March 2021 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Call for Papers
by HAPSAT 15 Mar '21

15 Mar '21

Dear Colleagues, Please find attached a Call for Papers for the forthcoming issue of *Spontaneous Generations*, a scholarly and peer-reviewed journal published by the graduate students at University of Toronto's Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. We invite contributions on the theme of expertise and its increasingly contested place in our democratic societies. Traditionally, *Spontaneous Generations* publishes a mix of early career and established scholars. If anyone has questions or would like us to review an abstract ahead of the deadline, please don't hesitate to write me at daniel.halverson(a)mail.utoronto.ca. Best, Daniel Halverson Editor, *Spontaneous Generations* PhD Student, University of Toronto, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology M.A., History, Case Western Reserve University

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CfA Fellowships and Working Groups at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS)
by Esther Laufer 15 Mar '21

15 Mar '21

Are you studying the social, political, economic, media-related or cultural effects of digitalization? Do you want to concentrate exclusively on a project and are interested in interdisciplinary exchange? The Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum, Germany, supports innovative projects that deal with the social opportunities and challenges of the digital transformation. Experts from academia and practice can apply for fellowships and working groups. The funding program is open to experts of all career stages, to all disciplines and areas of investigation, as well as to pure research and to projects that are more applied in orientation. The funding program is continuous. Apply by 12 April 2021 for fellowships starting from October 2021. For more information go to:http://www.cais.nrw/en/callforapplications/ . If you have any questions, please contact esther.laufer(a)cais.nrw mailto:esther.laufer@cais.nrw .

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Plans for SIGCIS at 2021 SHOT
by David C. Brock 12 Mar '21

12 Mar '21

I just was looking at the call for the November 2021 SHOT meeting (joint with HSS) and wondered if there were any particular plans yet for a SIGCIS meeting there? +++++++++++++++ David C. Brock dcb(a)dcbrock.net 40 Russell Street, Greenfield, MA 01301 Mobile: 413-522-3578 Skype: dcbrock Twitter: @dcbrock Pronouns: he, him, his

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New Article on History of AI Criticism
by Colin Kelley Garvey 10 Mar '21

10 Mar '21

Dear all — I would like to invite you to check out my new article in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing — happy to send a copy of the PDF if your institution doesn’t provide access. The “General Problem Solver” Does Not Exist: Mortimer Taube and the Art of AI Criticism Abstract: This article reconfigures the history of artificial intelligence (AI) and its accompanying tradition of criticism by excavating the work of Mortimer Taube, a pioneer in information and library sciences, whose magnum opus, Computers and Common Sense: The Myth of Thinking Machines (1961), has been mostly forgotten. To convey the essence of his distinctive critique, the article focuses on Taube's attack on the general problem solver (GPS), the second major AI program. After examining his analysis of the social construction of this and other “thinking machines,” it concludes that, despite technical changes in AI, much of Taube's criticism remains relevant today. Moreover, his status as an “information processing” insider who criticized AI on behalf of the public good challenges the boundaries and focus of most critiques of AI from the past half-century. In sum, Taube's work offers an alternative model from which contemporary AI workers and critics can learn much. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9324949 Yours, Shunryu Colin Garvey ——— Affiliate Fellow Institute for Human-Centered AI<https://hai.stanford.edu/people/shunryu-colin-garvey> (HAI) Stanford University ——— Select Publications: 2021 - “Artificial Intelligence & its Discontents.”<https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/yisr20/46/1-2?nav=tocList> special double issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 2021 - “Unsavory medicine for technological civilization: Introducing ‘Artificial Intelligence & its Discontents’.”<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03080188.2020.1840820> Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 2021 - “The ‘General Problem Solver’ Does Not Exist: Mortimer Taube & the Art of AI Criticism.”<https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9324949> IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 2020 - “COVID-19 Digital Health Innovation Policy: A Portal to Alternative Futures in the Making.”<https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/omi.2020.0089> OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology 2019 - "Artificial Intelligence and Japan’s Fifth Generation: The Information Society, Neoliberalism, and Alternative Modernities.”<https://phr.ucpress.edu/content/88/4/619> Pacific Historical Review

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Two jobs at Virginia Tech: (1) Cyber Technology and Policy; (2) Data, Equity, and Diversity
by Janet Abbate 09 Mar '21

09 Mar '21

The College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech seeks to fill two faculty positions to advance transdisciplinary research, teaching, and public engagement: (1) Cyber Technology and Policy and (2) Data, Equity, and Diversity. Both positions will actively contribute to at least one of the supporting Destination Areas (+ Policy; Data and Decisions; Equity, Social Disparity & the Human Condition), which are university-wide, cross-cutting transdisciplinary communities addressing thematic challenges that impact the human condition. In addition, both positions may contribute to the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences’s new Academy of Transdisciplinary Studies. Positions are open rank, tenured or tenure-track, to start in August 2021. For full description, see: https://careers.pageuppeople.com/968/cw/en-us/job/515370/open-rank-faculty-… Feel free to contact me if you have questions. Janet Dr. Janet Abbate Professor, Science, Technology and Society Virginia Tech Co-director, VT National Capital Region STS program liberalarts.vt.edu/sts www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/stsconnect/

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Material and embodied practices of people doing mathematics, symbolic logic, and calculation
by David C. Brock 05 Mar '21

05 Mar '21

Dear All, I’m wondering if you could point me to some references that treat the material and embodied practices — like writing, reading, publishing, lecturing — of people doing mathematics, symbolic logic, and calculation. I’m interested particularly in the era *before* the widespread use of electronic computers. Best wishes, David +++++++++++++++ David C. Brock dcb(a)dcbrock.net 40 Russell Street, Greenfield, MA 01301 Mobile: 413-522-3578 Skype: dcbrock Twitter: @dcbrock Pronouns: he, him, his

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After Post-Photography 6+ – Call for papers by M.A. and PhD candidates of Photography Studies (3-5 June 2021, European University St. Petersburg/online)
by Friedrich Tietjen 04 Mar '21

04 Mar '21

Dear members of SIGCIS, please have a look at the CfP below - me and my Russian colleagues would very much welcome if you would distribute it further to possibly interested parties through your networks. Best wishes from rainy Leipzig Friedrich ---snip--- After Post-Photography 6+ – Call for papers by M.A. and PhD candidates of Photography Studies (3-5 June 2021, European University St. Petersburg/online) Due to commonly known reasons, the annual After Post-Photography conference on visual studies, history and theory of photography will have to happen online and not at the European University in St. Petersburg. We very much regret not meeting colleagues and friends, listening what they have to say about their newest research and trade ideas, stories and gossip during the coffee breaks. Yet we’ll use the opportunity to add a third day to the conference for M.A. and PhD candidates to pitch their projects and get substantial feedback from the participants of the conference and the APP community. This Call for Papers has no specific subject – we’re open to, and interested in, M.A. and PhD projects from all walks of research, including, but not limited to, the history of photolithography as a tool in the semi-conductor industry, queer photographers in Latin America, the accessibility of tintype portraits to members of the lower strata of society in the 1880s in the US, the under-the-counter trade in pornographic photography in the countries of the former eastern bloc before 1989, the interlacing of photography and music in Jazz, private photography in Mongolia before 1990, social media photography in sub-saharan Africa, the changing perceptions of time through ultra-highspeed photography, the photo-journalist as an avatar in video games, post-indexical photography, the history of gum bichromate as one of the most versatile emulsions in the late 19th century, Jeff Wall’s lightboxes as apparitions, sceptic re-readings of Roland Barthes’ vitriolic critique of “Family of Man” or similar, or completely different topics. Please submit your proposal of no more than 1600 characters in English no later than March 28 at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=app60. As we will blind review the submissions, make sure that your name does not appear in the proposal itself. If your work aims at analyzing visual material we also welcome links where we can see what you intend talking about. If you have any questions, please send an eMail to app(a)mur.at – we should get back to you within a few days. And should you like to know more about previous conferences, have a look at our website http://after-post.photography/ ---snip---

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4pm Mon 1 March PST & 4 more Mondays: Next Generation Disaster Governance
by Sharon Traweek 01 Mar '21

01 Mar '21

Apologies from Sharon Traweek, UCLA, for cross-posting about this symposium and the ongoing, growing project in which I have been engaged a long time. Our transdisciplinary and transnational collaborators include engineers, computer scientists, physicists, policy makers, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, clinicians, etc. This symposium will provide an introduction to our work. 4pm Monday 1 March PST: a webinar by UC Irvine Prof. Kim Fortun on From Bhopal to Fukushima and Next Generation Disaster Governance https://www.international.ucla.edu/japan/event/14824 will launch the Envisioning Next Generation Radiation Governance Symposium, posing questions and laying groundwork for the 4 panel discussions to follow on subsequent Mondays in March. [See attachment for more information and registration links.] The four panels will explore the archiving, regulation, and education needed to support radiation governance in the future, in a wide array of places. The tenth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear reactor failure calls for reflection on past and future radiation governance, recognized as a transnational, transdisciplinary, and transgenerational challenge and responsibility. ... This symposium extends from and supports the on-going work of the Radiation Governance Working Group, building a transnational community-of-practice, body of research, and teaching materials focused on radiation governance. We investigate how those with different kinds of expertise about radiation (nuclear scientists and engineers, policy makers, affected community members, regulators, facility administrators, clinicians, social science researchers, educators, et al.) can construct among themselves ways of sharing their knowledge and working together to build effective governance. We also want to help build new capacity for radiation governance through ... [see the attachment for more information and links to our working group platform]. This 5-part symposium is sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the UCLA Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, the UCI Department of Anthropology, and the Disaster-STS Network https://disaster-sts-network.org/

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MGRL Lecture Series: David Parisi & Justin Grandinetti
by Adriana de Souza e Silva 01 Mar '21

01 Mar '21

*** Apologies for cross-postings*** Department of Communication Mobile Gaming Research Lab Spring ‘21 Lecture Series Please join us for the Mobile Gaming Research Lab’s Spring ‘21 Lecture Series webinar: http://app.bronto.com/public/previewmessage/email/36892/1200600/html <http://app.bronto.com/public/previewmessage/email/36892/1200600/html>. To celebrate the release of the Retro Mobile Gaming Database (http://database.mglab.chass.ncsu.edu <http://database.mglab.chass.ncsu.edu/>/), this webinar will feature scholars whose research is at the intersection of mobile games, archives and history. The talks will explore the history of touch-based mobile game interfaces and how Pokémon Go contributes to the creation of digital memory. WHEN: April 7, 2021 | 1:30-2:30 p.m. EST Featured Presentations Instrumentalities of Touch in Mobile Game Interfaces Dr. David Parisi, Associate Professor of Communication, College of Charleston (USA) Touch-based mobile game interfaces, by opening up new sites of contact between players and games, participate in a fantastical re-imagination of touch that originated in 1950s theories of information transmission. According to this model, touch could be deployed as the standing reserve of audiovisual interfaces, an alternative pathway for transmitting messages that compensates for the overloading and overcrowding of seeing and hearing in the modern media environment. By mapping the gap between these imagined transformative uses for digital touch and touch’s comparatively mundane deployment in contemporary mobile games, this talk provides a framework for further explorations of the relationship between mobile gaming and tactility. Speaker Bio (https://communication.cofc.edu/about/faculty-staff-listing/parisi-david.php <https://communication.cofc.edu/about/faculty-staff-listing/parisi-david.php>) » Pokémon GO and Digital Memory Dr. Justin Grandinetti, Assistant Professor of Communication, University of North Carolina Charlotte (USA) Critical to the functionality of the location-aware augmented reality mobile gameplay of Pokémon GO are elements of pervasive data collection, storage, and processing. For the player, this manifests in location-aware log and journal features, but also through the new Pokéstop scanning process that allows developer Niantic to “crowdsource” AR maps. In this presentation, Dr. Grandinetti will examine the digital memory of Pokémon GO as posthuman cognitive assemblage (Hayles, 2016; Lee, 2018) and part of a lineage of a personalized relation to space. Speaker Bio (http://www.justingrandinetti.com/ <http://www.justingrandinetti.com/>)» REGISTER HERE: https://ncsu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Mxndqj3NQbCTlMS9aqoFmw <https://ncsu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Mxndqj3NQbCTlMS9aqoFmw> _________________________ Adriana de Souza e Silva University Faculty Scholar Professor Department of Communication NC State University http://www.souzaesilva.com <http://www.souzaesilva.com/>

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