July 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

3 5

CFP--ACM Heritage/History/Archiving On-line Seminar
by Jeffrey Yost 18 Jul '22

18 Jul '22

Dear Colleagues, Want to share this CFP from the ACM History Committee [HC]. From CBI, both Amanda and I are ACM HC Members. All of us on the committee are excited about this interdisciplinary event bringing together archivists, curators, historians, information scientists, computer scientists, social scientists, humanities and arts scholars/professionals, etc.). The event Prgm. Comm. is CS, Tex. St. U.'s Vicki Almstrum; CBI, U. of Minnesota's Amanda Wick, & Annenberg Sch. of Comm., USC's Anna Loup. *CFP (Pls Share) * *"Seminar on Capturing Hidden ACM Heritage"Hosted by the ACM History Committee* This seminar is designed for individuals who are planning or are actively involved in doing projects related to ACM history, including the history of Special Interest Groups (SIGs), past or present. The seminar will explore concepts and methods for heritage preservation, including professional archiving practices. CFP and Info. @ ACM | ACM Heritage on-line seminar- ACM History Committee <https://history.acm.org/2022/07/17/call-for-participation-heritage-seminar/> Best, Jeff *Please connect: Twitter <https://twitter.com/justcodeculture> ** Linkedin <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-yost-b714566>** CBI-FB <https://www.facebook.com/babbageinstitute> Blockchain & Society FB <https://www.facebook.com/Decentralizedinternet/>* *Jeffrey Yost, Ph.D. * Director, Charles Babbage Institute <http://www.cse.umn.edu/cbi>; Research Professor, HSTM 222 21st Avenue South, University of Minnesota; Minneapolis, MN 55455 *Studies in Computing and Culture book series, Johns Hopkins U. Press * Co-Editor *PI, NSF-funded CBI project "Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy."* *Blockchain & Society Blog and Site* <https://www.blockchainandsociety.com> (Founder/Leader) *Interfaces: Essays and Reviews in Computing and Culture <https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces> *Co-Editor (w/ Amanda Wick) *Committee Member, National Academy of Engineering Extraordinary Engineering Impacts on Society* *Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry (MIT Press) <https://amzn.to/3gqe4R6>*

1 0

SMS+S special issue abstract deadline extension (Mon Aug 15)
by Andrew Iliadis 14 Jul '22

14 Jul '22

Hi all, Hope everyone is safe and doing well. We're writing to say the deadline to submit abstracts for our SM+S special issue on "semantic media" has been extended to Mon Aug 15. Abstracts focusing on histories of the semantic web, knowledge graphs, web schemas, computational ontologies, and virtual assistants are encouraged. best, Andrew and Heather **** Abstract deadline extended to Mon Aug 15 **** Call for Papers Social Media + Society Special Issue: Semantic Media Editors: Andrew Iliadis and Heather Ford This special issue focuses on “semantic media,” which we define as media technologies that primarily orchestrate and convey facts, answers, meanings, and “knowledge” about things directly in media products, rather than lead people to other sources. Search engines and virtual assistants respond directly to questions based on textual or verbal searches (e.g., “Things to do in Philadelphia?” or “What is the capital of Israel?”). The special issue is thus dedicated to the often-invisible ways (to the non-specialist) that internet companies are now actively involved in constructing “knowledge” about the world. Organizations like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon extract, curate, and store facts served to users in new and emerging media products. Such processes have significant implications for the politics of knowledge sharing in the future. We seek papers that examine how design decisions “bake” these facts into the apps and platforms people use daily while focusing on the infrastructures dedicated to orchestrating and presenting this information. The goal is to understand the technologies that will drive social and political outcomes when large internet companies become a primary conduit through which people directly acquire an understanding of facts about the world. We also seek to understand how governments, nonprofit, and nongovernmental organizations engage these media technologies. Semantic media are less about searching for keywords and matches on different websites that are then ranked for people to choose. Instead, they deal with identifying and describing entities (things like people, products, and places) and directing interactions with those entities (actions like purchasing, scheduling, and contacting). How do semantic media identify concepts and connect related information about them? How do companies and organizations produce facts and organize the data? From where does the data originate? What do these semantic processes mean for web users and administrators? What types of gatekeeping or safety checks do companies and organizations perform concerning these facts? Today’s semantic media have a long history reaching back to the “Semantic Web” project initiated by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. Yet, media researchers do not adequately cover how companies and organizations implement semantic technologies on platforms relative to their central role. These semantic technologies are in proprietary and open-source products, and extensive media platforms are now using them to provide facts and represent knowledge to various publics. Google’s Knowledge Graph is a database of facts that Google uses to provide quick answers to the public, and such graphs are in use at other companies. At the same time, Wikipedia has a product called Wikidata that similarly stores facts about the world in data formats through which various apps can retrieve the data. Researchers and journalists also use semantic technologies for search engine optimization, fact-checking practices, and data sharing and organization. This special issue thus focuses on such platformized versions of fact production and examines the underlying infrastructures, histories, and modeling techniques used in knowledge representation systems. We are interested in quantitative, qualitative, and critical approaches and papers that propose new methods, theories, and frameworks. Areas of interest: • The creation or transmission of facts, answers, meanings, definitions, and “knowledge” across media systems and their platforms • Answers from virtual assistants such as Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Bixby, etc. • Answers from search engines such as Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, etc. • Products like knowledge panels, infoboxes, carousels, rich results, maps, etc. • Open-source semantic technologies such as Schema.org, Wikidata, etc. • Proprietary semantic technologies such as Google’s Knowledge Graph, etc. • Fact-checking practices for misinformation and disinformation across semantic media platforms • Search engine optimization and semantic search practices • Semantic infrastructure projects such as the semantic web, linked data, etc. • Semantic governance organizations such as the World Wide Web Consortium, etc. • Semantic technologies such as metadata, markup languages, knowledge bases, knowledge graphs, web schemas, applied ontologies, and enterprise semantic software • Semantic, linguistic, and conceptual theories involving rules and logic, theories of meaning, ontology, taxonomy, ideas of truth, social ontology, etc. Timeline: • Extended 1000-word abstracts due Fri July 15 * Mon Aug 15 * • Decisions out to authors Fri Aug 19 • Full 8000-word manuscript due Fri Nov 18 • Final decisions January 2023 • Publication spring 2023 Send submissions to andrew.iliadis(a)temple.edu and heather.ford(a)uts.edu.au with the subject header “Social Media + Society Special Issue: Semantic Media” Link: https://journals.sagepub.com/page/sms/collections/cfp -- Andrew Iliadis, PhD Assistant Professor Department of Media Studies and Production Lew Klein College of Media and Communication Temple University

1 0

Homework assignment types for computer history survey course?
by Koblentz, Evan A 07 Jul '22

07 Jul '22

This week I received my course evaluations from our spring semester. It was my first time working as an adjunct instructor. The student evaluations of my knowledge and teaching were great, the only exception being that everyone ranked the assignments as average, easy, or very easy. The assignments were: - multiple choice quiz at the start of each class, to ensure the students read the homework chapters - midterm with 10 open-ended questions - final paper For those who teach similar courses (survey of the history of computing), what kind of assignments do you give? Also what sort of in-class group projects do you assign? I'm looking for new ideas. There is some concern that CS students might take my course with the expectation of it being an easy A. (It's not, but still I think it needs to be more challenging for them.)

5 4

Study grant: the history of the UK Tech industries
by Tom Abram 04 Jul '22

04 Jul '22

Archives of IT (AIT) seeks a postdoctoral researcher to work on a short study of the social and economic history of the UK Tech industry and its impact on society within a chosen window in the period 1950 to 2022. The precise topic will reflect the successful candidate's research interests, and is for discussion with AIT and our project sponsors, the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. The duration is likely to be around two or three months but is flexible and might be longer with part time working. AIT https://archivesit.org.uk<https://archivesit.org.uk/> is a charity established 6 years ago to encourage study of the history, raise awareness of the industry's contribution to society, and inform young people of the opportunities it offers as a meritocratic profession without regards to social standing, ethnicity or gender. To that end we are creating an open digital archive of oral history and documentary materials, including company records and industry reports. We are approaching leading figures in and around the industry, who have materially influenced it, who are shaping its future now and / or who shed light through their experience of working in it. We have now completed over 200 interviews and collected 30,000 pages of documents. The proposed work should draw upon these AIT materials and other sources as needed. We are open to the idea of gathering additional materials (interviews and documents) to support the work. The output should be a written report of 5,000 -10,000 words and a graphic or multimedia presentation. If you would like more information or an informal chat, email the director of AIT at tom(a)abram.co<mailto:tom@abram.co>. If you know someone who might be interested, then please pass this on. Or if you have some ideas already, send a CV, and a short outline of initial thoughts. Tom Abram Director - Archives of IT research(a)archivesit.org.uk www.archivesit.org.uk<http://www.archivesit.org.uk/> > Subscribe<https://archivesit.org.uk/sign-up/> to our e-newsletter > Follow us on Twitter @ArchivesIT<https://twitter.com/ArchivesIT> Registered Charity No: 1164198 This e-mail is confidential and may be privileged. It may be read, copied and used only by the intended recipient. If you have received it in error, please contact the sender immediately by return e-mail. Please then delete the e-mail and do not disclose its contents to any person.

1 0

Imagining AI, workshop and display, Oxford 9/10 September
by Mate Szabo 04 Jul '22

04 Jul '22

Dear All, We are happy to announce and invite everyone to the Imagining AI pop-up exhibition and workshop in the Bodleian Library in Oxford during the weekend of September 9-10 (https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/60729) The exhibition is organized by Professor Ursula Martin with the members of the Oxford Mathematical Institute, the Bodleian Library and the History of Science Museum in Oxford. The exhibition focuses on the manuscripts of the Bodleian Library, but also includes Jevons' logical piano from the HSM, among other artifacts. On September 9th there will be an academic workshop putting the exhibition in a broader context. The speakers of the event include: - Troy Astarte (Swansea) on Christoper Strachey's 1950s experiments with computer poetry and chess - David Brock (Computer History Museum, Mountain View) on curating AI experiments - Kanta Dihal (Cambridge) author of "AI Narratives" (OUP) - David Dunning (Pennsylvania) on Jevons's 1850s "Reasoning Piano" - Sharon Ruston (Lancaster) author of “The science of life and death in Frankenstein" (Bodleian) - Máté Szabó (Oxford, Greenwich) on Max Newman's influence on Alan Turing On September 10th there will be several demonstrations for the general audience, including, among other, Ai-Da, the world’s first ultra realistic robot artist, a model of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine in action, and a cybernetic robot ladybug that follows light and sound. All events are free to attend, but registration is required for the workshop. More information and registration links can be found at https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/60729. Kind regards, Máté Szabó --- Postdoctoral Research Associate Mathematical Institute University of Oxford https://oxford.academia.edu/MateSzabo

1 0

Reminder: the "grand narratives" event is coming up July 4 and 5
by thomas.haigh＠gmail.com 02 Jul '22

02 Jul '22

Hello SIGCIS, Our first and last reminder: the event Rethinking and Rebuilding: Grand Narratives in the History of Computing is being held in Siegen and online this July 4 and 5. All events in the afternoon for Europeans, which will make some sessions accessible to those in other timez ones depending on location and sleep habits. Program at: https://www.socialstudiesof.info/grandnarratives/ Whole bunch of historiographic roundtable discussions. I just posted an informal essay with some thoughts on why we chose the workshop topic and selected the questions we did for each of the roundtable panels. That is at https://tomandmaria.com/Tom/node/32. Registration is free, and will get you a zoom link. Please send an email to Anna Büdenbender at anna.buedenbender(a)student.uni-siegen.de <mailto:anna.buedenbender@student.uni-siegen.de> Best wishes, Tom

2 1

Last call: 15th CIFAS Field School in Ethnographic Research Methods in New York City, July 18 to 29, 2022
by Renzo Taddei 01 Jul '22

01 Jul '22

*Apologies for cross-posting. A few seats are still available. Please disseminate this to potentially interested parties. * *15th CIFAS Field School in Ethnographic Research Methods in New York City* On-site in New York City: July 18 to 29, 2022 – 9 AM to 12 PM EDT [image: image.png] The Comitas Institute for Anthropological Study (CIFAS) is pleased to announce the 15th CIFAS Field School in Ethnographic Research Methods. In 2022, the course returns to its face-to-face modality in New York City. Classes will meet at Teachers College, Columbia University. The Field School aims to offer training in the foundations and practice of ethnographic methods. The faculty works closely with participants to identify the required field methods to address their academic or professional needs. The Field School is suitable for graduate and undergraduate students in social sciences and other fields of study that use qualitative approaches (such as education, communication, cultural studies, health, social work, human ecology, development studies, and consumer behavior, among others), applied social scientists, professionals, and researchers who have an interest in learning more about ethnographic methods and their applications. *Program:* o Foundations of ethnographic research o Theory and practice: social theories in the field o Research design o Data collection techniques o Planning the logistics of field research o Digital ethnography o Ethnography in interface with Social Network Analysis and other trends in the field of the digital humanities o Ethnography in specific fields of activity (applied social sciences, health, social service, environmental studies, public policy design, business, and others) o Principles of organization and indexation of field data o Analyzing field data; qualitative analysis software packages: basic principles The total workload of the course is 30 hours. In this edition of the summer school, the option of earning credits is not available. Places are limited. The tuition fee is US$ 1,200. *Comitas Field School Fellowship:* a limited amount of fellowships are available to students from underrepresented minorities and low-income countries. See information on how to apply at the end of the application form. The application should be completed online *here* <http://cifas.us/field-school-registration-form/>. For more information, please see https://cifas.us/field-school/ or email us at fieldschool(a)cifas.us.

1 0