December 2022 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

New Book: Digital Independence. India's Way Into the Computer Age – an International History
by Michael Homberg 30 Dec '24

30 Dec '24

Dear SIGCIS, please excuse the "self-promotion": I am excited to announce the publication of my new book: "Digital Independence. India's Way Into the Computer Age – an International History" ("Digitale Unabhängigkeit. Indiens Weg ins Computerzeitalter – eine Internationale Geschichte"). It has been published this week by Wallstein, and is largely based upon my habilitation thesis which I finished at the University of Potsdam, Germany, in 2021. The book is in German language only, but an English translation is already planned. I've shared the translated German blurb below. Many thanks for all the inspirations I received from the SIGCIS community, and I hope you all have a lovely weekend. Best regards from Berlin, Michael *** Digitale Unabhängigkeit. Indiens Weg ins Computerzeitalter – eine Internationale Geschichte, Göttingen: Wallstein 2022 (Geschichte der Gegenwart, Bd. 32). URL: https://www.wallstein-verlag.de/9783835352674-digitale-unabhaengigkeit.html. Blurb: The first electronic computers arrived in India in the 1950s. Today, Indian programmers embody our globalized world. This book examines the long and chequered history of India's journey into the digital age. It shows how the emergence of digital expertise in India was the result of both national efforts and international cooperations. From early on, the computer thus became a symbol of Indian nation-building at the end of the colonial era, a tool of technocratic planning in the high modern age, and an instrument of power politics, cultural controversies and economic interests. The book interweaves a national history perspective on the Indian republic, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, with an analysis of the country's global relations, analyzing the different speeds and intensities of the computerization of the living and working worlds in the Global North and the Global South. Thus, it reconstructs the highly international networks of computer specialists, technicians, managers and politicians, development experts and activists in India. Since the early days of the Indian republic, industrialized nations such as the USA and the USSR, but also the Federal Republic of Germany and Great Britain promoted the expansion of computer technology and education in India. This study explores the roots of these international technical assistance programs in the Cold War era and the development of its global geopolitics of expertise, the growing desire in the Indian computer industry for “digital independence” in the global IT market since the 1970s and the triumph of elite programmers in Silicon Valley in the early 21st century. It analyzes the preconditions, dynamics, and consequences of global exchange processes in India after 1947, and thus “decenters” the primarily Western perspective of computer history and its master narratives. Drawing on broad (archival) research in India, the USA, and Europe, the study's sources include governmental records, university archival collections, academic literary estates, parliamentary minutes, and contemporary media. _______________________________ PD Dr. Michael Homberg Senior Scientist/Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam (ZZF) e.V. Am Neuen Markt 1 14467 Potsdam

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SIGCIS 2022 CFP: UNDER CONSTRUCTION | Due June 1
by Laine Nooney 30 Jan '24

30 Jan '24

Dear SIGCIS Community, The SIGCIS Conference Organizing Committee is pleased to *announce the CFP for our 2022 SIGCIS Conference, **UNDER CONSTRUCTION*. Our keynote for the event is Lilly Irani <https://quote.ucsd.edu/lirani/>, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication & Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. The SIGCIS Conference will take place *November 13th, 2022 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, *on the Sunday of the SHOT conference. *Abstracts are due June 1.* Below you can find the full CFP for this year's conference. The CFP can also be viewed as a Google doc here <https://bit.ly/388L3Zk>, or at our conference website: meetings.sigcis.org. Please circulate widely, and we hope to see you at SIGCIS! -Laine Nooney, Morgan G. Ames, Stephanie Dick, and Xiaochang Li -------------------------------------------------------------- *UNDER CONSTRUCTION* *New Orleans, LA, US | November 13, 2022* The Special Interest Group in Computing, Information, and Society [SIGCIS] welcomes submissions to their annual conference meetings.sigcis.org Proposal Due Date: June 1, 2022 KEYNOTE SPEAKER Lilly Irani Associate Professor of Communication & Science Studies University of California, San Diego THEME A shovel strikes dirt in one country, and the Internet goes out in another. Data centers are cooled by local water supplies, fiber-optic cable follows the sightlines left by railroads and telegraph, global hardware semiconductor supplies depend on the labor of rare earth mineral miners: somehow computing always needs more. The past ten years, in particular, have exhibited a perilous turn in the political economy of computing, as software became service, programming became agile, and storage became cloud. This new regime is driven by an accelerated mode of iterative software development that increasingly relies on post-sales bug fixes, security patches, and performance upgrades, producing a litany of products and services whose endless failures aid some and threaten others. From the communities subject to such “innovation” to the shadow workers paid to “be” artificial intelligence to the coders pushing ambient updates by the millions, risk hums through it all. Computation today is locked in a state of perpetual beta testing, forever promising “improved” features—just don’t ask when it will end, and don’t ask who’s doing the work. In the meantime, these new standards of practice generate new labor and resource demands, new forms of risk, and new challenges for accountability and intervention alike. Yet the patched and partial nature of computing isn’t new. Computing is infrastructure, requiring its own forms of construction and maintenance throughout its history, whether tearing up roads, detangling spaghetti code, or hastily soldering circuits. These are metaphors for history too: what better encapsulates the sentiment of doing history, than the feeling that it will never be done? For historians of information and computing itself, such anxieties are particularly acute due to the objects under examination: constant upgrades, absent documentation, planned obsolescence, the failure of historic hardware. For every line of code we save, hundreds, thousands, disappear. As we work to make sense of our contemporary conditions, how does the undone quality of history affect our ability to tell it? The 2022 SIGCIS Conference, convening in-person in New Orleans on November 13 following the SHOT Annual Meeting, invites scholars, museum and archive professionals, journalists, 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 construction, maintenance, and labor, broadly and imaginatively construed. Areas of engagement may include: - Maintenance and infrastructure in the history of computing and information tech - Historically-oriented approaches to the platform and gig economies - Computing as a site of labor struggle - Networks, borders, boundaries - Computational models of resistance: obfuscation, open-source, hacking, going “off grid” - Government’s historic role in the construction of computing industries and infrastructure - Communitarian and utopian applications of computing - Updates, upgrades, failures, and bugs - Modding, re-using, recycling, afterlives - Archival and curatorial practices and methods - Oral history, memory, forgetting - The limits of historical representation SIGCIS is especially welcoming of new directions in scholarship. We maintain an inclusive atmosphere for scholarly inquiry, supporting disciplinary interventions from beyond the traditional history of technology and 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; critical studies of big data and machine learning; studies of women, gender, and sexuality; studies of race, ethnicity, and postcoloniality; 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 begins immediately after the regular 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/3Nswik2 SUBMISSION FORMATS SIGCIS welcomes proposals for individual 15-20 minute papers, 3-4 paper panel proposals, and non-traditional proposals such as roundtables, software demonstrations, art and music performances, hands-on workshops, etc. SUBMISSION PROCEDURES Submissions are due June 1, 2022 via Google form: <https://forms.gle/C8ixar9s3JsCXq8d9>https://forms.gle/sLRowEDz6QitKCfv9. Submissions require: - 300-350 word abstract, summary, or prospectus (as appropriate for the submission type). Full panel proposals should additionally include 200-250 word abstracts for each paper that will be part of the panel. - 100-150 word bios for each participant If you are submitting a co-presented paper, pre-constituted panel, or other submission involving multiple participants, please only have one person submit for the group; contact and professional information for other participants can be included in the Bio submission section. Questions about the submission process should be sent to: xiaochang.li(a)stanford.edu. COSTS/REGISTRATION While last year’s online conference was pay-what-you-can, hosting an in-person event incurs costs related to room and A/V rental, catering, etc. These costs are subsidized in part by our parent organization, SHOT, but participants should expect registration fees in the range of $45-50 for SHOT attendees and $90-120 for those only attending Sunday SIGCIS Conference (we list these rates in good faith, but they are subject to change). Attending SHOT has its own registration costs. TRAVEL AND CARE GRANTS As a new initiative, SIGCIS will be offering grants to support travel expenses and/or expenses related to child, elder, and other forms of care for presenters whose responsibilities at home may present a barrier to in-person participation. The top financial priority of SIGCIS is support for graduate students, visiting faculty without institutional travel support, and others who would be unable to attend the meeting without travel assistance. We understand that for some, participation is more contingent on childcare or elder care, and as such we are opening up these grants to provide that form of support as well. There 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, so acceptance by SIGCIS does not imply eligibility for the SHOT travel grant program. ACCESSIBILITY ACCOMMODATIONS REQUESTS The submission Google form will include a field where individuals may make requests for accessibility accommodations. Since our event is coordinated by our parent organization, SHOT, we cannot guarantee our ability to meet all accommodation requests. However, our intent will always be to advocate to meet the accessibility needs of our participants. SIGCIS MEETINGS ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Laine Nooney, New York University (SIGCIS Vice-Chair of Meetings) Morgan Ames, University of California, Berkeley Stephanie Dick, Simon Fraser University Xiaochang Li, Stanford University ---- 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

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CFP: 2023 ACM History and Archiving Fellowship
by Tracy, Kim 10 Feb '23

10 Feb '23

SIGCIS members, The ACM History Committee’s call for proposals for the history and archiving fellowship program is now open. We’d appreciate your sharing this call with anyone who may be interested. The full call can be found in the link: https://history.acm.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/ACM-fellowship_CFP_2023_…. The deadline for submissions is February 15th, 2023. The ACM History Committee’s 2023 fellowship competition is for research and archiving projects on or centrally-related to ACM history. The History Committee plans to support up to four projects with awards up to $4,000. The History Committee has awarded over 40 fellowships<https://history.acm.org/projects-and-initiatives/fellowship-for-the-advance…> since the start of this fellowship program in 2009. Thanks for any help in getting the word out, --Kim Kim W. Tracy Visiting Asst. Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering (he/him/his) ROSE-HULMAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 5500 Wabash Avenue | Terre Haute, IN 47803-3999 Room: Moench D216 | tracy(a)rose-hulman.edu<mailto:tracy@rose-hulman.edu> Phone: 812.877.8343 | Fax: 812.877.8343 www.rose-hulman.edu<http://www.rose-hulman.edu>

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Seeking Information on Adding Machines, Mechanical Calculators, etc. Designed and Used in the U.S. Prior to 1877
by Foster, David 18 Jan '23

18 Jan '23

Hello SIGCIS! I have the opportunity to do a research paper for a Spring term historiography course and I’d like to depart from the themes of the assigned readings and return to research in the realm of computing history. Given the chronological constraint of 1877 as the upper year, I can get just a bit into the beginning timeframe of James Cortada’s Before the Computer and had been thinking that devices like de Colmar’s Arithmometre (1820) must have made their way across the Atlantic and inspired some emulation or other ideas. The good people at the reference section of the LOC have given me some useful background and I’ve rec’d some valuable tips on patent search and organization methodologies. I have just started to search the patent history (calculators, adding machines, etc.), but any advice or insights on 19th century American “computing” from the group are greatly appreciated. Happy Holidays & New Year! Regards, Dave Dave Foster PhD Student Department of History Texas Tech University davidfos(a)ttu.edu linkedin.com/in/david-w-foster 806-282-4856 [47HZJ4QTcZx7w2e2Swgm4zzzgs9v9DxTQbyVFNkAgAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC] Learner | Intellection | Context | Ideation | Input

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STS Italia conference panel - Interesting failures to come: history, actors, and scenarios in unsuccessful digital technologies projects
by Sanvitale, Ginevra 20 Dec '22

20 Dec '22

Dear colleagues, we are pleased to invite abstract submissions to panel 25<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Feventi.un…> "Interesting failures to come: history, actors, and scenarios in unsuccessful digital technologies projects" organized in the scope of the 9th STS Italia Conference (Bologna, 28-30 June 2023). The deadline for abstract submission is January 15, 2023. The abstract should be sent through the conference platform<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conft…>. Notification of abstract acceptance/rejection will be sent by February 20, 2023. Please, find below the details. Interesting failures to come: history, actors, and scenarios in unsuccessful digital technologies projects (https://eventi.unibo.it/stsitalia2023/panel-25<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Feventi.un…>) Convenors: Olga Usachova, University of Padova Ginevra Sanvitale, Eindhoven University of Technology For a long time innovation in the development of digital technologies has been portrayed only from the successful side. In contrast, the recent review emphasizes that “innovation projects [that] failed either completely or partly range from 40 to 90%” (Rhaiem & Amara, 2021). Unsuccessful digital technologies project development has been addressed from different fields, such as government information system (Pelizza & Hoppe, 2015), digital media (Magaudda & Balbi, 2018), organizational management of ICT project implementation (Ungerer, 2021), the environmental history of technology (Jones-Imhotep, 2017), the history of telecommunications (Lipartito, 2003). This evidence shows how failure is an unavoidable and multifaceted process in the development of digital technologies. Designing interesting worlds to come thus also implies expecting interesting failures to happen. And learning from past and present technology failure is a crucial step to future success in addressing the more-than-human challenges ahead of us. This panel will focus on two connected aspects of digital technologies failure. On the one hand, we discuss the controversies in current developments of digital technologies, drawing attention to the so-called unsuccessful development. On the other hand, we are interested in historicizing failure in the development of digital technologies, looking into both exceptional and recurring cases of digital technologies failures across time. We envision digital technologies failure as a societal, technological and political construct, typically resulting from the interaction of multiple human and non-human actors. digital technologies failure is therefore also a pointer to failures in our relationship with the natural environment, in our societal order and norms, in our technopolitical arrangements. We invite submissions from science and technology studies, history of science and technology, and other related disciplines that address the following questions (but not limited to): - How can we define “failure” in digital technologies? What is the role of non-human actors in existing conceptualizations of digital technologies failure? How can discourses and practices in different contexts contribute to the definition of digital technologies? - What is the role of maintenance and repair practices in digital technologies failure? Which more-than-human alliances are implied by these practices? What is the relationship between digital technologies failure, more-than-human-challenges, and repair and maintenance practices? - What conditions underlie the institutional acceptance of technology failure? Why do some digital technologies failures receive more public attention than others? How do processes of accountability work in publicly-funded failed digital technologies projects? - What are historical and contemporary examples that address learning from digital technologies project failure? How are these learnings recorded and transmitted (but also forgotten and omitted) over time? - What is the relationship between digital technologies failures and the promises sustaining the implementation and diffusion of these technologies? Can technology promises be understood as a counterpart of technology failures? How do past technology failures inform future technology promises? Ginevra Sanvitale

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New resources for teaching about early LGBTQ life online
by Avery Dame-Griff 14 Dec '22

14 Dec '22

All, I wanted to share a new suite of resources the Queer Digital History Project <http://queerdigital.com/> developed for researching and teaching about early web history. These are specifically aimed at community members and non-specialists who might teach related topics, such as LGBTQ studies, but aren’t sure where to start. - Digital Exhibits for a selected number of important figures in the history of queer digital communities <https://queerdigital.com/exhibits/show/impfigs>, LGBTQ BBSes <https://queerdigital.com/exhibits/show/platforms/bulletin-board-systems>, and Usenet newsgroups <https://queerdigital.com/exhibits/show/platforms/usenet> - Teaching Guides on Computing and the AIDS Crisis <https://queerdigital.com/aidsbbs>, Indecency, Obscenity, and Queer Voices Online <https://queerdigital.com/cda> (including the Communications Decency Act), and Early LGBTQ Digital Communities <https://queerdigital.com/earlycomms> - A glossary <https://queerdigital.com/glossary> of unfamiliar terminology individuals might encounter in primary source readings Ideally, these initial offerings will grow over time as new exhibits and teaching guides are developed, so I welcome any suggestions or feedback. Also, the Queer Digital History Project offers public presentations, guest lectures, and/or workshops on any of the teaching guide topics, either in-person or via videoconferencing. Please feel free to reach out to me if you’re interested in discussing scheduling a session, especially if you're thinking about your classes or programming for the coming year! Finally, this work was completed with the generous support of Humanities Washington as part of their Public Humanities Fellows <https://www.humanities.org/public-humanities-fellows/> program. Best, Avery Dame-Griff -- Avery Dame-Griff (he/him/his) Lecturer, Women's and Gender Studies (Gonzaga University) Author, *The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet* (NYU Press, August 2023) Curator, Queer Digital History Project <http://queerdigital.com/> averydame.net

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Book just published open access "A Critical Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change"
by renzotaddei＠gmail.com 14 Dec '22

14 Dec '22

Dear colleagues, The book "A Critical Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," edited by Kari De Pryck and Mike Hulme, has just been published in open access at Cambridge University Press. The book summarizes the social science and STS literature on the IPCC across a wide range of topics. Available here: <https://tinyurl.com/5f56yefy> https://tinyurl.com/5f56yefy Renzo Taddei Federal University of Sao Paulo

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Fully Funded PhD Studentship on computing technology, sports, and media
by Troy Astarte 13 Dec '22

13 Dec '22

Hi SIGCIS, I’m pleased to advertise for a fully-funded 3 year PhD opportunity at Swansea University. The research project examines the relationship between computing technology, sports, and media, and offers the chance for a student to perform multidisciplinary research which can include history of computing/technology, STS, and media studies. The core aim is to add to our understanding of how technology shapes sports, and vice versa. The project is aligned with the PhD in Computer Science programme and candidates must have demonstrable technical expertise which they will also be expected to deploy during the project. I will be the primary supervisor, with further advisory support provided by colleagues in CS, media studies, and sports science. Funding is provided by the Faculty of Science and Engineering and EPSRC and covers tuition fees plus a stipend at normal UKRI rates. International candidates are welcome to apply and a successful international candidate would have their full tuition fees paid. However do note that 30 studentships were awarded this round and a maximum of 10 can be awarded to international candidates. For full details, and to apply, please see https://www.swansea.ac.uk/postgraduate/scholarships/research/computer-scien…. The closing date for applications is 13th January 2023. Interviews for shortlisted candidates will take place in late January / early February with decisions made by the beginning of March. There are four possible starting dates from October 2023 to July 2024. I would be grateful if you could pass this advert around your network. I welcome informal enquiries from prospective candidates though I may be a bit slower to respond to email over the winter break. Best, Dr. Troy Kaighin Astarte (they/them / nhw) Lecturer, Computer Science / Darlithydd, Cyfrifiadureg Swansea University / Prifysgol Abertawe For students: my office hours are Wednesday and Friday, 10–1100, CoFO 407 and online). I fyfyrwyr: fy oriau swyddfa yw dydd Mercher a dydd Gwener (CoFo 407 ac ar-lein), 10–1100. Zoom office: https://swanseauniversity.zoom.us/my/t.k.astarte Supervision booking: https://doodle.com/bp/troyastarte/supervision Every email has a cost to the climate. Please think before sending short emails. Mae gan bob e-bost gost i’r hinsawdd. Meddyliwch cyn i chi anfon e-byst byr.

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Internet Histories, Volume 6, Issue 4 is online
by Asger Harlung 13 Dec '22

13 Dec '22

To whom it may concern Internet Histories, Volume 6, Issue 4, December 2022 is now available online. This is the Internet Histories second early career researcher award issue. The issue may be accessed here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rint20/6/4 Below, please find an overview of contents of this issue. Please also consider submitting an article to the journal, more information about submission can be found here http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rint20&page=…. Kind regards on behalf of the Internet Histories editorial team, Asger Harlung, Editorial Assistant, Internet Histories --------- Contents: Editorial Internet histories second early career researcher award Niels Brügger, Gerard Goggin, Ian Milligan & Valérie Schafer Articles “Do female anime fans exist?” The impact of women-exclusionary discourses on rec.arts.anime Aurélie Petit Moderation and authority-building process: the dynamics of knowledge creation on history subreddits Daniela Linkevicius de Andrade & Demival Vasques Filho Archives in the making: documenting the January 6 capitol riot on Reddit Terri Lee Harel Imagining networked scholarly communication: self-archiving, academic labour, and the early internet Corina MacDonald The invention of the archived web: tracing the influence of library frameworks on web archiving infrastructure Kieran Hegarty Metadata dating the digital city: a software archaeological approach Robert Jansma Book Review The New Laws of Love: Online Dating and the Privatization of Intimacy By Marie Bergström, Medford: Polity Press, 2022. Reviewed by Ben T. Pettis

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Question about IBM in Iran, 1970s
by Lilly Irani 09 Dec '22

09 Dec '22

Hello! I come to you all with a question about IBM in Iran in the 1970s. A SIGCIS colleague suggested this list is a generous space filled with IBM experts. I have an old family story told to me by my family about IBM dumping computers into the ocean to maintain secrecy of its engineering designs. I am looking for help either corroborating it or understanding what really happened, as the person who told me the story no longer remembers it. Longer version with context: My mom worked at IBM in Tehran in the 1970s in customer support phone answering, then in a program room where clients would bring code tape/reels to process, and finally in a procurement department. I remember my mom telling me a story about IBM throwing computers in Iran into the ocean when they were disposed of because they did not want Iranians to learn how to build their own computer. Now she doesn't remember this. I interviewed my mom about what she did remember. She talked about the Shah asking IBM to manufacture computers in Iran in the 1970s and IBM rebuffed him. She also said that IBM probably didn't want the Soviets to get access to computers and Iran shares a 2000 mile border with Iran so that might be why they'd dump computers in the ocean but they'd do it in the gulf, not the caspian which bordered the USSR. *Can the IBM experts in this community advise me on where or how I might inquire into these dynamics of secrecy and refusal to tech transfer, but also specifically into how IBM did dispose of computers during this period in Iran or similar locations?* Thank you so much, Lilly Irani UC San Diego, Communication & Science Studies -- Lilly Irani Associate Professor, Communication & Science Studies Co-Director, Just Transitions Initiative Faculty, Design Lab Affiliate Faculty, Computer Science Member, Institute for Practical Ethics http://quote.ucsd.edu/lirani/ http://justtransitions.ucsd.edu/ Books: Redacted <https://tallercalifornia.cargo.site/Libros> (Taller California 2021) | Chasing Innovation <https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691175140/chasing-innovation> (Princeton University Press 2019) I respectfully acknowledge that we live and work on the unceded territory of the Kumeyaay Nation that spans across and precedes the US-Mexico border.

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