May 2023 - 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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SIGICS update
by Andrew Russell 01 Jul '24

01 Jul '24

Dear SIGCIS friends - I’m writing to share the news that I’m stepping down as SIGCIS Co-Chair. I started as Chair back in 2014, and became Co-Chair when Melanie Swalwell joined me in this role in 2020. I’m really proud of what we’ve built and sustained together as a community! At the same time, I think it’s healthy for SIGCIS to have some rotation in leadership. The tipping point for me came a couple of months ago, when I was named as Officer-in-Charge (aka interim president) of my university, SUNY Polytechnic Institute. This assignment is as rewarding as it is time-consuming, and leaves me little choice but to pull back from some of my professional commitments, including SIGCIS. Fortunately, Melanie Swalwell has agreed to continue on as SIGCIS Chair. She will be writing to the list soon with an update about SIGCIS in 2023 and beyond. Thank you for your support and kindness over the years, and for making SIGCIS a welcoming and fun place to be :) All the best, Andy — — — — — — — — — — — Andrew L. Russell, Ph.D. Officer-in-Charge SUNY Polytechnic Institute 100 Seymour Road Utica, NY 13502 257 Fuller Road Albany, NY 12203 https://sunypoly.edu/ https://arussell.org/

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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: Born Digital Cultural Heritage
by Melanie Swalwell 14 Jul '23

14 Jul '23

CFP: BORN DIGITAL HERITAGE NOW #BDCH23 - https://aama.net.au/conference/ Thursday, November 30th - Friday, December 1st, 2023 #BDCH23 is the third iteration of the Born Digital Cultural Heritage conference series. The first and second iterations - in 2014 and 2022 - brought together academics and practitioners from across the world to consider issues in the field of born digital heritage, from a range of disciplinary perspectives. A notable feature of this conference series has been the deliberate attempt to establish dialogue between those working in different professional fields. We recognise that born digital heritage reaches into all disciplines and that, if we want to make progress on the challenges of preserving born digital heritage, it takes people from a range of disciplines and professions working together. Therefore, we seek to break down professional silos and other barriers that inhibit the discussion and sharing of questions, knowledge and know how to address common challenges that we all face when researching, preserving and accessing different forms of born digital cultural heritage. BDCH#23 will consider where born digital cultural heritage is at now. What are we making progress on and what are the urgent challenges? How are we going to safeguard our digital heritage for future generations? For this event, we aim to expand the fields of discussions to include architecture and design and extend the focus on digital games and media arts to include websites, networking and other relevant domains. The challenges of preserving digital cultural heritage aren't limited to legacy technologies, of course, but also affect contemporary platforms such as apps, VR, AR, etc. BDCH#23 will be a hybrid conference held at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne and online via zoom. Access the full program for the last Born Digital Cultural Heritage Conference held in 2022<https://playitagainproject.com/conference/conference_program/> with abstracts and recordings of all presentations. We invite proposals for papers that address the four sub-themes: Collecting, Curating, Preserving and Researching, as well as those that cut across these sub-themes. Please send an abstract of 300 words, plus keywords and references, and a brief author biography (50-80 words) by July 27th, 2023. Send proposals to aama(a)swin.edu.au<mailto:aama@swin.edu.au> An anthology "On Revisiting 1990s Born Digital Artefacts" (working title) is planned after the conference. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to: * Recognition of digital cultural heritage * New approaches to collecting and curation * Engaging audiences with legacy digital artefacts * Exhibition case studies * Policy directions * Institutional interactions * Networked initiatives and coalitions * Distributed collections * New approaches to loans * New techniques in preservation * Imagining future tools, methodologies, problems and/or solutions * Legal developments * Tools and practical case studies * Training and workforce development * Progress on emulation strategies * Histories of the born digital * Reflections from researchers on accessing newly re-accessible artworks * Collaborations between practitioners and researchers. -- Melanie Swalwell Professor of Digital Media Heritage Co-Chair, SIGCIS<http://www.sigcis.org/> Acting Deputy Director Centre for Transformative Media Technologies School of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education Swinburne University PO Box 218, Hawthorn Vic 3122 Australia http://transformativemedia.swinburne.edu.au/ Tel +61 3 9214 3911 AS426 mswalwell(a)swin.edu.au @melswal Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality<https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/homebrew-gaming-and-beginnings-vernacular-di…> Game History and the Local<https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-66422-0>

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Congrats!!! CBI HCI History Prize/Award to Jacob Gaboury for Image Objects
by Jeffrey Yost 01 Jun '23

01 Jun '23

Dear Colleagues, I want to offer a special congratulations to University of California, Berkeley's Jacob Gaboury who has just been awarded the 2023 (inaugural) CBI Human-Computer Interaction History Award for his brilliant book *Image Objects: An Archeology of Computer Graphics* (MIT Press, 2021). Thanks to HCI pioneers University of Maryland''s Ben Schneiderman and Catherine Plaisant for making this possible. Thank you to Liz Petrick, Teasel Muir-Harmony, Con Diaz, Fabio Paterno, and Dag Spicer for serving on the committee with me! Prize statement/announcement at https://z.umn.edu/HCI_23 Best, Jeff *Please connect at:* *Mastodon <https://mastodon.social/@JustCodeCulture> Twitter <https://twitter.com/justcodeculture> ** Linkedin <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-yost-b714566>* *Jeffrey Yost, Ph.D. * Director, Charles Babbage Institute <http://www.cse.umn.edu/cbi>; Research Professor, History Sci/Tech/Med 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>*

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OSTP seeking AI policy input
by Jonathan Coopersmith 30 May '23

30 May '23

FYI: OSTP Seeking Input on National AI Strategy The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is seeking <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://aip-info.org/1ZJN-8B1NO-OUINPM-55U5ZB-1…> public input to inform a forthcoming National Artificial Intelligence Strategy. The office is specifically interested in policies and procedures that could minimize the risks of AI, as well its potential impacts on innovation, national security, the economy, and civil rights. Comments are due July 7. Stay sane, Jonathan Jonathan Coopersmith Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science Professor Emeritus Department of History Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-4236 979.739.4708 (cell) Technological obsolescence <https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2023/05/technological-obsolescence> "A Chief Skunk Looks Back," <https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/departments/a-chief-skunk-looks-back/> (interview with Sherm Mullin) *Aerospace America* March 2023 It's taking longer to vote - especially if you are Black or Hispanic <https://theconversation.com/its-taking-more-time-to-cast-a-ballot-in-us-ele…> , theconversation.com Preserving space archives: https://www.toboldlypreserve.space/ *FAXED. The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine* (Johns Hopkins University Press)

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] software modernization failures
by vahrenkamp2＠gmx.de 30 May '23

30 May '23

Hi Jeffrey, have many thanks for the link to your IFIP paper 2010, where you put the focus on logistic projects. In the summary you mentioned some reasons for the failure. Was the programming language Cobol too slow, was the concept of a centralized database to ambitious, too much work to maintain the database with correct data, was a decentralized approach of data storage with the client server architecture more appropriate, were there problems of not a adjusted numbering systems for spare parts and other kinds of goods to be delivered? Already in 1948 the US Air Force started the logistic project SCOOP with Linear Programming, but it was not in operation, and it only served to produce a scientific image for the Air Force, see the autobiography Murray Geissler: A Personal History of Logistics, Bethesda 1986. With kind regards from Berlin Richard Vahrenkamp Logistic Consulting Berlin Last paper published: Mathematical Management - Operations Research in the United States and Western Europe, in: Management Review 34 (2023), Issum 1, pp. 69-91

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Origin Stories: Plantations, Computers, and Industrial Control
by Troy Astarte 30 May '23

30 May '23

Dear all, A colleague sent me this very interesting and thought provoking article exploring the links between the industrialisation of control in the 19th Century, the arrangement and organisation of the plantation, and Charles Babbages’ engines: https://logicmag.io/supa-dupa-skies/origin-stories-plantations-computers-an…. It makes a powerful argument for engaging with racialised consideration of labour in our understanding of the early origins of computing. p.s. please remember to uphold the list Acceptable Use Policy (https://www.sigcis.org/aup) when discussing intellectually provocative pieces! –––– I am currently recovering from severe repetitive strain injury and consequently limiting typing. I am mostly dictating messages, which may lead to some strange results. Best, Dr. Troy Kaighin Astarte (they/them / nhw) Lecturer, Computer Science / Darlithydd, Cyfrifiadureg Swansea University / Prifysgol Abertawe For students: my office hours are on the Intranet<https://fse-intranet.swan.ac.uk/intranet/staff_officehours?selected_staff_i…>. I fyfyrwyr: mae fy oriau swyddfa ar y fewnrwyd. 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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software modernization failures
by Jonathan Coopersmith 29 May '23

29 May '23

Any suggestions for a book or article on software modernization failures, especially for large projects? Why do they seem common -- and apparently remain so? Thank you. Stay sane, Jonathan Jonathan Coopersmith Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science Professor Emeritus Department of History Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-4236 979.739.4708 (cell) "A Chief Skunk Looks Back," <https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/departments/a-chief-skunk-looks-back/> (interview with Sherm Mullin) *Aerospace America* March 2023 It's taking longer to vote - especially if you are Black or Hispanic <https://theconversation.com/its-taking-more-time-to-cast-a-ballot-in-us-ele…> , theconversation.com Preserving space archives: https://www.toboldlypreserve.space/ *FAXED. The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine* (Johns Hopkins University Press)

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Monday Deadline for Internet Forum submissions
by tom＠abram.co 25 May '23

25 May '23

If you are thinking of submitting an abstract for the Forum below . https://archivesit.org.uk/ait-forum-on-the-histories-of-the-internet-call-fo r-papers/ . don't delay - we would love to hear from you Tom Abram Director - Archives of IT <mailto:research@archivesit.org.uk> research(a)archivesit.org.uk <http://www.archivesit.org.uk/> www.archivesit.org.uk > <https://archivesit.org.uk/sign-up/> Subscribe to our e-newsletter > Follow us on Twitter <https://twitter.com/ArchivesIT> @ArchivesIT > Please support us at <https://archivesit.org.uk/get-involved-4/make-a-difference/> https://archivesit.org.uk/get-involved-4/make-a-difference/ 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.

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