Dear SIGCIS, Last weekend at the Business History Conference, an odd tweet came off the SHOT-SIGCIS handle: *#**bhc2016* <https://twitter.com/hashtag/bhc2016?src=hash>* Speaker from **@* *datasociety* <https://twitter.com/datasociety>* loves history of comp. literature, but sees nothing in it to explain big data or social networking today*. What gives computer historians? If someone actually said something so silly at a conference, would it really be worth tweeting?! And why direct the message @ the speaker’s employer?? Let me take this opportunity to introduce myself to the list: My name is Martha Poon. In my research, I track how changes in economic thinking, documented by Philip Mirowski in his book *Machine Dreams *(2002), have been implemented, through networked information systems, in financial markets. I’m trying to draw a link between networked computing and today’s debt-driven capital markets. My key piece of empirical work showed how automation of mortgage underwriting in the 1990s allowed the shadow banking sector to fund US subprime loans: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361368209000270 But I published my very first article in an edited volume through SIGCIS (*Technological Innovation in Retail Finance*, 2010) when Bernardo Batiz-Lazo kindly invited me to participate in this working group: http://www.sigcis.org/node/9 At the BHC in Portland, someone asked why I hadn't mentioned the history of computing. In the context of my paper on 19th Century life insurance markets (*Big Data and the Growing Power of Corporate Capitalism*, I’ll attach it), on a panel that paid tribute to *The Age of Fracture* (2012), I quickly replied that computer history and Internet studies were not [as] well equipped [as business historians] to tackle the question of financial value. I would have welcomed the opportunity to converse further with SICGIS members, but nobody from the organization spoke to me after the session. Just this Dadaist tweet addressed to Data & Society’s communication’s team back in New York…! I’m looking forward to attending SHOT and meeting the network properly. In the meantime, should list-members run into me elsewhere in the world, please, come talk to me! I juggle a number of disciplinary interests but I have long been a great admirer of computer history. Those of you in the New York area will find me here, next week, at Laine Nooney’s *Mistakes Were Made*: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mistakes-were-made-20-computer-history-decompil... With warm wishes, Martha -- Martha Poon|martha@datasociety.net|Research Fellow | Data & Society Research Institute| www.datasociety.net