October 2017 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Fundraising at SIGCIS events this weekend
by Andrew Russell 26 Oct '17

26 Oct '17

Hi everyone - This message is intended especially for anyone coming to the SIGCIS events this weekend in Philadelphia, the SIGCIS lunch Friday at SHOT, and the SIGCIS conference on Sunday. tl;dr: Please bring cash to support funding for the SIGCIS Travel Awards. Those who have been coming to SIGCIS events for a while know about our 2 different fundraising activities: the book auction and the money cup. I thought I would remind the veterans and alert the newcomers about these rituals and their purpose. 1. The book auction takes place at the Friday lunch: members donate books (so far I have over 2 dozen committed), and we auction them off to bidders in attendance. If you plan to bid, it helps if you bring cash or your checkbook, so that we can collect winning bids on the spot. IOUs are acceptable if all other options fail. 2. The money cup is something that we pass around at the SIGCIS lunch (Friday) and the SIGCIS conference (Sunday). Our requested donation is $20, or so, for those with stable employment. More is great, less is great - as the saying goes, give at the level where you feel comfortable. I hope you are asking: where does this money go? Simple: it goes directly into the SIGCIS fund that SHOT maintains, and is used to support the SIGCIS Travel Awards <http://www.sigcis.org/travelaward>. In fact, the funds mainly go to support two of those awards, the Michael S. Mahoney Travel Awards and the MIT Press Travel Awards. (I’m happy to note, parenthetically, that we have another travel award, the Computer History Museum Travel Award, that exists thanks to the generous support of Len Shustek, who many of you know as the Chairman of the Computer History Museum.) Proceeds from the auction of books donated by MIT Press support the award in its name; the rest of the auction proceeds and money cup proceeds go toward the Mahoney Travel Awards. This year we are awarding nearly $2000 in Mahoney Travel Awards and MIT Press Travel Awards, all to early-career scholars who are presenting their work at the SIGCIS conference on Sunday and who will be recognized at the beginning of the meeting on Sunday morning. In order to maintain awards at this level - and, ideally, increase the amount and number of the awards we give out! - we need to raise at least $2000 this year. Given past trends, I’m optimistic that we can raise a significant sum from the book auction and money cup. I’ll report back after SHOT to tell you all how we did, and to ask for further contributions. Of course, you can donate to SIGCIS at any time via SHOT's online form, at https://shot.press.jhu.edu/membership/contribute <https://shot.press.jhu.edu/membership/contribute>. Thank you all for your support and engagement with SIGCIS, and I look forward to seeing many of you this weekend! Andy Russell SIGCIS Chair

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SIGCIS 2017 Conference Details // October 29
by Laine Nooney 24 Oct '17

24 Oct '17

This email offers logistic info for those of you on the list attending SIGCIS 2017, Measure, Model, Mix: Computer as Instrument. All details can additionally be found on our website meetings.sigcis.org (the website menu dropdown is in the upper left hand corner). *Program* A PDF of our finalized program can be found here: http://meetings.sigcis.org/uploads/6/3/6/8/6368912/program_redacted.pdf(win… of the Mahoney and CHM prizes have been redacted from this digital version, so not to spoil the excitement Sunday morning) *Registration* Sunday morning, you will find our registration desk available on the lobby level of the SHOT conference venue, the Sheraton Philadelphia Society Hill Hotel. All events will happen on the lobby level. Registration runs from 8-8:45AM. Light breakfast will be available. The conference will start on time with our Welcome and Awards at 8:45AM. Online registration is currently closed, but day-of registration will be available onsite for $80. *Keynote* Our keynote this year is Joanna Radin, Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Yale University. Her keynote is titled: ‘DIGITAL NATIVES’: Why Indigenous and Medical Histories Matter for the History of Computing Keynote begins promptly at 9AM. *Lunch* Lunch will be provided in the Hamilton Room from 12:30PM-2PM. *Conference After Party* Conference presenter Theodora J. Dryer (Panel C.1 in program) generously invites local and visiting historians for autumnal hors d’oeuvres and drinks from 6:00 - 9:00PM just south of the conference venue (address can be found in the printed conference program). After 9:00PM there is a bar downstairs where guests can continue to convene. RSVPs appreciated: tdryer(a)ucsd.edu. Let us know if you have any other questions! We look forward to seeing many of you this weekend. ~SIGCIS Conference Committee (aka Laine Nooney, Andy Russell, Con Diaz, Joy Rankin, Steph Dick, Kera Allen and Nabeel Siddiqui) -- Laine Nooney <http://www.lainenooney.com/> MCC <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> @ NYU <http://www.nyu.edu/> Assistant Professor

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SHOT book co-launch
by Mar Hicks 23 Oct '17

23 Oct '17

Hi All-- At the Society for the History of Technology meeting this coming weekend in Philadelphia, MIT Press will being doing a joint launch of my book, Programmed Inequality, <http://bit.ly/mitorder> and Edward Jones-Imhotep’s terrific new volume on a unique set of Cold War technological failures <https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/unreliable-nation>. It runs from *3:30-4:30 on Friday, October 27, at the MIT Press table in the SHOT book hall*. Discounts, free bookmarks, and snacks will be available--come on by! Full details (and pics of the bookmarks) here: http://bit.ly/shotlaunch Best, MH __________________________ Marie Hicks, Ph.D. Department of History University of Wisconsin-Madison mariehicks.net *Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing* www.programmedinequality.com

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SIGCIS events at SHOT in Philadelphia
by Andrew Russell 23 Oct '17

23 Oct '17

Dear colleagues - With the SHOT and SIGCIS meetings about a month away, I’m writing with a few reminders and requests about SIGCIS-related events and happenings. I’m guessing I and others will be back in touch with more announcements as the time draws near, but what follows should be plenty to get us started. 1. Friday SIGCIS Lunch Our annual lunch will take place on Friday from 12:30-2. When you registered, you should have checked the box. If you didn’t, I’m sure that SHOT can find a way to accommodate you when you register in Philadelphia. As usual, our agenda for the lunch, beyond eating, will be (1) introductions from first-time attendees; and (2) the SIGCIS book auction, once again starring Tom Haigh as auctioneer. Regarding the latter, I have two reminders: a. Please bring books you would like to donate for the cause. It would help our accounting and record-keeping system if you can tell me ahead of time what book you plan to bring. b. Please bring cash to pay for books, or to otherwise donate to SIGCIS. We are lucky to have so many generous members in SIGCIS, since member donations allow us to award travel grants to students and others who need travel support. This year we are awarding over $2000 in travel support; to make this sustainable, we need to recoup those costs. If you’d rather donate to SIGCIS online or by check, we would be happy to facilitate that as well. 2. SHOT Sessions of Interest The SHOT program may be found from the following link: https://www.historyoftechnology.org/annual-meeting/2017-shot-annual-meeting… <https://www.historyoftechnology.org/annual-meeting/2017-shot-annual-meeting…>. In keeping with the trends of current years, the program has a great variety of sessions and papers that features, were organized by, or will be of interest to SIGCIS members, including: Nathan Ensmenger on the opening plenary panel on Thursday evening; Friday panels on the future of work (F2), computerized futures (F6), governance in IT (F17), communication (F22), AI history (F28), material histories of data (F30), AI history part 2 (F40); and Saturday panels on data management (S5), democracy & communication technologies (S14), computerized futures part 2 (S20), radio & politics (S25), visual media (S28), visual environments (S37), women and gender in computing (S39), ‘hidden figures’ (S41), and Cold War IT (S43). My goodness. 3. Sunday SIGCIS Conference: Measure, Model, Mix: Computer as Instrument Once again we have an amazing lineup of presentations for our Sunday SIGCIS conference. Details are available from http://meetings.sigcis.org/conference-schedule.html <http://meetings.sigcis.org/conference-schedule.html>. I’ll only highlight a couple of aspects here: at 8:45 we will introduce the workshop and announce our SIGCIS Travel Awards, the Mahoney Prize, and Computer History Museum Prize, which is always an exciting occasion; and we will then move into our keynote address by Prof. Joanna Radin at Yale University. More information about the conference will be forthcoming - stay tuned…. I hope to see you in Philadelphia! All the best, Andy Russell SIGCIS Chair

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new article on Soviet computing
by Ksenia Tatarchenko 19 Oct '17

19 Oct '17

Hi Sigcis,An article of mine on Soviet computing just came out in a journal that most of you are not consulting regularly. Hopefully, it might be of interest for some of you for comparative purposes as well as its transnational arguments.Ksenia Tatarchenko, "The Computer Does Not Believe in Tears": Soviet Programming, Professionalization, and the Gendering of Authority, in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History Volume 18, Number 4, Fall 2017 pp. 709-739 Ksenia

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Making IT Work (MIT Press, 2017) published
by Jeffrey Yost 17 Oct '17

17 Oct '17

Dear Colleagues, Wanted to announce a new book that I just published with MIT Press that may be of potential interest--*Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry.* The computer services industry has worldwide annual revenues of over a trillion dollars and employs millions of workers, but is often overshadowed by the hardware and software products industries (both of which are less than half its size). In this book, I examine how computer services, from consulting, data processing, programming, systems integration, time-sharing, and facilities management to data analytics and cloud computing, have played a crucial role in shaping information technology -- in making IT work (both in the sense of making IT useful, and also extending the ever growing IT labor force). Based on extensive archival research (many CBI collections, the IBM Corporate Archives, Hagley Museum & Library, MIT Archives, etc.), oral histories, and trade journal research, I provide a business, social (gender, labor, professionalization), policy/legal/political economy history of this 65 year old industry. In doing so, I seek to contribute to business, social, and technology historiography. https://www.amazon.com/Making-Work-Computer-Services-Computi ng/dp/026203672X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1508181708&sr=8-1&ke ywords=making+it+work+yost Thanks. Best, Jeff -- Jeffrey R. Yost, Ph.D. Associate Director, Charles Babbage Institute Faculty, Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine 222 21st Avenue South University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN 55455 612 624 5050 Phone 612 625 8054 Fax

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History of Unix symposium - Paris, France, October 19th (with working link)
by Camille Paloque-Berges 12 Oct '17

12 Oct '17

Dear colleagues and friends, An international conference on the history of Unix will be held in Paris, Oct. 19th, at the Conservatoire National des Arts & Métiers. Here is the link to the (bilingual) program : http://technique-societe.cnam.fr/colloque-international-unix-en-france-et-a… <http://technique-societe.cnam.fr/medias/fichier/programme-colloque-unix-bil…> There will be audio recordings of the symposium available afterwards - check the program page to know where and when. It will be followed, the next day, by a kick-off meeting of the research project “What is a computer program?”: http://technique-societe.cnam.fr/table-ronde-qu-est-ce-qu-un -programme-informatique-perspectives-historiques-et-philosop hiques--945355.kjsp <http://technique-societe.cnam.fr/table-ronde-qu-est-ce-qu-un-programme-info…> Best, the orgazining committee: Isabelle Astic, Raphaël Fournier-S’niehotta, Pierre-Eric Mounier-Kuhn, Camille Paloque-Bergès, Loïc Petitgirard. -- Institutional email address : camille.paloque_berges(a)cnam.fr *Laboratory for the History of Techno-Sciences (HT2S), Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, 2 rue Conté, 75003 Paris, France *Associate researcher at the Digital Paths cluster of CNRS' Institute for Communication Sciences (ISCC) -- Institutional email address : camille.paloque_berges(a)cnam.fr *Laboratory for the History of Techno-Sciences (HT2S), Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, 2 rue Conté, 75003 Paris, France *Associate researcher at the Digital Paths cluster of CNRS' Institute for Communication Sciences (ISCC)

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History of Unix symposium - Paris, France, October 19th
by Camille Paloque-Berges 12 Oct '17

12 Oct '17

Dear colleagues and friends, An international conference on the history of Unix will be held in Paris, Oct. 19th, at the Conservatoire National des Arts & Métiers. Here is the link to the (bilingual) program : http://technique-societe.cnam.fr/medias/fichier/programme- colloque-unix-bilingue_1506698407125-pdf There will be audio recordings of the symposium available afterwards - check the program page to know where and when. It will be followed, the next day, by a kick-off meeting of the research project “What is a computer program?”: http://technique-societe.cnam.fr/table-ronde-qu-est-ce-qu- un-programme-informatique-perspectives-historiques-et- philosophiques--945355.kjsp?RH=1500478967516 Best, the orgazining committee: Isabelle Astic, Raphaël Fournier-S’niehotta, Pierre-Eric Mounier-Kuhn, Camille Paloque-Bergès, Loïc Petitgirard. -- Institutional email address : camille.paloque_berges(a)cnam.fr *Laboratory for the History of Techno-Sciences (HT2S), Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, 2 rue Conté, 75003 Paris, France *Associate researcher at the Digital Paths cluster of CNRS' Institute for Communication Sciences (ISCC)

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Fall Updates on Ayyadurai and Techdirt
by Thomas Haigh 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

Hello SIGCIS, There have been some significant developments in the "inventor of email" saga since my last roundup, so as the list has now returned to life here's a brief roundup of reporting for those of you not following obsessively. Big news: on September 6 a judge granted summary dismissal of the $15 million libel lawsuit filed against Techdirt. According to reports, this was done on the basis that even if every factual claim in Ayyadurai's complaint turned out to be fully supported by evidence, none of the alleged behavior would constitute libel. The judge noted that Ayyadurai's claim is "incapable of being proved true of false" as claims to have produced the first of anything involve adopting a particular definition. By that logic Ayyadurai has a right to say he invented email, others have a right to disagree, and neither side has a right to sue the other for their opinions. Which seems reasonable to me. Many reports of this online, e.g. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/judge-dismisses-libel-lawsuit-fi led-by-self-proclaimed-e-mail-inventor/. The full ruling is at https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3987555/Gov-Uscourts-Mad-185980-4 8-0.pdf. Techdirt recently reported that Ayyadurai has notified the court of his intention to appeal. The same story mentions that Techdirt is appealing another aspect of the ruling: the Massachusetts judge's refusal to apply California's anti-SLAPP law to the case, under which a plaintiff might be liable for the legal costs of the defendant in a groundless lawsuit brought to silence critics. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171006/11584638359/latest-shiva-ayyadura is-failed-libel-suit-against-techdirt.shtml Ayyadurai's lawyer, Charles Harder, has also promised to sue the New York Times for $50 million on behalf of Harvey Weinstein. Before the case was dismissed, Ars Technica published a lengthy article including some email history and actual reporting -- including quotes from Ayyadurai himself (and from me). https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/shivas-war-one-mans-quest-to-con vince-the-world-that-he-invented-e-mail/ In August, Techdirt had accepted a $250,000 donation to support its reporting on free speech issues. The money came from a variety of sources, including the Koch Foundation as well as more liberal groups, making for an interesting alliance. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/techdirt-accepts-250000-to-expan d-journalism-on-free-speech-issues/?comments=1 <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/techdirt-accepts-250000-to-expa nd-journalism-on-free-speech-issues/?comments=1&post=33780449> &post=33780449 Mike Masnick of Techdirt repeatedly chocked up as he described the effects of the lawsuit on his business and himself at the Personal Democracy Forum in June. https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/08/mike-masnick-personal-democracy-forum/ The talk highlighted Ayyadurai's tweet ""#FakeNewsMedia like TechShit need to be shutdown for their FAKE NEWS." Meanwhile Ayyadurai's quixotic senate campaign (slogan: "Only a real Indian can defeat the fake Indian") is proceeding energetically, including a spot keynoting the controversial Boston "free speech" rally held shortly after the Charlottesville tragedy. http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/19/us/boston-free-speech-rally/index.html. He also received widespread attention for an ill-fated appearance with conservative radio host Howie Carr in which Ayyadurai repeatedly shouted variations on "It's not about you or me, it's about Elizabeth Warren" when asked about a 2005 arrest for domestic abuse. https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2017/07/23/watch-radio-host-howie-carr- and-republican-senate-candidate-get-in-on-air-yelling-match Boston Magazine ran a closely reported feature on the campaign back in June, capturing Ayyadurai's own perspective on the dramatic evolution of his political reviews from ultra liberal campus activist to "darling of the Breitbart set." : http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2017/07/09/shiva-ayyadurai/. This has been your Fall update on the invention of email. Best wishes, Tom

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The Balanced Ternary Machines of Soviet Russia
by Laurent Bloch 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

Dear Members, Did you see that paper about The Balanced Ternary Machines of Soviet Russia? https://dev.to/buntine/the-balanced-ternary-machines-of-soviet-russia And even a (virtual) implementation: https://sbtcvm.org/ Thanks to Christophe Poirier via Infosecu <infosecu(a)arcsi.fr>. Cheers! -- Laurent Bloch - https://www.laurentbloch.net - lb(a)laurentbloch.org Si vous trouvez que l'éducation coûte cher, essayez l'ignorance ! (A. Lincoln)

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