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History & Technology
by Dag Spicer 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

Does anyone else subscribe to this? I’ve received one issue for all of last year. Apparently there are editorial and queue issues. I won’t be renewing. Is anyone else having problems with H&T or Taylor and Francis? 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 Twitter: @ComputerHistory

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CBI Tomash fellowship and Norberg grant deadlines --> 15 Jan. 2015
by Thomas J. Misa 09 Jan '15

09 Jan '15

Hello all, Just a friendly reminder of the soon-upcoming deadline of Jan 15th for both the CBI Tomash fellowship and the Norberg travel grant. Pls see <http://www.cbi.umn.edu/research/tfellowship.html> and <http://www.cbi.umn.edu/research/ntravelfund.html>. Please note that Arvid Nelsen, CBI Archivist, is away on a three-month research leave and WILL NOT readily be answering emails. Any specific focused question about CBI archival materials should be instead directed to CBI's assistant archivist Rebecca Hranj <rhranj(a)umn.edu>. Best, Tom Misa

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Davies, Baran, Kleinrock and Telegram Routing
by Bjorn Westergard 08 Jan '15

08 Jan '15

I'm interested in the influence semi-automatic routing procedures in telegraphy (e.g. Western Union's Plan-55 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_55-A>) may have had on the mathematicians and engineers who developed packet-switching standards and algorithms. Davies, Baran, and Kleinrock all seem to have been familiar with telegram routing. Kleinrock mentions Plan-55 <http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/11562/33840535.pdf> in "*Message Delay" *(1962). In *Distributed Communication Networks *(1964) Baran mentions that "Torn-tape telegraph repeater stations and our mail system provide examples of conventional store-and-forward switching systems". Davies' mother worked for the British postal system <https://books.google.com/books?id=RLKxSvCBQZcC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=donald+d…>, and his first exposure to queuing theory was through a book she brought home from work. In a CBI oral history <http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/107241>, he portrays the influence of torn-tape systems on researchers in general as quite strong, but says little about how they influenced him: I think the reason [the software problems of packet switching were > difficult] was that message-switches were being made to try to operate like > a torn tape centre. In other words they were trying to emulate the human > system, which was really quite complex and involved a certain amount of > subtlety in dealing with particular kinds of failures. The idea of sending > messages - packets - and relying on lack of any response to send them again > was unlike the way human systems work. > I'm looking for any tips the list can offer in determining when these researchers first became acquainted with torn-tape or postal systems, and in what manner. Observation of installations? Product manuals? Conversations with engineers who designed such facilities? What institutional connections were there between their employers (NPL, RAND, MIT) and the operators of semi-automatic message-switching systems? When Baran was at RAND, was Western Union's contract with the Air Force to build and operate a Plan-55 system an influence on research? Would RAND fellows have been in touch with Western Union engineers? Cheers, Bjorn

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Happy Birthday Silicon Valley
by Dag Spicer 07 Jan '15

07 Jan '15

Dear friends, Enjoy this new blog post on Silicon Valley history by CHM semiconductor curator David Laws: http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/who-named-silicon-valley/ (Happy New Year!) 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 Twitter: @ComputerHistory

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Software in Scholarship workshop and round table - programme and registration
by tara.andrews＠kps.unibe.ch 07 Jan '15

07 Jan '15

(Apologies for cross-posting) Dear colleagues, We are delighted to announce the full programme for the workshop and round table 'Software in Scholarship, Scholarship in Software', sponsored jointly by Digital Humanities @ Uni Bern and Infoclio.ch<http://Infoclio.ch>, to be held 29-30 January 2015 in Bern. http://www.dh.unibe.ch/en/2015/01/scholarship-in-software-workshop-and-roun… Any and all are welcome to attend; we ask that you register your attendance with thomas.leibundgut(a)kps.unibe.ch<mailto:thomas.leibundgut@kps.unibe.ch> by 19 January. Best wishes, Tara Andrews ‘Expressions’, 29 January 2015: Workshop on Software-based Scholarship 10:00 – Welcome 10:15 – Opening remarks – Willard McCarty, King’s College London A matter of prepositions: Software in scholarship and scholarship in software? 10:45 – Panel 1. Assessment and process * Eugene Lyman, Independent Scholar Scholarly Software and the Enhancement of Critical Scrutiny * Aris Xanthos, Université de Lausanne By scholars, for scholars: a case study on quality assessment of scientific software * Oleksandr Makarenko, National Technical University of Ukraine Mathematical Modeling in Scholarship and their Representation in Software 12:15 – Lunch break 14:00 – Panel 2. Confrontation and collaboration * James Baker, British Library Removing Black Boxes: Exposing Scholarship to Researchers * Pieter Francois, University of Oxford Connecting Modes of Scholarship through the Library: The genesis of the Sample Generator for Digitized Texts * Jonas Schneider, Universität Zürich Geovisualizing History 15:30 – Coffee break 16:00 – Panel 4: Creation * Manfred Thaller, Universität Köln Engineering, Science, Art, Scholarship: On implicit assumptions in the software for semantic image databases. * Joris van Zundert, Huygens ING, and Gregor Middell, independent scholar Code and Authorship in the Humanities 17:00 – Closing keynote – David Berry, University of Sussex Softwarization, Archives, and the Digital Humanities ‘Evaluation’, 30 January 2015: Round table on Peer Review for Digital Scholarly Work Schedule: 9:00 – Welcome 9:10-10:40 – Position papers (max. 15 min. each) 10:40-11:00 – Coffee Break 11:00-12:30 – Collective Discussion on specific issues 13:00 – Lunch for all roundtable participants Participants (in alphabetical order): * James Baker, Digital Research Team, British Library – Stepping back – playing as research * Claire Clivaz, Laboratoire des cultures et humanités digitales, Université de Lausanne – Reshapping the peer-review process: heretic remarks in a digital time * Seth Dembo, Director of Scholarly Communication and Digital Initiatives, American Historical Association – AHA’s Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Evaluation of Digital Scholarship by Historians * Ingrid Kissling, Head of the Humanities and Social Sciences division, Swiss National Science Foundation – Peer review under revision – The digital challenge for funding agencies * Eugene Lyman, University of Boston – Publishing digital projects reviews: practical suggestions * Nicolas Thély, Professor for Digital Humanities, Université de Rennes 2 – Toward an evaluation grid for Digital Humanities projects * Philip Steinkrüger, Editor of RIDE (Review Journal for digital editions and ressources); Trinity College Dublin & University of Cologne – Toward a catalogue of criteria for the review of digital editions * Sacha Zala, Director of the Swiss Historical Association & director of the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland – Some dogmatic postulates for the digital historical sciences -- Prof. Tara L Andrews Digital Humanities, Universität Bern http://www.dh.unibe.ch/

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Grad students & early career scholars
by M. Hicks 07 Jan '15

07 Jan '15

Hi all, Are there any new grad students or early career scholars on the list who are working on the history of race, sexuality (particularly queerness), disability, or poverty and IT? If so, please drop me a note. No need to reply to this if I've already contacted you ;) Thanks, Marie ______________________ Marie Hicks, Ph.D. Asst. Professor, History of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL USA mariehicks.net | mhicks1(a)iit.edu | @histoftech

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Third Issue of Archives for the Philosophy and History of Soft Computing (APHSC)
by Rudolf Seising 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

[ please distribute - apologies for multiple postings ] Dear collegues and friends, the third issue of the Archives for the Philosophy and History of oft Computing (APHSC) is online! Archives for the Philosophy and History of Soft Computing has just published its latest issue at http://aphsc.org/index.php/aphsc. We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review articles and items of interest: Issue 2/2014, December 2014 Table of Contents Interviews On the History of Fuzzy Clustering An Interview with Jim Bezdek and Enrique Ruspini<http://www.aphsc.org/index.php/aphsc/article/view/22> Rudolf Seising Articles A note on fuzzy logic programming languages and vague knowledge representation<http://www.aphsc.org/index.php/aphsc/article/view/13> Clemente Rubio-Manzano, Pascual Julian-Iranzo Material and Strict Implication in Boolean Algebras, Revisited<http://www.aphsc.org/index.php/aphsc/article/view/17> Enric Trillas, Rudolf Seising Published by the European Centre for Soft Computing in Mieres (Asturias), Spain - ISSN 2341-0183 - aphsc(a)softcomputing.es Editors in Chief: Alejandro Sobrino, Rudolf Seising Assistant Editors: Martin Pereira-Fariña, Marco Elio Tabacchi Thanks for the continuing interest in our work, The Editors PD Dr. Rudolf Seising Vertreter der Professur für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaft und Technik "Ernst-Haeckel-Haus" Berggasse 7 07745 Jena Adjoint Researcher European Centre for Soft Computing Edificio Científico-Tecnológico. 3ª Planta. C Gonzalo Gutiérrez Quirós S/N 33600 Mieres, Asturias, Spain [ Aviso legal ]<http://www.softcomputing.es/legal_ES> --- [ Legal Warning ]<http://www.softcomputing.es/legal_EN>

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PS -- last notes re BBN computing history book
by dave.walden.family＠gmail.com 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

The on-line version (November 2012 -- see bottom of copyright page) http://walden-family.com/bbn/bbn-print2.pdf includes corrections of typos and a few other small errors found in the orininal end-of-2011 printed version. As my website won't live forever, the book is also in the on-line archives at the CBI and the CHM, for which I again say "thank you." Sent from my iPad

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BBN computing history book
by Dave Walden 05 Jan '15

05 Jan '15

Hi, I just received the invoice from Lightning Source ($12) to keep the book listed in bookstores (e.g., Amazon) for another year, and of course I welcome purchases of a printed copy of the book. However, to tell you (or perhaps to remind you if I have told you this before), that a PDF of the book is available for free download -- see the link in the third paragraph at http://walden-family.com/bbn/ Do take a copy for your own use (and for digital searching). (I posted the free copy on the web a while back, once the sale of printed copies had covered the development costs of the book.) Dave -- home address: 12 Linden Rd., E. Sandwich, MA 02537 home ph=508-888-7655; cell ph = 503-757-3137 (often don't carry it) email address: dave(a)walden-family.com; website: <http://www.walden-family.com/bbn/>http://www.walden-family.com/

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NY Review of Books: The Imitation Game -- a question
by Dave Walden 24 Dec '14

24 Dec '14

Hi, With all this emphasis on Turing these days, including the 100th anniversary celebration a couple of years ago and opinions about how fundamental Turing was to how much that came later, I am curious if anyone knows what the ACM people were thinking when they named their award after Turing only a decade or so after his death. Did they already see him as important historically as he is seen today? Did they think he had been a brilliant many whose life ended badly and who thus deserved memorializing? ...? I suppose there may have been some writing in the CACM when the award was named or first awarded, and I can go try to find that. In any case, I am wondering if anyone knows what the committee members (or whomever) who decided on this name for the award were thinking. Dave At 11:54 AM 12/21/2014, Dag Spicer wrote: >http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/19/poor-imitation-alan-turing/ > >Best, > >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 > >Twitter: @ComputerHistory > >_______________________________________________ >This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion >list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member >posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The >list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you >can change your subscription options at >http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members -- home address: 12 Linden Rd., E. Sandwich, MA 02537 home ph=508-888-7655; cell ph = 503-757-3137 (often don't carry it) email address: dave(a)walden-family.com; website: <http://www.walden-family.com/bbn/>http://www.walden-family.com/

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