce new knowledge or make life-enhancing discoveries. Lively, even heated and acrimonious debates over policy, campus and otherwise, as well as more narrowly defined disciplinary matters are essential elements of an intellectual environment and such debates are the very definition of the Wisconsin Idea. When faculty members use email or any other medium to develop and share their thoughts with one another, they must be able to assume a right to the privacy of those exchanges, barring violations of state law or university policy. Having every exchange of ideas subject to public exposure puts academic freedom in peril and threatens the processes by which knowledge is created. The consequence for our state will be the loss of the most talented and creative faculty who will choose to leave for universities where collegial exchange and the development of ideas can be undertaken without fear of premature exposure or reprisal for unpopular positions. Martin was soon to flee the state herself for the happier world of Amherst College. I agree with her, and with Krugman and with Grafton: requests of this kind are a crude intimidation tactic from the playbook of climate change deniers, designed to scare faculty members into steering away from public engagement or controversial topics and to force us to defer to the interests of the powerful. They've been embraced by conservative activists as a way of curtailing academic freedoms and smearing researchers with whose work they disagree by launching fishing expeditions for phrases that can be misrepresented or quoted out of context. This practice threatens the ability of any research university to function. The recent elimination of real tenure <http://www.aaup.org/news/tenure-weakened-wisconsin> across the Wisconsin system makes faculty here all the more vulnerable to this kind of pressure. When he was seeking revenge for his firing from an Indian research institution, Ayyadurai campaigned with the slogan "Innovation demands freedom" (innovationdemandsfreedom.com <http://innovationdemandsfreedom.com/> is one of Ayyadurai's many vanity domains). He presents himself as a liberal champion of the underdog, a plucky impoverished dark-skinned immigrant boy <http://vashiva.com/yes-a-darkie-invented-email-get-over-it/> fighting for what's right. His most prominent supporters are Noam Chomsky and his business associate Deepak Chopra. He insists that his public relations campaign to brand himself as the inventor of email "isn't about my wanting glory... It's about refusing to enact the script that's been played out for much too long in the lives of people from my background." So it's a little ironic that Ayyadurai is now resorting to an ugly tactic used to erode the freedom of researchers. It's been a long time since Ayyadurai was a defenseless 14 year old boy. In 2016 Ayyadurai is a wealthy and well connected celebrity regularly featured in tabloid gossip pages, with access to the best lawyers and public relations executives. His own legal complaint <https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2829697-Gov-Uscourts-Mad-180248-1-0 .html#document/p17> against Gizmodo describes him as "a world-renowned scientist, inventor, lecturer, philanthropist and entrepreneur" and insists that being recognized as the inventor of email would have added tens of millions of dollars to his net worth. In contrast I am an obscure scholar who has never appeared on television or in the Daily Mail's showbiz section <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2747398/Fran-Drescher-weds-sci entist-partner-Shiva-Ayyadurai.html> . Because I have no financial interest in who did, or didn't, invent email my aim has been to serve the public by protecting the accuracy of the historical record. Now that conservatives have declared open season on faculty all over Wisconsin, we might ask why a self-proclaimed liberal crusader has embraced their tactics by, as Cronon termed it, abusing open records to attack academic freedom <http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/2011/03/24/open-records-attack-on-a cademic-freedom/> .

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