April 2017 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

CCM and Hidden Digital Labor
by M. Hicks 05 Apr '17

05 Apr '17

Hi all, I wanted to make sure everyone had seen Sarah Roberts's piece in the Atlantic on fake news, CCM, and the hidden labor that we often assume is algorithmic rather than human. Sarah is a longtime member whose work has consistently challenged the Silicon Valley narrative of seamless automation. Sarah in fact coined the term CCM, and is literally "writing the book on it." You may have met or seen her recently at our meeting at the Computer History Museum (Command Lines, #SIGCIS2017). I teach a course on the history of digital labor and Sarah's work never fails to amaze my students. I figure this up-to-the-minute encapsulation of her work might be useful to folks who teach similar courses. Here's an excerpt from her article, and a link below: "Missing from this evolving self portrayal [of social media websites], however, has been significant mention of a distinct kind of editorial practice that Facebook and most other prominent social-media platforms are involved in. Thus far, much of the post-election discussion of social-media companies has focused on algorithms and automated mechanisms that are often assumed to undergird most content-dissemination processes online. But algorithms are not the whole story. In fact, there is a profound human aspect to this work. I call it commercial content moderation, or CCM." https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/518796/ Best, Marie ______________________ Marie Hicks, Ph.D. Asst. Professor, History of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL USA mhicks1(a)iit.edu | mariehicks.net | @histoftech Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing (MIT Press, 2017) www.programmedinequality.com

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Danny Bobrow, RIP -- a great computer scientist
by David Walden 05 Apr '17

05 Apr '17

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/mercurynews/obituary.aspx?n=daniel-g-bobro…

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Fwd: Inside story of the breaking of Hitler's secret cipher
by Brian Randell 04 Apr '17

04 Apr '17

Hi: This news release will I trust be found of interest by SIGCIS: SIGCIs mi Begin forwarded message: From: Stephen Fleming <stephen.fleming(a)palam.co.uk<mailto:stephen.fleming@palam.co.uk>> Subject: Inside story of the breaking of Hitler's secret cipher Date: 4 April 2017 at 09:52:09 BST Reply-To: <stephen.fleming(a)palam.co.uk<mailto:stephen.fleming@palam.co.uk>> NEWS RELEASE Inside story of the breaking of Hitler’s secret cipher Launch of the Lorenz book at The National Museum of Computing 4 April 2017 Capt Jerry Roberts’ autobiography Lorenz, telling the inside story of the breaking of Hitler’s most secret cipher, has been launched at The National Museum of Computing in the presence of veterans whose work with Colossus helped in the decrypting process. The “unbreakable” Lorenz cipher was used to encrypt communications between Hitler and his High Command. Far more complex than Enigma, Lorenz-encoded messages carried invaluable strategic information. The decrypts are credited with shortening the war and saving countless lives. The Lorenz book is the autobiographical story of the life of the late Captain Jerry Roberts and gives an in-depth personal perspective of the breaking the twelve-wheeled Lorenz cipher. The launch was attended by some Bletchley Park veterans, their families and special guests including BBC presenter Paddy O’Connell. Among the veterans was O’Connell’s mother Betty, who was one of the first operators of Colossus, the computer that helped break the cipher. Full story and photos: http://www.tnmoc.org/news/news-releases/book-launch-lorenz-tnmoc Cheers Brian Randell — School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk<mailto:Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk> PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/people/profile/brianrandell.html

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SIGCIS triumphs at the Business History Conference awards banquet
by Thomas Haigh 03 Apr '17

03 Apr '17

Hello SIGCIS, Some exciting news from the awards banquet last night at the Business History Conference. Our own Gerardo Con Diaz won the Kroos prize for best dissertation with his 2016 Yale thesis "Intangible Inventions: A History of Software Patenting in the United States, 1945-1985." This is an award that the BHC takes very seriously - the finalists present their dissertations in a 90 minute plenary session to close out conference. Afterwards I heard several very prominent business historians rooting for Con to win, which he duly did a few hours later. Both of the best article prizes went to "IBM Rebuilds Europe: The Curious Case of the Transnational Typewriter," by Petri Paju and (ahem) me. Those are the Scranton Prize for the best overall article in Enterprise and Society and the Wilkins prize for the best on comparative or international business. The paper comes out of our shared experience in the Software for Europe project, reflecting the challenge posed by Gerard Alberts to find a way to deliver on his promise of connecting the history of information technology to the development of transnational European identity. Petri did all the hard work and the meticulous research - my contribution was strictly in rewriting, editing, framing, etc. Which was great fun, particularly the chance to get Hitler, J.G. Ballard and Miss Congeniality into the same paper. As I said in accepting the award, we hadn't expected an article on typewriter supply chains in the 1940s to seem to topical. I therefore thanked Trump, Brexit, and Putin for making the case for this research. Preprint at http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/Writing/IBMRebuildsEuropePREPRINT.pdf. The history of computing is not as well represented on the BHC program as it has recently been at SHOT, but there was also a strong "maintainers" themed panel with Rebecca Slayton, Nathan Ensmenger, Andrew McGee and Ellan Spero. Best wishes, Tom

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