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computer game of Nim
by Guy Fedorkow 23 Jan '26

23 Jan '26

Greetings SIGCIS, My colleague Brian White has done quite a bit of work to successfully recover a demo/game of Nim, written to run on the Whirlwind computer in late 1955. We know that the Whirlwind project had an ongoing work item to produce a variety of demonstrations to impress their steady stream of VIP visitors with the breadth of applications that could be run on this new-fangled general-purpose computing machine. The thing that's a puzzle is just how much work they put into "generalizing" Nim. The normal game allows a number of tokens to be removed from a bucket on each turn. The WW Nim can be configured to allow/require the players (human against computer) to remove a number of tokens from a number of buckets in each turn. I don't think the Nim game is very well known these days, but it seems to have had a bit of a moment in the early days of computing as an algorithmic problem that was more challenging than (e.g.) tic-tac-toe, but more tractable than chess. I've seen reference to Nim on a couple of special-purpose Nim-playing machines (Nimatron and Ferranti NimRod), but is anyone aware of other "game theory" approaches to Nim algorithms from that era that might have prompted the Whirlwind efforts? Thanks! /guy ps, All the material is posted on my Whirlwind simulator github site, although the user-interface is so un-intuitive (there's graphical output on a CRT, but input is all in octal) that it really needs a fairly extensive user-guide to be playable. You can see the original Whirlwind memo on the game at http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/whirlwind/DCL-series/DCL-113_Generalized_N…

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Our "Women in Computing" book display
by Brian Randell 22 Jan '26

22 Jan '26

Hi: Last weekend I took a mixed party of about twenty visitors around the School of Computing at Newcastle University, mainly to see our historical computing display (some ten display cabinets). But I also showed them our display (see attached photo) of books “Women in Computing” - it was the one display that the visitors actually applauded! (It is sponsored by Sage Computing, and we have arranged that additional copies of all the books on display are borrowable from the University Library.) Cheers Brian Randell -- School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk<mailto:Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk> PHONE = +44 (0)786 7805578 URL = https://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/staff/profile/brianrandell.html

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SIGCIS 2026: Known Error | CFP and Keynote Announcement | Submissions due: 2/16/2026
by Gili Vidan 19 Jan '26

19 Jan '26

Dear SIGCIS Community, We're thrilled to share our CFP for the upcoming SIGCIS 2026 annual meeting, "Known Error," which will take place at the School of Information, UC Berkeley in June 17-18, 2026, and virtually. *Abstract submission are due in 4 weeks--Mon, 2/16!* *Please see the full CFP here <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VP2Z2dMjFt055P0ee4PwpVyosWu8Mbgu0Jf8Uzk…>*. This year we are accepting submissions for individual papers, pre-constituted panels of 3-4 papers, software demos, roundtables, and other formats. We are also once again running our graduate student works-in-progress (WIP) closed session, where students can share draft chapters or article manuscripts with a more senior SIGCIS community member and receive feedback. If you would like to serve as a WIP mentor but are not otherwise submitting a proposal to SIGCIS, please reach out to us at sigcis.conference(a)gmail.com. We are also excited to announce this year's *keynote speaker:* *Dwai Banerjee* <https://sts-program.mit.edu/people/sts-faculty/dwai-banerjee/>, Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, on *"Computing in the Age of Decolonization."* Bio: What new perspectives about the history and practice of science, technology, and medicine emerge when we foreground the intellectual labor of thinkers and practitioners from the Global South? Dwaipayan Banerjee's work centers the lives and creative visions of scientific practitioners in South Asia, challenging scholars to reorient how we understand the past and future of science, technology, and medicine. He is an Associate Professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of *Enduring Cancer: Life, Death, and Diagnosis in Delhi* (Duke Univ Press), *Hematologies: The political life of blood in India* (Cornell Univ Press) and *Computing in the Age of Decolonization: India's Lost Technological Revolution* (forthcoming, Princeton Univ Press). *Please circulate this call widely to your own networks and communities!* We look forward to gathering both in person and virtually this summer! The SIGCIS Meetings Organizing Committee: Morgan G. Ames <http://morganya.org/>, University of California, Berkeley (SIGCIS Co-Chair) Katya Babintseva <https://www.cla.purdue.edu/directory/profiles/ekaterina-babintseva.html>, Purdue University Jason Ludwig <https://www.filmandmedia.ucsb.edu/person/jason-ludwig/>, University of California, Santa Barbara Colette Perold <https://www.colorado.edu/cmci/people/media-studies/colette-perold>, University of Colorado, Boulder Honghong Tinn <https://cse.umn.edu/hstm/honghong-tinn>, University of Minnesota Gili Vidan <https://infosci.cornell.edu/content/vidan>, Cornell University (Vice-Chair of Meetings) --- Gili Vidan Assistant Professor | Information Science | Cornell University Pronouns: she/her

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[CfP] INDL-North America Symposium on Labor and AI @ Yale
by Posada, Julian 15 Jan '26

15 Jan '26

Dear colleagues, I am pleased to announce the call for papers for the INDL-North America Symposium on Labor and Artificial Intelligence. Event Details: * Date: April 29, 2026 * Location: Yale University, New Haven, CT (In-person) Theme: "Workers Building, Using, and Resisting AI" This inaugural symposium highlights the essential role of labor not only in creating AI models but also in shaping how those technologies transform work, maintaining AI infrastructure, and developing strategies to navigate or resist AI-driven change. We invite contributions from established and early-career academic researchers (including graduate students), labor organizers and practitioners, and professionals engaged with the theme. Funding: We are pleased to offer a limited number of scholarships for graduate students, non-academics, and independent scholars, funded by Yale’s MacMillan Center. Important Dates: * Abstract Deadline (<500 words): January 18, 2026 (AoE) * Notification of Acceptance: February 28, 2026 For the full call for papers and submission instructions, please visit the symposium website: https://indl-na.sciencesconf.org/ *Apologies for cross-posting. Please share widely.* —————————— Julián Posada, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of American Studies Yale University https://posada.website/

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[RESET Journal] Call for Papers – “Towards New Social and Historical Studies of Artificial Intelligence” (January 16, 2026)
by FICHEN Mathilde 15 Jan '26

15 Jan '26

Hello everyone, The journal RESET is issuing a call for contributions on the following theme: “Towards New Social and Historical Studies of Artificial Intelligence”. Details of the call are available in French<https://journals.openedition.org/reset/6249> and English<https://journals.openedition.org/reset/6250> on the journal’s website. This special issue, coordinated by Mathilde Fichen (HT2s, Cnam), Alexander Campolo (Durham University), and Valentin Goujon (médialab, Sciences Po), aims to bring together empirically grounded contributions that fall within one or more of the following areas: * “Winters” and “springs,” symbolic and connectionist: testing the robustness of major historiographical narratives about artificial intelligence * Spaces, objects, intersectionality: renewed perspectives on the history of artificial intelligence * Contemporary socio-histories of artificial intelligence, between commercial breakthroughs and scientific renewals Article abstracts (around 4,000 characters, excluding bibliography) are expected by January 16, 2026 at the following three email addresses: * mathilde.fichen(a)lecnam.net * alexander.campolo(a)durham.ac.uk * valentin.goujon(a)sciencespo.fr The proposal, written in French or English, should indicate the research question, the methodology used, the theoretical framework applied, and the expected results. It should emphasize the scientific relevance of the proposed article in relation to the existing literature and the call for papers, and should be accompanied by a short bibliography. Authors will receive a response in mid-February 2026. For accepted proposals, full articles must be submitted no later than June 2026. The journal RESET is also open, in its Varia<https://journals.openedition.org/reset/3228> section, to all work in the humanities and social sciences that deals with the digital world as an object or method of research. Please feel free to share this call with anyone who may be interested. We remain available at the email addresses above for any questions. We look forward to reading your submissions, Mathilde Fichen, Alexander Campolo, and Valentin Goujon. Mathilde Fichen Ph.D Candidate CNAM - HT2S<https://technique-societe.cnam.fr/histoire-des-technosciences-en-societe-ht…> Personal page: mathfichen.github.io<https://mathfichen.github.io/>

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Postdoc in history of cryptography
by Matthew L. Jones 14 Jan '26

14 Jan '26

SIGCIS folks, Sharing an exciting two year post-doc opportunity in the history of cryptography, focused broadly in the latter third of the twentieth century to the present. Reach out to me and/or christof.paar(a)mpi-sp.org with any questions. Please distribute widely in your networks. Cheers, Matt Matthew L. Jones Smith Family Professor of History Princeton University@nescioquid The Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP) in Bochum, Germany, is offering a position for One Postdoctoral Scholar (m/f/d) for 2 years, with employment contract: TVöD-Bund (pay scale E14) to begin in June 2026 or later. We seek a postdoctoral scholar working in the history of cryptography and information security after 1970, with a robust research agenda. The successful applicant will conduct their own research within these guidelines, will undertake a series of oral history interviews, and will organize a workshop on the history of cryptography with a focus on the last 50 years. The project aims to support innovative scholarship on cryptography, both the individual project of the successful candidate and the broader work in the community. The project will be conducted in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (Etienne Benson) and Princeton University (Matthew Jones).The successful candidate will organize and undertake, along with the director at MPI-SP and the collaborators, to secure high quality, technically and historiographically informed oral history interviews of the major figures in the development of cryptography. Special attention should be given to the 1970s, when cryptography began to emerge as a research field outside government agencies, and to the 1990s, when concerns about privacy and state surveillance became prominent with the rise of the internet. The position will be centered at Christof Paar’s group at MPI-SP and offers a unique opportunity to work within two intellectually stimulating environments: the history-of-science community, with a focus on technology and information technology, and the global cryptography community. The hosting institute together with the collaborating institutions are well connected in both communities at the international level. To apply, please submit the following documents: - Cover Letter; - Curriculum vitae; including publication list; - Research prospectus in which you outline your planned contribution to the research theme (maximum 1,500 words); - An English writing sample communicating your own research to academics or the general public. Preferably a published piece. - Contact information for two referees. Applications must be received by February 28, 2026, and should be sent to christof.paar(a)mpi-sp.org with the subject line “history of cryptography”. Applications will be reviewed in March 2026 and short-listed candidates will be interviewed in March and possibly April of 2026. Only successful candidates will be notified. Please note that we can only accept electronic applications submitted through the portal. The Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy stands for a collaborative, diverse and inclusive workplace culture and promotes equal opportunities. We strongly encourage applications from members of any underrepresented group in our research area. In particular, we invite and encourage women and individuals with disabilities to apply.

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🎮 ROMchip Presents: Upcoming Game History Talks & Fundraiser Twitch Stream!
by Laine Nooney 13 Jan '26

13 Jan '26

The ROMchip Editorial Group <https://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal/about/editorialTeam> is excited to invite you to a series of *free* online talks on *the ROMchip Twitch channel* (https://www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal) as part of our annual fundraiser season. These events highlight new work in game history and support *ROMchip*’s mission to publish ad‑free, open access research in the history of games. *Learn More about ROMchip* DONATE <https://hcb.hackclub.com/donations/start/romchip-a-journal-of-game-histories> | SUBSCRIBE <http://eepurl.com/crCul1> | BLUESKY <https://bsky.app/profile/romchip.bsky.social> | YOUTUBE <https://www.youtube.com/@ROMchipJournal> ------------------------------ 📅 *Friday, January 23, 2026 — 2:00 PM EST* *ROMchip Presents: Cameron Kunzelman on Everything Is Permitted: On Assassin’s Creed* *About the book:* Released in fall 2007, *Assassin’s Creed* transformed video gaming. Across more than a dozen franchise entries, players engage with the eternal conflict between the Order of Assassins and the nefarious Templar Order, carrying out missions in a series of painstakingly rendered historical settings, from the Holy Lands during the Third Crusade to Renaissance Italy, the Age of Piracy, the French Revolution, and Victorian London. *Everything is Permitted *is an analysis of the development, evolution, gameplay, and world-building of this sprawling and distinctive franchise. Tix and more info HERE <https://www.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehistories/2018775> . ------------------------------ 📅 *Friday, February 6, 2026 — 2:00 PM EST* *ROMchip Presents: Raiford Guins on King Pong: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions* *About the book:* *PONG *is one of the longest- and most consistently circulating video games. Released in 1972, it remains at our fingertips as Android or iOS app, hosted at freepong.org and the Internet Archive, and even released as *A Tiny Game of Pong* for the Apple Watch. Despite its simplicity and ubiquity, Atari’s *PONG *encapsulates far more than the history of a video game and an iconic game company. *King PONG* is the first book dedicated to an unassuming game that changed the world. Through the prisms of product positioning, market development, and category creation, Raiford Guins answers the question of why Atari’s inaugural product succeeded and why it endures. Tix and more info HERE <https://www.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehistories/2013396> . ------------------------------ 📅 *Friday, February 13, 2026 — 2:00 PM EST* *ROMchip Presents: Carlin Wing on Bounce: Balls, Walls, and Bodies in Games and Play* *About the book:* *Bounce *follows an array of bouncing balls through the histories of nonelectronic and electronic games, across the spectrum of play, game, and sport, and into the domains of physics, material science, animation, and computing. The book’s focus on bounce sidesteps the focus on play found in much of the game studies literature and broadens the scope of game history by spotlighting an interaction that is central to thousands of physical and digital games and sports. ------------------------------ 🎉 *Saturday, February 21, 2026 * *— 11:00 AM - 11:00 PM ESTJoin us for the **ROMchip Twitch Fundraiser Stream!* Drop in for a full day of game streams, special guests, prizes, and historical hijinks featuring guests from across the game history community! Featured streamers include Rob Dubbin, Naomi Clark, Pablo F. Quarta, Kendra Albert, Jason Soctt, Todd Anderson, and more! Explore the developing lineup schedule HERE <https://donate.romchip.org/>. DONATE <https://hcb.hackclub.com/donations/start/romchip-a-journal-of-game-histories> | SUBSCRIBE <http://eepurl.com/crCul1> | BLUESKY <https://bsky.app/profile/romchip.bsky.social> | YOUTUBE <https://www.youtube.com/@ROMchipJournal> -- Laine Nooney <http://www.lainenooney.com/> Associate Professor | MCC <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> @ NYU <http://www.nyu.edu/> | they/them Managing Editor | ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories <https://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal> | Join our Newsletter <http://eepurl.com/crCul1> -Need to make an appt? Click, don't email: https://calendar.app.google/V9ZuMRWEKnnUBdQ56 -Probably typed by voice recognition, so please cherish typos

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CFP: Networks: Energy and Data in 20th Century Europe (deadline 15th January)
by Marta Musso 09 Jan '26

09 Jan '26

Dear list members My name is Marta Musso and I am working to a MSCA Project at La Sapienza University, focussing on the comparison between the history of the European oil industry and the history of the computing industry. Together with Séveric Yersin (European University Institute) and Filippo De Chirico (Università Roma Tre), we are setting up a panel & roundtable proposal for the next Tensions of Europe conference on strategic infrastructures in Europe - we would be happy to receive proposals on the history of computing, please see the CFP and consider applying. The deadline for panel proposals is the 18th January, so we can accept proposals until the 15th, in order to leave time to prepare the submission. Thank you for the attention and best regards Marta Musso -- *Fai crescere le giovani ricercatrici e i giovani ricercatori*** *con il 5 per mille alla Sapienza* Scrivi il codice fiscale dell'Università *80209930587 **Cinque per mille <https://www.uniroma1.it/it/node/23149>*

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cfp "Intelligence and Imitation: Mind, Mechanism, Mimesis, " JHU, April 24-26, 2026
by Ksenia Tatarchenko 08 Jan '26

08 Jan '26

Dear colleagues, We invite submissions for "Intelligence and Imitation: Mind, Mechanism, Mimesis," the Humanities of AI Workshop, to be held at Johns Hopkins University, April 24–26, 2026. Please feel free to circulate this announcement. With best regards, Ksenia Tatarchenko INTELLIGENCE AND IMITATION: MIND, MECHANISM, MIMESIS Humanities of AI Workshop Johns Hopkins University April 24–26, 2026 As a creative aspiration, the Greek notion of mimesis (“imitation”) manifested not only in artistic works imitating reality and philosophical speculation but also in scientific theories and mechanical artifacts. Plato and Aristotle’s nous; Hobbes’s and La Mettrie’s machine-like mind and world; the Jaquet-Droz automata; Kempelen’s chess-playing Turk; Wiener’s cybernetic analogies; Mori’s “uncanny valley”; and Yuri Lotman’s conception of culture as a collective mind exemplify the broad relevance of imitation to science, literature, and culture. Developments in artificial intelligence (AI) participate in this legacy but also complicate it. Across AI’s research history, systems have been claimed to represent, simulate, assist, improve upon, substitute for, or replace human cognition. Concepts such as optimization, satisficing, and superintelligence run orthogonal to classical notions of mimesis. At the same time, developments in science and society have challenged both mimesis and mindedness as ideals. Embodied and Darwinian cognition, as well as analyses of labor, material reproduction, and social stratification (Marx, Wallerstein, Pasquinelli, among others), call into question the value and veracity of material imitations and accounts of “intelligent” labor. Contemporary divisions in AI uptake—anti-AI activism, competing governance regimes, and popular terms such as “AI slop”—underscore these challenges. We announce a three-day workshop for the presentation and discussion of new humanities research engaging these themes. Our aim is to foster critical engagement with AI in its history, socioeconomic context, architecture, and cultural significance. We invite submissions from early-career (including graduate students) and established scholars. POSSIBLE TOPICS (non-exhaustive) - Mimesis and mechanical imitation from antiquity to the transformer - Transformer architectures and the hermeneutic circle - Political economy of digital infrastructures sustaining LLMs - New histories of literary cybernetics and NLP - Human–LLM hybridity and joint agency - Anthropomorphism and relations with the (in)animate - Emotional AI as mimesis or optimization The workshop will also include collective reflection on the humanities of AI as a research domain: its present state, future directions, relations to the sciences, and sociotechnical impact. FEATURED SPEAKERS Yulia Frumer (Johns Hopkins University) Steven Gross (Johns Hopkins University) N. Katherine Hayles (UCLA / Duke University, Emerita) Matthew L. Jones (Princeton University) Matthew Kirschenbaum (University of Virginia) Patrick McCray (UC Santa Barbara / Library of Congress) Alexander Williams Tolbert (Emory University) SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS Submit a single Word or PDF file by January 31 to: Jiantong Liao (jliao20(a)jh.edu) Please include: - Abstract (~300 words) - Short bio (name, affiliation, contact email) - Up to five keywords Decisions will be communicated within one month. Accepted participants will be asked to submit up to 3,000 words for pre-circulation. SUPPORTING INSTITUTIONS Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, Johns Hopkins University https://krieger.jhu.edu/humanities-institute/ Center for Equitable AI & Machine Learning Systems (CEAMLS), Morgan State University https://www.morgan.edu/ceamls ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Jiantong Liao, Johns Hopkins University Ksenia Tatarchenko, Johns Hopkins University Phillip Honenberger, Morgan State University

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CFP: AIBC-2026: Hype, Promise, Speculation; University of Sussex (UK), 1-2 July 2026
by Susannah Glickman 07 Jan '26

07 Jan '26

Dear all, Happy New Year! I am on the program commitee for this symposium and wanted to pass on the CFP! All the best, Susannah Call for Abstracts: AISB 2026 Symposium Hype, Promise, and Speculation: AI Bubbles and the Replication Crisis in Computer Science 1-2 July 2026, AISB 2026, University of Sussex, UK, https://aisb.org.uk/ <https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/aisb.org.uk/___.YzJ1OnN0b25…> In this symposium, we intend to tackle complementary issues related to the likelihood of a replication crisis in computer science and computational methods, and an emerging AI bubble. Website: https://aisb.org.uk/aisb-2026-symposium-hype-promise-and-speculation <https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/aisb.org.uk/aisb-2026-sympo…> Submission: Extended abstracts of 500 words (maximum, excluding references) to Easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aibc2026 <https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/easychair.org/conferences/?…> Deadline: 6 March 2026 TOPICS OF INTEREST We invite papers from a wide range of disciplines, including: computer science, AI, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Explainable AI, philosophy, behavioural sciences, psychology, social sciences, and those working with computational models, e.g. in finance. We welcome a broad variety of topics, including but not limited to: Machine learning (e.g. modelling, AI) Large language models Neural networks Deep learning Explainable AI Decision trees Replication crisis AI bubble(s) The replication crisis The replication crisis has crossed multiple fields in science asking if results presented in published papers can be reproduced, repeated, and/or replicated. In their efforts to verify results various disciplines, including computer science, have already found that the answer for too many papers is “no” (Gundersen et al 2025, Cockburn et al 2020). In this symposium we look at the replication crisis as it pertains especially to computer science, whether within the discipline (cf. Cockburn et al 2020), or as applied to, or utilised in, other disciplines, such as computational modelling for neuroscience (Miłkowski et al 2018). There is also uncertainty about the extent to which ‘questionable research practices’ (QRPs) can be found in the above contexts. These can include manipulating data for statistically significant results (p-hacking), post hoc analysis to find statistically significant outcomes (p-fishing), or to present these as expected, i.e. ‘Hypothesising After the Results are Known’ (HARKing) (Cockburn et al 2020). Meanwhile, there are also proposals to address QRPs in computer science research, for instance through replication or the use of pre-study registered reports that include hypotheses and methods etc (Brown et al 2022). AI bubbles It’s clear that AI development is expanding substantially (Giattino et al 2023) , but the extent to which this growth is sustainable is unclear. Meanwhile, the possibility of this becoming another bubble, like those from the dot com boom and real estate, is clear (Carvão 2025). A bubble is a vague concept that captures where a process or commodity is valued or hyped beyond its intrinsic worth, typically in unsustainable ways. If contemporary expectations currently dominating the AI field do turn out to be a bubble we can expect further expansion, and then collapse, typically causing damage in the process. The economic damage of a collapse is already estimated by US commentators to rival the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 1990 and the financial crash of 2008 (Allyn 2025, Casselman and Ember 2025, Yip 2025). In the symposium we look beyond the speculation of AI stocks at the promises and reality of AI capabilities and what the effects of the potential bubble are. In addition to the above are epistemic bubbles, which form around new or ‘popular’ ideas. ‘Epistemic bubbles’ may include ‘self-segregated’ networks of ‘like-minded people’ whose members are ‘liable to converge on and resist correction of false, misleading or unsupported claims’ (Sheeks 2023). These bubbles can in turn create ‘social epistemic’ structures which are similar to echo chambers, ‘in which other relevant voices have been actively discredited’ (Nguyen 2020). In AI contexts, these epistemic bubbles might exclude voices who are critical of these technologies, or who doubt either its identity as AI, or its scope for positive impacts and change. Not least as ‘AI’ as a term brings greater expectations, including financial, compared with describing the technology in terms of its components and capacities, e.g. as LLMs, RAGs, DNNs, transformers, models, etc. Epistemic bubbles can also be created through the use of AI itself, for instance due to its scope for personalisation on media platforms, and agreeableness in GenAI chatbots, such that views of users are neither challenged nor developed.

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