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Nominations invited for the 2026 Mahoney Prize
by Morgan G. Ames 24 Mar '26

24 Mar '26

Please submit your article nominations for SIGCIS's 2026 Mahoney Prize! And please forward widely! The Mahoney Prize recognizes an outstanding article in the history of computing and information technology, broadly conceived. The Mahoney Prize commemorates the late Princeton scholar Michael S. Mahoney, whose profound contributions to the history of computing came from his many articles and book chapters. The prize consists of a $500 award and a certificate. For the 2026 prize, *articles published in the preceding three years (2025, 2024 and 2023) are eligible for nomination*. The Mahoney Prize is awarded by the Special Interest Group in Computers, Information, and Society (SIGCIS). Please email copies of articles being nominated to the 2026 Prize Committee by* April 24, 2026*. Self-nominations are welcome, as are nominations from the SIG’s membership. Committee members’ names and emails are included below. Luke Stark (Chair) Assistant Professor Faculty of Information and Media Studies University of Western Ontario cstark23(a)uwo.ca David Murphy Senior Lecturer Digital, Tech, Innovation & Business Staffordshire University david.murphy(a)staffs.ac.uk Janet Toland Adjunct Professor School of Information Management Victoria University of Wellington janet.toland(a)vuw.ac.nz Information on previous winning essays may be found on the SIGCIS website: https://www.sigcis.org/mahoneyprize

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Delete: Strategies of Negation in the Age of Data Suffocation, CFP Reminder (1 Week Left)
by Veronika Hanáková 23 Mar '26

23 Mar '26

Dear colleagues, We invite you to submit proposals for the conference: *Delete: Strategies of Negation in the Age of Data Suffocation* *Where: *BLOC Cinema, *Queen Mary University of London * *When:* 17–18 September 2026 *Apply until 31 March:* https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdIk0FttwN7BI9Q0QlLw6_rWDt_S_ZM4Cu… <https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.goog…> *Read CfP:* https://www.qmul.ac.uk/arts/research/research-events/items/delete-strategie… *Keynote speakers: *Neta Alexander (Yale University), Thomas Dekeyser (University of Southampton) Seventeen years ago, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger argued that deleting is indissolubly linked to our capacity to survive and move forward (Schönberger 2009). Yet even then, a paradox emerged: while digital technologies expanded possibilities for erasure, deletion’s critical and subversive function was already eroding. With growing storage capacities and tracking mechanisms, deletion has become reduced, contested, or even impossible. How has its status changed, as AI slop and global political turbulence render this gesture seemingly futile? In the late 2000s, deleting still carried weight: we removed media to free space and erased posts to avoid embarrassment, while glitchy images and sounds remained worth preserving. By 2026, deletion has largely lost urgency. Entertainment is accessed via subscription platforms, files are dispersed across drives and clouds, and interactions (on social media or with AI models like ChatGPT) are effectively permanent and extractable. We are surrounded by lossless media, and even failures have become pauses between updates (Alexander and Appadurai 2019). Meanwhile, disruption itself appears co-opted by Big Tech, limiting its value for cultural production (Owens 2024). This conference revisits deletion as both a tool of power and a practice of resistance, refusal, and negation. Current research shows how online regimes delete memories, histories, subjectivities, and labour (Lingel 2021; Thylstrup 2025), while creative strategies attempt to rupture the deluge of digital content (Dekeyser and Culp 2023; Klik 2026). Bringing together *scholars, artists, archivists, and activists*, the conference aims to collectively reflect on and experiment with infrastructures, methodologies, and epistemologies in which deleting can once again operate as a meaningful cultural and political act. *Possible topics include (but are not limited to): * - Aesthetics of Deletion and Absence - Media Obsolescence and Forgotten Technologies - The Politics of Digital Forgetting - Creative Erasure in Videographic Scholarship - Failures, Errors, and Digital Loss on Streaming Platforms - Events and Impact of Social Media Going Dark - Histories of Digital Deletion - Media Preservation and the Fight Against Digital Deletion - Cognitive Tools and the Deletion of Traditional Memory Functions - Algorithmic Deletion and Digital Bias - Global vs. Local Practices of Deletion and Digital Memory - AI and Deletion All the best, Veronika Hanáková, Jiří Anger, and Daniel O’Brien -- Mgr. Veronika Hanáková *. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.**. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.* *Screenworks: the peer-reviewed online publication of practice research in screen media* <https://www.screenworks.org.uk/archive> Associate Editor *. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.**. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.* *Cycles of Labour: In the Metaverse, We Will Be Housewives* <https://necsus-ejms.org/cycles-of-labour-in-the-metaverse-we-will-be-housew…> Co-authored with Jiří Anger and Martin Tremčinský BAFTSS Awards 2025: Winner, Best Videographic Criticism . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁. *The Red Shoes: A Desktop Fairy Tale * Recipient of the SCMS Digital Humanities & Videographic Criticism SIG Graduate Student Video Essay Award

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So.hist.Info Seminar : Anna Katharina Osterlow (CERI, Paris) - Training “The African vanguard of the computer age”
by Camille Paloque-Bergès 20 Mar '26

20 Mar '26

Dear colleagues, We are pleased to invite you to the next session of the Socio-History of Informatics Seminar 2025-2026. This sixth and penultimate session of the 2025–2026 season will host: *April 13, 3:00–5:00 pm* *Anna Katharina Osterlow (Centre for History at Sciences Po / CERI, Paris)* for a presentation entitled: *Training “The African vanguard of the computer age”: early computing and visions of modernity and independence in Senegal and Nigeria, 1963-1984* The seminar will be held in *hybrid format* at *UTC-Paris, 62 boulevard Sébastopol – 75003 Paris* (Salle Danielle Quarante [IMI/IMI-QUARAN]). A connection link and the room number will be posted on this page before the event. To attend the seminar, please *register here <https://framaforms.org/inscription-seminaire-de-socio-histoire-de-linformat…>* *.* *Training “The African vanguard of the computer age”: early computing and visions of modernity and independence in Senegal and Nigeria, 1963-1984* In March 1982, an ambitious, transnational group of teachers, scientists, and computer experts from Senegal, France, and the United States launched the project “Computers in education” at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Dakar, Senegal, to explore the usage of micro-computers in teaching and learning. The exchanges within the transnational network of experts around this project raised questions about the “Westernness” of technology, the appropriate ways to spread computing knowledge adapted to Senegalese culture, and the conditions of exporting computer hardware from the Global North to the Global South. Similar questions were raised in a much earlier computer project in 1964 in Nigeria, where International Business Machines (IBM) established the “African Education Centre”, in cooperation with the University of Ibadan, to train students from different African countries on an IBM punch card computer. While evoking similar questions on modernity and computing, this project brought forward Nigerian aspirations of linking computing with the efforts of nation-building and decolonisation, and it was announced as a symbol for the path that the African continent would take. Considering the changing practices of computing over the years, my research investigates the entanglements between French and US American state and private actors with African academics, functionaries, teachers, and computer scientists, from the 1960s to the late 1980s, in their ambitions to spread computing. Thereby, my research intends to shed light on the “silence” surrounding African computing history and its embeddedness in the global dynamics of decolonisation and the Cold War. My research is based on archival materials from archives in France, Senegal, Nigeria, and the US The *So.Hist-Info seminar* is coordinated by* Mathilde Fichen, Camille Paloque-Bergès & Adrien Tournier (HT2S lab Cnam, Paris) and Léandre Bécard (COSTECH, UTC, Compiègne). *Please note that this will be the first session organized with our new co-coordinator, L. Bécard. More info on the seminar : https://sohistinfo.github.io/ https://technique-societe.cnam.fr/seminaire-socio-histoire-de-l-informatiqu… Link to the online announcement : https://technique-societe.cnam.fr/anna-katharina-osterlow-training-the-afri…

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Turing Conference -- On Computable numbers...
by Dag Spicer 16 Mar '26

16 Mar '26

On the 90th anniversary of Turing's classic paper. <https://www.tnmoc.org/computable90-conference> [computable90-logo.jpg] Computable90 Conference — The National Museum of Computing<https://www.tnmoc.org/computable90-conference> tnmoc.org<https://www.tnmoc.org/computable90-conference> Dag ----- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ACM History Committee 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View CA 94043 “History is a vast early warning system.” — Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990). Join our Mailing List here: https://info.computerhistory.org/subscribe

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Jürgen Habermas, RIP
by Dag Spicer 14 Mar '26

14 Mar '26

<https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/14/jurgen-habermas-one-of-germanys-leading…> [1200x675_cmsv2_100bcdb6-815c-50f6-84ca-e07494a0400c-9685864.jpg] Leading contemporary philosopher Jürgen Habermas has died<https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/14/jurgen-habermas-one-of-germanys-leading…> euronews.com<https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/14/jurgen-habermas-one-of-germanys-leading…> Dag ----- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ACM History Committee 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View CA 94043 “History is a vast early warning system.” — Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990). Join our Mailing List here: https://info.computerhistory.org/subscribe

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CHM Update: Apple History in Prototypes
by Dag Spicer 14 Mar '26

14 Mar '26

As part of its ongoing celebration of Apple’s 50th anniversary, CHM curator Dr Hansen Hsu surveys our remarkable collection of Apple prototypes: <https://computerhistory.org/blog/apple-history-in-prototypes/> [chm_apple50_web_image2_960x540.jpg] Apple History in Prototypes<https://computerhistory.org/blog/apple-history-in-prototypes/> computerhistory.org<https://computerhistory.org/blog/apple-history-in-prototypes/> Prototypes as objects for historians to study can offer some interesting benefits: 1. Historians can interact with prototypes to "re-experience" the constraints of a past era. By physically manipulating a replica or an original prototype, a researcher gains a phenomenological understanding of the machine’s weight, heat, noise, and interface, leading to insights that a 2D drawing cannot provide. 2. Modern scholarship — with its user-centered historiography — often emphasizes how technology is "socially constructed.” (I know this might be viewed as a bit dated but it still has many proponents!) Prototypes often show evidence of early user testing. Wear patterns, modified buttons, or ergonomic adjustments on a prototype tell a story of how early users influenced a technology’s trajectory before it ever reached a factory line. 3. … and, finally, standard histories often suffer from hindsight bias, looking only at successful end products. Prototypes provide a material trail of the path not taken. By examining a series of failed or intermediate prototypes, historians can reconstruct the developer's logic, seeing exactly where a specific technical theory failed and how the design was "negotiated" with the laws of physics. Enjoy Hansen’s great blog! Dag ----- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ACM History Committee 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View CA 94043 “History is a vast early warning system.” — Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990). Join our Mailing List here: https://info.computerhistory.org/subscribe

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New MA Programme in Game Studies at FSV, Charles University
by Veronika Hanáková 13 Mar '26

13 Mar '26

Dear colleagues, I would like to bring to your attention a new *MA programme in Game Studies* offered by the *Faculty of Social Sciences (FSV), Charles University* in Prague. If you have undergraduate students who would like to further develop their academic interests in the field of game studies, we would be grateful if you could make them aware of this opportunity. Students with a background in media studies, game studies, film studies, visual culture, sociology, or related disciplines are particularly encouraged to apply. The programme provides interdisciplinary training combining perspectives from media studies, sociology, and cultural studies. *Courses include* Introduction to Game Studies, History of Computer and Video Games, Player Studies, and Psychology of Digital Games, alongside classes exploring representation and politics in games and game journalism and marketing. Students will also gain practical experience through a game industry internship and specialized research seminars. The Faculty of Social Sciences is an internationally oriented institution with a strong focus on media and communication research and a large international student body. Students enrolled in the programme may also benefit from a range of mobility and funding opportunities, including Erasmus+ exchange programmes, faculty mobility schemes with partner universities, and several *FSV scholarships and support funds* for international students. Studying in Prague provides access to a dynamic academic and cultural environment in a central European capital known for its strong cultural sector, growing game development scene, and high quality of life for students. The deadline to apply is *30 April 2026*. Further information about the *Game Studies programme** and tuition fees* can be found here: https://study.fsv.cuni.cz/study-programs/master-programs/game . More information about *scholarships* can be found here: https://study.fsv.cuni.cz/how-to-apply/scholarships. If you have questions, please let me know: veronika.hanakova(a)fsv.cuni.cz Kind regards, Veronika Hanáková -- Mgr. Veronika Hanáková *. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.**. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.* *Screenworks: the peer-reviewed online publication of practice research in screen media* <https://www.screenworks.org.uk/archive> Associate Editor *. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.**. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.* *Cycles of Labour: In the Metaverse, We Will Be Housewives* <https://necsus-ejms.org/cycles-of-labour-in-the-metaverse-we-will-be-housew…> Co-authored with Jiří Anger and Martin Tremčinský BAFTSS Awards 2025: Winner, Best Videographic Criticism . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁. *The Red Shoes: A Desktop Fairy Tale * Recipient of the SCMS Digital Humanities & Videographic Criticism SIG Graduate Student Video Essay Award

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CHM Live | Apple at 50: Five Decades of Thinking Different
by Dag Spicer 12 Mar '26

12 Mar '26

Hi Everyone! Here is the recording of last night’s amazing Apple @ 50 celebration at the Computer History Museum. Enjoy! <https://youtu.be/eCSNJgI2LFI> [maxresdefault.jpg] CHM Live | Apple at 50: Five Decades of Thinking Different<https://youtu.be/eCSNJgI2LFI> youtu.be<https://youtu.be/eCSNJgI2LFI> Dag ----- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ACM History Committee 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View CA 94043 “History is a vast early warning system.” — Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990). Join our Mailing List here: https://info.computerhistory.org/subscribe

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In Memoriam: C.A.R. "Tony" Hoare
by Dag Spicer 11 Mar '26

11 Mar '26

A true computing pioneer has left us. <https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-memoriam-sir-antony-hoare-1934-2026/> [Antony-Hoare-image.png] In Memoriam: Sir Antony Hoare (1934–2026)<https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-memoriam-sir-antony-hoare-1934-2026/> computerhistory.org<https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-memoriam-sir-antony-hoare-1934-2026/> ----- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ACM History Committee 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View CA 94043 “History is a vast early warning system.” — Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990). Join our Mailing List here: https://info.computerhistory.org/subscribe

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] The Computer History Museum presents "Apple @50" = Tomorrow Night
by Dag Spicer 10 Mar '26

10 Mar '26

Ach! Sorry guys: the show starts at 7:00 p.m Pacific — which is 10:00 p.m. (not 4:00 p.m.) Eastern. See you there! Dag Five Decades of Thinking Different! [Screenshot 2026-03-10 at 5.41.19 PM.png] On 03/10/2026 7:34 PM EDT Dag Spicer via Members <members(a)lists.sigcis.org> wrote: Hello SIGCIS Friends! Just a heads up: Tomorrow night — March 11 — the Computer History Museum is presenting a very special evening with some of Apple’s most significant and influential historical figures. The fun starts at 7:00 p.m. Pacific time / 4:00 p.m. Eastern / 12:00 a.m. GMT. The Event is SOLD OUT but you can sign up to watch the livestream here: [chm_apple_chm_website_924x551.jpg] Apple at 50<https://computerhistory.org/events/apple-at-50/> computerhistory.org<https://computerhistory.org/events/apple-at-50/> Our host is the wonderful DAVID POGUE, multi-decade Apple reporter and tech columnist for CBS Sunday Morning. We’re also delighted to celebrate David's new 600 page magnum opus, “Apple: The First 50 Years,” now available from Simon and Shuster. Hope to see you all there: this will be one for the ages! Dag ----- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ACM History Committee 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View CA 94043 “History is a vast early warning system.” — Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990). Join our Mailing List here: https://info.computerhistory.org/subscribe _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at 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://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org . CAUTION: External email. Beware of links & attachments.

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