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Fwd: STIP Spring 2021 Internship Opportunities
by Jonathan Coopersmith 04 Nov '20

04 Nov '20

This might be of interest to some of your students. Stay sane, keep washing those hands, and practice social solidarity as well as physical distancing, Jonathan Jonathan Coopersmith Professor Department of History Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-4236 979.291.2925 (cell) 979.862.4314 (fax) Engineering elections: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/engineering-principles… Racial disparities in waiting to vote: https://theconversation.com/it-takes-a-long-time-to-vote-141267 *FAXED. The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine* (Johns Hopkins University Press) ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: The Wilson Center <stip(a)e.wilsoncenter.org> Date: Wed, Nov 4, 2020 at 3:30 PM Subject: STIP Spring 2021 Internship Opportunities To: Jonathan Coopersmith <j-coopersmith(a)tamu.edu> Having trouble? View this email in your browser. <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193853/259933…> [image: Wilson Center] <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193854/259933…> [image: Science and Technology Innovation Program] Science and Technology Innovation Program Follow [image: twitter] <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193855/259933…> [image: youtube] <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193856/259933…> SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION PROGRAM -- SPRING 2021 INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITIES The Science and Technology Innovation Program (STIP) is currently welcoming applications for the spring semester of 2021. Our internships are designed to provide the opportunity for current students or recent graduates for practical experience in an environment that successfully combines scholarship with public policy. We recommend exploring our website to determine if your research interests align with current STIP programming around emerging technologies, i.e.: *5G • Artificial Intelligence • Big Data • Citizen Science • Cybersecurity • Disinformation • Marine Debris / Ocean Plastics • One Health • Open Science • Public Communication of Science • Serious Games* We offer two types of internships: graduate-level research and undergraduate-level research internships. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Wilson Center continues to closely monitor guidelines established by the CDC and other authorities surrounding COVID-19. *At this time, all internships will continue to be served remotely.* Internships are unpaid unless otherwise stated. Please find more details about our application process and internship opportunities on our website <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193857/259933…> . <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193858/259933…> The Serious Games Initiative Internship We are seeking a research intern for the Science and Technology Innovation Program's Serious Games Initiative, reporting to the Director of SGI. About the Program As a dominate form of media used by the average American, games have the power to make complex ideas accessible, allowing a direct experience to worth through the intricacies of policy problems. The Serious Games Initiative (SGI) was founded with one goal: to use games to engage the broader public in policy discourse. It is one thing to read about potential impact of policy solutions – it is another to live it. Since its founding, SGI has been a leader in the field of serious games. Under the umbrella of the Science and Technology Innovation Program, SGI is using games as a dynamic technology to communicate cutting edge research at the Wilson Center and beyond. The primary responsibilities of this internship would be: - Write or edit articles for either peer-reviewed or popular media, such as blog posts amplifying the applications of serious games for policy initiatives. - Conduct background policy research to support game development. - Support meetings for game-based working groups, conferences, and other events, gaining valuable project management experience. Successful applicants should: - Have a demonstrated background in policy or social science research, and a demonstrated interest in the positive impacts of games, such as serious games, game-based learning, or sociological orientations to game communities. - Excel at writing for mixed audiences, with particular preference given to candidates with background in writing academic and popular media (blog) styles. - Be detail-oriented. - Be able to work remotely. - Be enrolled in a degree program, recently graduated (within the last year) and/or have been accepted to enter an advanced degree program within the next year. This is an unpaid position available for 15-20 hours a week for undergraduate and graduate-level students. Applicants from any fields will be considered. Experience conducting cross and trans-disciplinary research is an asset BLOG POST | SERIOUS GAMES INITIATIVE <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193859/259933…> Games Round Up: Quantum Computing A comprehensive list of games developed by quantum experts to help non-experts understand abstract STEM concepts. BLOG POST | SERIOUS GAMES, EDUCATION <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193860/259933…> National Video Games Day: It's Not What You're Playing, But Who You're Playing With <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193861/259933…> One Woodrow Wilson Plaza 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, DC 20004-3027 Phone: (202) 691-4000 Follow the Wilson Center <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193862/259933…> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193863/259933…> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193864/259933…> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193865/259933…> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193866/259933…> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://click.everyaction.com/k/21193867/259933…> Was this email forwarded? 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Debunking the myth of individual genius
by Barbara B Walker 01 Nov '20

01 Nov '20

Hi, everybody, Hope everyone is safe and well. Here is an article on the importance of looking beyond the mythologies and cults of genius in the history of science and tech. https://undark.org/2020/10/22/the-fiction-of-individual-genius/ However, I would argue that in computer history as everywhere else in the history of science and tech, debunking is not enough – we must understand the reasons, cultures and process of cult-formation and myth-making that plays such an influential role in our understanding of the past. That’s something I’m exploring in an article on John von Neumann that I recently submitted for publication review (“Creation Myths”). Am also looking at the formation of political personality cults in a seminar I am teaching this semester. Barbara Walker Barbara Walker Associate Professor Department of History/308 University of Nevada, Reno Reno NV 89557

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Fwd: CCS - November 19th 2020 - The Origins of GENESYS, the General Engineering System
by Brian Randell 01 Nov '20

01 Nov '20

Hi: Here’s an announcement for the next Computer Conservation Society Zoom lecture - which you’ll see is open to all. Cheers Brian Randell Begin forwarded message: From: "BCS Computer Conservation Society" <ccsmem(a)lists.bcs.org.uk<mailto:ccsmem@lists.bcs.org.uk>> Subject: CCS - November 19th 2020 - The Origins of GENESYS, the General Engineering System Date: 31 October 2020 at 22:38:06 GMT Dear Fellow Members The next meeting of the Computer Conservation Society for the 2020/21 season is on Thursday 19th November via Zoom. The lecture will begin at 2.30PM with the Zoom session opening at 2pm. Our October meeting was attended by a record breaking 155 people. Our meetings are open to all free of charge so do pass on this invitation to others who may be interested in this meeting or other CCS activities. The title of the meeting is The Origins of GENESYS, the General Engineering System. Our speaker will be Brian Shearing. GENESYS, the GENeral Engineering SYStem, was commissioned by the Ministry of Public Building and Works in 1968. It was a way of writing and using engineering software that worked, without change, across all major mainframes of the day, something that unfortunately could not be said for software written in the various dialects of FORTRAN available then. The ministry also commissioned the establishment of the GENESYS Centre which opened in 1972 and was charged with promoting, teaching, developing and expanding the applications that ran under the system. The speaker was chief programmer of the team that built the central system. The seminar is the first of two, the second being next season, and explores what the system was like, what its influences were and how it came to be commissioned. The story begins in 1965 in 21 Portland Place ... Brian wrote his first program for a Ferranti Sirius computer in 1961, and he has never quite got over the excitement. His primary interests have always been compilers and operating systems, and he has written several of each. The compiler for GENTRAN, the programming language at the heart of GENESYS, was his first or as will become clear during the seminar, his first and second. His latest is for a novel concurrent programming language, still under development. As a software design consultant he has worked on trading systems, medical systems, and programs for highway design. He has lectured in Europe and the Americas, has had twelve papers published, and was on the Editorial Board of the John Wiley Journal, Software Practice and Experience for more than twenty years. He has given many talks to BCS branches, specialist groups and conferences, was Chairman of the Fortran Specialist Group for three years, has served on the Society's Technical Board, has represented it on BSI Programming Languages Committee IST/13, and was a member of the programme committee of the Advanced Programming Specialist Group for seven years. Please pre-register for the event. To do so, follow this linkhttp://www.computerconservationsociety.org/lectures/current/lecture.htm and click on the “Book” symbol. All registrants will be notified of the URL for the Zoom link in advance of the meeting. The programme for the 2020/21 season will be found athttp://www.computerconservationsociety.org/lectures/current/lecture.htm The National Museum of Computing have informed us of their new programme of online talks. These are free to TNMoC supporters and volunteers and £10.00 each otherwise. To book to attend, follow the link www.tnmoc.org<http://www.tnmoc.org/> and go to Events 12 November - Dr Ted Coles - Talk on Tunny & Colossus 15 November - Dr Andrew Herbert - Talk on EDSAC 30 November - Jerry McCarthy - Talk on the Polish Cryptomachine LACIDA 4 December - Peter Onion - Talk on Code 1960’s Back water 13 December - Peter Shiret - Talk on Mobile Network Evolution 1G -4G Good wishes Roger Johnson CCS London Programme Secretary Cheers Brian Randell

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Vint Hill Farms, VA
by Ceruzzi, Paul 29 Oct '20

29 Oct '20

I wrote about this a few years ago, but many of you haven't heard of this. Vint Hill Farms was for many years a listening post for intercepting foreign radio transmissions, including some that were of crucial significance during the Second World War. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vint_Hill_Farms_Station> After it was decommissioned in 1997 the NSA "sanitized" the property and turned it over to commercial and other government uses. <https://vinthill.com/>. The reason I mention this is that a housing development on one corner of the property has some interesting names of streets: Cray Drive, Osborne Drive, Sutherland Court, Shugart Court, Auerbach Court, Hillis Court, Wilkes Court, Wirth Lane, Macintosh Drive, Sholes Court [?], von Neumann Circle, and Aiken Drive, and Eckert Court. <https://goo.gl/maps/5aMYoRkjVt6xpRyUA> Last time I visited, I asked the real estate agents who came up with the names, but they did not know. The property has an extensive web site, but I did not see any clues there either, unless I missed something. I really wanted to know: which Eckert--Wallace or Presper? Do we have a real estate developer lurking among us? Paul Ceruzzi

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Mahoney Prize for 2020
by Melanie Swalwell 25 Oct '20

25 Oct '20

Dear all, On behalf of the SIGCIS Executive, it is my pleasure to announce that the 2020 Mahoney Prize has been awarded to Dr Oliver Belcher for his essay "Sensing, Territory, Population: Computation, Embodied Sensors, and Hamlet Control in the Vietnam War". The citation: Belcher, Oliver. "Sensing, Territory, Population: Computation, Embodied Sensors, and Hamlet Control in the Vietnam War," Security Dialogue 50.5, 416-436 (2019). Oliver Belcher - a geographer and Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University - has written a remarkable history of the Hamlet Evaluation System (HES) created and deployed by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. As Belcher details, the story of HES is an important episode both in the history of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and in the history of U.S. "pacification" actions in Vietnam. Particularly striking are Belcher's arguments that U.S. military advisors acted as "embodied sensors" for HES, and that their transformations of the realities of village life into the data format of HES constituted a form of "epistemic violence" implicated in the broader landscape of physical violence during the war. In this, Belcher positions his study as a contribution to a "history of computers as a technology of imperial violence." As SIGCIS did not have an official presence at the SHOT meeting this year, committee member Elizabeth Petrick announced the prize at the "Just Code" virtual conference over the weekend. I would like to thank the 2020 Prize Committee - David Brock, Hyungsub Choi, and Elizabeth Petrick -- for their service, as well as the organisers of "Just Code" for accommodating the announcement in their program. For those who aren't aware, the Mahoney Prize honours the late Princeton scholar Michael S. Mahoney, by recognising an outstanding article in the history of computing and information technology, broadly conceived. There is more information about the prize on the website, including past recipients: https://www.sigcis.org/mahoneyprize I am sure you will all join with me in congratulating Oliver! Regards, Melanie -- Melanie Swalwell Professor of Digital Media Heritage Co-Chair, SIGCIS<http://www.sigcis.org/> Centre for Transformative Media Technologies Faculty of Health, Arts and Design Swinburne University PO Box 218, Hawthorn Vic 3122 Australia Tel +61 3 9214 3911 AS419 mswalwell(a)swin.edu.au http://transformativemedia.swinburne.edu.au/

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Debunking the myth of individual genius
by David Walden 24 Oct '20

24 Oct '20

Earlier writing but maybe still relevant Abbott Payson Usher. A History of Mechanical Inventions, pages 65–68. Harvard University Press, 1929, pointed out that pointed out that it was futile to try to identify the inventor of mechanical printing, or the steam engine, or the airplane, since cultural achievement is a social accomplishment based on the accumulation of many small acts of insight by individuals. John Szarkowski [Photography Until Now, page 11. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1989] quotes Usher in describing the long and complicated prehistory of photography. The invention of photography, sometimes simplistically credited to Daguerre in about 1840, as Szarkowski describes was really the result of the efforts of many people before and after Daguerre. Szarkowski says: "Inventions—the name by which we call devices that seem fundamentally new—are almost always born out of a process that is more like farming than magic. From a complex ecology of ideas and circumstances that includes the condition of the intellectual soil, the political climate, the state of technical competence, and the sophistication of the seed, the suggestion of new possibilities arises."

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Colossus and the lone genius
by thomas.haigh＠gmail.com 23 Oct '20

23 Oct '20

Thanks Barbara, This reminds me that I didn’t share with SIGCIS the recent publication of a paper, “Contextualizing Colossus” written with Mark Priestley. This came out in the July issue of Technology and Culture. It’s a companion to our Finn Prize winning paper “Colossus and Programmability,” but while the earlier paper looked at the affordances of Colossus this one is about the personal and institutional relationships that produced it. That’s very much an attack on the “lone genius” idea of innovation, which attributes the WWII code-breaking machine Colossus machines to the lone genius of Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers (except for very lazy journalists who attribute them Alan Turing, on the assumption that he was responsible for anything to do with Bletchley Park). Flowers is usually said to have built the first Colossus despite the knee-jerk opposition of code breakers and Bletchley Park leaders who never believed electronics could work, building it secretly and paying for supplies out of his own pocket. He’s then supposed to have delivered it to Bletchley Park unexpectedly, to the bemusement of codebreakers who took weeks to understand its importance. According to one particularly enthusiastic myth-maker, if Churchill hadn’t perversely decided to smash the machines after the war, Britain would have been a world leader in computing and the Internet would have been created a decade before it actually was. None of that is true, of course. Here’s the abstract of our paper: The Bletchley Park codebreaking center sits close to the heart of Britain’s collective sense of historical greatness. Historians view it as a highly successful but largely ad-hoc institutional response to novel cryptographic challenges, depicting both its reliance on elite mathematicians and a large labor force as ruptures with peacetime practice. In contrast, we suggest that underpinning Bletchley Park’s success were institutional capabilities established in the pre-war British state. We focus on the celebrated “Colossus” electronic codebreaking devices as one element of a highly successful institutional collaboration between Bletchley Park, where they were used, and the Post Office research station at Dollis Hill where they were designed and built. We reveal the development of a productive institutional partnership sponsored at the highest levels of government and supported by managers on both sides, correcting claims that Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers built the first machine at his own expense without the support or knowledge of Bletchley Park’s managers. If you have institutional access, or a SHOT membership, you can find the paper at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/763592 If not, I have a preprint available at https://tomandmaria.com/Tom/Writing/ColossusInContextPreprint.pdf Best wishes, Tom Bonus for historians of capitalism: According to Wikipedia “Flowers applied for a loan from the Bank of England to build another machine like Colossus but was denied the loan because the bank did not believe that such a machine could work.[22] He could not argue that he had already designed and built many of these machines because his work on Colossus was covered by the Official Secrets Act.” You might wonder how much of a private market existing for large scale cryptanalytic machines, or whether the government would permit their sale. But more to the point, why is a central bank offering small business loans? I suspect whoever wrote this had not heard of any other British banks and did not understand that the Bank of England is not the local equivalent of the Bank of America. Wikipedia sources this truly odd claim to a web page composed largely of text cut and pasted from other online sources https://sldinfo.com/2018/12/remembering-tommy-flowers-the-inventor-of-the-p…, which cites it in turn to a content-farm style site apparently sourced from Wikipedia https://interestingengineering.com/tommy-flowers-the-man-who-built-colossus. That offers no source at all for the claim. The sentences have been in the Wikipedia article since at least 2013, and only recently received a supporting citation. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tommy_Flowers <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tommy_Flowers&oldid=539287753> &oldid=539287753 Hence this is almost certainly another one of those cases where a ridiculous idea stayed on a Wikipedia page long enough to be copied, producing sources that were later cited to support it. From: Members <members-bounces(a)lists.sigcis.org> On Behalf Of Barbara B Walker Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2020 10:42 AM To: members(a)lists.sigcis.org Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Debunking the myth of individual genius Hi, everybody, Hope everyone is safe and well. Here is an article on the importance of looking beyond the mythologies and cults of genius in the history of science and tech. https://undark.org/2020/10/22/the-fiction-of-individual-genius/ However, I would argue that in computer history as everywhere else in the history of science and tech, debunking is not enough – we must understand the reasons, cultures and process of cult-formation and myth-making that plays such an influential role in our understanding of the past. That’s something I’m exploring in an article on John von Neumann that I recently submitted for publication review (“Creation Myths”). Am also looking at the formation of political personality cults in a seminar I am teaching this semester. Barbara Walker Barbara Walker Associate Professor Department of History/308 University of Nevada, Reno Reno NV 89557

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] The World's Greatest Computer Scientist’s Early 2019 Announcement
by Brian Randell 23 Oct '20

23 Oct '20

Hi: SIGCIS might be interested in this message I have just received from The World's Greatest Computer Scientist, responding to my earlier posting here concerning him - also included below. Cheers Brian > Begin forwarded message: > > From: <lab(a)dkshin.com> > Subject: Thank You Message > Date: 23 October 2020 at 09:21:14 BST > To: <brian.randell(a)newcastle.ac.uk>, <contact(a)dkshin.com> > The United Kingdom > > Dear Professor Brian Randell, > > We recently learned that you sent your email to the members in the SIGCIS academic group. We appreciate your support, and are grateful for your communication which is both candid and ethical. Your straightforward note will encourage your colleagues as well as many students in coming generations to do their best to receive such explicit and enthusiastic acknowledgement. > > Sincerely, > > Dr. Dong-Keun Shin ------- > On 25 Feb 2019, at 14:34, Brian Randell <brian.randell(a)newcastle.ac.uk> wrote: > > Hi: > > I can’t resist forwarding to SIGCIS this message - from The World’s Greatest Computer Scientist - which I and my colleagues have recently had the pleasure of receiving! :-) > > You might also care to look at: http://www.dkshin.com/2011/biography/img/biography_all/1999_02_small.pdf > > Cheers > > Brian Randell > >> Begin forwarded message: >> >> From: <SortEngine(a)dkshin.com> >> Subject: The World's Greatest Computer Scientist’s Early 2019 Announcement >> Date: 25 February 2019 at 02:26:01 GMT >> To: <brian.randell(a)ncl.ac.uk> >> >> Re: The World’s Greatest Computer Scientist’s Early 2019 Announcement >> >> Emeritus Professor Brian Randell >> Newcastle University >> >> Dear Emeritus Professor Randell, >> >> I wish you a prosperous 2019. >> >> I recently wrote a rough draft of my paper that compares sorting and searching methods including my Shin sort and Shin search method. This paper (section 8.1 Divide-and-Conquer) is the conclusive part of my unpublished book, Computational Theories: Principles and Shin's Ideas. You can access my paper and review its validity at http://dkshin.com/2011/more/Divide-and-Conquer.php. I would appreciate your review and comments. >> >> My recent dispute with the Samoan Prime Minister reminded me that as the leader in the field of computer science and related technologies, I have not communicated enough with reputable colleagues within this field. Since the Prime Minister wrote that I am just an apprentice, I am sending this email to clarify my position. You can access and review my previous correspondences at http://www.dkshin.com/2011/more/Letters_in_2018/Correspondence_with_the_Sam…. >> >> "The World's Greatest Computer Scientist" title is shown in 37th(2015) and 38th(2017) edition of the Dictionary of International Biography by the International Biographical Centre(IBC), Cambridge, England. I hope that the IBC’s endorsement will urge you to challenge or follow me and help benefit students and researchers all over the world. >> >> People in future generations will remember our conciliation and cooperation. I need your constructive criticism as I strive for continual improvement. Thank you for your time. >> >> Sincerely, >> <image002.jpg> >> Dr. Dong-Keun Shin, IOM, FAOE >> The World's Greatest Computer Scientist >> >> Contact Information: >> DK Shin Laboratories >> Hwa Shin Building, 7th Floor >> 511 Seolleung-ro, Gangnam-gu >> Seoul 06150, Republic of Korea >> Tel: +82 2 565 7917 >> Fax: +82 2 565 7907 >> Email: contact(a)dkshin.com >> Website: http://www.dkshin.com >> YouTube: DK Shin Laboratories > — School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/people/profile/brianrandell.html

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CFP: Science as Culture forum on "Big Tech"
by thomas.haigh＠gmail.com 23 Oct '20

23 Oct '20

I am just reposting this from another list. The call cover email is below, and under that I pasted the actual text of the CFP as attachments don't always work well on the list. Tom Von: eurograd--- via Eurograd <eurograd(a)lists.easst.net <mailto:eurograd@lists.easst.net> > Betreff: [EASST-Eurograd] CfP: Science as Culture Forum on "Big Tech" Datum: 20. Oktober 2020 um 22:08:51 MESZ An: "eurograd(a)lists.easst.net <mailto:eurograd@lists.easst.net> " <eurograd(a)lists.easst.net <mailto:eurograd@lists.easst.net> > Antwort an: eurograd(a)lists.easst.net <mailto:eurograd@lists.easst.net> APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTINGS Dear all, I thought you might be interested in the attached call for papers. It's for a Forum on "Big Tech" in Science as Culture. These Forums are meant to be a faster form of special issue on current topics; they involve shorter papers refereed by the journal editors rather than peer reviewers. Full papers are welcome too, but they would have to go through the normal review process. Here's an example of a previous Forum I edited on "Techno-Economic Assumptions": https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/csac20/26/4 The point of this Forum is to turn an STS lens onto Big Tech. It's primarily motivated by an interest in trying to analyse the techno-economic dominance of Big Tech and the backlash this has engendered. For more, see the attached CfP. Please forward to anyone you think might be find it of interest. If you have any questions, then please feel free to email me. Thanks! Kean Kean Birch Graduate Program Director, Science <https://sts.gradstudies.yorku.ca/> & Technology Studies Program Associate Professor, <https://euc.yorku.ca/faculty-profile/birch-kean-d/> Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change Co-Editor, Science as Culture <https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csac20> Series Editor, Technoscience <https://www.academia.edu/42689541/Technoscience_and_Society_Book_Series_Uni versity_of_Toronto_Press_> & Society Book Series, University of Toronto Press Editorial Board Member, Science, Technology, <https://journals.sagepub.com/home/sth> & Human Values Editorial Board Member, <https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tsep20/current> Social Epistemology Twitter <https://twitter.com/keanbirch> | Website <http://www.keanbirch.net/> Tel.: (+1) 416-736-2100, ext. 30126 Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change | York University 4700 Keele Street Toronto ON, Canada M3J 1P3 Science as Culture (SaC) Forum on "Big Tech" Forum Editor: Kean Birch Big Tech is in the spotlight. Usually defined as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google/Alphabet, and Facebook, "Big Tech" has become a watchword for corporate surveillance, monopoly, and market power. Arguably, they are the defining institutions of our day, dominating our political economies, societies, and polities as Big Oil or Big Banks did in their time. Criticism of Big Tech is increasingly evident as well, cutting across popular books, academic work, film, and journalism: examples include, Shoshana Zuboff's 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism; recent documentaries like Social Dilemma and Agents of Chaos; and regular column inches in print media like the Financial Times and The Economist, this being particularly notable as these two are intellectual bastions of capitalism. Furthermore, Big Tech has been the subject of critical political investigations, like the recent US Congressional Hearings on Online Platforms and Market Power, or the International Grand Committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy. Although Big Tech is facing the glare of negative publicity, there is a notable absence of discussion about it in science and technology studies (STS), with some exceptions (e.g. Birch et al. 2020a, 2020b; Fourcade and Kluttz 2020; Geiger 2020; Sadowski 2020). Cognate fields - like information science, communication studies, law, algorithm or data studies, and so forth - have engaged with particular aspects of Big Tech or its antecedents (e.g. Gillespie 2014; Pasquale 2015; Roseblat and Stark 2016; O'Neil 2017; Noble 2018). For example, in analyses of how digital platforms and technologies reinforce social discrimination or disrupt political process. But STS as a field has not engaged analytical or empirically with 'Big Tech' as a specific and perhaps still emergent configuration of contemporary, technoscientific capitalism underpinned by monopoly and market power (Birch 2020; Birch and Muniesa 2020). Such configurations entail the techno-economic measurement and management of social relations and action, performatively driven by a particular techno-economic logic. For example, research on digital data illustrates the configuring of organizational practices by an "imperative to collect as much data as possible" (Fourcade and Healy, 2017). These data are necessarily scored and ranked in particular ways (e.g. individually), thereby re-configuring organizations in the process (ibid.). Similar techno-economic assumptions have been analysed for innovation more generally (Birch, 2017). Here, STS scholars are ideally placed to unpack and explore the techno-economic assumptions and knowledge claims, measurement tools and standards, organizational practices and expertise, innovation and business strategies, and policy debates underpinning the ascendance of Big Tech. All such aspects are normative as much as they are constitutive, reflecting key public debates right now about Big Tech's monopoly or market power derived from digital network effects, threats to privacy in its collection of personal data as an asset, and role in generating new political-economic inequalities through automation, algorithms, and platforms. This SaC Forum seeks to engage scholars in an STS analysis of Big Tech, especially their role in science, technology, innovation, and expertise more generally. Submissions should address questions like the following: - What are the different ways to analyse Big Tech as a techno-economic configuration? - In what ways are digital technologies different - or not - from other technologies in configuring market power? - How do some digital components (e.g. technologies, platforms, networks) become monopolistic? - In what ways is digital data - personal, health, etc. - a key constituent of Big Tech's dominance? - What technoscientific and economic knowledges, expertise, and organizational practices underpin Big Tech? - How might digital technologies have politics or political economy (Winner 1980)? - What role does and should Big Tech have in society? In ethics? In politics? - What alternatives are there to Big Tech? - In discussing the above questions, how should we define Big Tech? Details - Deadline: end of February 2021. - Length: flexible, ranging between 2k-6k words. - Format: author's contact details (postal address and email address) should be at the top of the file; articles should contain an Introduction and Conclusion, but are otherwise flexible. Forum pieces have key words but no Abstracts, so the Conclusion should summarise the overall argument. - Contact: please email Kean Birch (keanbirch(a)gmail.com) with queries about suitability or abstract proposals. - Submission: send submissions to both Les Levidow (L.Levidow(a)open.ac.uk) and Kean Birch (keanbirch(a)gmail.com) forum articles will be reviewed by both Les and Kean, but will not be sent out for peer review. - Full-scale papers (10k words maximum) are also welcome. But these would need to follow the SaC editorial guidelines and undergo the normal referee procedure through the online system. If not ready in time for the Forum, they will be published in a later issue. See https://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/csac_edit_guidelines.pdf References Birch, K. (2017) Guest Introduction: Techno-economic assumptions, Science as Culture 26(4): 433-44; special issue, https://www.tandfonline.com/action/doSearch?AllField=economic+assumptions&Se riesKey=csac20 Birch, K. (2020) Automated neoliberalism? The digital organisation of markets in technoscientific capitalism, New Formations 100-101: 10-27. Birch, K. and Muniesa, F. (eds) (2020) Assetization: Turning Things into Assets in Technoscientific Capitalism, Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Birch, K., Chiappetta, M. and Artyushina, A. (2020a) The problem of innovation in technoscientific capitalism: Data rentiership and the policy implications of turning personal digital data into a private asset, Policy Studies 41(5): 468-487. Birch, K., Cochrane, D.T. and Ward, C. (2020b) Data as (intangible) asset? Unpacking the governance and valuation of digital personal data in Big Tech firms, unpublished manuscript. Fourcade, M. and Healy, K. (2017) Seeing like a market, Socio-Economic Review 15(1): 9-29. Fourcade, M. and Kluttz, D. (2020) A Maussian bargain: Accumulation by gift in the digital economy, Big Data & Society, doi: 10.1177/2053951719897092 Geiger, S. (2020) Silicon Valley, disruption, and the end of uncertainty, Journal of Cultural Economy 13(2): 169-184. Gillespie, T. (2014) The Relevance of Algorithms, in T.Gillespie, P.Boczkowski, and K.Foot (eds), Media Technologies. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Noble, S. (2018) Algorithms of Oppression. New York: New York University Press. O'Neil, C. (2017) Weapons of Math Destruction, New York: Broadway Books Pasquale, F. (2015) The Black Box Society, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Rosenblat, A. and Stark, L. (2016) Algorithmic labor and information asymmetries: A case study of Uber's drivers, International Journal of Communication 10: 3758-3784. Sadowski, J. (2020) The internet of landlords: Digital platforms and new mechanisms of rentier capitalism, Antipode 52(2): 562-580. Winner, L. (1980) Do Artifacts Have Politics?, Daedalus 109(1): 121-136. Zuboff, S. (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, New York: Public Affairs.

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Linda Hall Library, 2021-22 Virtual Fellowships
by Benjamin Gross 22 Oct '20

22 Oct '20

Dear Friends and Colleagues, The Linda Hall Library<https://www.lindahall.org/> is now accepting applications for its 2021-22 fellowship program. These fellowships provide graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and independent scholars in the history of science and related STS fields with financial support to explore the Library’s outstanding science and engineering collections. The Linda Hall Library holds over half a million monograph volumes and more than 48,000 journal titles documenting the history of science and technology from the 15th century to the present. Its collections are exceptionally strong in the engineering disciplines, chemistry, and physics. The Library also boasts extensive resources related to natural history, astronomy, environmental and earth sciences, aeronautics, life sciences, infrastructure studies, mathematics, and the history of the book. Due to the public health risks associated with the coronavirus pandemic, all Linda Hall Library fellowships during the 2021-22 academic year will be virtual. Instead of traveling to Kansas City, virtual fellows will conduct research from off-site using digitized resources in the Library’s collections. These virtual fellowships reflect the Library’s ongoing efforts to expand the accessibility of its holdings while protecting the safety of both patrons and staff. Although they will be working off-site, virtual fellows will be active members of the Linda Hall Library’s social and intellectual community. Each fellow will receive: * A virtual introduction to the Library’s collections * Personalized research assistance from members of the Library’s reference staff * The ability to request complimentary scans of Linda Hall Library resources in accordance with the Library’s digitization policies * Opportunities to participate in the Library’s in-house works-in-progress seminar alongside scholars from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, the University of Kansas, and the Clendening History of Medicine Library, as well as working groups organized by the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine<https://lhl.z2systems.com/track/servlet/DisplayLink?orgId=lhl&emailId=f218d…> * Chances to share their projects with new audiences in Kansas City and around the world through the Library’s public lecture series, newsletter, or other online platforms * Invitations to Library programs and social events including coffee breaks, brown bag lunches, happy hours, etc. Please share this information with graduate students, colleagues, or anyone else who might be interested in the Linda Hall Library’s fellowship program. All application materials are due no later than January 15, 2021. For further information, visit https://www.lindahall.org/fellowships/<https://lhl.z2systems.com/track/servlet/DisplayLink?orgId=lhl&emailId=f218d…> or e-mail fellowships(a)lindahall.org<mailto:fellowships@lindahall.org>. Thank you! -Ben Gross Benjamin Gross, PhD Vice President for Research and Scholarship Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology 5109 Cherry Street Kansas City, Missouri 64110 816.926.8718 grossb(a)lindahall.org<mailto:grossb@lindahall.org> www.lindahall.org<http://www.lindahall.org/>

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