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Cortada's IBM Book == one of Bloomberg's top books for 2019
by Thomas Misa 12 Dec '19

12 Dec '19

Please see https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-best-books/ <https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-best-books/> for the announcement that Jim Cortada’s _IBM: Rise and Fall and Reinvention of a Global Icon_ (MIT Press = History of Computing series) is among the “top books of 2019” according to Bloomberg! —Tom Misa

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Tony Brooker: Obituary
by Brian Randell 10 Dec '19

10 Dec '19

Hi: I recently received the sad news of the demise of another British computing pioneer, Tony Brooker, described by Martin Campbell-Kelly in the obituary he wrote for the Guardian Newspaper as having “designed and implemented the world’s first high-level programming language”, the Manchester Autocode early in 1954 - see https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/05/tony-brooker-obituary I knew and greatly liked and respected Tony, though I was not a user of any of his software, since I had no access to the types of computer on which it ran. I am pleased that Martin has produced such a fitting obituary, which also rightly describes Tony’s work on the compiler-compiler as “a milestone in the development of programming in the 1960s”. Cheers Brian Randell — School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/people/profile/brianrandell.html

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2020-2021 CBI Tomash (Dissertation) Fellowship Announcement--Deadline for applications is January 15, 2020
by Jeffrey Yost 10 Dec '19

10 Dec '19

Dear Colleagues, Please find below the announcement for the 2020-2021 CBI Tomash Fellowship competition. Best, Jeff The Adelle and Erwin Tomash Fellowship in the History of Information Technology The Charles Babbage Institute is accepting applications for the 2020-2021 Adelle and Erwin Tomash Graduate Fellowship. The fellowship will be awarded to a graduate student for doctoral dissertation research in the history of computing. The fellowship may be held at the recipient's home academic institution, the Charles Babbage Institute, or any other location with appropriate research facilities. The stipend is $14,000. It is for students who have completed all requirements for the doctoral degree except the research and writing of the dissertation. Tomash Fellowship recipients must remain students in good standing throughout the term of their fellowship, but there is no restriction on holding other fellowships, scholarships, or awards concurrent to the Tomash Fellowship. Preference will be given to applicants indicating a need to use CBI materials, planning research in residence at CBI, and willing to make a brief presentation of their research findings to CBI staff and HSTM grad. students and faculty. Questions pertaining to collection content and access can be directed to Amanda Wick, CBI Interim Archivist, at abwick(a)umn.edu. Applicants should send to CBI a curriculum vitae and a five-page (single-spaced) statement and justification of the research project including a discussion of methods, research materials, evidence of faculty support for the project, and bibliography (bibliography does not count toward page count). Applicants should also arrange for three letters of reference and certified copies of graduate school transcripts to be sent directly to CBI. All materials must be received by CBI no later than January 15, 2020. Application materials should be sent to cbi(a)umn.edu. A confirmation email will be sent once your application has been received. Alternatively, applications may be mailed to (and must have a postmark date of Jan. 15, 2020 or earlier): Charles Babbage Institute: Tomash Fellowship 211 Andersen Library University of Minnesota 222 - 21st Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455 Please direct questions about the Tomash Fellowship to Jeffrey Yost, CBI Director, yostx003(a)umn.edu, 612.624.5050 Jeffrey R. Yost, Ph.D. Director, Charles Babbage Institute Research Professor, Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine 222 21st Avenue South University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN 55455 612 624 5050 Phone 612 625 8054 Fax

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new book on history of computing at NSF
by William Aspray 10 Dec '19

10 Dec '19

You may be interested in the recent publication of Peter A. Freeman, W. Richards Adrion, and William Aspray, Computing and the National Science Foundation, 1950-2016: Building a Foundation for Modern Computing (ACM Books, 2019, 407 pp.). Thanks to Janet Abbate, Tom Haigh, and Jeff Yost for serving on the historical advisory committee for the project; and Tom Misa for shepherding the book through the publication process. NSF supported the project with a grant but did not have any editorial control over the content. The project resulted in approximately 5,000 documents and 50 oral histories being deposited at the Babbage Institute. These materials will eventually be available for scholarly use once the collection has been processed. -Bill Aspray

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New Books on Fake News & Scrutiny
by James Cortada 10 Dec '19

10 Dec '19

Bill Aspray has published two other books this fall that may be of interest to you that he and I co-authored. Both deal with the role of fake news in American history back to the 1700s, urban legends and how people used the Internet to scrutinize fake facts and rumors from 1990 to 2015. They can be considered as one large research project published in two parts: *Fake News Nation: The Long History of Lies and Misinterpretations *(Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, 312 pp) and *From Urban Legends to Political Fact-Checking: Online Scrutiny in America, 1990-2015 *(Springer-Verlag, 2019, 156 pp). -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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First Call for Papers HaPoP-5, 27 May 2020 Paris
by lidemol 10 Dec '19

10 Dec '19

Dear all, we are very happy to send you the first call for papers for the fifth international symposium on the history and philosophy of programming, organized by the DHST/DLMPST commission for the History and Philosophy of Computing which will be held in Paris on May 27 2020. The symposium is co-located with the NewCrafts 2020 conference. Our main topic this edition will be /Programming as an art, a science or a craft/ but we also welcome submissions with a broader scope. We will also have travel grants available of 250$ -- the call for those will be distributed later, with very best wishes, Liesbeth De Mol and Tomas Petricek *HaPoP 2020* Fifth symposium on the History and Philosophy of programming 27 May 2020, Paris, France Co-located with NewCrafts 2020, 28-29 May 2020 https://www.shift-society.org/hapop5/ In a society where computers have become ubiquitous, it is necessary to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of computer programs, not just from the technical viewpoint, but from a broader historical and philosophical perspective. A historical awareness of the evolution of programming not only helps to clarify the complex structure of computing, but it also provides an insight in what programming was, is and could be in the future. Philosophy, on the other hand, helps to tackle fundamental questions about the nature of programs, programming languages and programming as a discipline. HaPoP 2020 is the fifth edition of the Symposium on the History and Philosophy of Programming, organised by HaPoC, Commission on the History and Philosophy of Computing. As in the previous editions, we are convinced that an interdisciplinary approach is necessary for understanding programming with its multifaceted nature. As such, we welcome participation by researchers and practitioners coming from a diversity of backgrounds, including historians, philosophers, computer scientists and professional software developers. /Programming as an art, a craft or a science/ This edition of the symposium will be colocated with NewCrafts, an international software development conference for professional developers who care about quality code and improving their practices. In recent years, NewCrafts featured many talks on software craftsmanship, programming paradigms, architecture, but also ethics and philosophy and history of computing. To initiate an inspiring conversation between the NewCrafts and HaPoP communities, we are particularly looking for talk proposals that discuss the question in how far programming can/has been/should be understood as an art, a craft and/or a science and what that implies both for the practice of programming as well as for our understanding of computer programs. We may not be able to answer this question, but we believe it will lead to useful insights about the nature of programs and programming. /Selected topics of interest for the symposium/ Possible and in no way exclusive questions of relevance to this symposium are: Can/has been/should be programming understood as an art, a craft and/or a science? Are we getting better at writing programs that solve the given problem? Is programming a specialist discipline, or will everyone in the future be a programmer? What are the different scientific paradigms and research programmes developed through the history of computer programming? Is it possible to eliminate errors from computer programs? What is a program? How did the notion of a program change throughout the history? How are programs and abstractions born, used and understood? What was and is the relationship between hardware and software developments? How did theoretical computer science (lambda-calculus, logics, category theory) influence the development of programming languages and vice versa? What are the novel and most interesting approaches to the design of programs? What is a correct program? Historical and philosophical reflections on issues in formal specification, type checking and model checking. What is the nature of the relationship between algorithms and programs? What legal and socio-economical issues are involved in the creation, patenting and free-distribution of programs? How do we understand the multi-faceted nature of programs combining syntax, semantics and physical implementation? How is programming to be taught? /Dates, format and submissions/ For the symposium, we invite submission of two-page extended abstracts (including footnotes, but excluding references). Accepted papers will be given a 30 minute presentation slot including discussion. As with the previous editions, we also intend to submit a proposal for a special issue of a suitable journal for publication of full papers based on the symposium presentations. Important dates Submission deadline: *1 March 2020* Author notification: *1 April 2020* HaPoP symposium: *27 May 2020* /Important links/ Submission web site: https://easychair.org/account/signin?l=PRJGt7pZiwCv3QpOfMAmKd# Financial support: Coming soon Registraton site: Coming soon /Program committee/ Liesbeth De Mol (co-chair, CNRS – UMR 8163 STL Université de Lille) Tomas Petricek (co-chair – University of Kent) Arnaud Bailly (Aleryo) Martin Carlé (Ionean University) Andrea Magnorsky (Independent) Ursula Martin (Oxford University) Baptiste Mélès (CNRS, UMR 7117 Archives Henri-Poincaré Pierre Mounier-Kuhn (CNRS & Université de Paris-Sorbonne) Romeu Moura (Independent) Mark Priestley (Independent) Giuseppe Primiero (University of Milan) /Registration/ Program committee of the symposium, as well as registration information will be announced soon. Please check this page regularly for updates. We will be also sharing updates via the HaPoC Comission web page (register to get updates via email) and on Twitter at @HaPoComputing. HaPoP-5 co-chairs are Liesbeth De Mol and Tomas Petricek. If you have any questions regarding suitability of a topic or format of the extended abstract, please contact Liesbeth at liesbeth.de-mol(a)univ-lille.fr or Tomas at tomas(a)tomasp.net. For quick questions, you can also use @tomaspetricek on Twitter.

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NYCDH Week 2020 is Coming February 3-7!
by Kimon Keramidas 08 Dec '19

08 Dec '19

Dear Colleagues, NYCDH <http://nycdh.org/> is happy to announce the 5th Annual NYCDH Week, February 3-7, 2020 <http://nycdh.org/dhweek/>. Taking place at institutions throughout New York City, NYCDH Week gives individuals across the region who are interested in digital humanities an opportunity to learn new techniques and skills, hear about DH projects from across the city, and become part of a vibrant and diverse community of scholars and practitioners. Please see the details below to join us in the following ways: Register for our kick-off event <https://nycdh.org/dhweek/event/kickoff-2020/>on the afternoon of February 3 at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center Campus Submit a proposal to join our kick-off day panel featuring exciting DH work on histories and representations of communities across NYC! Read more here <https://nycdh.org/dhweek/call-for-workshop-proposals-and-panel-presentation…> (Email proposals to Kelley Kreitz, kkreitz(a)pace.edu <mailto:kkreitz@pace.edu>. Review of proposals begins December 20) Volunteer to teach a workshop, present a demonstration, or host an event during NYCDH Week! (Complete the form linked to here <http://bit.ly/NYCDH-2020-Form> by January 5). Registration for these sessions will open shortly after that date. Join us for the Kickoff Day! NYCDH Week 2020 begins on February 3 with a kickoff gathering at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center Campus (113 W. 60th St., 12th Floor). This year's theme is History and Representation of Communities Across New York City. The afternoon-long event features speakers, round tables, lightning talks, and networking sessions. Register now! <https://nycdh.org/dhweek/event/kickoff-2020/> This keynote speaker for this year’s kickoff event will be Matt Knutzen <https://www.nypl.org/staff-profiles/matt-knutzen>, Linda May Uris Director, Humanities and Social Sciences Research Divisions at the New York Public Library. The rest of the week will consist of a diverse selection of free workshops, demos, and events hosted at a wide range of institutions across the city, including: Bard Graduate Center, Columbia University, CUNY Graduate Center, Fordham University, Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO), New York Public Library, NYU, Pace University, Pratt Institute, and The Frick Collection. Last year NYCDH Week included 39 workshops with more than 600 registrants. For a list of those workshops, see the DH Week website <https://nycdh.org/dhweek/workshops-2019/>. And last but not least, if you’ve yet to become a part of NYCDH, Join Now! <https://nycdh.org/create-an-account/> For more information, please kimon.keramidas(a)nyu.edu <mailto:kimon.keramidas@nyu.edu> Cheers, Kimon Kimon Keramidas, Ph.D. Clinical Associate Professor, XE: Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement <http://as.nyu.edu/ceh.html> Affiliated Faculty, Program in International Relations New York University 14 University Place New York, NY 10003 Co-Director - ITMO University International Digital Humanities Lab <http://dh.itmo.ru/> Co-Director - OutHistory.org <http://outhistory.org/> Co-Founder - The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy <http://jitpedagogy.org/> Co-Founder - NYCDH.org <http://nycdh.org/> P 212-998-3691 T @kimonizer W http://kimonkeramidas.com <http://kimonkeramidas.com/> The Sogdians: Influencers on the Silk Roads Exhibition <https://www.freersackler.si.edu/sogdians> The Interface Experience: Forty Years of Personal Computing Exhibition <https://www.bgc.bard.edu/gallery/exhibitions/10/the-interface-experience> The Interface Experience: A User’s Guide Winner of the 2016 Innovation in Print Design Award from the American Alliance of Museums Buy Book <http://store.bgc.bard.edu/the-interface-experience-a-users-guide-by-kimon-k…>

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new book: Hacking Diversity
by christina dunbar-hester 03 Dec '19

03 Dec '19

Dear SIGCIS folks, Forgive the self promotion (and x-posting), but I wanted to announce a new book: NEW FROM PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS—*Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures <https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691192888/hacking-diversity>* by Christina Dunbar-Hester. A firsthand look at efforts to improve diversity in software and hackerspace communities. Enter discount code *LIST30* on the PUP website to get *30% off* the paperback, through June 30, 2020. Though the book is about contemporary phenomena, it is indebted to scholarship by and conversations with many colleagues in SIGCIS/history of computing community! And I will look forward to future conversations. -c [image: image.png] "*Hacking Diversity* takes us into the hackerspaces, makerspaces, and unconferences where diversity advocates hack their social order to open up volunteer technologies along multiple dimensions. Dunbar-Hester shows that much more than 'stuff' is produced—issues of gender, race, power, and class emerge and are interrogated. This is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand how diversity becomes productive in open technology movements and corporate tech cultures."—Sareeta Amrute, University of Washington "This book provides a clear-eyed critical exploration of diversity advocacy within today's market-saturated culture of open technology, fractured by the sediments of racial capitalism. Dunbar-Hester brilliantly combines historical analysis with ethnographic insights to show why DIY interventions by voluntaristic open technologists and computing devotees, however well-meaning, struggle to resolve the foundational tensions between individual freedom and collective emancipation."—Paula Chakravartty, New York University "Written with grace, clarity, and generosity, *Hacking Diversity* critically probes inclusion initiatives in open content and hacker communities. Giving credit where it is due, Dunbar-Hester shows how diversity advocacy engendered laudable changes that nevertheless have fallen short of securing substantive equity and justice. This widely relevant book will become central to reorienting the public debate around diversity in technology."—Gabriella Coleman, McGill University "Unraveling threads of identity, open technology, and activism over the past decade, *Hacking Diversity* sympathetically but critically analyzes the daily life, utopian desires, and critical awareness of participants in hackerspaces, free software communities, maker movements, and activist tech collectives. Dunbar-Hester reveals the poignant tensions at work in communities struggling to address problems of global political inequality with new technologies and practices that promise liberation—but all too rarely deliver it."—Christopher M. Kelty, University of California, Los Angeles "Well-written, sophisticated, theoretically limber, and often clever and humorous, *Hacking Diversity* unpacks the concept of diversity advocacy and how to create, nurture, and sustain feminist hacker/maker spaces. It will make an impact in feminist media studies, critical communication studies, digital activism studies, and science and technology studies."—Leslie Regan Shade, University of Toronto

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Newcastle University—Celebrating 50 Years of Campus-wide Computing event report and video now available
by Troy Astarte 03 Dec '19

03 Dec '19

Dear all, In June this year, Newcastle Historic Computing Committee organised an event celebrating the inauguration of a new exhibition of computing history related to the acquisition of Newcastle’s System/360-67 computer and the groundbreaking MTS operating system. For anyone that missed it, or who wants to relive the event, there is a wonderful event report written by our own John Law on the Committee’s webpages: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/cs-history/inauguration-day/. There is also a video of the talks in full, timestamped for each speaker, and with subtitles. The video is linked within the webpage, but can also be found directly here: https://vimeo.com/353896736. Best, Troy Astarte School of Computing Newcastle University

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AI Now is hiring an Editorial Lead (job opportunity)
by Dr. Joy Lisi Rankin 02 Dec '19

02 Dec '19

Hello SIGCIS, I’m happy to report that I’m joining the AI Now Institute at NYU to further develop and oversee the strategy and initiatives for AI Now’s Gender, Race, and Power in AI program. Come work with me: AI Now is hiring an Editorial Lead. This is a leadership position and this person would be charged with driving all of AI Now's editorial production. This includes working with team members to make their work more accessible (without dumbing it down), developing a cohesive voice for a new and growing organization, and overseeing editorial strategy. What we really need is someone who has strong writing chops, can translate academic research, knows how to work collaboratively with authors, and can develop publication strategies to reach and connect with different audiences. The full details are here: https://ainowinstitute.org/join-us.html Please share and circulate widely. Thank you! Regards, Joy Joy Lisi Rankin A People’s History of Computing in the United States www.joyrankin.com

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