April 2022 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

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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2021 Mahoney Prize nominations
by Elizabeth Petrick 10 May '22

10 May '22

Hello everyone, It's time for the 2021 Mahoney Prize for outstanding article in the history of computing and information technology, broadly conceived. Articles published in 2018, 2019, or 2020 will be considered. Self-nominations and nominations of others are both welcome. Please email a copy of the article to members of the prize committee, listed here: https://www.sigcis.org/mahoneyprize Deadline is May 1, 2021. Best, Liz ------------- Elizabeth Petrick Associate Professor Department of History Rice University http://elizabethpetrick.com/

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New Book: The Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight
by Alexander Monea 30 Apr '22

30 Apr '22

New Book: The Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight I wanted to post an announcement for my new book The Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight that just came out from MIT Press. The Digital Closet is an exploration of how heteronormative bias is deeply embedded in the internet, hidden in algorithms, keywords, content moderation, and more. You can use the coupon code ‘MONEA20’ to get 20% off when you purchase the book direct from Penguin Random House at PRH.com. See here https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/691644/the-digital-closet-by-alexa… I’ll post the summary below, but you can also find more information about the book (including endorsements, author details, etc.) at https://www.digitalcloset.org Summary: In The Digital Closet, Alexander Monea argues provocatively that the internet became straight by suppressing everything that is not, forcing LGBTQIA+ content into increasingly narrow channels—rendering it invisible through opaque algorithms, automated and human content moderation, warped keywords, and other strategies of digital overreach. Monea explains how the United States' thirty-year “war on porn” has brought about the over-regulation of sexual content, which, in turn, has resulted in the censorship of much nonpornographic content—including material on sex education and LGBTQ+ activism. In this wide-ranging, enlightening account, Monea examines the cultural, technological, and political conditions that put LGBTQ+ content into the closet. Monea looks at the anti-porn activism of the alt-right, Christian conservatives, and anti-porn feminists, who became strange bedfellows in the politics of pornography; investigates the coders, code, and moderators whose work serves to reify heteronormativity; and explores the collateral damage in the ongoing war on porn—the censorship of LGBTQIA+ community resources, sex education materials, art, literature, and other content that engages with sexuality but would rarely be categorized as pornography by today's community standards. Finally, he examines the internet architectures responsible for the heteronormalization of porn: Google Safe Search and the data structures of tube sites and other porn platforms. Monea reveals the porn industry's deepest, darkest secret: porn is boring. Mainstream porn is stuck in a heteronormative filter bubble, limited to the same heteronormative tropes, tagged by the same heteronormative keywords. This heteronormativity is mirrored by the algorithms meant to filter pornographic content, increasingly filtering out all LGBTQIA+ content. Everyone suffers from this forced heteronormativity of the internet—suffering, Monea suggests, that could be alleviated by queering straightness and introducing feminism to dissipate the misogyny. Alexander Monea Assistant Professor English | Cultural Studies George Mason University [1473787391094_GMU]

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Events today and next month for A New History of Modern Computing (hybrid)
by thomas.haigh＠gmail.com 29 Apr '22

29 Apr '22

Hello SIGCIS, A little more self-promotion. There are two hybrid book talks coming up for A New History of Modern Computing. One is a small event today at UWM, my home university, with our digital humanities group. It's 3:00 to 4:00 US central time, and as it is likely to be a small audience (particularly in person) I expect to run it in a more conversational, interactive way rather than just ploughing through a huge deck of slides. https://uwm.edu/libraries/events/dh-lab-registration-for-a-new-history-of-mo dern-computing/ If you fill in the form then you should get a zoom link from the host. But if you don't get your zoom link half an hour ahead then email me and I'll send it to you directly. I am not including the link here, because if you fill the form in it will help the DH lab justify its existence. Then there is what promises to be a larger event in Chicago, organized by the local chapter of the ACM and hosted by Loyola. https://www.meetup.com/acm-chicago/events/285566610/ That's going to be on Wednesday, May 18 from 6pm to 8pm (again US central time). It will a more formal talk, but given the non-specialist audience I'm going to try to make it accessible by focusing on the core question of what the unusual nature of the computer itself means for someone faced with the task of trying to construct a coherent and comprehensive biographical narrative for this technology. BTW, if you do want to see a recording of me rushing through a lot of slides in an intense manner then the keynote talk I gave at HAPOC in Zurich last year is now available: https://video.ethz.ch/events/2021/hapoc/c78227a5-4f48-443f-bc48-f56125e654c3 .html. Given the audience there I assumed an interest in Turing and a familiarity with the general shape of the history of computing literature. Thanks, of course, to everyone involved with setting up those events and in particular for the invitation to Zurich, which thanks to the timing of the various Covid waves felt like a surprisingly normal conference experience. While I am clogging up your inbox, I might as well also include a link to a nice story that Gil Press of Forbes posted about the book recently: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2022/04/11/read-this-engaging-story-of -how-the-computer-has-been-eating-the-world-for-75-years Best wishes, Tom

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The Communicators
by Evan Koblentz 29 Apr '22

29 Apr '22

I’m interested in a new-to-me research angle: the people who changed computing by writing about it. Lovelace comes to mind. So do Vannevar Bush and Edmund Berkeley. 1. Who else should I consider from prior to 1965? (I have the microcomputer generation covered.) 2. Are there existing papers on this subject? [NJIT logo]<https://www.njit.edu/> Evan A Koblentz Staff Writer, Office of Strategic Communications Adjunct Instructor, Ying Wu College of Computing evan.a.koblentz(a)njit.edu<mailto:evan.a.koblentz@njit.edu> • (973) 596-3065<tel:9735963065> https://web.njit.edu/~evank <https://web.njit.edu/~evank%0b>@TechnicallyEvan<https://twitter.com/technicallyevan>

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New OA book: What Was Artificial Intelligence?
by Jeff Pooley 28 Apr '22

28 Apr '22

mediastudies.press is a scholar-led, nonprofit, no-fee open access publisher in the media, film, and communication studies fields. We are excited to announce the publication of our latest book, Sue Curry Jansen’s *What Was Artificial Intelligence?*: https://www.mediastudies.press/wwai When it was originally published in 2002, Sue Curry Jansen’s “What Was Artificial Intelligence?” attracted little notice. The long essay was published as a chapter in Jansen’s Critical Communication Theory, a book whose wisdom and erudition failed to register across the many fields it addressed. One explanation for the neglect, ironic and telling, is that Jansen’s sheer scope as an intellectual had few competent readers in the communication studies discipline into which she published the book. “What Was Artificial Intelligence?” was buried treasure. In this mediastudies.press edition, Jansen’s prescient autopsy of AI self-selling—the rhetoric of the masculinist sublime—is reprinted with a new introduction. Now an open access book, What Was Artificial Intelligence? is a message in a bottle, addressed to Musk, Bezos, and the latest generation of AI myth-makers. https://www.mediastudies.press/wwai The book is available online, and as a free download in PDF, ePub, and Mobi. The book is also available as a $5 paperback. https://www.mediastudies.press/wwai What Was Artificial Intelligence? appears in the Media Manifold series. Scholars interested in proposing volumes in this or other series are encouraged to reach out with a query: https://www.mediastudies.press/queries --------- Jeff Pooley Professor of Media & Communication, Muhlenberg College Director, mediastudies.press jeffpooley.com

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BBC TV Request for Help
by James Cortada 27 Apr '22

27 Apr '22

I have received a request for help that I thought one or more of you could assist with. Johndy Surio III, a researcher at the BBC Studios in London is working on a documentary program entitled “The Secret Genius of Everything,” and wants to learn more about the invention of the magstripe and the Forrest Parry ironing story. BBC would like to have a chat with someone knowledgeable about these topics. Can one of you help out? I can facilitate an introduction. Thanks. Jim Cortada -- James W. Cortada Senior Research Fellow Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota jcortada(a)umn.edu 608-274-6382

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Great podcast series about Klara von Neumann
by thomas.haigh＠gmail.com 27 Apr '22

27 Apr '22

Hello SIGCIS, In the wake of Andy's recent self-promotion, please allow me to pop up suddenly in your inbox to let you know about a new podcast centered on Klara von Neumann. It's season 2 of _Lost Women of Science_, fronted by Katie Hafner of NY Times, WELL & _Where Wizards Stay Up Late_ fame and distributed with PRX and Scientific American. Klara von Neumann made her main contributions to the history of computing between 1947 and 1950. In my book _ENIAC in Action_ (with Mark Priestley and Crispin Rope) we argued that the code she wrote in 1947/8 for ENIAC was not just the first Monte Carlo simulation run on a computer but the first "modern" code of any kind executed on any computer. She worked hands on with ENIAC during two long visits that year, and played an even more central role in further fission and fusion simulations run on behalf of Los Alamos in 1949 and 1950. Yet despite her conspicuous accomplishments, and a prominent appearance in George Dyson's bestselling and idiosyncratic _Turing's Cathedral_ she never quite made list of well known pioneering women in computing. <Grumpy aside> Compounding this general neglect, the most prominent online source about her, a 2017 Smithsonian Magazine article, is centered on something she didn't do (invent numerical meteorology). https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/meet-computer-scientist-you-sh ould-thank-your-phone-weather-app-180963716/ In fact she didn't write the code for this project, wasn't there when it was run, didn't manage the punched cards holding data, and despite the article's title doesn't need to be thanked for your smartphone weather app. Unfortunately the bogus claim has now been further garbled by the Guardian and written into Wikipedia, so likely it will never go away. </grumpy aside> In contrast, the Lost Women of Science format devotes an entire season to a single "lost woman" which is a nice change from the thriving industry of shoddily sourced quickie online articles recycling tired anecdotes about the same handful of (by now well-known) inspirational women. So there's an actual team of journalists behind it who did archival research and spoke with a lot of people, including SIGCIS stalwarts such as Janet Abbate, Nathan Ensmenger and Anne Fitzpatrick. I feature up quite prominently in episodes three and four, which deal with ENIAC and the work that Klara did with it. That's when computers enter the picture, but I urge you to listen to the whole thing - it's a very high quality production and delves into Klara's story to turn up information on her earlier life that I wasn't aware of and I don't believe has been fully reported elsewhere. I was very impressed with the team's commitment to getting details correct and its willingness to explore the paradoxes and ambiguities of a complicated life without trying to shoehorn it into a tidy narrative template. The first four episodes are up at https://lostwomenofscience.org/season-2. There should be one more coming soon, plus a bonus episode. In addition, you might be interested in an event that was organized at the Computer History Museum to launch the new season. It featured me in conversation with Katie Hafner, moderated by Maria Klawe. There's a nice blog post at https://computerhistory.org/blog/there-at-the-creation/, which includes video snippets embedded in the text (as well as the whole thing at the bottom). Best wishes, Tom

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New Book & Article on Internetworking history: Pelkey, Russell, and Robbins
by Andrew Russell 27 Apr '22

27 Apr '22

Hi SIGCIS! Self-promotion alert :) I’m beyond thrilled to share the news that the book that I’ve been working on with James Pelkey and Loring Robbins is, at long last, published and on sale. The book is called “Circuits, Packets, and Protocols: Entrepreneurs and Computer Communications, 1968-1988,” published by ACM Books/Morgan & Claypool. Details here: https://www.morganclaypoolpublishers.com/catalog_Orig/product_info.php?prod…. As many of you may know, the foundation for the book is Jim Pelkey’s interviews, conducted in the late 1980s, with over 80 protagonists in the data comm, networking, and internetworking industries. These interviews now reside in the Pelkey collection at Computer History Museum <https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102746648>; you can also access them through Pelkey’s website, https://historyofcomputercommunications.info/. There he has some overviews and context for the interiews (check out the JCR Licklider <https://historyofcomputercommunications.info/interviews/j.c.r.-licklider/> intro, for example, and the intro to the Paul Baran <https://historyofcomputercommunications.info/interviews/paul-baran/> interview for insight into the backstory for the book). Circuits, Packets, and Protocols is 632 pages, with many color illustrations, including an appendix that has a timeline of events, technologies, and companies in 3 different market-structures that arose between 1968 and 1988: data communications (modems); networking (LANs); and internetworking (gateways and routers). The book answers questions that no other book has taken on, namely: who made these devices that allowed computers to interconnect? How did they do it? How did they navigate the competing forces of government funding, standards committees, the towering presence of AT&T and IBM, and, of course, fickle (and then overwhelming) market demand? The book is available for purchase at https://www.morganclaypoolpublishers.com/catalog_Orig/product_info.php?prod…, and at other places where books are sold. It’s also available via the ACM Digital Library, and I believe some ACM members will have free or discounted access as a perk of their membership. In addition, we have an article just published by Business History Review in a special issue on standards and international business, which summarizes some aspect of the book that relate to standards. That article appears to be open access (for the time being), available from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-history-review/article/abs…. The article might be especially appealing for those looking for a breezy 12,000 word version, before you dive into the full 632 pages of Circuits, Packets, and Protocols. This has been a project long in the making, and I want to thank those who have supported Pelkey and us along the way, especially Tom Misa, our series editor at ACM Books. I hope you enjoy it! And please help us spread the word :) Many thanks, Andy — — — — — — — — — — — Andrew L. Russell, Ph.D. Dean, College of Arts & Sciences SUNY Polytechnic Institute Donovan Hall - 2123B 100 Seymour Road Utica, NY 13502 t. 315-792-7317 w. https://sunypoly.edu/ e. arussell(a)arussell.org

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CfA Fellowships and Working Groups at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS)
by Esther Laufer 26 Apr '22

26 Apr '22

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 31 May 2022 for Fellowships starting from April 2023 and for Working Groups starting from 15 May 2023. 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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