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Review of
by Brian Randell 19 Aug '16

19 Aug '16

Hi: I’ve just been alerted to this (English language) review of the book "Meilensteine der Rechentechnik” by Herbert Bruderer, which the review describes as "an extensive in-depth scholarly history of mathematics and computer science with a focus on computing technology in German lands”. http://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/meilensteine-der-rechentechnik Cheers Brian Randell — School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/staff/profile/brian.randell

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CFP 2017 Media & Civil Rights History Symposium
by M. Hicks 15 Aug '16

15 Aug '16

I bet the work of several folks on the list would fit in well at this conference (see below). MH ______________________ Marie Hicks, Ph.D. Asst. Professor, History of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL USA mariehicks.net | mhicks1(a)iit.edu | @histoftech Begin forwarded message: From: Carol Stabile <cstabile(a)uoregon.edu> Date: August 15, 2016 at 10:33:22 AM EDT To: "gender, media & technology collaboration" <fembot(a)lists.uoregon.edu> Subject: fembot: Fwd: 2017 Media & Civil Rights History Symposium Reply-To: "gender, media & technology collaboration" <fembot(a)lists.uoregon.edu> > > Dear Symposium friend, > As you enter your fall semester, please see the attached PDF for preliminary information about the 2017 Media & Civil Rights History Symposium. The Symposium webpages are available at 2017 Media & Civil Rights History Symposium <http://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/cic/journalism_and_mass_communicat…>. Look for detailed information by email shortly. > Sincerely, > Chris > ——— > Christopher Frear > Graduate Student > Director > Media & Civil Rights History Symposium > School of Journalism and Mass Communications > University of South Carolina > Columbia, SC 29208 > frearc(a)email.sc.edu <mailto:frearc@email.sc.edu> > Media & Civil Rights History Symposium <http://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/cic/journalism_and_mass_communicat…> _______________________________________________ fembot mailing list fembot(a)lists.uoregon.edu https://lists-prod.uoregon.edu/mailman/listinfo/fembot

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FW: AERA as research topic
by Akera, Atsushi 08 Aug '16

08 Aug '16

Hi Everyone, I have an offer from a friend of mine, Gary Nelson, who used to work at MITRE on a system that was a successor to the SAGE air defense system (AERA, or Advanced En Route Air Traffic Control). He’s willing to help anyone who might be interested in writing about, or conducting an oral history related to this system and this period in MITRE’s history. His original note is copied below, and he also adds: Yes, that is the plan. I will assist in any way I can to put the right people together. I worked on AERA3 ca. 1990, but was also part of the team that did the benefit-cost study of the AAS 1984-8. The AERA benefits were a key part of the analysis. I can network to several other contacts at MITRE. regards, Gary Feel free to write to me, or to Gary directly if you’re interested! He’s copied on this message. (And please forward to anyone who might be interested in this.) - Atsushi From: Gary Nelson [mailto:garygnelson@gmail.com<mailto:garygnelson@gmail.com>] Sent: Sunday, August 7, 2016 3:50 PM To: Akera, Atsushi <akeraa(a)rpi.edu<mailto:akeraa@rpi.edu>> Subject: AERA as research topic Atsushi, While reading your book it occurred to me that our work on AERA (Advanced en route ATC) at MITRE is a good topic that is an extension of the story of MITRE/SAGE etc. If that inspiration were not enough, it happened that I just ran into an old colleague of mine who was visiting Troy. Had not seen her in decades--but it must be a sign to consider the topic! Perhaps either you or someone you know would tale this on: It's time before all the principals die off (the program ended with AAS about 1994). But the apps were intenmded to take advantage of the digitization of the NAS Stage A system (1973). That it never happened is a great case study of air traffic management. Regards, Gary -- Gary G. Nelson 38 Maple Ave. Troy, NY 12180 518-273-3893<tel:518-273-3893> -- Gary G. Nelson 38 Maple Ave. Troy, NY 12180 518-273-3893

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Inventor Steve Sasson discusses the first digital camera
by Brian Randell 05 Aug '16

05 Aug '16

Hi: I've just stumbled across this very engaging YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yDLEBsThvk - Inventor Steve Sasson discusses the first digital camera which the speaker introduces as being on “how to develop disruptive technology in a corporate environment”! :-) Cheers Brian Randell -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell

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Job opening at National Air and Space Museum
by Ceruzzi, Paul 03 Aug '16

03 Aug '16

Full-time, curatorial job opening. https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/446445000 Paul E. Ceruzzi Curator, Division of Space History National Air and Space Museum MRC 311, PO Box 37012 Smithsonian Institution Washington, DC 20013-7012 www.ceruzzi.com<http://www.ceruzzi.com> ceruzzip(a)si.edu<mailto:ceruzzip@si.edu> 202-633-2414

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CHM Fellows - Your voice matters!
by Dag Spicer 02 Aug '16

02 Aug '16

Hello SIGCIS friends, Just a quick reminder that our 2017 Computer History Museum Fellows nominations are closing in a few weeks. The CHM Fellow Awards, held each year in the Spring, are a way to honor those who have built the computing and technology infrastructure of our world but who often are invisible to history. We especially encourage nominations of candidates from traditionally under-represented communities. The Nomination Form is here: http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/_media/docs/fa-nomination-form.… If you have any questions about the process, please email us at: nominations(a)computerhistory.org<mailto:nominations@computerhistory.org> Full details on the Awards, including selection criteria are here: http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/nominations/ Thanks everyone — we greatly appreciate your support! Dag -- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 Tel: +1 650 810 1035 Fax: +1 650 810 1055

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Seymour Papert has died
by Dave Walden 02 Aug '16

02 Aug '16

See http://news.mit.edu/2016/seymour-papert-pioneer-of-constructionist-learning… Papert was one of the co-inventors of the Logo programming language. My memory is that his group of Logo people was located at 545 Technology Square in Cambridge, MA, among the Project MAC (later LCS) groups of MIT computing research people.

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Informatics in the light of some Leibniz’s works
by Laurent Bloch 24 Jul '16

24 Jul '16

Hi, Here is my text "Informatics in the light of some Leibniz’s works": http://www.laurentbloch.org/MySpip3/Informatics-in-the-light-of-some-Leibni… Disclaimer: I'm neither an historian nor a philosopher, but an informatician. Best regards! -- Laurent Bloch - http://www.laurentbloch.org - lb(a)laurentbloch.org Dieu se rit des hommes qui déplorent les effets dont ils chérissent les causes. (B.)

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Call for Abstracts - Lives of Data Workshop, Sarai-CSDS (Deadline: 15 Sept.)
by Sandeep Mertia 23 Jul '16

23 Jul '16

*Call for Abstracts -** ‘Lives of Data’ Workshop, 06-07 January 2017, The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. * ‘Data’ has been recently termed as the new oil, new soil, new world currency and the raw material for the new industrial revolution. It has been hypothesised that the era of Big Data will finally see the ‘end of theory <http://www.wired.com/2008/06/pb-theory/>’. This hyperbole has it that the new technologies being developed today can produce truth based on computations of large amounts of machine readable digital data. Beyond such deterministic claims, the ‘Data Revolution’ indeed poses compelling theoretical and methodological challenges in all fields with stakes in knowledge. The present conjuncture, we would argue, is loaded with possibilities for rethinking ‘data-driven knowledge’ through longer histories of classification, enumeration, quantification, techno-scientific practices, and forms of media storage, retrieval, computational analysis and use. Scholarship in the emerging field of data studies has established close connections with science & technology studies (STS), and media and software studies. There is now a growing body of work <http://bds.sagepub.com/> which questions the Big Data hubris and the excesses of the post Web 2.0 digital deluge. ‘Raw Data’, as Geoffrey Bowker and Lisa Gitelman among others have suggested, is an ‘oxymoron’. In the Indian context, concerns about statistics, governance and knowledge, evident in the histories of colonial census, the work of P C Mahalanobis at the Indian Statistical Institute and the Planning Commission, the emergence of scientific computing in the 1950s-60s, government regulation of media, electronics and telecom, provide a vivid background to think about the new technics, materiality and aesthetics of our digital cultures. In times when Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have passed their initial developmental hype-cycles and mobile phones have somewhat flattened the so-called ‘digital divides’ (while creating many new ones), the fields of information research in India are grappling with socio-technical reconfigurations of a widening scope and scale. The projections and contestations around our much promoted march towards a #DigitalIndia <http://www.digitalindia.gov.in/> with the world’s largest biometric database (#Aadhaar <https://uidai.gov.in/>); a nation-wide digging campaign for broadband connectivity in villages and the building of one hundred #SmartCities <http://smartcities.gov.in/>; and the intense pursuit of the ‘Next Billion’ users by a floating array of large technology companies and startups (#FreeBasics <https://0.freebasics.com/desktop>, #StartupIndia <http://startupindia.gov.in/>); have inundated the space for reflection and critique. The many known and unknown lives and after-lives of data in this ecosystem of flux demand description, interpretation, concepts, and – if the data permits – theory. In the past Sarai has organised workshops on ‘Social & Cultural Lives of Information <http://sarai.net/social-and-cultural-life-of-information-workshop-discussio…>’ and the ‘Lives of Information’ <http://sarai.net/lives-of-information/>, to reflect upon the cultures of information practices and the connections between colonial and post-colonial information infrastructures in South Asia. Continuing our focus on contemporary realities, ICTs and infrastructures, the ‘Lives of Data’ workshop aims to encourage research on pertinent questions concerning ‘data’ – its imaginaries, infrastructures, knowledge politics, and techno-science and media cultures in India and South Asia. The ‘Lives of Data’ workshop hopes to bring together interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners to examine the historical and emergent conditions of data-driven knowledge production and circulation in Indian and South Asian contexts. We are interested in a conversation which dynamically moves back and forth in science, technology and media history and anthropology to reflect upon the many layered abstractions and materialisations of data, information and knowledge. The key questions which the workshop will explore are: – What is data? How is it imagined, collected, archived, developed, scraped, parsed, mined, cleaned, used, interpreted, re-produced, circulated and deleted? – How do we map the relationships between data, infrastructure and knowledge production? – How do we reimagine data and information through longer histories of statistics, bureaucracy, governmentality and development? – What are the stakes involved in analysing the ever increasing volume, velocity, variety and value of data? How do practitioners understand the changing nature of their work with data? – How do we conceptualise the new data publics? Workshop themes include: – Histories of State and Statistics, Classification, Enumeration and Planning – Data Analytics, Data Ontologies, Digital Objects – Digital Humanities, Computational Social Sciences, Cultural Analytics – Cultures of Software Engineering and Design – Data, Memory and Materiality: Archives, Paper/Digital Databases, Warehouses, Data Centres, Server Farms – Thinking through Digital Infrastructures: Hardware, Code, Meta-Data, Formats, Protocols, Programming Languages, Information Architectures, Algorithms, Apps, Interfaces, Platforms, APIs, etc. – Data-Driven Urbanism: Geographies of Mobile Computing, Locative Apps and Social Media, GIS, and Smart Cities – Openness, Transparency and Access to Data/Information/Knowledge. #RTI #OpenData #DNAProfiling #Copyright #Encryption #Privacy – Platforms as Government: Transnational Networks of Intermediaries and the Flows of Data/Capital – ‘SysAdmin <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_administrator>’ like the State: Bio-Politics, Surveillance, User/Citizen, Governance, Policing and Law. #Aadhaar #ITact #CyberSecurity – ‘Beautiful Data <https://www.dukeupress.edu/beautiful-data>’: Design, Aesthetics, Vision and Visualisation *The Sarai Programme invites submission of abstracts for the ‘Lives of Data’ workshop. Besides academic researchers, we strongly encourage media, design and software practitioners to apply for the workshop. Abstracts should not exceed 300 words, and should be sent to dak(a)sarai.net <dak(a)sarai.net> by 15 September, 2016, with the subject heading ‘Proposal for the Lives of Data Workshop.’ Authors of the selected abstracts will be notified by 01 October, 2016.* *The workshop will be held on 06-07 January, 2017 at Sarai-CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi. The Sarai Programme will cover three days of accommodation for outstation participants. In addition, participants from India will be eligible for travel support.* URL: http://sarai.net/call-for-abstracts-lives-of-data-workshop/ <http://sarai.net/call-for-abstracts-lives-of-data-workshop/>*---* Regards, Sandeep Mertia, Research Associate, Sarai-CSDS, Delhi

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2016 Michael S. Mahoney Prize
by Jason Gallo 21 Jul '16

21 Jul '16

The winners of the 2016 Michael S. Mahoney Prize <http://www.sigcis.org/node/397> are Andrew L. Russell and Valérie Schafer for "In the Shadow of ARPANET and Internet: Louis Pouzin and the Cyclades Network in the 1970s," *Technology and Culture* 55, no. 4 (October 2014): 880-907. Prize Citation: This paper expands our understanding of how networks emerged and evolved. It contributed additional evidence of the international nature of ICTs, in this case, within France. The paper is another example of the power of international collaboration among scholars. It provides a meaningful narrative of a key piece of French networking history that has been understudied in a polished essay. The essay is available via Project Muse <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/562835>.

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