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How did the Incas calculate with yupanas?
by herbert.bruderer＠bluewin.ch 06 Feb '22

06 Feb '22

Dear colleagues: The Romans used the abacus for calculations and recorded the results with Roman numerals. The Incas recorded the values with quipus and calculated with yupanas. Does anyone know how they calculated with these tools? Many thanks. Best wishes, Herbert Bruderer -- Bruderer Informatik Seehaldenstrasse 26 Postfach 47 CH-9401 Rorschach Switzerland Telefon +41 71 855 77 11 Bruderer, Herbert [2020a]: Milestones in Analog and Digital Computing, Springer Nature Switzerland AG, Cham, 3rd edition 2020, 2 volumes, 2113 pages, 715 illustrations, 151 tables, https://www.springer.com/de/book/9783030409739 Bruderer, Herbert [2020b]: Meilensteine der Rechentechnik, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin/Boston, 3. Auflage 2020, Band 1, 970 Seiten, 577 Abbildungen, 114 Tabellen, https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/567028?rskey=xoRERF&result=7 Bruderer, Herbert [2020c]: Meilensteine der Rechentechnik, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin/Boston, 3. Auflage 2020, Band 2, 1055 Seiten, 138 Abbildungen, 37 Tabellen, https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/567221?rskey=A8Y4Gb&result=4

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Search for new EIC for IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
by William Aspray 05 Feb '22

05 Feb '22

The IEEE Annals of the History of Computing has been a central part of the history of computing community since the 1970s. The IEEE Computer Society is now searching for a new editor-in-chief for Annals, for a three-year term beginning 1 January 2023. (An EIC can apply later for a second term of two years.) For more information about the Computer Society and Annals, and to learn about the application process, see https://www.computer.org/press-room/2021-news/ieee-cs-pubs-seek-2023-editor… <https://www.computer.org/press-room/2021-news/ieee-cs-pubs-seek-2023-editor…>. Please note that the deadline for receipt of applications is 1 March 2022. If you have other questions about the EIC position, please feel free to contact me as nominations committee chair at william.aspray(a)icloud.com.

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CACM piece on A New History of Modern Computing/Sinclair QL up next
by thomas.haigh＠gmail.com 04 Feb '22

04 Feb '22

Dear SIGCIS, Anyone curious about A New History of Modern Computing (MIT Press, 2021) which I wrote with Paul Ceruzzi, but not curious enough to have actually read the book, might be interested in my latest to the February issue of Communications of the ACM. "Becoming Universal: A New History of Modern Computing" looks at some of the special challenges of writing an overview history of a technology as mutable as the computer, talks about some of our decisions and key themes, and gives an idea of how the book differs from earlier overview histories. You can read it at https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2022/2/258223-becoming-universal/fulltext My next contribution will be a delayed reaction to the death of Clive Sinclair, focused on the machine that his obituaries tended to overlook: the Sinclair QL. If any of you have QL stories to share, let me know. Also, if anyone has contact information for Tony Tebby, David Karlin, or Jan Jones I'd be interested to get it. If you haven't heard of the QL but like reading about 1980s computer platforms, take a look at https://www.theregister.com/2014/01/12/archaeologic_sinclair_ql/ for the story. Also chapter 8 of Adamson and Kennedy's book Sinclair and the 'Sunrise' Technology which is available at https://www.readanybook.com/online/681933. Best wishes, Tom

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CfP: After Post-Photography 7 (June 2-4, 2022, St Petersburg // online)
by Dr. Friedrich Tietjen 03 Feb '22

03 Feb '22

Dear Sigcis, please see below the CfP for our next After Post-Photography conference in St Petersburg. Maria Gourieva and I started the conference series in 2015 and since then enjoyed the annual conferences quite a bit as did the (mostly) Russian audience - in particular because the open call attracted speakers from a wide variety of disciplines. So if you're doing research that one way or the other involves photography, feel welcome to submit a paper. Personally, I would be very interested in particular in papers on techno-racism (you probably remember the infamous HP-camera that would only recognize and track the movement of Caucasian faces) and on image generation in digital cameras (to name but a few subjects). Feel free to spread the word, and thanks for that Friedrich Stiftung Reinbeckhallen Berlin https://en.stiftung-reinbeckhallen.de/ https://univie.academia.edu/FriedrichTietjen ---snip--- After Post-Photography 7 - Presence and Absence International conference on visual studies, history and theory of photography 2-4 June 2022 European University (St. Petersburg, Russia // online) Maybe we never depended on photographic media as much as we do since early 2020. Probably we never looked so often, on so many occasions and at so many photographic images, as when wave after pandemic wave crashed into the world as we knew it. The less we could physically interact, the more we did by means of visual media. Instead of traveling we watched documentaries and were comforted a bit when videos showed a pair of dolphins swimming through Venice‘s Canale Grande where these animals had been absent for ages. We perused old family albums or sifted through the thousands of pictures on our hard drives. As libraries were closed, generous colleagues would snap page after page of book chapters someone else in the world was desperate to read. Our seminars were replaced by screens from which the participants‘ faces stared frontally, each one an involuntary panoptic jailer and inmate. And the breakout rooms of conferences were hardly a surrogate for the drafty hallways where gossip was exchanged and wild new research ideas developed over lukewarm coffee. The pandemic drama found its visual metaphors and allegories in the photograph of an Italian nurse collapsing after too many shifts, a short video of the former German tennis star Boris Becker applauding care workers from the balcony of his luxury mansion and demonstrations against the pandemic, lockdowns, vaccinations and the state as such. And as usual, many of its aspects remained invisible – the rise of domestic violence and alcoholism, the boring routine work in hospitals, the terrors of proximity in overcrowded camps, the dying in squalor of which there was rather more than less. In these and many more respects, a multitude of medialized relations of presence and absence and photography or – on broader terms – of visibility were negotiated within the framework of the pandemic. But of course these relations did not only emerge through the pandemic alone. In fact they are at the very core of images in general, and of photographs in particular. As photographic media shape our understanding of the world outside our immediate vicinity, their practices and politics of presence and absence are fundamental to modernity and its societies. Both practices and politics obviously depend upon what the images show. But in equal measure they also depend on how images are produced, distributed and reach out to their audiences. Thus, photographic presence and absence can happen in a lot of different ways. Photographic images can be applied to highlight, generate, select and obscure persons, objects, events and relations; they can render them special, ordinary, normal or boring. They can address individuals or everybody, they can aim for eternity or ephemerality. How all this was, is, or can be done depends not only on intentions but also on the technologies of the photographic media in question. These technologies however are neither objective nor are they neutral. How they cast the visibile - and invisible - into photograpic images depends upon the common politics and practices of visibility: if a team of engineers developes a facial recognition systems and trains it with portraits of predominantly white men, it is hardly surprising that it fails to identify or even recognize non-white persons. Under these conditions, possible topics include, but are not limited to - The image is the real thing: Photographic replacements - Skype, Zoom and BBB: Visual telepresence and other panoptical experiences - This can't be me: Non-representation through photography - Mobile presence: The smartphone as representation of the self - Photographic decay: What do faded photographs tell? - Technical blindness - what photography can't see or show - Photographic media and their audiences - You'll only see this once: Technical ephemerality - Photographs of what never has been: Retouching, rendering and other technologies of photo-realism - Pseudo-photography: The photographic aesthetics of sonographs, tomographs and other imaging methods As it was the case with previous conferences however, After Post-Photography is driven by a general curiosity in subjects of photography. Thus, there is only ground rule for submitting a paper to After Post-Photography: If you‘re doing Sociology, Nuclear Physics, Ethnology, Computer Sciences, Gender Studies, Meteorology, Law, Memory Studies, Criminology, Architecture, Archaeology, Botany, Art History, Mathematics, Numismatics, Astronomy, Game Studies, Oenology, Art History or any other discipline from science and humanities and your research involves photography in the broadest sense, we are happy to receive your paper. Please submit your application, including a short summary of your paper (250-400 words) only in English no later than February 28, 2022. Use the following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=app7; do not send submissions per eMail. Note that you need to register at the Easychair website in order to submit your application. Should you like to get in touch with us prior to your submission, please write to app(a)mur.at; we will get back to you within two or three days and if need be are also happy to talk to you via Zoom or Skype. There is no participation fee for the conference, neither for speakers nor for guests; should you like to support the conference however, let us know. As the pandemic continues, traveling options are impossible to predict which is why we plan for a hybrid conference. If your paper is accepted and you would like to come to St. Petersburg we regret that we can’t sponsor traveling or accommodation but can help you finding a place to stay. We will also provide you with an invitation in case you need a visa. The working languages of the conference are Russian and English, and during the conference, both papers and discussions will be translated. For programs of After Post-Photography conferences since 2015, please see www.after-post.photography We would sincerely appreciate it if you would circulate the call to your own networks and other mailing lists. Organizing committee After Post Photography 7 Olga Annanurova, Maria Gourieva, Olga Davydova, Natalia Mazour, Daria Panaiotti, Friedrich Tietjen

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Venues for technical history?
by Jeffrey Starr 03 Feb '22

03 Feb '22

I'm interested in writing on technical computer science history topics (e.g. programming language history) and I'm trying to identify venues for short-form/article length publications. The focus would be on the engineering decisions and impact, rather than the social or business impact, which I understand is "out of scope" for many of the typical historical journals. Does this community have any recommendations? Jeffrey Starr

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] History of Computing/Technology podcasts?
by Shreeharsh Kelkar 02 Feb '22

02 Feb '22

Hi Ted, and all, Thanks for the links to those podcasts. Some of the podcasts I've listened to occasionally (and found quite good) on computing history are: Brian McCullough's Internet history podcast: http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/podcasts-by-chapter/. I don't think he publishes it anymore but I've liked quite a few of the episodes (I haven't listened to all of them by any means), especially some of the interviews with practitioners (e.g. with the people who brought the NYT and WSJ online). Gabriella Coleman's The Hackers podcast. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m0012fjk Land of the Giants (these are histories of the giant internet companies) is a good series though it's about the last 20 years or so mostly. https://www.vox.com/land-of-the-giants-podcast. They also had this one-off season on the delivery economy which I found pretty good (and assigned as a reading for my class). https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/delivery-wars/id1465767420?i=10005255… Some of the episodes/seasons of Command Line Heroes. https://www.redhat.com/en/command-line-heroes Last, but not the least, my own podcast (well, technically, these are my lectures when I taught my course The Social Life of Computing asynchronously in Spring 2021, but I tried to mimic the style of my favorite narrated history podcasts): https://soundcloud.com/user-118533348/sets/the-social-life-of-computing. There's a lot of social history of computing in there if they're of any use. https://soundcloud.com/user-118533348/sets/the-social-life-of-computing Hope this is useful! Best, Shreeharsh _______________ Shreeharsh Kelkar http://www.shreeharshkelkar.net

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Tenure-track assistant professor or associate professor in science studies, Aarhus University
by Timo Leimbach 02 Feb '22

02 Feb '22

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History of Computing/Technology podcasts?
by Ted Pedersen 01 Feb '22

01 Feb '22

Greetings all, I'm teaching a class where I'm asking students to create podcasts on topics from the History of Computing and Technology. This is new terrain for most of them, so I want to give them some example podcasts, and I also enjoy listening to these so there is some self interest at work here as well. The students are undergraduate CS majors, so more technical content is fine and perhaps even desirable. The following are podcasts that I'm aware of that seem relevant to this, and I am just wondering what else might be available that anyone would recommend. - History of Computing Podcast <https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fthehistoryofcomputing.net%2F&sa=…> - Bitwise Podcast <https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bitwisepodcast.com%2F&sa=D&s…> - Retro Computing Roundtable <http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Frcrpodcast.com%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=…> - Advent of Computing <https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fadventofcomputing.com%2F&sa=D&sn…> - Computing Britain <https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fprogrammes%2Fb06…> - ? Thank you! Ted --- Dr. Ted Pedersen http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse UEA-A Member : https://sites.google.com/d.umn.edu/ueaumd

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NYCDH Week Announcement
by Kimon Keramidas 01 Feb '22

01 Feb '22

This may be of interest to some on the SIGCIS List Only Seven Days Until NYCDH Week From Home! Can you believe it? This time next week we’ll all be eagerly participating in the kickoff event <https://nycdh.org/dhweek/event/nycdh-kickoff-event-2022/> and preparing for sessions to start. We are excited to release the slate of workshops, demonstrations, and events <http://nycdh.org/dhweek/sessions-2022> and we can’t wait until NYCDH is brightening screens across the region, country and world. NYCDH Week 2022 will take place in a fully online format, while continuing to do what it has done for the past six years -- bring together individuals across the region who are interested in digital humanities, offering them opportunities to learn new techniques and skills, to hear about DH projects from across the city, and to connect with a vibrant and diverse community of scholars and practitioners. In place of a traditional keynote lecture, this year’s kickoff event will feature a roundtable titled “Finding, Cultivating, and Sustaining Support for Your DH Project.” Roundtable participants will include Jennifer Serventi – National Endowment for the Humanities Moacir de Sá Pereira – Columbia University Jim Groom – Reclaim Hosting Jason Rhody – Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Katina Rogers – Independent Scholar As is tradition, following the introduction and kickoff roundtable we will be announcing the winners of our annual Graduate Student Awards with presentations by the winners, as NYCDH continues to support the next generation of scholars in the field. We look forward to welcoming you soon and thanks to everyone for making NYCDH such a great community! Check out the Sessions Page! <https://nycdh.org/dhweek/sessions-2022/> For more information, visit the NYCDH <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__nycdh.us7.list-2Dmanag…>website or contact nycdigitalhumanities(a)gmail.com <mailto:nycdigitalhumanites@gmail.com>. Cheers, Kimon Keramidas Kimon Keramidas, Ph.D. Clinical Associate Professor, XE: Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement <http://as.nyu.edu/xe.html> Affiliated Faculty, Program in International Relations Pronouns: He/Him New York University 14 University Place New York, NY 10003 Co-Director - ITMO University International Digital Humanities Research Center <http://dh.itmo.ru/en_about> Co-Founder - The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy <http://jitpedagogy.org/> Co-Founder - NYCDH <http://nycdh.org/> E kimon.keramidas(a)nyu.edu <mailto:kimon.keramidas@nyu.edu> W http://kimonkeramidas.com <http://kimonkeramidas.com/> The Sogdians: Influencers on the Silk Roads Exhibition <https://www.freersackler.si.edu/sogdians> The Interface Experience: Forty Years of Personal Computing Exhibition <https://www.bgc.bard.edu/gallery/exhibitions/10/the-interface-experience> The Interface Experience: A User’s Guide Winner of the 2016 Innovation in Print Design Award from the American Alliance of Museums Buy Book <http://store.bgc.bard.edu/the-interface-experience-a-users-guide-by-kimon-k…>

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IEEE Annals of the History of Computing Winter Reviews!
by Theodora J Dryer 01 Feb '22

01 Feb '22

Dear SIGCIS community, I hope everyone is doing well. Here is the call for book reviews, Winter 2022 Edition <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yDEjJvJko_a0s60ydsEgg9-8MAy5O02iGZkZNhW…> ! Please let me know if you would be interested in publishing a book review with IEEE. Book reviews* are a great way to complete a short form publication while engaging with and supporting our wider community in the history of computing. Additionally, please do let me know if you have a forthcoming book in 2022-2023. I would like to help promote and celebrate your work as it comes out! Thank you, Theodora *Beyond books, reviews can include art and technology, archives, and other media related to the history of computing. We are open for proposals on new content and approaches for review and engagement. -- Theodora Dryer, Ph.D. she/her https://www.theodoradryer.com/ Water Justice + Technology <https://ainowinstitute.org/water-justice-technology.pdf.> @AI Now Institute and @CIEJ Big Data Stream <https://logicmag.io/kids/big-data-stream/>@Logic Magazine

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