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News about my book, gender and computing
by Marie Hicks 11 Apr '17

11 Apr '17

Hi all, I wanted to mention that my book, *Programmed Inequality*, was the *Times Higher Education Supplement*'s book of the week pick this week. It was actually reviewed--very sympathetically--by a computer scientist. I found his perspective really interesting, especially when he talks about his dilemma re: "booth babes" at trade shows. (I think it shows the difficulties many of us face when trying to address institutionalized discrimination.) If you're interested, the link is: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/review-programmed-inequality-mar… (it may ask you to register--for free--in order to read it.) At the very bottom--near the end of the interview portion, there is also a section of shout outs to some other scholars whose work I admire (including a few SIGCISers). Space prevented me from listing all of the many folks I would have liked to! Best, Marie ______________________ Marie Hicks, Ph.D. Asst. Professor, History of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL USA mhicks1(a)iit.edu | mariehicks.net <http://www.mariehicks.net> | @histoftech <http://twitter.com/histoftech> *Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing* www.programmedinequality.com

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Computer History Museum Prize - deadline May 15, 2017
by Andrew Russell 08 Apr '17

08 Apr '17

Dear colleagues - Please note the call for nominations for the Computer History Museum Prize is now open! The postmark deadline is May 15. Details are below and at http://www.sigcis.org/chmprize <http://www.sigcis.org/chmprize>. ———— The Computer History Museum Prize is awarded to the author of an outstanding book in the history of computing broadly conceived, published during the prior three years. The prize of $1,000 is awarded by SIGCIS, the Special Interest Group for Computers, Information and Society. SIGCIS is part of the Society for the History of Technology. In 2012 the prize was endowed in perpetuity through a generous bequest from the estate of Paul Baran, a legendary computer innovator and entrepreneur best known for his work to develop and promote the packet switching approach on which modern networks are built. Baran was a longtime supporter of work on the history of information technology and named the prize to celebrate the contributions of the Computer History Museum to that field. 2017 Call for Submission Books published in 2014-2016 are eligible for the 2017 award. Books in translation are eligible for three years following the date of their publication in English. Publishers, authors, and other interested members of the computer history community are invited to nominate books. Please note that books nominated in previous years may be nominated again, provided they have been published in the timeframes specified above. Send one copy of the nominated title to each of the committee members listed below, with a postmark no later than May 15, 2017. For more information, please contact Jason Gallo <mailto:jgallo@ida.org>, SIGCIS Vice Chair for Operations. Current information about the prize, including the most recent call and a list of previous winners, always may be found at http://www.sigcis.org/chmprize <http://www.sigcis.org/chmprize>. 2017 Prize Committee Members Joy Rankin (2017 Chair) Lyman Briggs College Michigan State University 919 E. Shaw Ln. E-35 East Lansing, MI 48825 USA Janet Abbate Dept. of Science, Technology and Society Virginia Tech Northern Virginia Center 7054 Haycock Road Falls Church, VA 22043 USA Hallam Stevens Room 1705, 7/F wenke Building China Center for Special Economic Zone Research, Shenzhen University Nanhai Avenue 3688, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, 518060

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Videos of recent CHM SIGCIS event sessions?
by Brian Dear 06 Apr '17

06 Apr '17

Hello SIGCIS, I recall reading that videos of all the sessions held at SIGCIS's recent Computer History Museum conference were going to be put online soon. Anyone know when and where the videos will be available? Regards, - Brian Brian Dear PLATO History Project Santa Fe, NM brian(a)platohistory.org Author of “The Friendly Orange Glow” (Pantheon, Nov. 2017)

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SHOT deadline extension to April 15
by Thomas Haigh 05 Apr '17

05 Apr '17

Hello SIGCIS, FYI, a deadline extension from our parent organization, SHOT. I didn’t get myself organized to propose a panel this time (taking a break after putting several together each year as chair) but will be putting in an individual abstract. Happy to be listed as a commentator, if anyone is still putting together a panel proposal. Best wishes, Tom From: Society for the History of Technology [mailto:shot.secretariaat@tue.nl] Sent: Monday, April 03, 2017 5:33 AM To: thaigh(a)computer.org Subject: Society for the History of Technology Event EXTENDED DEADLINE: Call for Papers and Sessions for the SHOT Annual Meeting - Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, USA) - 26-29 October 2017 <https://imgssl.constantcontact.com/letters/images/sys/S.gif> Having trouble viewing this email? http://www.historyoftechnology.org/call_for_papers <http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?m=1103106318472&ca=b430a3ae-…> <https://imgssl.constantcontact.com/letters/images/sys/S.gif> <https://imgssl.constantcontact.com/letters/images/sys/S.gif> <https://imgssl.constantcontact.com/letters/images/sys/S.gif> <http://r20.rs6.net/on.jsp?a=1103106318472&r=3&c=684b43e0-2037-11e3-817a-782…> <http://files.constantcontact.com/880a246d001/995d7436-d6bd-4a9e-9c3e-eeadb8…> April 3, 2017 Dear Thomas, Annual Meeting - Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, USA) 26-29 October 2017 Extended Call for Papers and Sessions The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) is an interdisciplinary and international organization concerned not only with the history of technological devices and processes but also with technology in history and society. We explore the production, circulation, appropriation, maintenance and abandonment of technology under specific historical circumstances. And we scrutinize the epistemic, economic, social, cultural and political conditions of this development. Our approaches are informed by a broad concept of technology encompassing knowledge resources, practices, artefacts and biofacts, i.e. artefacts in the realm of the living. Accordingly, the Program Committee invites paper and session proposals on any topic in a broadly defined history of technology, including topics that push the boundaries of the discipline. Submitters are encouraged to propose sessions that include a diverse mix of participants: multinational origins, gender, graduate students and junior scholars with senior scholars, significantly diverse institutional affiliations, etc. To pay tribute to the venue of the 2017 annual meeting - Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed - we want to encourage proposals that engage topics related to technology, democracy and participation. The birthplace of the oldest participatory democracy is the ideal setting for reflecting on, and interrogating, the overlapping subjects of technology, democracy, and participation. Philadelphia was not only the first capital of the United States, but also an early capital of industrialization and the accompanying transformations of work, skill, creation and maintenance, all of which continue to shape modern participation in the world. Commercial systems, slave economies, and immigration patterns developed locally alongside complex technologies of production and infrastructure in Philadelphia. Industrialization also led to an era of increased human intervention in the environment, now referred to as the Anthropocene. City and region participated in the cyclical expansion and contraction of global trade and supply chains of commodities, labor, and cultures. As other urban and rural, industrialized and agricultural polities have historically contended with similar forces of change, and transnational networks have carried the impacts of modernization agendas to both willing and unwilling communities, the cultural embrace of technology, notions of democracy, and ideologies of participation have played out in myriad ways around the world. These cultural commitments and their interactions, as seen in Philadelphia's history and across a wide range of other global settings, thus form an appropriate theme for the 2017 SHOT meeting. For the 2017 meeting the Program Committee welcomes proposals of three types: * Traditional sessions of 3 or 4 papers, with a chair and a commentator. Deadline: March 31, 2017. * Unconventional sessions, with formats that diverge in useful ways from the typical 3 or 4 papers with comment. These might include round-table sessions and workshop-style sessions with pre-circulated papers. Deadline: March 31, 2017. * Open sessions: Open Sessions descriptions, along with organizer contact information, can be found on the SHOT-website. To join a proposed panel from the Open Sessions list, contact the organizer for that panel, not the Program Committee. Open Session organizers will then assemble full panel sessions and submit them to SHOT by the end of the regular call for papers on March 31, 2017. The Program Committee will review the resulting fully formed session proposals, whether traditional or unconventional, for quality and adherence to SHOT standards of gender, geographic, and institutional diversity. * In special cases, proposals for individual papers will be considered, but the Program Committee will give preference to organized sessions, either Traditional or Untraditional. Those scholars who might ordinarily propose an individual paper are instead requested to propose Open Sessions themselves or to join an Open Session that is posted on the SHOT website. SHOT allows paper presentations at consecutive meetings but rejects submissions of papers that are substantially the same as previous accepted submissions. Submissions covering the same fundamental topic should explain the difference(s) with the prior presentation. The SHOT Executive Council formulated its response to US Presidential measures to restrict access to the United States for select foreign nationals, including to our annual meeting. This statement can be found on the SHOT website. Please keep an eye open for this statement and, if possible, do not be discouraged from submitting a paper by the current situation. For more information on preparing and submitting a proposal and the Open Sessions List please visit the SHOT website at www.historyoftechnology.org <http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0013vjDdGpevgBwuJJ7vSP85oyDPuHlUonc3WxFjYWmHWDT…> The deadline for proposals is 15 April 2017 Please forward this call! Jan Korsten Society for the History of Technology

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CCM and Hidden Digital Labor
by M. Hicks 05 Apr '17

05 Apr '17

Hi all, I wanted to make sure everyone had seen Sarah Roberts's piece in the Atlantic on fake news, CCM, and the hidden labor that we often assume is algorithmic rather than human. Sarah is a longtime member whose work has consistently challenged the Silicon Valley narrative of seamless automation. Sarah in fact coined the term CCM, and is literally "writing the book on it." You may have met or seen her recently at our meeting at the Computer History Museum (Command Lines, #SIGCIS2017). I teach a course on the history of digital labor and Sarah's work never fails to amaze my students. I figure this up-to-the-minute encapsulation of her work might be useful to folks who teach similar courses. Here's an excerpt from her article, and a link below: "Missing from this evolving self portrayal [of social media websites], however, has been significant mention of a distinct kind of editorial practice that Facebook and most other prominent social-media platforms are involved in. Thus far, much of the post-election discussion of social-media companies has focused on algorithms and automated mechanisms that are often assumed to undergird most content-dissemination processes online. But algorithms are not the whole story. In fact, there is a profound human aspect to this work. I call it commercial content moderation, or CCM." https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/518796/ Best, Marie ______________________ Marie Hicks, Ph.D. Asst. Professor, History of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL USA mhicks1(a)iit.edu | mariehicks.net | @histoftech Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing (MIT Press, 2017) www.programmedinequality.com

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Danny Bobrow, RIP -- a great computer scientist
by David Walden 05 Apr '17

05 Apr '17

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/mercurynews/obituary.aspx?n=daniel-g-bobro…

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Fwd: Inside story of the breaking of Hitler's secret cipher
by Brian Randell 04 Apr '17

04 Apr '17

Hi: This news release will I trust be found of interest by SIGCIS: SIGCIs mi Begin forwarded message: From: Stephen Fleming <stephen.fleming(a)palam.co.uk<mailto:stephen.fleming@palam.co.uk>> Subject: Inside story of the breaking of Hitler's secret cipher Date: 4 April 2017 at 09:52:09 BST Reply-To: <stephen.fleming(a)palam.co.uk<mailto:stephen.fleming@palam.co.uk>> NEWS RELEASE Inside story of the breaking of Hitler’s secret cipher Launch of the Lorenz book at The National Museum of Computing 4 April 2017 Capt Jerry Roberts’ autobiography Lorenz, telling the inside story of the breaking of Hitler’s most secret cipher, has been launched at The National Museum of Computing in the presence of veterans whose work with Colossus helped in the decrypting process. The “unbreakable” Lorenz cipher was used to encrypt communications between Hitler and his High Command. Far more complex than Enigma, Lorenz-encoded messages carried invaluable strategic information. The decrypts are credited with shortening the war and saving countless lives. The Lorenz book is the autobiographical story of the life of the late Captain Jerry Roberts and gives an in-depth personal perspective of the breaking the twelve-wheeled Lorenz cipher. The launch was attended by some Bletchley Park veterans, their families and special guests including BBC presenter Paddy O’Connell. Among the veterans was O’Connell’s mother Betty, who was one of the first operators of Colossus, the computer that helped break the cipher. Full story and photos: http://www.tnmoc.org/news/news-releases/book-launch-lorenz-tnmoc Cheers Brian Randell — School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk<mailto:Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk> PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/people/profile/brianrandell.html

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SIGCIS triumphs at the Business History Conference awards banquet
by Thomas Haigh 03 Apr '17

03 Apr '17

Hello SIGCIS, Some exciting news from the awards banquet last night at the Business History Conference. Our own Gerardo Con Diaz won the Kroos prize for best dissertation with his 2016 Yale thesis "Intangible Inventions: A History of Software Patenting in the United States, 1945-1985." This is an award that the BHC takes very seriously - the finalists present their dissertations in a 90 minute plenary session to close out conference. Afterwards I heard several very prominent business historians rooting for Con to win, which he duly did a few hours later. Both of the best article prizes went to "IBM Rebuilds Europe: The Curious Case of the Transnational Typewriter," by Petri Paju and (ahem) me. Those are the Scranton Prize for the best overall article in Enterprise and Society and the Wilkins prize for the best on comparative or international business. The paper comes out of our shared experience in the Software for Europe project, reflecting the challenge posed by Gerard Alberts to find a way to deliver on his promise of connecting the history of information technology to the development of transnational European identity. Petri did all the hard work and the meticulous research - my contribution was strictly in rewriting, editing, framing, etc. Which was great fun, particularly the chance to get Hitler, J.G. Ballard and Miss Congeniality into the same paper. As I said in accepting the award, we hadn't expected an article on typewriter supply chains in the 1940s to seem to topical. I therefore thanked Trump, Brexit, and Putin for making the case for this research. Preprint at http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/Writing/IBMRebuildsEuropePREPRINT.pdf. The history of computing is not as well represented on the BHC program as it has recently been at SHOT, but there was also a strong "maintainers" themed panel with Rebecca Slayton, Nathan Ensmenger, Andrew McGee and Ellan Spero. Best wishes, Tom

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Opportunities at Swansea University, UK
by Tucker J.V. 25 Mar '17

25 Mar '17

I thought this development would be worth drawing to the attention of members of SIGCIS, as there are opportunities for people active in the history of computing to apply for an academic post in a UK Computer Science Department. Note the April deadlines. Some history of computing is taught to students, and the University has a fledgling History of Computing Collection: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/library/archive-and-research-collections/hocc https://www.flickr.com/photos/hocc_swansea/albums https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn00nU-ndo9tDMY4AezF_uQ You are also welcome to contact me, and/or the Head of the Department (see below), for further information and to take soundings. John Tucker ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Swansea University is intensifying its investments in Computer Science. It wishes to expand the scale, relevance and intellectual diversity of the subject. To this end the University has available 9 permanent academic posts at the rank of lecturer, senior lecturer and associate professor. Some of these posts are directed at particular areas (see below) but for five positions the research focus can be in any area of Computer Science. The posts can enhance existing areas, or bring in new areas that resonate with the Department. Currently, the Department’s expertise is in Theoretical Computer Science, Graphics and Visualization, and Human-Computer Interaction. In recent years, we have developed research and scholarship in Data Science, Security, High Performance Computing, and History of Computing. The Department would welcome applications from early career academics with a developing portfolio of research interests that that they believe have the potential to play a significant role in the future development of the discipline. Exceptional applicants with a more developed academic portfolio may be appointed to a higher grade. More information on these positions can be found following the links to the University's web site: 4 Lecturers in Computer Science (Research) - http://www.swansea.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/details.php?nPostingId=4537&nPostin…<http://www.swansea.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/details.php?nPostingID=4537&nPostin…> 1 Senior Lecturer (Teaching) - http://www.swansea.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/details.php?nPostingID=4526&nPostin… The University is also creating a new 7500m^2 building to house Computer Science and Mathematics under a programme called the Computational Foundry: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/campus-development/phase2-current/keyprojects/comp… The new building is on Swansea University's recently opened £450M Bay Campus: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/campus-development/baycampus The websites invite informal contact with the Head of Department, Arnold Beckmann: a.beckmann(a)swansea.ac.uk Some Background on Swansea Computer Science UK Computer Science is very strong in global terms and is a magnet for outstanding staff and students. The Computer Science Department at Swansea University is highly ranked for both teaching and research: The Times Good University Guide 2017 placed it 12th in the UK and 1st in Wales; the National Student Survey 2016 ranked it as 7th in the UK with 95% overall satisfaction, and 1st in Wales; and in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 it was ranked 18th in the UK and 1st in Wales. Based on these successes, Computer Science at Swansea University has embarked on a £31M programme of work – the Computational Foundry – to make Swansea a beacon for Computer Science, that attracts and retains excellent researchers, and builds up a large base of scientific, technological and scholarly talent. This call for 9 permanent academic positions is part of this expansion programme. The Department will be moving into the Computational Foundry building on Bay Campus in August 2018. This building comprises nearly 7,500 m2 of purpose built Computer Science facilities and includes extensive up to date research and teaching laboratories and spaces. The Department has longstanding major projects in engaging with business, education and civic society. Currently, our Technocamps Unit is a driving force for educational reform in computing in Wales. The Department is the driving force behind the University's History of Computing Collection. We provide industrial education. The Department has recently been selected as the home for one of the UK’s Digital Economy Centres. The other four directed posts are: 2 Lecturers HCI (Research) - https://tinyurl.com/swansea-cs-lecturer-hci<http://www.swansea.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/details.php?nPostingID=4534&nPostin…> 1 Associate Professor (Cyber Security) – Research - https://tinyurl.com/swansea-cs-ap-cyber-security<http://www.swansea.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/details.php?nPostingID=4531&nPostin…> 1 Lecturer (Dependable Systems) – Research - https://tinyurl.com/swansea-cs-lecturer-dependable<http://www.swansea.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/details.php?nPostingID=4525&nPostin…>

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The latest inventor of the computer
by Len Shustek 25 Mar '17

25 Mar '17

We're fully engaged in the invention of email, but we haven't had any new inventors of the computer in a while. The Atlantic is helping with that: "How Aristotle Created the Computer". https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/03/aristotle-computer/5… The article is rather better than its title.

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