August 2026 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

CHSTM Computing Working Group (Sep 10)
by Kye Palider 23 Aug '26

23 Aug '26

Dear all, I am pleased to share that the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM) is hosting a new working group this year on the history of computing. It is a place to share your research and engage in discussion on the history of computing. All meetings are online and occur monthly on every second Thursday at 12:00-13:30 EDT (EST after daylight savings). The working group is open to all scholars from graduate students to faculty, as well as those working in computing-related disciplines. We have our first meeting scheduled for Sep 10 at 12:00-13:30 EDT where Honghong Tinn will present her Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan's Computing Industry (MIT Press, 2025), with a focus on Chapter 10. We are excited and grateful to have such a piece for our inaugural meeting, as it will engage many themes that we intend to explore at the working group, such as global histories of computing, a grassroots historiography, and hobbyist cultures. To join, please follow this two-step process: 1. Register an account at CHSTM: https://www.chstm.org/user/register 2. Click request membership on the computing working group page: https://www.chstm.org/group/history-computing You may also find more information about the working group on its page (the second link above) where we will post meeting information as it becomes available (more to come soon). To submit your work for an upcoming meeting, please either email me at <kye.palider(a)mail.utoronto.ca>, send a message to conveners via the computing working group page -> Membership -> Email group conveners, or submit through the CHSTM's call for paper proposals<https://www.chstm.org/news/call-working-group-papers-2026-2027> (where you may submit to multiple working groups for consideration). We welcome research at any stage of development. Lastly, please spread the word about the working group to any interested parties. We are a growing community and welcome not just historians of computing, but those working on modern computing and society, those working in the computing industry, or simply anyone with an interest in computing! All my best, Kye Palider On behalf of the conveners

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CHM Lecture: AI Chips & The Silicon Gold Rush
by Dag Spicer 19 Aug '26

19 Aug '26

Hello SIGCIS Friends, Lecture at the Computer History Museum next week — August 27, 2026. 7:00 p.m. Pacific time. Topic: "The Silicon Gold Rush: How AI is Driving the Development of New Chips.” Panel discussion with: Bill Dally, Chief Scientist, NVIDIA. Norm Jouppi, Google Fellow. Dave Patterson, (Moderator), 2007 CHM Fellow and Pardee Professor of Computer Science Emeritus at UC Berkeley. Description: AI chips are the new frontier of computing: companies once known only for software—Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft—are now designing their own silicon to gain efficiency, control costs, and optimize large-scale model training and inference. The implications extend far beyond technology. These in-house chips influence global data-center architectures, supply-chain strategy, and national competitiveness in a field now seen as geopolitically essential. The resulting competition influences global datacenter design, supply chains, and national strategies, marking a major new chapter in the evolution of advanced computing and AI. In-person attendance is SOLD OUT but ONLINE streaming is still available here: <https://computerhistory.org/events/the-silicon-gold-rush/> [chm_live_gold-rush_chm_website-blank_924x551.jpg] The Silicon Gold Rush<https://computerhistory.org/events/the-silicon-gold-rush/> computerhistory.org<https://computerhistory.org/events/the-silicon-gold-rush/> Enjoy! Dag ----- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ACM History Committee 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View CA 94043 “History is a vast early warning system.” — Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990). Join our Mailing List here: https://info.computerhistory.org/subscribe

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CFP: Deterritorializing Artificial Intelligence: East Asia as Method
by Gao, Xinyue 13 Aug '26

13 Aug '26

Dear SIGCIS members, I am writing to share the CFP for “Deterritorializing Artificial Intelligence: East Asia as Method,” a two-day symposium to be held at Washington University in St. Louis on February 12–13, 2027. The symposium rethinks the history and present of artificial intelligence beyond US-centered narratives, exploring how AI has been imagined, translated, built, and contested through transpacific circulations of knowledge, labor, capital, and infrastructure. We invite interdisciplinary perspectives on the histories, politics, media cultures, and alternative theories of intelligence and automation that emerge when East Asia is placed at the center of the conversation. Selected participants will receive travel support, three nights of accommodation, and meals. Abstracts of approximately 300 words are due by September 1, 2026, and may be sent to eastasia-ai(a)wustl.edu<mailto:eastasia-ai@wustl.edu>. The full CFP is available on H-Net here: https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20153172/call-papers-deterri… Please feel free to share this announcement with colleagues, students, and others who may be interested. Best, Xinyue Gao Ph.D. Candidate, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures Washington University in St. Louis

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FW: A referral question on Soviet humanities-computing archives
by thomas.haigh＠gmail.com 02 Aug '26

02 Aug '26

Received this query, but do not recall seeing anything about the history of Soviet humanities computing. If you have any leads, please respond directly to Василий Глущенко <admiral.vasily(a)gmail.com> Tom Thomas Haigh Professor & Chair, UWM History Department Chair, IEEE Computer Society History Committee Director, ACM History Committee Turing Awards Project See more at www.tomandmaria.com/Tom -----Original Message----- From: Василий Глущенко <admiral.vasily(a)gmail.com> Sent: Monday, July 27, 2026 4:37 PM To: thomas.haigh(a)gmail.com Subject: A referral question on Soviet humanities-computing archives Dear Professor Haigh, My name is Vasiliy Glushchenko. I am a historian completing a Candidate of Sciences dissertation at the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the history of the digitisation of ancient Greek and Latin texts from the 1940s to the present. I also work as a programmer at the Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences. I am trying to locate archival or oral-history evidence for a narrow but persistent gap in the history of computing: Soviet and Eastern European computing centres and information projects that supported libraries, bibliographic retrieval, linguistics, text corpora, or humanities institutes. The existing literature has given me a strong starting point for general Soviet computing and projects such as OGAS. What remains difficult to identify are the people and records documenting the institutional space between Academy of Sciences computing centres, scientific-information organisations such as VINITI or INION, and early work with machine-readable texts. Could you recommend one or two historians, oral-history collections, or archival fonds in which this overlap has been studied or documented? A single person or collection would be enough. I am not looking for a general introduction to Soviet computing, but for a concrete route into the history of text-oriented and humanities-related applications. If this question falls outside your immediate work, a referral to someone within the SIGCIS, IEEE history, or Computer History Museum communities would already be extremely valuable. Best wishes, Vasiliy Glushchenko Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences Ivannikov Institute for System Programming, Russian Academy of Sciences

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