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A vote for history from a young student
by William McMillan 16 Aug '12

16 Aug '12

Dear SIGCIS members, I wanted to tell you about a conversation I was party to with a group of high school students who had completed a pretty amazing robotics project: *http://tinyurl.com/ctukmdb* The students were asked what would motivate more of their peers to pursue science and technology. Expecting to hear something like, "Assign more cool projects," I was surprised that the first suggestion from a student was, "Teach the history of science." I think he meant technology too. The whole group agreed. (Of course, they suggested more cool projects as well! And some remarked that, since many of them were fortunate to grow up on farms, they learned about all kinds of technology, unlike urban kids who get exposed to so little.) Bill

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SIGCIS lunch - is happening, on Friday
by Thomas Haigh 16 Aug '12

16 Aug '12

Hello SIGCIS members, I was just registering for SHOT, and realized I should alert you to something. The registration form does not include a SIGCIS lunch this year. This is, I think, because we chose the university cafeteria option. The lunch will happen as usual on Friday, and include introductions of new members, our book auction, presentation of travel grants, announcements from members, etc. Good news: this gives you choices and saves you money! This also means that, as usual, we're clashing with the other Friday lunch event which is the WITH (Women In Technology History) lunch. We're hoping to arrange something for future meetings whereby we don't clash with WITH every year. We did our best to avoid the clash this year, but for this meeting the logistics of a Saturday lunch didn't work, due to cafeteria closures, etc. Our lunch is listed at http://www.historyoftechnology.org/copenhagen/copenhagen_sigs.html, but this is easy to miss when registering so please do remember that it is happening as usual and make an effort to attend. We had originally been told that there would be a reserved area of the cafeteria for our lunch, to ensure that we could sit together, and I am checking currently to confirm this. Tom

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Final cfp Turing in context II, 10-12 Octobre 2012, Brussels
by Liesbeth De Mol 10 Aug '12

10 Aug '12

Dear all, I hope the following cfp is of interest to some of you, best wishes, Liesbeth. [Apologies for X-posting] FINAL CALL FOR ABSTRACTS "Turing in context II" Historical and Contemporary Research in Logic, Computing Machinery and AI www.computing-conference.ugent.be/tic2 10-12 October, 2012 Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts, Brussels, Belgium In the spirit of Alan Turing's interdisciplinary research, an international meeting will be held at the Royal Flemish Academy for the Sciences and Arts, exploring recent research into the many directions brought together in his work. This meeting is the second Turing in Context event during the 2012 Turing centennial. The first was held at King's College, Cambridge, 18-19 February 2012. It was an outreach event for the general academic public with invited speakers only. Turing in Context II is a research meeting meant for experts in the fields touched by Turing's contributions to science. TOPICS of the meeting include but are not restricted to: * history and theory of symbolic and physical machines * human and artificial intelligence * logic, computability and complexity We cordially invite contributions in all fields relating to the work and legacy of Alan Turing, both current research continuing Turing's ideas, and historical and philosophical reflections on them. Researchers from areas that Turing worked in but are not listed above, such as pattern formation and cryptography are explicitly encouraged to submit as well. Submissions should be 200-500 words abstracts and should be submitted to EasyChair via the following link: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tic2 Authors of accepted papers will later be invited to send an extended abstract (max. 6 pages) to be reviewed by the programme committee for publication in a volume of the Academy Proceedings Series. A volume of full papers might follow after the conference. TIMETABLE: Deadline Submission of Abstracts: August 15, 2012 Notification of Acceptance: August 31, 2012 Conference: October 10-12, 2012 KEYNOTES: S. Barry Cooper, "Turing Machines, Embodied Information, and Higher Type Computability" Leo Corry, Turing and the Computational Tradition in Pure Mathematics: The Case of the Riemann Zeta-Function Daniel Dennett, "Turing's gradualist vision: making minds from proto-minds" Marie Hicks, The Imitation Game Writ Large: Thinking about gender, labor, and sexuality in making machines useful. Maurice Margenstern, Universality everywhere and beyond, an epic of computer science Elvira Mayordomo, From Computability to Information Theory Alexandra Shlapentokh, Definability and decidability over function fields of positive characteristic Rineke Verbrugge, Cognitive systems in interaction PROGRAMME COMMITTEE: Bill Aspray (University of Texas) Tony Beavers (University of Evansville) Liesbeth De Mol (Ghent University) Luc De Raedt (Leuven University) Pablo Gervas (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) Antonina Kolokolova (University of Toronto) Benedikt Loewe (University of Amsterdam) David McCarty (Indiana University Bloomington) Erik Myin (Antwerp University) Giuseppe Primiero (Ghent University) Wilfried Sieg (Carnegie Mellon University) Mariya Soskova (Sofia University) Jean-Paul van Bendegem (Free University of Brussels) Bart van Kerkhove (Hasselt University) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Liesbeth De Mol, Benedikt Loewe, Giuseppe Primiero, Jean-Paul van Bendegem, Bart van Kerkhove The meeting is sponsored by: Royal Flemish Academy of the Sciences, Belgian Society for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Fund for Scientific Research Flanders, Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, VUB.

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New CHM Lectures - Now on YouTube!
by Dag Spicer 09 Aug '12

09 Aug '12

Dear SIGCIS Friends, I'm delighted to announce the publication on YouTube of several new lectures. All lectures took place recently at the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, California. Enjoy! Dag -- Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvUJpvop-0w Many people consider Apple the most powerful brand in the world -- an accolade that's hard to dispute when its product line includes iPad, the iPod, iPhone, iMac and MacBook Air. Companies all over the world try to emulate Apple's creative genius and groundbreaking marketing. But what is the real secret to Apple's success? According to Ken Segall, the man who put the "i" in iMac and served as a member of Steve Jobs' creative inner circle for more than a decade, the answer is: simplicity. Segall's book reveals what sets Apple apart from other technology companies and makes it stand out in a complicated world: a deep, almost religious belief in the power of simplicity. The purest expression of Steve Jobs' unique viewpoint, it's apparent in everything Apple does, from product design to advertising. Serving as Jobs' ad agency creative director for both NeXT and Apple, Segall led the team that created Apple's legendary Think Different campaign, which was an integral part of Apple's transformation following Jobs' return. Segall's other clients have included technology giants such as Dell, Intel and IBM as well as consumer brands such as JCPenney. Harry McCracken, TIME's Editor-at-large, has covered the technology beat for two decades, writing about the Web, mobile technology, consumer electronics and PCs for PC World, Macworld, CNET, and his own site, Technologizer. He will moderate a discussion with Segall about Apple, Steve Jobs and the art of marketing technology to the masses, from the inside out. [Recorded July 31, 2012] DARPA's Dan Kaufman in Conversation with John Markoff of The New York Times http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny6xDCFU4nI Imagine what the world would look like if we gave everyone the ability to solve its toughest problems, the freedom to explore the world, and the tools to build the future. These are ideas that have been driving Dan Kaufman and his research efforts at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He is convinced that if we build the tools and technology to empower everyone to participate, we would be amazed at the results. Recently at DARPA there have been multiple efforts to research the mobilization and self-organization potential of social networks & crowd sourcing. Two interesting questions arise: can you use the power of the crowd to solve a specific problem, and can you find special people in the crowd to solve a problem who have never been asked before? The power of the crowd has been explored through DARPA's Network Challenge (commonly referred to as the Red Balloon Challenge) in which 10 large red weather balloons were placed at undisclosed locations across the US for one day. Finding people in the crowd who can contribute greatly has been explored through a recent DARPA sponsored experiment called the Shredder Challenge. In this test, the winning solution was not resolved by the "power of the crowd," but by finding, in the crowd, those special people who may have never been asked the question. Many thought the task impossible, but it turned out that they had been asking the wrong people. An obstacle to fully empowering the crowd is the need for software programmers. DARPA has pushed to develop tools that allow ordinary people to solve complex problems. The program RealWorld gave tools to U.S. soldiers to allow them to create their own mission-specific simulations, without expertise in computer programming. Those tools have now been used to build aircraft, medical, and neurological simulators. John Markoff has referred to DARPA as an "Agency of Wonder" -- join us to find out why. [Recorded July 24, 2012] Transforming Music: From Guitar Hero to Robotic Opera & Beyond http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFKzBvInaCY "Music exerts its power when we are actively engaged, not when we listen subliminally. For this reason, I have been working with my group at the MIT Media Lab to create musical tools -- often with specially designed technologies -- that enable everyone to participate directly in music-making, regardless of background." Tod Machover "Tod Machover is the only person I am aware of who contributes on a world-class level to both the technology of music creation and to music itself. Even within these two distinct areas, his contributions are remarkably diverse, and of exquisite quality". Ray Kurzweil Join us for an evening with musician, inventor and educator Tod Machover, the Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music & Media at the MIT Media Lab, where he directs the Opera of the Future Group. An influential composer, he has been praised for creating music that breaks traditional artistic and cultural boundaries; his music has been performed and commissioned by some of the world's most important performers and ensembles. He has also created the technologies behind Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Machover's opera "Death and the Powers" premiered in Monte Carlo in the fall 2010. The project was developed by a creative team of international artists, designers, writers and theatrical luminaries, as well as by an interdisciplinary team of Media Lab graduate and undergraduate students. Powers features a robotic, animatronic stage -- the first of its kind -- that gradually "comes alive" as the opera's main character. The Museum's John Hollar moderated a fascinating conversation with Tod - the son of a noted piano teacher and a computer graphics pioneer - who is using technology to revolutionize music. [Recorded: June 27, 2012] -- Dag Spicer | Senior Curator | Computer History Museum Editorial Board | Annals of the History of Computing 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. | Mountain View CA 94043 Tel: +1 650 810 1035 | Fax: +1 650 810 1055 Twitter: @ComputerHistory FB: facebook.com/computerhistory Technology married with the humanities makes our hearts sing. -- Steve Jobs

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interviewing in North America
by Edgar Daylight 03 Aug '12

03 Aug '12

Dear All, As a researcher in the history of programming languages, living with a wife and daughter in Belgium, I am looking for funding so that I can travel to North America multiple times in 2013 in order to extensively interview some high-profile & retired computer scientists. I have already met some of these potential interviewees at Turing events in England and have had lengthy email conversations with others (--- as a reaction to my previous writings). So most of them already know me. Can anyone help me get funding? Unfortunately, moving to the USA for a year is not an option for me due to family obligations. Each interview would require 8 weeks of preparation. If possible, I would like to interview at least 4 people (and wouldn't mind having dinner conversations with several more). Being able to meet some interviewees more than once would be nice. I can be more specific in private correspondence and am of course willing to write a research proposal. All interviews will cover the 1950s -- 1970s and will share the same themes: + the transition from special-purpose machines to general-purpose computers (e.g. IBM Stretch, IBM OS/360) (cf. Amdahl, Blaauw, Brooks) + the emerging dichotomy between software engineering and computer science + the influence, if any, of Turing and logic in the aforementioned transition and dichotomy + different notions of structured programming (e.g. Mills at IBM, Parnas, Dijkstra) + different notions of "general purpose", "general", "elegant" in programming Any feedback is very welcome! Many thanks in advance. Edgar Daylight. My short CV is available on my website: www.dijkstrascry.com

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Query: Dolphins and 1960s Interactive Computing
by Thomas Haigh 30 Jul '12

30 Jul '12

Hello everyone, Below is a query that John D. Peters, a communications professor at the University of Iowa has asked me to pass on in case anyone has any knowledge on this rather specific topic. He is not a SIGCIS member, so please send responses to him directly at john-peters(a)uiowua.edu. HIS QUERY: >>>> Ted Nelson (whose mother just died), J. C. R. Licklider, Douglas Englebart, and John Lilly were all funded by the info sciences division of the USAF in the 1960s under Harold Wooster. There is a pervasive metaphor in cetacean science and in pop culture about dolphins living in an internet-like world of distributed cognition (Denise Herzing and Peter Tyack both use it for instance) and I'd like to know if there was actual contact. Nelson seems to have worked for Lilly as a photographer http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_nelson.htm and Graham Burnetts Sounding of the Whale (2012, p. 615) mentions Nelsons work with Lilly briefly. Do you know of any citations in Nelson or Licklider to Lillys work, or to dolphins as metaphors for distributed computing? <<<< Best wishes, Tom

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Andersen Library Research Scholars Travel Grant
by Thomas J. Misa 27 Jul '12

27 Jul '12

Hi all, CBI offers an annual travel-to-collections grant program, deadline upcoming after the first of the year <tinyurl.com/d2ezacc>. In addition, the University Libraries offers the "Elmer L. Andersen Research Scholars Program" with an application deadline in September. People coming to use CBI materials, **ALONG WITH** materials from one of the other UMN special collections, have been successful. <tinyurl.com/cv73c6a> Best, Tom Misa

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Paul McJones on Annals of Invention: The Internet
by Thomas Haigh 25 Jul '12

25 Jul '12

(Reply forwarded from Paul McJones, who has fallen victim to our DNS issue) Return-path: <paul(a)mcjones.org> Received: from 108-90-41-134.lightspeed.sntcca.sbcglobal.net ([108.90.41.134]:59962 helo=[192.168.1.104]) by vps.hungerhost.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES128-SHA:128) (Exim 4.77) (envelope-from <paul(a)mcjones.org>) id 1StorN-0007RL-Pk; Tue, 24 Jul 2012 19:49:49 -0400 Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Annals of Invention: The Internet Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1278) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii From: Paul McJones <paul(a)mcjones.org> In-Reply-To: <025001cd69f1$78440190$68cc04b0$@org> Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:49:48 -0700 Cc: "'sigcis'" <members(a)sigcis.org> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: <41558426-D36D-4AB0-8048-3EA9852E3732(a)mcjones.org> References: <025001cd69f1$78440190$68cc04b0$@org> To: "Thomas Haigh" <thaigh(a)computer.org> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1278) Tom, I mentioned Corvitz's WSJ article to Bob Taylor (who I worked for at DEC = SRC), and he pointed out Michael Hiltzik's excellent response: = http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/23/news/la-mo-who-invented-internet-2= 0120723 Paul

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Annals of Invention: The Internet
by Thomas Haigh 25 Jul '12

25 Jul '12

Hello everyone, Another example of the aggressively creative use of IT history to further an agenda, this time in a Wall Street Journal editorial. In his column, "Who Really Invented the Internet," Gordon Crovitz admits that "The federal government was involved, modestly, via the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network" but claims that "But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox." In fact, argues Crovitz, the government's main contribution was to get in the way and hold up progress for decades. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577539063008406518.ht ml I read the Journal with pleasure when travelling, as it is a staple of hotels and airport lounges, but turn the editorial pages quickly so as not to read something that will cause a violent reaction and spoil my good mood. So I'm not the most impartial judge, but there is perhaps something unusually blatant in the ideological spin here. Fortunately the basics of Internet history are pretty well documented, at least for those who understand the difference between Internet and Ethernet. Crovitz is nicely debunked by Farhad Manjoo at Slate, and I suspect by various others in the 800 comments the op-ed has so far attracted. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/07/who_invented_the _internet_the_outrageous_conservative_claim_that_every_tech_innovation_came_ from_private_enterprise_.html. Tom

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New History Videos from CHM!
by Dag Spicer 13 Jul '12

13 Jul '12

Dear SIGCIS Friends, I'm delighted to announce the publication on YouTube of several CHM lectures. These are from CHM's 2012 "Revolutionaries" lecture series. 1. Sir Maurice Wilkes: The Man and His Machine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9DrKQ2isIk&feature=em-subs_digest Sir Maurice Wilkes, without doubt one of the foremost pioneers of computing, died in November last year aged 97. In a remarkably long and distinguished career, he built the EDSAC the world's first electronic stored-program computer to go into regular service, and went on to pioneer concepts such a microprogramming, bit-sliced architectures, local area networks and many, many other things. He served the international computing community with distinction and gained many honors. David Hartley has spent almost the whole of his career in Cambridge University much of it in close association with Sir Maurice. In conversation with CHM's John Hollar, David described Sir Maurice's more important achievements, including the EDSAC computer, as well as giving a personal view of a man that he knew and with whom he worked over such a long period of time. 2. Bill Draper: The Startup Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD2vPxoDeb8&feature=em-subs_digest "The Startup Game" covers Bill Draper's forty years of experience and describes how vital the relationship between venture capitalist and entrepreneur is to the future of business, and offers lessons culled from decades of working in the technology center of the world. Draper extracts lessons and advice that only a lifetime in the field can provide—from the necessary qualities any successful entrepreneur must possess to the importance of friendship and family in the business world. He provides candid descriptions of his own successes and failures in venture capital and public service, and writes passionately about the important role government can—and in his view should—play in encouraging new businesses in the United States. 3.Dr. Eric Horvitz and Dr. Peter Norvig: The Challenge and Promise of Artificial Intelligence http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtmQ3xlt-4A&feature=em-subs_digest Join leading researchers Dr. Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research and Dr. Peter Norvig of Google for an intriguing discussion about the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence, moderated by KQED's Tim Olson. We were extremely fortunate to have Eric and Peter on our stage -- they've known each other for several years, and discussed everything from machine learning to data-driven science, the world of perception, speech recognition, robotics, self-driving cars, and even a computer called Watson. Enjoy! Dag -- Dag Spicer | Senior Curator | Computer History Museum Editorial Board | Annals of the History of Computing 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. | Mountain View CA 94043 Tel: +1 650 810 1035 | Fax: +1 650 810 1055 Twitter: @ComputerHistory FB: facebook.com/computerhistory Technology married with the humanities makes our hearts sing. -- Steve Jobs

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