Dear all,
this is a gentle reminder of the approaching deadline (20 June 2018) of
the call for a PhD candidate in the history and/or philosophy of
computer programming.
The PhD will be supported by the ANR-funded project PROGRAMme and the
candidate will be a member of the research team of the project. More
details can be found here:
https://programme.hypotheses.org/call-for-application-phd-appel-a-candidatu…
If you would have any more questions, please do not hesitate to contact me,
with very best wishes,
Liesbeth.
Dear SIGCIS Community,
This email is a friendly reminder that we are one-month out from the
submission deadline for* our 2018 10th Annual SIGCIS Conference, **STORED
IN MEMORY*. Our keynote for the event is Eden Medina, Associate Professor
of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University Bloomington.
The SIGCIS Conference will take place *October 14th, 2018 in St. Louis,
Missouri, USA, *on the Sunday of the SHOT conference. *Abstracts are due
June 30.*
Below you can find the full CFP for this year's conference. These details
can also be found at our conference website: meetings.sigcis.org
Please circulate widely, and we hope to see you in St. Louis!
-Laine Nooney, Andrew Russell, Gerardo Con Diaz, Stephanie Dick, Kera Allen
and Nabeel Siddiqui
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*STORED IN MEMORY**The 10th Annual SIGCIS Conference*
*St. Louis, Missouri, USA | October 14, 2018*
The Special Interest Group in Computing, Information, and Society [SIGCIS]
welcomes submissions to their annual conference
meetings.sigcis.org
*Proposal Due Date: June 30, 2018*
*KEYNOTE SPEAKER*
*Eden Medina*
Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University
Bloomington
*THEME*
Much of a computer’s work is made possible not by users’ direct actions,
but by off-screen manipulations of its memory: storage, allocation, saving,
deletion, registration, collection, partitioning, defragmentation, and so
on. These processes have been crucial to the computer’s mass popularization
during the 20th century and into the 21st—from the first stored program
computer, to the rise of the consumer software industry, to the
unpredictable and often troubling emergence of the Internet of Things,
predictive analytics, and data harvesting. Yet encoding in computer memory
is never obvious, given, or inert; choices about how to store and structure
data inevitably inform the meaning that can be made with computing
machines. In other words, all exercises in memory are also exercises in
obfuscation, exclusion, and forgetting.
Similarly, historians, theorists, and archivists of information
technologies depend on the often imperceptible operations of memory: from
the delicacy of human past experiences taken down in oral history, to
presences and gaps “captured” in the archive. This problem of what is
remembered, and what is forgotten, is the disciplinary condition that
renders history as much art as it is science.
In honor of the 10th annual SIGCIS conference, STORED IN MEMORY invites
scholars, museum and archive professionals, IT practitioners, artists and
independent researchers across the disciplinary spectrum to submit
abstracts related to the historical conditions of computing. We are
especially interested in (but not limited to) work that relates to the
theme of “memory,” broadly and imaginatively construed. Areas of engagement
may include:
- How have computing technologies transformed people’s engagement with
their past, present, or future?
- What role does computing play in the formation and development of
political systems, governance infrastructures, and institutional memory?
- How are people’s histories and identities—race, gender, sexuality,
ethnicity, and so on—recorded and represented through information
technologies?
- Where do computer encodings fit in the longer history of tools and
practices with which communities represent the world? What epistemological
realities does computer memory afford?
- What place does the history of memory (computer, human,
sociopolitical, and so on) have in the history of computing?
- How have databases served to memorialize and monumentalize certain
formations of knowledge, and what is forgotten in these processes?
- How has the historiography of computing and information changed over
the years, and where could it take us next? (Retrospectives welcome)
- What challenges and methods are emerging in the preservation of
computing history through archives, museums, oral histories, and
digital-born collections?
SIGCIS is especially welcoming of new directions in scholarship. We
maintain an inclusive atmosphere for scholarly inquiry, supporting both
disciplinary interventions from beyond the traditional history of
technology, and with respect to promoting diversity in STEM. We welcome
submissions from: the histories of technology, computing, information, and
science; science and technology studies; oral history and archival studies;
digital humanities; critical studies of big data and machine learning; studies
of women, gender, and sexuality; studies of race, ethnicity, and
postcoloniality; disability studies and the medical humanities; film,
media, and game studies; software and code studies; network and internet
histories; music, sound studies, and art history; and all other applicable
domains.
The annual SIGCIS Conference takes place on the final day of the annual
meeting of our parent organization, the Society for the History of
Technology [SHOT]. Information about the annual SHOT conference can be
found at: https://bit.ly/2E6qgko
*SUBMISSION FORMATS*
SIGCIS welcomes proposals for individual 15-20 minute papers, 3-4 paper
panel proposals, works-in-progress (see below), and non-traditional
proposals such as roundtables, software demonstrations, hands-on workshops,
etc.
*WORKS-IN-PROGRESS*
The Works-in-Progress (WiP) session will be a workshop wherein participants
discuss their work in small group sessions. We invite
works-in-progress—articles, chapters, dissertation prospectuses—of 10,000
words or less (longer works must be selectively edited to meet this
length). We especially encourage submissions from graduate students, early
career scholars, and scholars who are new to SIGCIS. Authors who submit a
WiP will also commit to reading (in advance) two other WiPs, discussing
them in a small group setting, and providing written feedback on one of
those WiPs. Scholars who would like to participate in this session without
submitting their own WiP are welcome; we ask that they commit to reading
(in advance) at least two of the WiPs.
Submissions for WiP only require a 350-400 word abstract, but applicants
should plan to circulate their max-10,000-word WiPs no later than September
30, 2018. Scholars who would like to be a reader of WiPs, please email a
brief bio or 1-page CV, along with your areas of interest and expertise, to
Gerardo Con Diaz [condiaz(a)ucdavis.edu]
*SUBMISSION PROCEDURE *
Submissions are due June 30, 2018. Applicants should download, fill out and
follow the instructions on the application cover sheet at
http://meetings.sigcis.org/call-for-papers.html. All submissions will
require:
- 350-400 word abstract (full panel proposals should additionally
include a 250-300 word panel abstract in addition to 3-4 paper abstracts)
- 1-page CV or resume for each presenter
Please Note: Individuals who have submitted to the main SHOT program are
welcome to submit an additional proposal to our workshop, but should make
sure that there is no overlap between the two presentations. However,
SIGCIS may choose to give higher priority to submissions from those not
already presenting at SHOT.
Questions regarding submission procedure should be sent to Kera Allen [
kera.allen(a)gatech.edu]
*TRAVEL AWARD*
The top financial priority of SIGCIS is the support of travel expenses for
graduate students, visiting faculty without institutional travel support,
and others who would be unable to attend the meeting without travel
assistance. The submission cover sheet includes a space to note whether you
fall into one of these categories and would like to be considered for an
award. These is no separate application form, though depending on the
volume of requests and available resources we may need to contact you for
further information before making a decision.
Any award offered is contingent on registering for and attending the SIGCIS
Conference. Please note that SHOT does not classify the SIGCIS Conference
as participation in the SHOT annual meeting, therefore acceptance by SIGCIS
does not imply eligibility for the SHOT travel grant program.
Details of available awards are at http://www.sigcis.org/travelaward
<http://www.sigcis.org/travelaward>.
*SIGCIS CONFERENCE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE*
Laine Nooney <http://www.lainenooney.com/>, New York University (SIGCIS
Vice-Chair of Meetings)
Andrew Russell <http://www.arussell.org/>, SUNY Polytechnic Institute
(SIGCIS Chair)
Stephanie Dick <https://hss.sas.upenn.edu/people/stephanie-dick>,
University of Pennsylvania
Gerardo Con Diaz <https://www.condiaz.com/>, University of California,
Davis (SIGCIS Treasurer)
Kera Allen
<https://hts.gatech.edu/people/person/e2f55e07-937a-571a-a4f8-c32c87fef19d>,
Georgia Institute of Technology (Conference Assistant)
Nabeel Siddiqui <https://nabsiddiqui.github.io/>, College of William and
Mary (Conference Assistant)
--
Laine Nooney <http://www.lainenooney.com/>
MCC <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> @ NYU <http://www.nyu.edu/>
Assistant Professor
-Need to make an appt? Click, don't email: https://bit.ly/2GIHuK0
-Probably typed by voice recognition, so please cherish typos
-Stop email nonsense: http://emailcharter.org
Picking back up on a SIGCIS thread from a few years ago, on the history of
"unicorn" as an odd term to apply to a tech company, I just saw this amazing
headline "Bird Races to Become the First Scooter Unicorn" on Bloomberg.com.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-29/sequoia-said-to-value-sco
oter-company-bird-at-1-billion I am going to look for a way to work it into
something I write, and perhaps in a few years it will earn its proper place
as a distillation of our historic moment not unlike "Peace in Our Time" or
"Dewey Defeats Truman."
Beyond the whole idea of rival billion-dollar scooter companies, I now can't
stop thinking about a bird chasing a unicorn riding a scooter. Or maybe the
bird is on a scooter, trying to catch up to a galloping unicorn as it
approaches a checkered flag. Or the bird might be hovering over a cauldron,
trying to turn itself into a scootering unicorn via a hurriedly cast spell
of transformation. There are so many possible readings.
I know this is somewhat tangential to list business, but I just couldn't
resist sharing it given the growing sense of doom hovering over most other
news stories, including the global financial turmoil I visited Bloomberg to
check on.
Best wishes,
Tom
