January 2026 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

CFP: Networks: Energy and Data in 20th Century Europe (deadline 15th January)
by Marta Musso 09 Jan '26

09 Jan '26

Dear list members My name is Marta Musso and I am working to a MSCA Project at La Sapienza University, focussing on the comparison between the history of the European oil industry and the history of the computing industry. Together with Séveric Yersin (European University Institute) and Filippo De Chirico (Università Roma Tre), we are setting up a panel & roundtable proposal for the next Tensions of Europe conference on strategic infrastructures in Europe - we would be happy to receive proposals on the history of computing, please see the CFP and consider applying. The deadline for panel proposals is the 18th January, so we can accept proposals until the 15th, in order to leave time to prepare the submission. Thank you for the attention and best regards Marta Musso -- *Fai crescere le giovani ricercatrici e i giovani ricercatori*** *con il 5 per mille alla Sapienza* Scrivi il codice fiscale dell'Università *80209930587 **Cinque per mille <https://www.uniroma1.it/it/node/23149>*

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cfp "Intelligence and Imitation: Mind, Mechanism, Mimesis, " JHU, April 24-26, 2026
by Ksenia Tatarchenko 08 Jan '26

08 Jan '26

Dear colleagues, We invite submissions for "Intelligence and Imitation: Mind, Mechanism, Mimesis," the Humanities of AI Workshop, to be held at Johns Hopkins University, April 24–26, 2026. Please feel free to circulate this announcement. With best regards, Ksenia Tatarchenko INTELLIGENCE AND IMITATION: MIND, MECHANISM, MIMESIS Humanities of AI Workshop Johns Hopkins University April 24–26, 2026 As a creative aspiration, the Greek notion of mimesis (“imitation”) manifested not only in artistic works imitating reality and philosophical speculation but also in scientific theories and mechanical artifacts. Plato and Aristotle’s nous; Hobbes’s and La Mettrie’s machine-like mind and world; the Jaquet-Droz automata; Kempelen’s chess-playing Turk; Wiener’s cybernetic analogies; Mori’s “uncanny valley”; and Yuri Lotman’s conception of culture as a collective mind exemplify the broad relevance of imitation to science, literature, and culture. Developments in artificial intelligence (AI) participate in this legacy but also complicate it. Across AI’s research history, systems have been claimed to represent, simulate, assist, improve upon, substitute for, or replace human cognition. Concepts such as optimization, satisficing, and superintelligence run orthogonal to classical notions of mimesis. At the same time, developments in science and society have challenged both mimesis and mindedness as ideals. Embodied and Darwinian cognition, as well as analyses of labor, material reproduction, and social stratification (Marx, Wallerstein, Pasquinelli, among others), call into question the value and veracity of material imitations and accounts of “intelligent” labor. Contemporary divisions in AI uptake—anti-AI activism, competing governance regimes, and popular terms such as “AI slop”—underscore these challenges. We announce a three-day workshop for the presentation and discussion of new humanities research engaging these themes. Our aim is to foster critical engagement with AI in its history, socioeconomic context, architecture, and cultural significance. We invite submissions from early-career (including graduate students) and established scholars. POSSIBLE TOPICS (non-exhaustive) - Mimesis and mechanical imitation from antiquity to the transformer - Transformer architectures and the hermeneutic circle - Political economy of digital infrastructures sustaining LLMs - New histories of literary cybernetics and NLP - Human–LLM hybridity and joint agency - Anthropomorphism and relations with the (in)animate - Emotional AI as mimesis or optimization The workshop will also include collective reflection on the humanities of AI as a research domain: its present state, future directions, relations to the sciences, and sociotechnical impact. FEATURED SPEAKERS Yulia Frumer (Johns Hopkins University) Steven Gross (Johns Hopkins University) N. Katherine Hayles (UCLA / Duke University, Emerita) Matthew L. Jones (Princeton University) Matthew Kirschenbaum (University of Virginia) Patrick McCray (UC Santa Barbara / Library of Congress) Alexander Williams Tolbert (Emory University) SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS Submit a single Word or PDF file by January 31 to: Jiantong Liao (jliao20(a)jh.edu) Please include: - Abstract (~300 words) - Short bio (name, affiliation, contact email) - Up to five keywords Decisions will be communicated within one month. Accepted participants will be asked to submit up to 3,000 words for pre-circulation. SUPPORTING INSTITUTIONS Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, Johns Hopkins University https://krieger.jhu.edu/humanities-institute/ Center for Equitable AI & Machine Learning Systems (CEAMLS), Morgan State University https://www.morgan.edu/ceamls ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Jiantong Liao, Johns Hopkins University Ksenia Tatarchenko, Johns Hopkins University Phillip Honenberger, Morgan State University

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CFP: AIBC-2026: Hype, Promise, Speculation; University of Sussex (UK), 1-2 July 2026
by Susannah Glickman 07 Jan '26

07 Jan '26

Dear all, Happy New Year! I am on the program commitee for this symposium and wanted to pass on the CFP! All the best, Susannah Call for Abstracts: AISB 2026 Symposium Hype, Promise, and Speculation: AI Bubbles and the Replication Crisis in Computer Science 1-2 July 2026, AISB 2026, University of Sussex, UK, https://aisb.org.uk/ <https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/aisb.org.uk/___.YzJ1OnN0b25…> In this symposium, we intend to tackle complementary issues related to the likelihood of a replication crisis in computer science and computational methods, and an emerging AI bubble. Website: https://aisb.org.uk/aisb-2026-symposium-hype-promise-and-speculation <https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/aisb.org.uk/aisb-2026-sympo…> Submission: Extended abstracts of 500 words (maximum, excluding references) to Easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aibc2026 <https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/easychair.org/conferences/?…> Deadline: 6 March 2026 TOPICS OF INTEREST We invite papers from a wide range of disciplines, including: computer science, AI, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Explainable AI, philosophy, behavioural sciences, psychology, social sciences, and those working with computational models, e.g. in finance. We welcome a broad variety of topics, including but not limited to: Machine learning (e.g. modelling, AI) Large language models Neural networks Deep learning Explainable AI Decision trees Replication crisis AI bubble(s) The replication crisis The replication crisis has crossed multiple fields in science asking if results presented in published papers can be reproduced, repeated, and/or replicated. In their efforts to verify results various disciplines, including computer science, have already found that the answer for too many papers is “no” (Gundersen et al 2025, Cockburn et al 2020). In this symposium we look at the replication crisis as it pertains especially to computer science, whether within the discipline (cf. Cockburn et al 2020), or as applied to, or utilised in, other disciplines, such as computational modelling for neuroscience (Miłkowski et al 2018). There is also uncertainty about the extent to which ‘questionable research practices’ (QRPs) can be found in the above contexts. These can include manipulating data for statistically significant results (p-hacking), post hoc analysis to find statistically significant outcomes (p-fishing), or to present these as expected, i.e. ‘Hypothesising After the Results are Known’ (HARKing) (Cockburn et al 2020). Meanwhile, there are also proposals to address QRPs in computer science research, for instance through replication or the use of pre-study registered reports that include hypotheses and methods etc (Brown et al 2022). AI bubbles It’s clear that AI development is expanding substantially (Giattino et al 2023) , but the extent to which this growth is sustainable is unclear. Meanwhile, the possibility of this becoming another bubble, like those from the dot com boom and real estate, is clear (Carvão 2025). A bubble is a vague concept that captures where a process or commodity is valued or hyped beyond its intrinsic worth, typically in unsustainable ways. If contemporary expectations currently dominating the AI field do turn out to be a bubble we can expect further expansion, and then collapse, typically causing damage in the process. The economic damage of a collapse is already estimated by US commentators to rival the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 1990 and the financial crash of 2008 (Allyn 2025, Casselman and Ember 2025, Yip 2025). In the symposium we look beyond the speculation of AI stocks at the promises and reality of AI capabilities and what the effects of the potential bubble are. In addition to the above are epistemic bubbles, which form around new or ‘popular’ ideas. ‘Epistemic bubbles’ may include ‘self-segregated’ networks of ‘like-minded people’ whose members are ‘liable to converge on and resist correction of false, misleading or unsupported claims’ (Sheeks 2023). These bubbles can in turn create ‘social epistemic’ structures which are similar to echo chambers, ‘in which other relevant voices have been actively discredited’ (Nguyen 2020). In AI contexts, these epistemic bubbles might exclude voices who are critical of these technologies, or who doubt either its identity as AI, or its scope for positive impacts and change. Not least as ‘AI’ as a term brings greater expectations, including financial, compared with describing the technology in terms of its components and capacities, e.g. as LLMs, RAGs, DNNs, transformers, models, etc. Epistemic bubbles can also be created through the use of AI itself, for instance due to its scope for personalisation on media platforms, and agreeableness in GenAI chatbots, such that views of users are neither challenged nor developed.

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New book release
by herbert.bruderer＠bluewin.ch 06 Jan '26

06 Jan '26

Dear colleagues: I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book: Turning Points in the Analog and Digital World. The book is available here (selection): - ACM Books Turning Points in the Analog and Digital World: | ACM Books | ACM Digital Library https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/3755991 - Barnes & Noble Turning Points in the Analog and Digital World by Herbert Bruderer, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/turning-points-in-the-analog-and-digital-w… - Walmart ACM Books Turning Points in the Analog and Digital World, (Paperback) - Walmart.com https://www.walmart.com/ip/ACM-Books-Turning-Points-in-the-Analog-and-Digit… - Amazon Amazon.com: Turning Points in the Analog and Digital World (ACM Books) eBook : Bruderer, Herbert: Kindle-Shop https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B0G8KVS49V/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%… You will find more information on Zenodo: Bruderer, H. (2025). Turning Points in the Analog and Digital World. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17822921 Many thanks and best wishes, Herbert Bruderer Bruderer Informatik Seehaldenstraße 26 Postfach 47 CH-9401 Rorschach Switzerland

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Special Issue: Technologies of War
by Tahir, Madiha 01 Jan '26

01 Jan '26

Dear colleagues - I wanted to share a special issue Technologies of War<https://read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/issue/45/3>, for CSSAME (Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East) that may be of interest to you. The issue, co-edited by Adrien Zakar and me, examines the longer genealogies of digital war. Here is the full ToC for Technologies of War | Vol 45 Issue 3: Introduction: Technology and Critique: Genealogies of Digital War<https://read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/article/45/3/411/402223/Technology-and-…> Madiha Tahir & Adrien Zakar (Counter)-Mapping US Empire in Africa: Scattered Hegemonies, Feminist Methodologies, and Situated Knowledge <https://read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/article/45/3/421/402206/Counter-Mapping…> Samar Al-Bulushi Gimmicks of War<https://read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/article/45/3/429/402209/Gimmicks-of-War> Adrien Zakar Drone Empires: Ethnic Conflict, Techno-Spectacle, and Imperial Machinations Across Eurasia and Africa<https://read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/article/45/3/441/402219/Drone-EmpiresEt…> Matthew Ghazarian Distributed Empire: A Technics of Drone War <https://read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/article/45/3/449/402207/Distributed-Emp…> Madiha Tahir iPhones as Compromised Talisman: Data Control and the “Imperial In-Between” in Northwest China<https://read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/article/45/3/459/402204/iPhones-as-Comp…> Darren Byler Big Data Before the Age of Big Data: The 1917 Anglo-Egyptian “Dress Rehearsal” of the Nazi Census<https://read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/article/45/3/465/402222/Big-Data-Before…> Karim Malak Pivots<https://read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/article/45/3/475/402214/Pivots> Sareeta Amrute Warmly Madiha ___ M. Tahir, Ph.D. Assistant Professor | American Studies Faculty Affiliate: Ethnicity, Race & Migration Yale University

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Zuse's scientific work
by Richard Vahrenkamp 01 Jan '26

01 Jan '26

Dear Troy, thank you for your hint to the wonderful edition of IEEE on Automation! Augmenting Paul Rojas' contribution on Konard Zuse I may give the additional hint on my research on the scientific papers of Zuse: https://www.vahrenkamp.org/files/Vahrenkamp_History_Operations_Research_WP6… With kind regards Richard -- ******************************************** Prof. Dr. Richard Vahrenkamp Logistik Consulting Berlin Phone 0177- 628 3325 E-Mail: Vahrenkamp2(a)gmx.de Web: www.vahrenkamp.org Trendelenburgstr. 10 14057 Berlin *********************************************

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