August 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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Lo and Behold, new movie
by Ceruzzi, Paul 06 Sep '16

06 Sep '16

There have been a lot of movies or television shows about computing history lately: "The Imitation Game," "The Social Network," et al. I found most of them disappointing. Last week I saw "Lo and Behold," a documentary about the Internet by Werner Herzog. I recommend it. I have quibbles about some of the history in it, including the origin of the movie's title, but it is well worth seeing. If anyone wants to discuss it, we can do that off-line, unless you think a discussion is of general interest. Paul Ceruzzi ceruzzip(a)si.edu 202-633-2414

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Please help update the SIGCIS Members Directory!
by Andrew Russell 25 Aug '16

25 Aug '16

Dear colleagues - As we embark on a new academic year, now seems as good a time as any to ask you to take a minute and update your profile on the SIGCIS members directory, located at http://www.sigcis.org/members. Over the years, I have heard from many people who use the SIGCIS members directory to locate people for press inquiries, book reviews, peer reviews, publishing opportunities, and so on. Clearly, the directory only works well if the profiles are up to date with contact information, keywords, etc. If you have lost track of your password, there is a "request new password” feature at http://www.sigcis.org/user. If you have problems or run into quirks, you should contact Jason Gallo and Brent Jesiek, who are cc’d on this email. Thank you! Andy Russell SIGCIS Chair — — — — — — — — — — — Please note that I have left Stevens as of June 30, 2016. My email address arussell(a)stevens.edu is no longer be in service. My new contact information is: Andrew L. Russell, Ph.D. Dean, College of Arts & Sciences SUNY Polytechnic Institute Donovan Hall - 2123B 100 Seymour Road Utica, NY 13502 t. 315-792-7317 w. https://sunypoly.edu/ e. arussell(a)arussell.org

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critical infrastructures/criticality/critical studies/critical theory
by Sharon Traweek 24 Aug '16

24 Aug '16

Just a reminder: we are using a set of words with different meanings developed by different kinds of experts in different sub/fields, some of whom do not know the other meanings, nor why they developed. At least since the 1930s there also have been multiple kinds of territorial 'boundary maintenance' around/within some of those terms by those aware of the various terms and their histories. Some of the multiple meanings, their histories, and their affiliated communities of expertise intersect in some infrastructure studies. Here are a few of the distinctions, as drawn by our colleagues writing essays for wikipedia: Criticality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality Criticality index<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_index> Criticality matrix<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_matrix> Critical theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory "... As a term, critical theory has two meanings. with different origins and histories: the first originated in sociology<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology> and political philosophy<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_philosophy>, while the second originated in literary studies<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_studies> and literary theory<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_theory>. ... While they can be considered completely independent intellectual pursuits, increasingly scholars are interested in the areas of critique where the two overlap. ..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory Note too the differences between/within modernist, postmodern, and current critical theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory#Postmodern_critical_theory See also these links, among others, listed as "subfields" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory * Critical ethnography<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_ethnography> * Critical legal studies<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_legal_studies> * Critical management studies<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_management_studies> * Critical pedagogy<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_pedagogy> * Critical philosophy<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_philosophy> * Critical psychiatry<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_psychiatry> * Critical psychology<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_psychology> * Critical race theory<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory> * Cultural studies<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies> ________________________________ From: Members [members-bounces(a)lists.sigcis.org] on behalf of Alberts, Gerard [G.Alberts(a)uva.nl] Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2016 3:27 PM To: Thomas Haigh; 'Lori Emerson' Cc: members(a)lists.sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Call for Ideas! Eh, but Tom, aren't getting off on a tangent here? I agree with Brian that "critical" in this context is an adjective to infrastructures, not to the study of it -even if we do not have to exclude to possibility of a critical theory of infrastructures. Infrastructures were deemed critical by those who observed that the breakdown of such infrastructures would bring the whole of society to a standstill. I would think, the high voltage power networks were the key example. Whether the expression "critical infrastructure" was brought into the debate by military strategists, political scientists, anthropologists or by those building the networks, I do not know. Interesting historical question. Of equal interest is when and by whom IT-infrastructures were considered so crucially important, that they were called "critical". Gerard ________________________________________ From: Members [members-bounces(a)lists.sigcis.org] on behalf of Brian Randell [brian.randell(a)newcastle.ac.uk] Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2016 3:22 PM To: Thomas Haigh Cc: members(a)lists.sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Call for Ideas! Hi Tom: In the research communities I inhabit the meaning that would be attached to “critical infrastructure studies” is “studies of critical infrastructure” not “critical studies of infrastructure”. Further, “critical infrastructure” typically concerns "critical national infrastructure”, such as the electricity grid - see http://www.cpni.gov.uk/about/cni/ or on your side of the Atlantic - https://www.dhs.gov/what-critical-infrastructure As regards the word “infrastructure”, here is a summary explanation that I and my computer science colleagues have used: •Infrastructure is by definition reusable by different individuals/organizations for different purposes on different occasions. •Not all of these uses are known to, or even the concern of, the designer(s) of the infrastructure who must create something which will respond to and support uses that have not yet been conceived. •Infrastructures need to be capacity engineered - so that the amount of resource can be changed to meet current and expected demand. •Over-deployment endangers the supplier, under-deployment frustrates the user. •One organization’s system often becomes another organization’s infrastructure. Cheers Brian ________________________________ From: Members [members-bounces(a)lists.sigcis.org] on behalf of Thomas Haigh [thomas.haigh(a)gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2016 2:42 PM To: 'Lori Emerson' Cc: members(a)lists.sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Call for Ideas! I don’t think critical adds a whole lot to “infrastructure studies.” It has some usefulness in formulations like “critical management studies” (a thing in Northern Europe but no so much in the US) as management scholarship is usually uncritical in every sense of the word. So “critical” demarcates a scholarly community deliberately taking a unorthodox approaches to challenge the assumptions of the field. http://www.criticalmanagement.org/content/about-cms But science studies, STS, media studies, etc. manage to embrace a variety of socially and culturally informed perspectives without their practitioners needing to add the “critical” in front of them. Adding “critical” might be seen as a challenge to those currently embracing “infrastructure studies” as a scholarly identity. There’s also the question of whether “critical” means critical as in “critical thinking” or as in “critical theory,” and while critical theory certainly has a place among other approaches in the study of infrastructure not everyone would feel comfortable with the suggestion that it should be elevated over approaches grounded in STS, history, sociology, anthropology, etc. Best wishes, Tom _____________________________________________ From: Members [mailto:members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Lori Emerson Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2016 1:39 PM To: Paul N. Edwards <pne(a)umich.edu> Cc: Dag Spicer <dspicer(a)computerhistory.org>; members(a)lists.sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Call for Ideas! Dear all, I just wanted to thank you for sending in these great resources for infrastructure studies - I came across the term "critical infrastructure studies" a couple months ago and got quite excited about how it seemed more expansive and more useful for describing my projects on labs and the pre-history of the internet than either "media archaeology" or just "media studies." But now I wonder what the extra "critical" denotes since there's a somewhat well established field already of I.S.? Any thoughts? yours, Lori

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Call for Ideas!
by Dag Spicer 23 Aug '16

23 Aug '16

Can anyone suggest some canonical and effective texts in Infrastructure Studies? Thanks! 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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Review of
by Brian Randell 19 Aug '16

19 Aug '16

Hi: I’ve just been alerted to this (English language) review of the book "Meilensteine der Rechentechnik” by Herbert Bruderer, which the review describes as "an extensive in-depth scholarly history of mathematics and computer science with a focus on computing technology in German lands”. http://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/meilensteine-der-rechentechnik Cheers Brian Randell — School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/staff/profile/brian.randell

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CFP 2017 Media & Civil Rights History Symposium
by M. Hicks 15 Aug '16

15 Aug '16

I bet the work of several folks on the list would fit in well at this conference (see below). MH ______________________ Marie Hicks, Ph.D. Asst. Professor, History of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL USA mariehicks.net | mhicks1(a)iit.edu | @histoftech Begin forwarded message: From: Carol Stabile <cstabile(a)uoregon.edu> Date: August 15, 2016 at 10:33:22 AM EDT To: "gender, media & technology collaboration" <fembot(a)lists.uoregon.edu> Subject: fembot: Fwd: 2017 Media & Civil Rights History Symposium Reply-To: "gender, media & technology collaboration" <fembot(a)lists.uoregon.edu> > > Dear Symposium friend, > As you enter your fall semester, please see the attached PDF for preliminary information about the 2017 Media & Civil Rights History Symposium. The Symposium webpages are available at 2017 Media & Civil Rights History Symposium <http://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/cic/journalism_and_mass_communicat…>. Look for detailed information by email shortly. > Sincerely, > Chris > ——— > Christopher Frear > Graduate Student > Director > Media & Civil Rights History Symposium > School of Journalism and Mass Communications > University of South Carolina > Columbia, SC 29208 > frearc(a)email.sc.edu <mailto:frearc@email.sc.edu> > Media & Civil Rights History Symposium <http://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/cic/journalism_and_mass_communicat…> _______________________________________________ fembot mailing list fembot(a)lists.uoregon.edu https://lists-prod.uoregon.edu/mailman/listinfo/fembot

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FW: AERA as research topic
by Akera, Atsushi 08 Aug '16

08 Aug '16

Hi Everyone, I have an offer from a friend of mine, Gary Nelson, who used to work at MITRE on a system that was a successor to the SAGE air defense system (AERA, or Advanced En Route Air Traffic Control). He’s willing to help anyone who might be interested in writing about, or conducting an oral history related to this system and this period in MITRE’s history. His original note is copied below, and he also adds: Yes, that is the plan. I will assist in any way I can to put the right people together. I worked on AERA3 ca. 1990, but was also part of the team that did the benefit-cost study of the AAS 1984-8. The AERA benefits were a key part of the analysis. I can network to several other contacts at MITRE. regards, Gary Feel free to write to me, or to Gary directly if you’re interested! He’s copied on this message. (And please forward to anyone who might be interested in this.) - Atsushi From: Gary Nelson [mailto:garygnelson@gmail.com<mailto:garygnelson@gmail.com>] Sent: Sunday, August 7, 2016 3:50 PM To: Akera, Atsushi <akeraa(a)rpi.edu<mailto:akeraa@rpi.edu>> Subject: AERA as research topic Atsushi, While reading your book it occurred to me that our work on AERA (Advanced en route ATC) at MITRE is a good topic that is an extension of the story of MITRE/SAGE etc. If that inspiration were not enough, it happened that I just ran into an old colleague of mine who was visiting Troy. Had not seen her in decades--but it must be a sign to consider the topic! Perhaps either you or someone you know would tale this on: It's time before all the principals die off (the program ended with AAS about 1994). But the apps were intenmded to take advantage of the digitization of the NAS Stage A system (1973). That it never happened is a great case study of air traffic management. Regards, Gary -- Gary G. Nelson 38 Maple Ave. Troy, NY 12180 518-273-3893<tel:518-273-3893> -- Gary G. Nelson 38 Maple Ave. Troy, NY 12180 518-273-3893

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Inventor Steve Sasson discusses the first digital camera
by Brian Randell 05 Aug '16

05 Aug '16

Hi: I've just stumbled across this very engaging YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yDLEBsThvk - Inventor Steve Sasson discusses the first digital camera which the speaker introduces as being on “how to develop disruptive technology in a corporate environment”! :-) Cheers Brian Randell -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell

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