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FW: [Sighfis-l] Deadline Extended: ASIS&T History Fund Awards 2012
by Thomas Haigh 27 Apr '12

27 Apr '12

The deadline is now rather less looming for anyone interested in the two awards I forwarded recently. Tom -----Original Message----- From: sighfis-l-bounces(a)asis.org [mailto:sighfis-l-bounces@asis.org] On Behalf Of Lai Ma Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 12:23 PM To: asis-l(a)asis.org; sighfis-l(a)asis.org Subject: [Sighfis-l] Deadline Extended: ASIS&T History Fund Awards 2012 [Note the deadline has been extended to May 19, 2012] The ASIS&T History Fund Advisory Board announces the following two competitive awards for 2012: 1) The ASIS&T History Fund Research Award This award will be for a maximum of $1,000 and will be awarded for the best research support proposal submitted by May 19, 2012. All topics relevant to the history of information science and technology may be proposed. The proposal should state: the central topic or question to be researched, qualifications of the researcher (brief vita should be included), a budget, and how the funds will be expended. All funds must be expended by June 30, 2013. Submit proposal to http://www.softconf.com/asist/History_Fund/ (choose the "Research Award" category) by May 19, 2012. If an award is made for 2012, the winner will be notified by June 1, 2012. 2) The ASIS&T History Fund Best Paper Award This award will be for a maximum of $500 and will be awarded for the best paper submitted by May 19, 2012. All topics relevant to the history of information science and technology will be considered. The paper should not have been previously published or submitted to a journal. The paper should not exceed 30 pages double-spaced, including notes/references, using APA style manual. The ASIS&T History Advisory Board will review all submissions and decide if an award is to be made by June 1, 2012. If an award is made the winner will be expected to present the paper at the 2012 ASIS&T Annual Meeting pre-conference and give first rights of refusal for publication to the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Submit papers to http://www.softconf.com/asist/History_Fund/ (choose the "Research Award" category). The ASIS&T History Fund was established by the ASIS&T Board of Directors in June, 2000 for the purposes of supporting and encouraging research and publication in the history of information science and technology. The Fund is supported by donations (including book royalties) from ASIS&T members and others with interest in the history of information science and technology. The Fund Advisory Board encourages further donations from anyone interested in supporting historical study of information science and technology. Members of the ASIS&T History Fund Advisory Board for 2012 are: Kathryn La Barre, Chair Sarah Buchanan, Chair-Elect Julian Warner, Past Chair Michael Buckland Samantha Hastings For further information on submitting a proposal for the grant award or the best paper award for 2012 please contact Lai Ma at lama(a)indiana.edu. _______________________________________________ Sighfis-l mailing list Sighfis-l(a)asis.org http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sighfis-l

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FW: REMINDER : ASIS&T History Fund Awards 2012
by Thomas Haigh 26 Apr '12

26 Apr '12

Hello SIGCIS members, You might consider submitting for these small awards. Our members have had some success in the past -- Andrew Russell won the "research grant" in 2010. (http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGHFIS/about_sighfis.htm) The deadline is looming. The best unpublished paper award is attractive primarily if you hope to attend the ASIS&T meeting anyway, as the $500 prize for the best paper award would be largely consumed by conference registration costs. Tom -----Original Message----- From: sighfis-l-bounces(a)asis.org [mailto:sighfis-l-bounces@asis.org] On Behalf Of Lai Ma Sent: Monday, April 16, 2012 7:54 AM To: asis-l(a)asis.org; sighfis-l(a)asis.org Subject: [Sighfis-l] REMINDER : ASIS&T History Fund Awards 2012 The ASIS&T History Fund Advisory Board announces the following two competitive awards for 2012: 1) The ASIS&T History Fund Research Award This award will be for a maximum of $1,000 and will be awarded for the best research support proposal submitted by May 1, 2012. All topics relevant to the history of information science and technology may be proposed. The proposal should state: the central topic or question to be researched, qualifications of the researcher (brief vita should be included), a budget, and how the funds will be expended. All funds must be expended by June 30, 2013. Submit proposal to http://www.softconf.com/asist/History_Fund/ (choose the "Research Award" category) by May 1, 2012. If an award is made for 2012, the winner will be notified by June 1, 2012. 2) The ASIS&T History Fund Best Paper Award This award will be for a maximum of $500 and will be awarded for the best paper submitted by May 1, 2012. All topics relevant to the history of information science and technology will be considered. The paper should not have been previously published or submitted to a journal. The paper should not exceed 30 pages double-spaced, including notes/references, using APA style manual. The ASIS&T History Advisory Board will review all submissions and decide if an award is to be made by June 1, 2012. If an award is made the winner will be expected to present the paper at the 2012 ASIS&T Annual Meeting pre-conference and give first rights of refusal for publication to the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Submit papers to http://www.softconf.com/asist/History_Fund/ (choose the "Research Award" category). The ASIS&T History Fund was established by the ASIS&T Board of Directors in June, 2000 for the purposes of supporting and encouraging research and publication in the history of information science and technology. The Fund is supported by donations (including book royalties) from ASIS&T members and others with interest in the history of information science and technology. The Fund Advisory Board encourages further donations from anyone interested in supporting historical study of information science and technology. Members of the ASIS&T History Fund Advisory Board for 2012 are: Kathryn La Barre, Chair Sarah Buchanan, Chair-Elect Julian Warner, Past Chair Michael Buckland Samantha Hastings For further information on submitting a proposal for the grant award or the best paper award for 2012 please contact Lai Ma at lama(a)indiana.edu. _______________________________________________ Sighfis-l mailing list Sighfis-l(a)asis.org http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sighfis-l

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One last VCF reminder ...
by Evan Koblentz 25 Apr '12

25 Apr '12

Historians, ... A final reminder that the Vintage Computer Festival East 8.0 is less than two weeks ago: May 5-6, at the InfoAge Science Center, in Wall, New Jersey. We've got 24 exhibits, eight technical workshops, and four lectures, and two keynotes. All the details are posted at http://www.vintage.org/2012/east/ and there are also updates at http://www.facebook.com/vcfeast8. A pair of intriguing testimonials from veteran VCF attendees: Steve Wozniak: “Seeing the early equipment at VCF is an amazing experience. For many of us, it's better than a museum. It touches on all the hopes and dreams of the time and the many efforts to achieve what others thought would never happen. It brings back memories of a revolution in the making. And we see the humble devices that we could actually understand and hold each piece in our hands and even construct ourselves. Every new device back then signaled a change in life forever. A lot of young people look in awe upon those days too, the way they might look upon the founding music of rock and roll. The people you meet at the VCF are amazing. Most are older and more accomplished but every single story of those days that they tell is the type you hinge on and feel inside what they were doing, often against the grain of our culture and against what was supposedly possible. It was a time of few rules and little conformity, all because there weren't billions of dollars visible yet for this new industry. How much we were up against is one thing you take home after this event,” Wozniak continue. Lee Felsenstein: "In 35 years the personal computer has grown from nothing into the most important device shaping everyday life. It should be part of everyone's education to see how it grew and to learn from the people who grew it. VCF is the place to be where not only the equipment can be seen and tried out but, perhaps more importantly, where the people who rose to the challenge offered by these machines can be met and heard from." Me again: consider putting down your journal articles :) and coming to VCF where you see and touch computer history.

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Turing's 100th Birthday Party at King's College, Cambridge
by Jack Copeland 25 Apr '12

25 Apr '12

Turing's 100th Birthday Party at King's College, Cambridge 15th & 16th June 2012 King's College, Cambridge <http://sites.google.com/site/turingace2012/>http://sites.google.com/site/turingace2012/ Turing's 100th Birthday Party, celebrating his life and work, will be held at King's College, Cambridge--Turing's beloved intellectual home. All welcome! The speakers include a team of experts on Turing and leading scientists and science broadcasters such as Daniel Dennett, Simon Singh and Stephen Wolfram. Four members of Turing's immediate family and others who knew him personally will share their recollections of him. Pioneers of computing who worked alongside him, building and programming the first computers, as well as investigating his mathematical theory of how living matter grows, will explain his ideas and achievements. Codebreaker Jerry Roberts, one of Turing's last surviving wartime colleagues from Station X, will give the King's College Turing Centenary Lecture. There will be lectures on Turing's contributions to: the Second World War, the development of our technological society, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Life, the theory and practice of computing, and the understanding of the human mind. Music: the premier performance of A Piano Suite for Turing. For more information about the event, please go to: <http://sites.google.com/site/turingace2012/>http://sites.google.com/site/turingace2012/ Speakers Sir John Dermot Turing Turing's three nieces Inagh, Janet and Shuna Jon Agar Margaret Boden, OBE Martin Campbell-Kelly Brian Carpenter Jack Copeland Daniel Dennett Robert Doran William Newman Teresa Numerico Brian Oakley Brian Randell Bernard Richards Jerry Roberts Simon Singh Doron Swade Stephen Wolfram Michael Woodger Registration Please register early, places are limited. To register, visit: <http://sites.google.com/site/turingace2012/registration>http://sites.google.com/site/turingace2012/registration Transport and accommodation For information about how to arrive in King's College, and places to stay, visit: <http://sites.google.com/site/turingace2012/hotels>http://sites.google.com/site/turingace2012/hotels Organizers Turing's 100th Birthday Party is being organized by Jack Copeland (<mailto:j.copeland@phil.canterbury.ac.nz>jack.copeland(a)canterbury.ac.nz) and Mark Sprevak (<mailto:mark.sprevak@ed.ac.uk>mark.sprevak(a)ed.ac.uk)

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New CBI Newsletter (Spring 2012, Vol. 34:1)
by Charles Babbage Institute 24 Apr '12

24 Apr '12

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New book on the Amiga
by Ian Bogost 24 Apr '12

24 Apr '12

Hi everyone, The latest book in the Platform Studies series I co-edit at MIT Press has been published. It's called "The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga," by Jimmy Maher. The book is just terrific. Here's the publisher's page and the Amazon page: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12832 http://www.amazon.com/The-Future-Was-Here-Commodore/dp/0262017202 And here's the blurb: > Long ago, in 1985, personal computers came in two general categories: the friendly, childish game machine used for fun (exemplified by Atari and Commodore products); and the boring, beige adult box used for business (exemplified by products from IBM). The game machines became fascinating technical and artistic platforms that were of limited real-world utility. The IBM products were all utility, with little emphasis on aesthetics and no emphasis on fun. Into this bifurcated computing environment came the Commodore Amiga 1000. This personal computer featured a palette of 4,096 colors, unprecedented animation capabilities, four-channel stereo sound, the capacity to run multiple applications simultaneously, a graphical user interface, and powerful processing potential. It was, Jimmy Maher writes in The Future Was Here, the world’s first true multimedia personal computer. > > Maher argues that the Amiga’s capacity to store and display color photographs, manipulate video (giving amateurs access to professional tools), and use recordings of real-world sound were the seeds of the digital media future: digital cameras, Photoshop, MP3 players, and even YouTube, Flickr, and the blogosphere. He examines different facets of the platform--from Deluxe Paint to AmigaOS to Cinemaware--in each chapter, creating a portrait of the platform and the communities of practice that surrounded it. Of course, Maher acknowledges, the Amiga was not perfect: the DOS component of the operating systems was clunky and ill-matched, for example, and crashes often accompanied multitasking attempts. And Commodore went bankrupt in 1994. But for a few years, the Amiga’s technical qualities were harnessed by engineers, programmers, artists, and others to push back boundaries and transform the culture of computing. As before, I'd invite anyone on this list to consider writing a book for the series! Best wishes, Ian Ian Bogost, Ph.D. Professor Director, Graduate Program in Digital Media Georgia Institute of Technology Digital Media/TSRB 320B 85 Fifth Street NW Atlanta, GA 30308-1030 ibogost(a)gatech.edu +1 (404) 894-1160 (tel) +1 (404) 894-2833 (fax)

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30th anniversary coverage of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum
by James Sumner 23 Apr '12

23 Apr '12

Interesting to see so much of this in the British press today, given that the Spectrum doesn't fit the "revolutionary technological breakthrough" trope. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17776666 Interviews with Rick Dickinson and Richard Altwasser, the latter of whom unsurprisingly invokes the Raspberry Pi manifesto. First time I've seen the Spectrum described as "Bauhaus-inspired". And "Sir Clive declined to take part in the conversation." http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-doodle… on today's Google Doodle, which commemorates St George's Day in an image with authentic Spectrum attribute-clash (was the choice of 23 April as release date a deliberate bit of marketing? Doesn't seem quite to fit with the general approach). http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2012/apr/23/zx-spectrum-comp… Positions the Spectrum as a "computer for the masses" which "typified the British approach to industrial design – utilitarian but also idiosyncratic and characterful". Well, up to a point... Cheers James

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The History of File-Sharing
by Brian Randell 23 Apr '12

23 Apr '12

Hi: I've just come across what seemed to me to be an interesting account of the history of file-sharing, at: http://torrentfreak.com/the-history-of-filesharing-120422/ Out of curiosity, I'd be interested if someone with more knowledge of file-sharing than I have could comment on the accuracy and completeness of this account. Cheers Brian -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 222 7923 FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell

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1979 Xerox commercial for the Alto
by Thomas Haigh 23 Apr '12

23 Apr '12

Hello everyone, Dag Spicer of the Computer History Museum has been kind enough to process and upload to YouTube for us a short 1979 Xerox commercial showcasing the experimental Alto technology as an embodiment for its vision of the office of the future. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0zgj2p7Ww4 This was something I'd seen years ago (an extract is featured in Triumph of the Nerds) but had been unable to track down anywhere online. I've added a link to my invention of email piece http://www.sigcis.org/Ayyadurai as this video by itself does a pretty good job of disproving the claim that nobody had ever built a system to harness email for office communication before 1980. Best wishes, Tom

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2013 International Congress of HSTM again
by James Sumner 21 Apr '12

21 Apr '12

Dear all Final push for this one: the proposal needs to be submitted by next Monday (30 April). Details as per my previous message, copied below. Interest so far has led to two fairly concrete subtheme ideas which should work well as 90-minute sessions within a wider symposium: banking and the cashless society, co-ordinated by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, and information systems in biology/biomedical computing, co-ordinated by Miguel Garcia Sancho. I think we can build a good case for an overarching theme titled something like "Data at work", with some focus on typical SIGCIS interests but an appeal to some of the Congress's other constituencies. Ideally, I'd like to include at least one more full session (three or four papers) for breadth. We don't need to include precise details or firm commitments in the symposium proposal, but it would be good to have as concrete a definition as possible. Interested? Drop me a line by the middle of next week, and we'll discuss further. All best James --- Dear SIGCIS members I'm writing to draw your attention to the current call for themed sessions for ICHSTM, the International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine, to be held in July 2013 here in Manchester. Full details are on the Congress website at http://www.ichstm2013.com/ ICHSTM happens every four years and is the largest meeting in the field, drawing around a thousand delegates and lasting a full week. Its constituency is more global than most, with strong participation from China, South America, India and Eastern Europe. The organisation behind it (for details of which, see http://sites.google.com/a/dhstweb.org/www/ ) is structured around international commissions for a variety of sub-disciplines, each of which contributes a "symposium" -- basically, a substantial themed speaker session or group of sessions, covering half a day or more. However, any organisation or (if they represent more than one country) group of people can propose a symposium -- and that, I hope, is where we come in. There is, at least at present, no formal commission representing history of computing and allied interests, whereas SIGCIS is the most active international community in the field. Putting together a SIGCIS session for Manchester would help to raise our profile among the wide range of subject communities present. It would also tie in nicely with Helena Durnova and Slawomir Lotysz's planned session on COMECON computing, which you may recall was announced on this list earlier this month. Their session has been submitted to ICOHTEC (the International Committee for the History of Technology), whose 2013 meeting will be very closely integrated with the Congress, sharing a venue, a single registration, and much of the central organisation. If we can pull together a SIGCIS session, I'll try to persuade the programme planners to run it consecutively with the COMECON session for the benefit of anyone planning a shorter trip. And, of course, I would be very pleased to see as many of you as possible in Manchester, and can promise a friendly environment and a fun programme -- we'll be making the most of the region's industrial culture with plenty of excursions, and we're currently in discussions towards special sessions debating the relationship between historians and science/technology policy and showcasing work to bring history to wider public audiences. The theme of the Congress is 'Knowledge at work'. Conveniently, it so happens that I'm the local committee representative who ended up with the job of explaining what on earth this means: I've put a list of suggested approaches on the site at <http://www.ichstm2013.com/call/>, but notice the customary "may include, but are not limited to" -- all suggestions are welcome. Possible SIGCISsy ideas might include: cultures of working (formal or informal) in IT production and use; the relevance of the fieldwork concept to our research; pure/applied boundary work and its relation to the shape of the computer science discipline; the history of debates over computer literacy in education; computing and craftsmanship. The deadline for symposium submissions is Monday 30 April. We don't, in fact, need detailed abstracts for all papers (there's a later call for these), but would need a schedule of committed participants with titles, and an overview of the session's theme and aims. If you're interested, please drop me a line soon with an indication of what you'd like to present on, and we'll take it from there. All best James

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