February 2017 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Command Lines: Software, Power, Performance // March 18-19 @ CHM
by Laine Nooney 22 Feb '17

22 Feb '17

Dear SIGCIS Community, We were planning for a coordinated announcement about Command Lines once we'd had a chance to triple-check our program, but seeing as Tom has jumped the gun: we're thrilled to announce the lineup for our first SIGCIS-sponsored conference unattached to SHOT, handily accessible via this URL: http://meetings.sigcis.org/program.html. This program delivers scholars ranging across STS, the history of computing, game studies, media studies, critical race studies and more. Tremendous effort has been made to support the attendance of graduate students, and those from disciplinary communities not often represented at SIGCIS. We have limited capacity in the venue (generously hosted by the Computer History Museum), and with so many speakers, it unfortunately left limited space for outside attendees. Tickets went almost immediately upon advertising the conference, so we must announce that registration is closed. While we're of course regretful we can't include everyone who would like to attend, we are thrilled with the enthusiasm and excitement over what we believe will prove the most sprawling, diverse and cross-disciplinary SIGCIS event yet. We are hoping to offer streaming of one of the lecture halls, and we should be capturing video of all talks for CHM's Youtube channel, so the output of the event can be as accessible as possible. Stay tuned for updates on this. Warm Regards from the Command Lines Planning Committee, Laine Nooney, Georgia Tech David Brock, Computer History Museum Marie Hicks, Illinois Institute of Technology Andy Russell, SUNY Polytechnic Kera Allen, Assistant, Georgia Tech -- Laine Nooney www.lainenooney.com DM <http://dm.lmc.gatech.edu/> @ LMC <http://lmc.gatech.edu/> @ GT <http://www.gatech.edu/> Assistant Professor

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Program is up for the SIGCIS/CHM "Command Lines" event, which is already full
by Thomas Haigh 21 Feb '17

21 Feb '17

Hello SIGCIS, Two things I discovered this afternoon. First, the program for the SIGCIS/CHM "Command Lines" event next month is now up. You may remember the CFP posted in this list in December, but I didn't notice any updates since then. The program is kind of an easter egg on the stylish website, http://meetings.sigcis.org/, but if you click the little box in the top left corner you can get to it. Looks like a great lineup. Second, registration ($40) is sold out already. But if you were planning on attending in conjunction with the other events at the Museum that week, maybe you can plead for an exception with the organizers. Best wishes, Tom

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CfP: 4S 2017 Open Panel: Autonomous Technologies, 40 Years Later
by Colin K Garvey 21 Feb '17

21 Feb '17

Hi all, earlier there was a post asking if anyone had organized an open panel for 4S 2017 — please take a look below! Please circulate to those you think would appreciate this, and direct all inquires to Colin Garvey <garvec(a)rpi.edu <mailto:garvec@rpi.edu>> 44. Making Sense of Autonomous Technologies, 40 Years Later Organized by: Colin Garvey, RPI <garvec(a)rpi.edu <mailto:garvec@rpi.edu>> ; Langdon Winner The 40th anniversary of the publication of Langdon Winner’s seminal work, Autonomous Technologies: Technics-out-of-Control (1977), provides an opportunity to reflect both on an increasingly automated Anthropocene as well as the field of STS itself at the opening of the 21st century. In 1977, when electronic digital computers still occupied entire rooms within the citadels of the military-industrial-university complex, AI and robotics were still largely arcane avocations of a few research teams and entrepreneurs. Today, smartphones with millions of times the power of those machines reside in the pockets of billions of people around the world; robotic beasts crawl over rubble to win prizes from DARPA; and consumer automobiles are (finally) beginning to drive themselves. Forbes magazine has already named 2017 “The Year of AI,” and China is poised to outpace the US and Japan combined in total numbers of industrial robots. R&D funding for autonomous technologies is at an all-time high, as are both optimism and fear about the futures they promise. Meanwhile, some of the world’s leading democracies struggle to function under conditions of electronically mediated information overload. How are we making sense of these technological transformations forty years after Autonomous Technologies? And how should we be? What still applies? What has changed? What have we learned since, and what remains insensible to us? This panel welcomes contributions on autonomous technologies, broadly construed to include historical and contemporary reflections as well as speculative and future-oriented pieces. http://www.4sonline.org/meeting/open_panel_topics_34_66 <http://www.4sonline.org/meeting/open_panel_topics_34_66> Submission link: http://www.4sonline.org/meeting <http://www.4sonline.org/meeting> Best regards and see you in Boston! Colin Garvey PhD candidate, STS @ RPI

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Original manual printed in 1974 for OEP systems
by Murray Turoff 18 Feb '17

18 Feb '17

http://archives.njit.edu/vhlib/cccc-materials/njit-cccc-isg-117/njit-cccc-i… Peggy this is the link to the collection of software used by the office of emergency preparedness in the executive office of the president to handle various functions. EMISARI was developed to handle the 1971 wage price freeze and has extensive message capabilities in an integrated systems that had many features found in current social systems. In 1973 Nixon terminated the OEP and OST and sent the emergency management functions to GSA and this software was in use there till about 1985. This is part of a collection out of the NJIT library. http://library.njit.edu/archives/cccc-materials/ which is a collection of all the research reports of the NJIT EIES systems (electronic Information Exchange System) financed by NSF and which is probably the fist ever social network system and which had the ability besides the general features to create specialized Computer Mediated Communication Structures for different groups on the system. The first objective was to allow invisible colleges of professionals to improve their ability to advance their research. The above manual is at the end of this list of research reports generated by the early work of CCCC -- *please send messages to murray.turoff(a)gmail.com <murray.turoff(a)gmail.com> do not use @njit.edu <http://njit.edu> addressDistinguished Professor EmeritusInformation Systems, NJIThomepage: http://is.njit.edu/turoff <http://is.njit.edu/turoff>*

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Suggestions for Graduate Study
by Drucker, Thomas L. 18 Feb '17

18 Feb '17

One of my students here at the University of Wisconsin--Whitewater will be receiving his undergraduate degree in history shortly. He has taken both my history of mathematics class and a theory of computation class I teach, the latter in pursuit of a minor in computer science. He expressed an interest in graduate study in history of technology with particular attention to the history of computer science. I'd be grateful for any suggestions that I could pass along to him, and those could be sent offlist if you feel that the topic is not of general interest. Thomas Drucker druckert(a)uww.edu

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Recent Posts
by Kidwell, Peggy 18 Feb '17

18 Feb '17

I’m intrigued by recent messages concerning early electronic messages. Should anyone have examples of such messages and related software, I’d be delighted to consider them for the Smithsonian collections (complementing the materials elsewhere that Janet and others have used). Also, on the book and movie Hidden Figures, two recent blogs might be of interest: https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/hidden-figures-and-human-compu… http://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/hidden-figures. Best - Peggy Kidwell Curator of Mathematics Address for US Mail: MRC 671, National Museum of American History Smithsonian Institution P.O. Box 37012 Washington, DC 20013-7012 Address for UPS or FedEx: MRC 671, National Museum of American History Smithsonian Institution 12th St. and Constitution Ave. Washington, DC 20560 Email: kidwellp(a)si.edu<mailto:kidwellp@si.edu> Telephone: 202-633-3828

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Any panels at 4S conference?
by McMillan, William W 17 Feb '17

17 Feb '17

In the past members of this list have chaired panels at the 4S conference and I've enjoyed participating. For 2017 the conference site is: http://www.4sonline.org/meeting Are there any for this year with involvement of SIGCISers? The deadline for open panel proposals is long past, but for closed panels and papers it's March 1. (Paper submissions are 250-word abstracts.) Thanks. Bill

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Computer History Museum Event: Computing in Your Pocket
by Sara Baechler 16 Feb '17

16 Feb '17

Hello, We are very excited about a great event we have coming up soon, Computing in Your Pocket: The Prehistory of the iPhone in Silicon Valley. We wanted to spread the word and were hoping it might be of interest to your group. The event will take place at the Computer History Museum and feature a panel including Steve Capps, Donna Dubinsky, Marc Porat, and Jerry Kaplan and will be moderated by John Markoff. For more information and to register for the event please see our event webpage here<http://www.computerhistory.org/events/upcoming/#computing-your-pocket>. It should be a wonderful night. If you have any questions or concerns Please let me know. Best, Sara .................................... Sara Baechler Program Coordinator, Exponential Center<http://www.computerhistory.org/exponential/> Computer History Museum<http://www.computerhistory.org/> 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd | Mountain View, CA 94043 650.810.1882 direct | 650.810.1010 main Follow Us: CHM Blog<http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/> I Facebook<http://www.facebook.com/computerhistory> I Twitter<http://www.twitter.com/computerhistory> I YouTube<http://www.youtube.com/computerhistory>

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documenting or diagramming human computation
by Paul Fishwick 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

I saw Hidden Figures this weekend, which brought back some early days for me when I worked in Langley’s Structures Directorate as a systems analyst. After scouring the web for documents, and reading Grier’s book, I still wonder whether the computation steps were organized in some sort of diagram that would be used by a planner (?) to guide the human computers. I’ve also reviewed Pickering’s legacy, the Handbook of Human Computation, and Human Computation by Law and von Ahn. If you review Willey (1969) “Manual for Reduction of Data” by Helen H. Willey (Supervisory Mathematician), there are many equations but no visual guides as to who does wha,t and the structured flow of computed variables by computers. Here is a nice NASA site with citations: https://crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/historic/Human_Computers But I do not see anything resembling a time-ordered process. Today, we might expect data flow diagrams, business process notations, or something of the sort. What did they use back then, or perhaps they created computational and data flow order without explicating documenting it? -paul Paul Fishwick, PhD Distinguished University Chair of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Blog 1: medium.com/@metaphorz

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In today's Boston Globe, re developer of EMAIL
by Dave Walden 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/02/13/says-invented-email-dispute-… -- 12 Linden Road, East Sandwich, 02537 landline=508-888-7655; cell=774-205-3202 website=walden-family.com

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