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New Book from CBI Research Fellow Prof. Gerardo Con Díaz --Everyone Breaks These Laws: How Copyright Made the Online World (AND Con was promoted to Full Prof. & became Chair!)
by Jeffrey Yost 22 Jun '25

22 Jun '25

Dear Colleagues, I want to share the tremendous news that CBI Research Fellow (& dear friend & close collaborator) Professor Gerardo Con Díaz has recently been promoted to Full Professor and just became the Chair of Science and Technology Studies at UC, Davis! Additionally, his new book Everyone Breaks These Laws: How Copyright Made the Online World <https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300251265/everyone-breaks-these-laws/> was just published (yesterday!) from Yale University Press. I had the pleasure of reading this fascinating and insightful book earlier this year, and the honor, along with distinguished colleagues Prof. Kevin Driscoll and Prof. Ken Alder, of contributing a blurb! Please join me in congratulating Con!!! Best, Jeff ** * * * * ** *Jeffrey Yost, Ph.D. * *Director, Charles Babbage Institute for Computing, Information & Culture* *Research Professor, University of Minnesota* *Just Code: Power, Inequality and the Political Economy of IT (Johns Hopkins U. Press out in Nov. 2025 co-edited w/ Gerardo Con Diaz) <https://press.jhu.edu/books/title/12804/just-code> * *Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry (MIT Press) <https://amzn.to/3gqe4R6>* *Studies in Computing and Culture book series, Johns Hopkins U. Press <https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/series/studies-computing-and-culture> *Co-Editor (w/ Con Diaz) *PI, NSF-funded CBI project "Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy."* *Blockchain & Society* <https://www.blockchainandsociety.com>* (crit. inq. essays & resources)* (Founder/Leader) *Interfaces: Essays and Reviews in Computing and Culture <https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces> *Co-Editor-in-Chief (w/ Amanda Wick)

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Internet Histories Volume 9, issue 1-2 is now online
by Asger Harlung 19 Jun '25

19 Jun '25

To whom it may concern, The Editorial Staff of Internet Histories is pleased to announce that Internet Histories Volume 9, issue 1-2 is now online. Please notice: The entire issue has free access until the end of July. This is a special double issue: Gender in Internet and Web History Guest Editors: Leopoldina Fortunati, Autumn Edwards & Janet Abbate The full issue may be accessed here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rint20/9/1-2 A list of the content is included below. If you have an interesting piece on web or Internet history, please submit @InternetHistor http://www.tandfonline.com/rint20, or email Managing Editor Niels Brügger nb(a)cc.au.dk With kind regards on behalf of the editorial team, Asger Harlung, editorial assistant, Internet Histories - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - List of articles in Vol. 9(1-2): Introduction: (re)writing gender in Internet histories Leopoldina Fortunati, Autumn Edwards & Janet Abbate Articles: “She does a good job for a woman” – the challenges for women enablers in the era of internet histories Jane Vincent Becoming Wikipedian women: a sociotechnical history of the Gender Gap Task Force (2013–2023) | Open Access Steve Jankowski Gendering of the “ideal user” in 1990s-era internet magazines Will Mari & Fanny Ramirez The politics of the digital transition: lessons from slash fan fiction communities at the turn of the millennium Anne Kustritz Digital pioneers: Mormon mommy bloggers and building the “Bloggernacle” Emily Lynell Edwards Streaming out of the spiral of silence. Women’s visibility in gaming community and on twitch Roberto Carradore & Tiziana Pirola Network breakdown: the queer anarchist politics at the heart of the ‘net from FidoNet to HOMOCORE Kat Brewster (Un)scaffolding gender: social media and the evolution of nonbinary identity Shell Avenant How have you modelled my gender? Reconstructing the history of gender representation in Wikidata | Open Access Beatrice Melis, Marta Fioravanti, Chiara Paolini & Daniele Metilli Doing LGBTQ internet histories justice: a queer web archive manifesto | Open Access Jesper Verhoef Dwelling with feminist media archives in the age of big data | Open Access Shana MacDonald, Brianna Wiens & Nick Ruest Roundtable: Researching gender in the history of the Internet and the Web. A roundtable at the SHOT 2023 conference Janet Abbate, Cassius Adair, Avery Dame-Griff, Autumn Edwards, Leopoldina Fortunati, Deena Larsen, Laine Nooney & Valérie Schafer

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A teachable moment for ChatGPT?
by Brian E Carpenter 17 Jun '25

17 Jun '25

Hello, I was thinking about LLM hallucinations the other day, and decided to ask ChatGPT about the topic. As you can see at https://cs.auckland.ac.nz/~brian/ChatGPT-Quetelet.pdf, it challenged me to "ask me a tricky question from computing history" (at the middle of page 3) and promptly produced a hallucination as the result. What I found interesting is its response to my correction. It would be even more interesting if somebody else could ask it the same question now, a few days later. In any case, this confirms that historians must be very wary about LLMs. Regards, Brian Carpenter

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RIP Bill Atkinson
by Elizabeth Petrick 16 Jun '25

16 Jun '25

I just read of Bill Atkinson's passing. John Markoff did a nice article on him for the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/technology/bill-atkinson-dead.html?unloc… Best, Liz _________________ Elizabeth Petrick Associate Professor Director of Graduate Studies Department of History Rice University

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Historical Conference Proceedings
by Eric Kaltman 12 Jun '25

12 Jun '25

Greetings all, The CS department at UAlberta is moving buildings and clearing out a lot of older texts. I found out rather late and am looking through their discards. I'm wondering if anyone can confirm / affirm that major conference proceedings are generally available? I'm looking at a near complete stack of proceedings (ACM SIGMOD, VLDB, etc.) and it appears that the official scans are missing front matter and such in some cases. Just wanted to get any thoughts on whether I should have any concern about the proceedings or try to keep them somewhere. Best, Eric -- Dr. Eric Kaltman, Assistant Professor Software History Futures and Technologies (SHFT) Group https://www.shft.group Media and Technology Studies / History University of Alberta

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Survey of US libraries and archives under perssure
by Susannah Glickman 11 Jun '25

11 Jun '25

Dear all, A wonderful colleague of mine, Nancy Tomes, is working on the following project and asked me to send the following request around: "If you will be using a U.S. archive or library this summer, consider reporting back on the conditions you find there using this survey, which I helped develop for the Organization of American Historians along with Chris Sellers. Some background: in late February, I helped found HARPP, an OAH sponsored group dedicated to resisting the current assault on U.S. history. Chris Sellers is also a member. Here's a link to our OAH webpage, which includes our mission statement: HAARP website <https://www.oah.org/resources/advocacy-partners/harpp/> We've initiated an oral history project with fired and endangered federal workers and another survey documenting ideological deletions and revisions to historical sites, institutions, and agencies in the U.S. Now we are launching a survey to get information about the impact of budget cuts and ideological campaigns on US archives and libraries. If you are using a US library or archive this summer, please report back on what you find. The new survey is here. https://www.oah.org/2025/06/10/survey-what-are-you-seeing-as-you-research-t… <https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https://www.oah.org/2025/06/10/sur…> Thanks. I'm glad to answer any questions you may have. (nancy.tomes(a)stonybrook.edu <mailto:nancy.tomes@stonybrook.edu>)” All the best, Susannah -- Susannah E. Glickman Assistant Professor Department of History Stony Brook University

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New book: The Routledge Companion to Transnational Web Archive Studies
by Niels Brügger 02 Jun '25

02 Jun '25

The Routledge Companion to Transnational Web Archive Studies explores the untapped potential of web archives for researching transnational digital history and communication. It covers cross- border, cross- collection, and cross- institutional examination of web archives on a global scale. This comprehensive collaborative work, emerging from the WARCnet research network, presents an exploration of the ways web archive research can transcend technological and legal challenges to allow for new comparative, transnational studies of the web’s pasts, and of global events. By combining interdisciplinary work and fostering collaboration between web archivists and researchers, the book provides readers with cutting- edge approaches to analyzing digital cultural heritage across countries. The book contains concrete examples on how to research national web domains through a transnational perspective; provides case studies with grounded explorations of the COVID- 19 crisis as a distinctly transnational event captured by web archives; offers methodological considerations while unpacking techniques and skill sets for conducting transnational web archive research; and critically engages the politics and power dynamics inherent to web archives as institutionalised collections. The Routledge Companion to Transnational Web Archive Studies is an essential read for graduate students and scholars from internet and media studies, cultural studies, history, and digital humanities. It will also appeal to web archiving practitioners, including librarians, web curators, and IT developers. Read more at https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Transnational-Web-Arch… Best, Niels Brügger —————————————————————————————— NEW WEBSITE: webhistorie.dk<http://webhistorie.dk/> — about my research project ‘Histories of the Danish web in the 1990s’. Managing Editor of Internet Histories—Digital Technology, Culture and Society (Routledge) — latest issue 8(4), https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rint20. Please consider submitting an article to the Internet Histories Early Career Researcher Award 2026, read more here https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/early-career-researcher-a… — due 1 Oct 2025. LATEST PUBLICATIONS (selection) A. Ben-David, S. Aasman, N. Brügger (Eds.) (2025). The Routledge Companion to Transnational Web Archive Studies. Abingdon: Routledge, 468 p. https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Transnational-Web-Arch… N. Brügger, G. Goggin (Eds.) (2022). Oral Histories of the Internet and the Web. London/New York: Routledge, 226 p. https://www.routledge.com/Oral-Histories-of-the-Internet-and-the-Web/Brugge… N. Brügger (2022). Tracing a historical development of conspiracy theory networks on the web: The hyperlink network of vaccine hesitancy on the Danish web 2006–2015. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, online first. Read article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548565221104989 N. Brügger (2022). Media events in an age of the Web and television: Dayan and Katz revisited. Nordic Journal of Media Studies, 4(1), 37-55. Read article: https://doi.org/10.2478/njms-2022-0003 A. Fage-Butler, L. Ledderer, N. Brügger (2022). Proposing methods to explore the evolution of the term ‘mHealth’ on the Danish Web archive. FirstMonday, 27(1). Read article: https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/11675 N. Brügger (2021). Digital humanities and web archives: Possible new paths for combining datasets, International Journal of Digital Humanities, 2(1-3). Read article: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42803-021-00038-z N. Brügger, J. Nielsen, D. Laursen (2020). Big data experiments with the archived Web: Methodological reflections on studying the development of a nation's Web. First Monday, 25(3). Read article: https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/10384 N. Brügger, D. Laursen (Eds.) (2019). The historical web and digital humanities. London/New York: Routledge, 194 p. — now in paperback https://www.routledge.com/The-Historical-Web-and-Digital-Humanities/Brugger… NIELS BRÜGGER, Professor, PhD Department of Media and Journalism Studies School of Communication and Culture Aarhus University Helsingforsgade 14, building 5335, room 239 8200 Aarhus N Denmark Coordinator of the RESAW Conferences, resaw.eu<http://resaw.eu/> Member of the Academia Europaea Phone (switchboard) +45 8715 0000 Phone +45 2945 3231 E-mail nb(a)cc.au.dk<mailto:nb@cc.au.dk> Webpage https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/nb%40cc.au.dk Profile at LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/1/50a/555 Skype name: niels_bruegger Orcid.org/0000-0003-1787-1980 Google Scholar<https://scholar.google.dk/citations?hl=en&user=EEdaLscAAAAJ&view_op=list_wo…>

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SIGCIS 2025 CFP: proposals due June 30
by Morgan G. Ames 30 May '25

30 May '25

We are excited to announce our Call for Participation for the 16th Annual Conference of the Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and Society, "Power Surge," which will take place online September 25-27. Proposals for papers, panels, graduate student WIP papers (new this year!), or other forms of participation are due June 30 (11:59pm AoE) at https://forms.gle/R63W9xYzAepkCwB98. See below or follow this link <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1plGw7dI_bUWUxNW295A0IrdeBMggoZ-qRI2hPAK…> for the full CFP. Please reach out if you have any questions, and please spread the word! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SIGCIS 2025: power surge September 25-27 2025 | Online via Zoom The Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and Society (SIGCIS) welcomes submissions to their 16th Annual Conference meetings.sigcis.org Proposal Due Date: June 30, 2025 | Submit Here <https://forms.gle/R63W9xYzAepkCwB98> Keynote Speaker Lily Geismer <https://www.cmc.edu/academic/faculty/profile/lily-geismer>Professor of History, Claremont McKenna College call for participation >From the rapid uptake of commercial AI tools in the workplace to the increasingly dominant role the tech industry is playing in politics, the combustible confluence of technology, power, money, and politics is moving fast and things are breaking. Scholars and practitioners know to be wary of cycles of hype and fear around new technologies. But to many, what’s happening today feels like a definitive break from the past, akin to an unexpected power spike that exceeds the normal operating voltage of a circuit. For SIGCIS 2025, we ask: What are the stakes of studying the history of computing at a time when technology's perceived excesses are unraveling political institutions, legal doctrines, and professional norms? When technology works as intended for some and "glitches" for others (Benjamin 2019), when political agency is superseded by the technologists' visions of autonomy (Marx 2010), and when labor is devalued in the name of machine productivity (Bix 2000), we assert that locating this moment within the longer history of computing can help us grapple with the contemporary politics of power. The 16th annual conference of the Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and Society (SIGCIS) employs a broad definition of the history of the politics of computing to facilitate a timely discussion of the relationship between political power and digital technologies. What role does the tech industry play in engineering political, cultural, and economic orders? How do the changes in systems of government funding and patronage steer the goals, tasks, and values of professional and research communities in computer science and engineering? How do political and economic ideologies create demand for certain technologies and shape their adoption? Whether one sees this moment as a breaking point or as a fundamental continuity, this year's theme "Power Surge" also connotes the potential for resistance and response to excesses of computing’s technologies, institutions, corporate actors, and legal doctrines. What modes of effective push-back does the history of computing present to us? "SIGCIS 2025: Power Surge" invites scholars, museum and archive professionals, journalists, IT practitioners, artists, and independent researchers across the disciplinary spectrum to consider how the history of computing and information technology can offer fresh perspectives on tech policy and regulation, the institutional contexts in which computing technology is developed and deployed, and how computing technologies mediate the politics of everyday life. SIGCIS is welcoming of new directions in scholarship. We are particularly interested in submissions that bridge and engage with adjacent but often siloed fields that center the study of power, politics, and policy such as American Political Development (APD), global political economy, political theory, technology policy, and related fields; as well as broader analyses 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; or other adjacent domains. We maintain an inclusive atmosphere for scholarly inquiry supporting disciplinary interventions from beyond the traditional history of technology and promoting diversity in STEM. submission format and procedures SIGCIS welcomes proposals for individual 15-minute papers, 3-4 paper panel proposals, and non-traditional proposals such as roundtables, software demonstrations, art and music performances, hands-on workshops, etc. Participants are limited to one presenting role, but may take on additional roles as moderator, discussant, graduate student workshop mentor, or similar. NEW THIS YEAR: WIP Workshops for graduate students! In addition to the open SIGCIS program, we invite graduate students to submit an abstract, following the submission guidelines below, for a closed works-in-progress (WIP) workshop, where accepted participants will receive feedback on their drafts from established scholars in the history of computing and adjacent fields. Workshops will take place on Saturday, September 27, the final day of the conference. Students who are accepted to the WIP Workshop must submit a full or excerpted draft of their paper/chapter (4000-8000 words, excluding references) by August 31, 2025 in order to be included in the final program. Drafts will be circulated to mentors in the weeks before the conference. We also invite mentor nominations (including self-nominations), and graduate students submitting WIP papers are especially encouraged to submit nominations. Submissions are due June 30, 2025 here: https://forms.gle/R63W9xYzAepkCwB98. Submissions must include: - An anonymized 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. If you are proposing a virtual performance, skill share, social activity, or other non-traditional event, please also tell us how much time you anticipate needing. Please do not include names or other identifying information in this file. - A separate file of 100-150 word biographies with full name, affiliation, email, and presentation title for you and each other participant in your submission (if applicable). 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. Questions about the submission process should be sent to sigcis.conference(a)gmail.com. virtual logistics and accessibility In order to make SIGCIS as accessible as possible within the means of an all-volunteer organization, the SIGCIS Conference Committee has implemented these measures: - SIGCIS is hosted online every other year, starting in 2021. - Virtual SIGCIS conferences are not co-located or co-timed with our parent organization, SHOT, so as not to conflict with SHOT’s in-person conference. - While our typical in-person format is a one-day, 3-stream conference, our virtual format is a multi-day, single stream event with time-zone-sensitive scheduling. - The virtual conference has a sliding-scale registration fee, and membership in SHOT is not required to register. - The submission form includes a field where you can list your time zone(s) and a field where you may make requests for accessibility accommodations. SIGCIS meetings organizing committee - Morgan G. Ames <http://morganya.org/>, University of California, Berkeley (SIGCIS Vice-Chair of Meetings) - Xiaochang Li <https://comm.stanford.edu/faculty-li/>, Stanford University - Katya Babintseva <https://www.cla.purdue.edu/directory/profiles/ekaterina-babintseva.html>, Purdue University - Gili Vidan <https://infosci.cornell.edu/content/vidan>, Cornell University - Colette Perold <https://www.colorado.edu/cmci/people/media-studies/colette-perold>, University of Colorado, Boulder

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Perplexity
by Brian Randell 26 May '25

26 May '25

Hi: A while ago I and colleagues published a short critique in the Annals of the History of Computing of ChatGPT, based on its performance on some questions about Percy Ludgate. I’ve recently been trying (the free version of) Perplexity, the AI search (or more exactly question-answering) system. Perplexity itself claims: Here's what makes Perplexity different Answers that are accurate and always cited We continuously search the internet and identify the best sources, from academic research to Reddit threads, to provide the perfect answer to any question. Citations in every response Every answer uses cited sources to provide a more accurate and comprehensive answer. If you want to dig deeper, just click the link to the source. See its brilliant answer to the question “Did Percy Ludgate's work have any impact?”: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/did-percy-ludgate-s-work-have-2esemV.BRuCo… The web version limits the number of questions per day – so far the iPhone App hasn’t. I assume I’m not alone here in trying Perplexity, but I don’t recall any previous comment about it in SIGCIS. However, the Wikipedia article about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perplexity_AI is a little sobering, regarding its alleged copyright violations, and failure to respect the robots.txt web-crawling standards. Cheers Brian

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Lost Alan Turing papers set for auction • The Register
by Brian E Carpenter 24 May '25

24 May '25

https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/24/turing_papers_auction/

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