September 2018 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

"Paths into digital society" / "Wege in die Digitale Gesellschaft" - New edited volume
by Martin Schmitt 08 Sep '18

08 Sep '18

Dear all, I’m happy to announce that our new edited volume "Paths into digital society. Computer usage in West Germany. 1955-1990" / "Wege in die Digitale Gesellschaft. Computernutzung in der Bundesrepublik 1955-1990“ was published in German this months. It makes available the results of our research projects on the history of computing in East and West Germany. You’ll find paper on the use of computer technology in German security services (Rüdiger Bergien), military (Janine Funke), pension system (Thomas Kasper), industrial production at Volkswagen (Frank Bösch) hacking (Julia Erdogan) and banking sector (me). Furthermore, we managed to find excellent researchers contributing chapters on such diverse topics as employment in the German IT-industry (Homberg), printing industry (Priemel), chess computers (Heßler) or software for home computers (Albert). The volume fills a big gap in German history of computing. Unfortunately, it is in German only so far. I could help to get in contact with any of the researches if you’re interested in a special topic or help to summarize some basic results in English for you if you want to know more about a special approach. Martin Research fellow | Ph.D student | digital enthusiast ZENTRUM FÜR ZEITHISTORISCHE FORSCHUNG | POTSDAM Mail: schmitt(a)zzf-potsdam.de <mailto:schmitt@zzf-pdm.de> Tel: +49 331 - 74510-119 http://www.zzf-pdm.de/site/991/Default.aspx BLOG - www.computerisierung.com Vice Chair of IFIP WG 9.7 „History of computing" Neu erschienen: Martin Schmitt - Internet im Kalten Krieg. http://www.transcript-verlag.de/detail/index/sArticle/3569

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Book announcement
by Mark Priestley 08 Sep '18

08 Sep '18

My new book *Routines of Substitution: John von Neumann's work on software development, 1945-1948 <https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-91671-2> *has been published in the new SpringerBriefs in History of Computing series edited by Gerard Alberts. More here: http://markpriestley.net/archives/99 Cheers, Mark

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Program available for STORED IN MEMORY: 10th Annual SIGCIS Conference
by Andrew Russell 07 Sep '18

07 Sep '18

Dear colleagues - We're very happy to announce the Conference Schedule <http://meetings.sigcis.org/conference-schedule.html> for STORED IN MEMORY, the 10th Annual SIGCIS Conference to be held in St. Louis, Missouri on October 14, 2018. This conference will once again take place on the final day of the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology <https://www.historyoftechnology.org/annual-meeting/2018-shot-annual-meeting…>. STORED IN MEMORY will begin with a keynote address by Prof. Eden Medina, Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, Bloomington. The conference features 31 papers by scholars from North America, South America, and Europe. To register, please visit the SHOT Annual Meeting Registration <https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07efg4d91d7…> website, where you have the option to register for the entire SHOT conference or the Sunday SIGCIS conference only. Please take a look at the program for the SHOT Annual Meeting <https://www.historyoftechnology.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Program-St.-…> itself, where you will see well over a dozen papers on computing and information history, as well as the traditional Friday SIGCIS lunch meeting. I hope to see you there! Andy On behalf of the program committee: Laine Nooney, New York University (SIGCIS Vice-Chair of Meetings) Andrew Russell, SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SIGCIS Chair) Stephanie Dick, University of Pennsylvania Gerardo Con Diaz, University of California, Davis Kera Allen, Georgia Institute of Technology (Conference Assistant) Nabeel Siddiqui, College of William & Mary (Conference Assistant)

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Call for volunteers: SIGCIS Internet Infrastructure
by Andrew Russell 06 Sep '18

06 Sep '18

Hi everyone - SIGCIS is looking for one or more volunteers to help us manage the technologies that support our website and mailing lists. Tasks are occasional - maintenance, periodic version upgrades, and working with the SIGCIS leadership to ensure that things are working well and meeting the needs of our members. We know there’s a lot of expertise in our community, so we’re hoping to tap into that. As you probably know, Brent Jesiek at Purdue has been working wonders in this role for many years. Our website runs on the Drupal CMS platform, so it’s essential that volunteer(s) for this role be familiar with Drupal - or be willing to learn. Familiarity with other tools, including the Mailman listserv application, HTML/CSS, and/or Unix and SQL, also would be handy. If you have any interest, or know of someone who might, please let me know. And, feel free to send Brent or me any questions about the specific tools and tasks involved. Thank you very much! Andy Russell SIGCIS Chair

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Submissions open for The Web that Was (June 2019, Amsterdam)
by Alberts, Gerard 06 Sep '18

06 Sep '18

The Web that Was: Archives, Traces, Reflections A three-day conference, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, June 19-21, 2019. The third biennial RESAW (Research Infrastructure for the Study of Archived Web Materials) conference. Organized by the University of Amsterdam. *** Submissions Open *** Submissions are now open for The Web that Was (RESAW19) and you can upload your submission here: https://easychair.org/my/conference.cgi?conf=resaw19. Please read the conference-specific instructions linked at the top of the submission form. Help with the conference tool can be found here: https://easychair.org/help/how_to_submit. The deadline for submissions is October 19, 2018. *** Keynote speakers *** Megan Ankerson, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, University of Michigan Wendy Chun, Canada 150 Research Chair, Simon Fraser University Florian Cramer, Professor of Applied Research, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences Olia Lialina, Professor of New Media, Merz Akademie Fred Turner, Harry and Norman Chandler Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication, Stanford University *** Special event *** The conference will host a lecture-performance by Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Cultures, Hogeschool van Amsterdam) and guests on the history and preservation of Amsterdam’s early internet culture. *** Call for contributions *** As the first generation of web users goes grey, it’s clear that the internet they remember is no longer around. The early web is now simply another object of nostalgia. Tech anniversaries are a dime a dozen, while once cool digital aesthetics have made several ironic comebacks. All of this reinforces a sense that we’ve left behind a digital history that was as clunky and slow as it was idealistic and naïve. How can we rethink this relationship to the web’s past and the past web? This question is crucial today as the open web continues to lose ground to platforms and apps. How can this history be reconstructed and re-evaluated, and how are web archives and web histories impacted by technological change? What do traditional problems of preservation and historiography look like at scale? And what stories capture the diverse transformations and continuities that mark nearly 30 years of web history? There is of course no single web history, materially or conceptually speaking. There is instead a politics of archives, technologies and discourses that needs to be uncovered. How can we expand our view of web history beyond Silicon Valley and celebrated cases? And how can we reveal the technological, social and economic contexts that have shaped not just the present web, but how we access its past? What role do archives play in uncovering the histories of the web, platforms and apps, as well as their production and usage contexts? This conference aims to bring together scholars, archivists and artists interested in preserving, portraying and otherwise engaging with the web that was. In addition to paper submissions, we invite proposals for audiovisual installations, posters, software demos, or other media that connects to the conference themes. Submissions in the form of an abstract may relate to, but are not limited by, the following topics: * Web and internet histories * Historicizing the web and digital culture * Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and critiquing periodizations * Past futures and paths not taken * Platformization and the changing structure of the web * Social imaginaries of the early web * Archives and access * Research methods for studying the archived web * Methods for platform and app histories * Ethics of (studying) web archives * Technicity of web archives * Software histories * Archived audiences and histories of internet use * Identity, intersectionality and web history * Digital activism and web history * Histories of net criticism * Media industries and their online histories * Web histories elsewhere: forgotten and marginalized web cultures * Realtime, time travel and other web temporalities * Future histories and the archive of tomorrow *** Submissions *** Submissions are welcomed from all fields and disciplines, and we would particularly encourage postgraduate students and early career researchers to participate. * Individual papers of 20 minutes length (750-word abstract and a short author bio of 100-150 words). * Panel sessions consisting of three individual papers, introduced by a chair (750-word abstract for each paper, a brief description of 300 words of the purpose of the panel, and a short author bio of 100-150 words for each speaker). * Posters, demonstrations, and audio/video/interactive installations (short abstract of no more than 500 words, a list of A/V or other requirements, and a short author bio of 100-150 words) * Workshops (a 500-word rationale for the workshop, including discussion of why the topic lends itself to a workshop format, and a short author bio of 100-150 words for the workshop organiser(s)). Acceptance will be on the basis of double-blind peer review. *** Timetable *** May 2018 – dates out June 2018 – first call for papers July 2018 – second call for papers August 2018 – third call for papers September 2018 – final call for papers and submissions open 19 October 2018 – deadline submission of abstracts December 2018 – notification of acceptance 19–21 June 2019 – conference *** Organizing Committee *** Anne Helmond, University of Amsterdam, NL Michael Stevenson, University of Amsterdam, NL In collaboration with the RESAW Conference Committee: Niels Brügger, Aarhus University, DK (organiser 2015) Jane Winters, University of London, UK (organiser 2017) Valérie Schafer, University of Luxembourg, LU (coming organiser 2021) *** Program Committee *** Susan Aasman, University of Groningen, NL Gerard Alberts, University of Amsterdam, NL Megan Ankerson, University of Michigan, USA Anat Ben-David, The Open University of Israel, IL Josephine Bosma, independent art critic and theorist, NL Sally Chambers, Ghent University, BE Frédéric Clavert, C2DH Luxembourg Annet Dekker, University of Amsterdam, NL Matthew Fuller, Goldsmiths, UK Sophie Gebeil, Aix-Marseille University, FR Robert W. Gehl, University of Utah, USA Daniel Gomes, arquivo.pt, PT Stefania Milan, University of Amsterdam, NL Ian Milligan, University of Waterloo, CA Francesca Musiani, CNRS, FR Claude Mussou, Ina, FR Janne Nielsen, Aarhus University, DK Camille Paloque-Berges, CNAM, FR Thomas Poell, University of Amsterdam, NL Bernhard Rieder, University of Amsterdam, NL Marta Severo, University of Paris Nanterre, FR Kees Teszelszky, Koninklijke Bibliotheek/Royal Library, NL Fred Turner, Stanford University, USA Peter Webster, Webster Research & Consulting, UK Katrin Weller, GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, DE *** Sponsors *** The conference is financed in part by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) as part of the research program Innovational Research Incentives Scheme Veni in connection with the projects “The Web that Was” (275-45-006) and “App ecosystems: A critical history of apps” (275-45-009). *** Contact *** Website: https://www.thewebthatwas.net Email: organizers(a)thewebthatwas.net _______________________________________________ resaw.dac mailing list

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Call for Tutorials: ACM FAT* 2019 (Conference in Fairness, Accountability & Transparency)
by Michael Ekstrand 06 Sep '18

06 Sep '18

Could you deliver a session that would further practice and knowledge around societal implication and risks of algorithmic systems? The second ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAT* 2019) is soliciting a wide variety of tutorials to be delivered on January 29, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia. - *Hands-on Tutorials* (90 or 180 mins) should give ACM FAT*’s broad audience the chance to experiment with new software packages to deal with the issues of the conference. - *Translation Tutorials* (45 or 90 mins) aim to "translate" between disciplines; for instance, by explaining computer science concepts in a way that will be practically useful for lawyers, policy makers, and other practitioners, or by explaining legal, policy, or social science concepts in a way that will guide computer scientists in their future technical explorations. - *Implications Tutorials* (45 or 90 mins) should cover known legal, policy, medical, or socio-economic effects of unfair algorithmic systems, lack of interpretability of machine learning models, biases in the data, or other ACM FAT* related issues. We particularly encourage submissions by civil rights lawyers, policy advocates, civil society representatives, and others who work closely with individuals and communities affected by algorithmic systems. 3 page tutorial descriptions (+1 page for Hands-On Tutorials), are due September 13, 23:59 AoE Time, and those successful will be notified on October 15. More information, including more detailed information about formats and types of session, is available here: https://fatconference.org/2019/cftutorials.html Best wishes, Michael and Michael Publicity Co-Chairs, ACM FAT* 2019 -- Michael D. Ekstrand — michaelekstrand(a)boisestate.edu — https://md.ekstrandom.net Assistant Professor, Dept. of Computer Science, Boise State University People and Information Research Team (PIReT) — http://coen.boisestate.edu/piret/

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CFP Graph Technologies in the Digital Humanities (18-19 January 2019, Mainz Germany)
by Joris van Zundert 05 Sep '18

05 Sep '18

Dear Colleagues, I kindly would like to point you to the CFP for a conference on Graph Technologies in DH inlined below. The full call is also online and downloadable at https://graphentechnologien.hypotheses.org/tagungen/graphentechnologien-2019 Apologies for possible cross posting. Kind regards --Joris van Zundert # Modellierung, Erschließung, Vergleich: Graphen in den Digitalen Geisteswissenschaften # ## Call for papers (English version: see below) ## Tagung am 18. und 19. Januar 2019 in der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz Graphdatenbanken werden seit einigen Jahren in Forschungsvorhaben zur Modellierung von Forschungsdaten und erschließendem Wissen genutzt. Infolgedessen sehen wir jetzt eine weit verbreitete Erforschung ihres Potenzials in den Geisteswissenschaften: Graphen werden verwendet um soziale Netzwerke, Korrespondenznetze, Textvariationen, Texttraditionen, prosopographische Daten uvm. zu repräsentieren. Sie ergänzen zunehmend relationale oder auch auf XML beruhende Forschungsdatenrepositorien. In den verschiedenen Anwendungszusammenhängen werden heterogene Modellierungsansätze verfolgt. Diese verschiedenen Modellierungsansätze sollen im Rahmen der Tagung als erster Schritt für eine denkbare Harmonisierung vorgestellt und diskutiert werden. Ziel der Tagung ist es, ein breites Spektrum an Möglichkeiten für graph-basierte Anwendungen in den Geisteswissenschaften aufzuzeigen. Dabei steht die Vielfalt der Modellierungsansätze und Anwendungen im Vordergrund, gleichzeitig soll die Möglichkeit der Generalisierung von Datenstrukturen für verschiedene Anwendungsbereiche untersucht werden. Die Konferenz wird sich daher sowohl auf eine Vielzahl von kreativen Ansätzen als auch auf die Identifizierung von Gemeinsamkeiten für die community-getriebene Entwicklung geisteswissenschaftlicher Graphmodelle konzentrieren. Die geplante Tagung widmet sich folgenden Schwerpunkten: 1. Flexibilität versus Interoperabilität Graphstrukturen ermöglichen es, hochspezifische Daten, Informationen und Interpretationen auszudrücken. Dies erleichtert die geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung, die sich durch heterogene Daten, situierte Interpretation, komplexe Forschungsfragen und projektspezifische ephemere Forschungsgestaltung auszeichnet. Gleichzeitig erfordern Forschungseinrichtungen, Datenrepositorien, Forschungsinfrastrukturen und digitale Archive eine Standardisierung der Daten und die Interoperabilität der Werkzeuge, um deren Nachhaltigkeit und Wiederverwendung zu erleichtern. Stehen diese beiden Merkmale grundsätzlich im Widerspruch zueinander, oder können sie unterschiedliche Seiten derselben Medaille sein? 2. Generische Strukturen Der zweite Schwerpunkt schließt sich unmittelbar an und behandelt Erschließungsstrukturen im Graphen. Wie könnten möglichst einfache, generische Strukturen aussehen, aus denen heraus sich dann disziplinenspezifische Annotationssysteme entwickeln lassen. Wie sieht eine minimale, nachhaltige geisteswissenschaftlich orientierte generische Graphendatenstruktur aus, und ist es mit einer solchen Struktur möglich, die hochspezifische Semantik zu unterstützen, die die geisteswissenschaftliche Forschungen erfordern? 3. Recherchestrategien Aus Sicht der Interoperabilität sind vergleichende Abfragestrategien für verschiedene Forschungsdatenrepositorien von größter Bedeutung. Es gibt mehrere graphenorientierte Abfragesprachen (z.B. GraphQL, OpenCypher, Gremlin, SPARQL), aber welche Anforderungen sollten an eine speziell auf geisteswissenschaftliche Forschungsdaten und Fragestellungen ausgerichtete Graphenabfragesprache gestellt werden? Wie können solche Strategien aussehen? Gibt es Möglichkeiten hier disziplinübergreifende Ansätze zu finden? Im Mittelpunkt der Tagung stehen also der Austausch über Anwendungsszenarien von Graphentechnologien, nicht zuletzt um Doppelentwicklungen zu vermeiden und das Community-Building rund um Graphentechnologien. Insbesondere begrüßt werden Vorschläge zu theoretischen Ansätzen, die sich im Wesentlichen mit einem dieser Schlüsselthemen befassen, sowie praxisorientierte Arbeiten, die die praktische Anwendung von Graphentechnologien auf geisteswissenschaftliche Forschungsarbeiten zu diesen Themen beschreiben bzw. praktische technische Lösungen und Ansätze zu diesen Schlüsselfragen oder verwandten Themen wie zum Beispiel: * Graphenbasierte Datenmodelle, theoretische und praktische Untersuchungen * Anwendungen von Graphentechnologien in den Geisteswissenschaften * Text als Graph (TAG) * Lösungen zur Abfrage und zum Vergleich verschiedener Graphenmodelle * Strategien für den (rechnergestützten) Zugriff auf geisteswissenschaftliche * Daten und Informationen in Form von Graphen * Graph-basierte Repräsentation spezifischer Personennetzwerke, Objekte und Informationen zu geisteswissenschaftlichen Fragestellungen * Interaktion mit Graphen und Graphen-Interaktionsdesign * Graphen als Lösung für die geisteswissenschaftliche Informations- und Datenannotation * Graphen als Modelle zur Darstellung der Provenienz und Übertragung von Information * Graphen als Modelle für historische Daten und Informationen, die über die Analyse sozialer Netzwerke hinausgehen * Technische Lösungsansätze zur Analyse, Traversierung und Abfrage von graph-basierter Datenstrukturen in spezifischen geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschungskontexten * Vergleich und Interpretation von Graphen, Teilgraphen und graph traversals Interessierte werden gebeten, ein kurzes Abstract in Deutsch oder Englisch (ca. 300 bis max. 500 Wörter, exkl. Literaturhinweise) bis einschließlich 15.10.2018 an graphentechnologien(a)adwmainz.de zu mailen. Eine Benachrichtigung über die Annahme des Beitrags wird bis zum 25.11.2018 erfolgen. Die Autoren der angenommenen Beiträge werden gebeten eine 20-minütige Präsentation vorzubereiten, an der sich eine kurze Diskussion anschließen kann. Die Keynote hält Prof. Dr. Thomas Stäcker, Direktor der Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Darmstadt. Die Organisatoren der Konferenz bemühen sich um die Finanzierung der Reisekosten für die Vortragenden jedes angenommenen Beitrags (ein Stipendium pro Beitrag). Die vorgestellten Beiträge werden online veröffentlicht, das Programmkomitee beabsichtigt jedoch, ausgewählte Beiträge in einer geeigneten Peer-Review-Publikation zu veröffentlichen. ### Programmkomitee Prof. Dr. Tara Andrews (Universität Wien) Dr. Andreas Kuczera (Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz) Dr. Thomas Efer (Universität Leipzig) Franziska Diehr (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin) Dr. Elena Spadini (University of Lausanne) Drs. Joris van Zundert (Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, Amsterdam) #### English Version # Graph Technologies in the Digital Humanities: Modelling, Access, Comparison ## Call for papers for a two day international exploratory conference organized by the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz, 18–19 January 2019. Although graph models as a computing technology are several decades old, it is only through advancement of generally available computing capacity in the last few years that the application of graph models has become feasible for many humanities projects. As a result we are now seeing a widespread exploration of their potential in the humanities: graphs are being used to express social networks, correspondence networks, text variation, textual traditions, prosopographical data, and so forth. Furthermore, they increasingly complement relational or XML-based research data repositories. The exploratory state of graph application in the humanities is marked by a great variety of modelling approaches and various understandings of graphs as data and information structures. These different modelling approaches are to be presented and discussed at the conference as a first step towards conceivable harmonisation. The purpose of this conference is to cast a wide net, soliciting contributions that represent the many applications that humanities researchers are currently finding for graphs. While keeping the rich variation in modeling approaches and applications in the foreground, we aim at the same time to explore the possibility of generalizing data structures for different application domains. The conference will thus focus both on celebrating a multitude of creative approaches and on identifying common ground for community-driven development of humanities-specific graph models. Key topics of the conference include: 1. Flexibility versus Interoperability Graphs are versatile structures able to express highly specific data, information, and interpretation. This facilitates humanities research, marked as it is by heterogeneous data, situated interpretation, complex research questions, and project-specific ephemeral research design. At the same time research institutions, data repositories, research infrastructures, and digital archives require standardization of data and interoperability of tools to facilitate their sustainability and reuse. Are these two features fundamentally at odds with each other, or can they be different sides of the same coin? 2. Generalization Closely related to the first key topic is the question of modelling in graph structures and possibilities of generalization. Can we define generic terms, concepts, and structures from which discipline-specific annotation systems can then be developed? What does a minimally-sustainable humanities-oriented generic graph data structure look like, and is it possible with such a structure to support the highly specific semantics required by most humanities research? 3. Approaches to Querying and Access To support different research strategies it is paramount that interoperable research data repositories support adaptable query and information retrieval approaches. Several graph-oriented query languages exist (e.g. GraphQL, OpenCypher, Gremlin, SPARQL), but what requirements should be set for a graph query language geared especially towards humanities research data and questions? What can such strategies look like? Are there opportunities to find interdisciplinary approaches here? We welcome proposals for theoretical papers that engage substantially with any of these key topics, as well as for practice-based papers that describe the practical application of graph technologies to humanities research work to these topics and/or argue practical engineering solutions and approaches to these key questions or related topics such as: * Graph-based data models, theoretical and practical explorations * Applications of graph technologies in the humanities * Text-as-Graph (TAG) * Solutions for query and comparison of different graph models * Strategies for, or demonstration of, various kinds of (computational) access to humanities data and information represented as graphs * Graph representation of specific networks of persons, objects, and information relating to humanities research questions * Interacting with graphs and graph interaction design * Graphs as a solution for information and data annotation in the humanities * Graphs as models for representation of provenance and transmission of information * Graphs as models for historical data and information, above and beyond social network analysis * Engineering solutions to analysis, traversal, querying graph structure data in specific humanities research contexts * The comparison and interpretation of graphs, subgraphs, and traversals Proposals (between 300 and 500 words, excluding bibliographic references) should be submitted to graphentechnologien(a)adwmainz.de by 15 October 2018. Abstracts may be submitted in English or German. Notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent out on 25 November 2018. Authors of successful submissions will be allotted 20 minutes for their presentations, as well as a few minutes for discussion thereafter. A keynote by Prof. Dr. Thomas Stäcker, Director of the State and University Library in Darmstadt, will be presented at the conference. The organizers of the conference are seeking funding to support travel costs for the presenters of each accepted paper (one bursary per paper). Presented papers will be published on line at the very least, however the program committee intends to publish selected papers in a suitable peer reviewed publication. ### Program Committee: Prof. Dr. Tara Andrews (Universität Wien) Dr. Andreas Kuczera (Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz) Dr. Thomas Efer (Universität Leipzig) Franziska Diehr (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin) Dr. Elena Spadini (University of Lausanne) Drs. Joris van Zundert (Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, Amsterdam) --

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ENIAC presentation at HOPE
by Joly MacFie 02 Sep '18

02 Sep '18

Brian. L Stuart https://livestream.com/InternetSociety3/hope/videos/178434272 -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast -------------------------------------------------------------- -

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