This message is to inform you of the first session in the 2024-2025 academic year of the Socio-History of Informatics seminar, a research seminar organized at the HT2S research center of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris. The goal of this seminar is to explore new narratives in the long-term history of computing, with a focus on how computing intertwines with social, economic, political, and cultural issues. Every two months, we will invite a researcher in history and/or anthropology and sociology (with a historical or diachronic perspective) of computing to present their work. Website link : https://sohistinfo.github.io/english/

The first session will take place online and at CNAM in Paris on Monday, October 14, 2024, from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM with Ksenia Ermoshina (Centre Internet et Société, CNRS) - A "Sovereign Intelligence"? Infrastructures, Representations, and Geopolitics of Russian AI: A Comparative Approach.

Registration form: https://framaforms.org/inscription-seminaire-de-socio-histoire-de-linformatique-1725366317

Summary of the presentation: As part of the ANR CulturIA project, this investigation focuses on the contemporary history of artificial intelligence and its socio-cultural aspects, particularly within the Russian-speaking world and its international relations. Marked by the war against Ukraine and economic sanctions, the field has undergone a restructuring both in terms of infrastructure and in terms of discourse and representations. The collective research, conducted in collaboration with Boris Melnichenko, follows Russians who create or use AI in exile as well as engineers working for large companies in Russia. In line with the spirit of Science and Technology Studies (STS), it remains attentive to code and infrastructure and describes the significant restructurings of technological projects in the context of a major geopolitical crisis. By comparing Russian machine learning and AI projects with similar initiatives from the United States and China, this research asks: can we speak of a “Russian AI”? Are there distinctive characteristics that define the ways of developing and discussing AI specific to Russia, despite the inevitable borrowing, influences, and transnational exchanges that shape this field?

Future sessions:

The summary of each presentation will be communicated later.

Each session will be held in a hybrid format at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, 2 rue Conté, 75003 Paris, in room 30-1-18 (Building 30, 1st basement level, Room 18). To facilitate the organization of the sessions, please register via this form: https://framaforms.org/inscription-seminaire-de-socio-histoire-de-linformatique-1725366317 A connection link (Big Blue Button) will be sent after registration to allow remote participation in each session.

This research seminar will focus on the history of computing not for its own sake within the well-defined framework of the omnipotent computer and its pervasive environments, but through the study of situations where computing plays a pivotal role in the articulation of science-technology-society relations. In this way, the seminar aims to shed light on a socio-history of computing over the long term and in spaces expanded geographically as well as socially, culturally, politically, and economically. You can find a more detailed presentation of our approach (with the program of planned sessions) on the seminar website: https://sohistinfo.github.io/

Looking forward to seeing you there. Best regards,
Mathilde Fichen (PhD student, HT2S), Adrien Tournier (PhD student, HT2S), and Camille Paloque-Bergès (Researcher, HT2S) for the seminar organization.