Just confirming that all are welcome to join conference (https://zkm.de/en/2026/03/envisioning-ai-legacy-and-impact-of-the-connection-machine).  The MIT Museum is one of the co-sponsors and we will be hosting a “watch party” (starting at 10 am Eastern Daylight Time) here at the museum if you happen to be in the Boston area and want to join us 

I did want to note that time difference.  The Germany does not go onto Daylight Savings Time until Sunday so there is “only” a 5-hours difference between Cambridge and Karlsruhe.  I have attached a modified version of the program that reflects Eastern US times but also includes the speakers, biographies, and abstracts.  

With warm regards,

Debbie Douglas

Hello SIGCIS,

 

I’ll be talking tomorrow (remotely) at an event at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. The museum is displaying an iconic Connection Machine 2, thanks in large part to the energy of artist and former Thinking Machines designer Tamiko Thiel in getting the machines into major museums. My talk “Why Did They Say The Machines Were Thinking?” will provide some historical context for the 1980s regarding the AI brand, ARPA’s history of AI funding, and the Strategic Computing Initiative.

 

I noticed that the livestream links are right there on the event page with no signup required, so thought I would circulate a last minute notification to the list to see if anyone is interested The event runs from 2pm Central European time on Friday, with two further sessions on Saturday. Full program with streaming links at https://zkm.de/en/2026/03/envisioning-ai-legacy-and-impact-of-the-connection-machine. Other speakers include Danny Hillis, Brewster Kahle, and the MIT Museum (is that you, Debbie Douglas?).

 

Tamiko Thiel herself has an interesting website on the Connection Machine and its legacy at https://tamikothiel.com/theory/cm_txts/ (particularly https://tamikothiel.com/cm/cm-30th.html). One of the themes of my forthcoming book The Brand That Wouldn’t Die is that the technical contributions of 20^th century AI-branded research centers in the 1960s and 70s were considerable but were all incidental to its supposed mission of achieving intelligence (e.g. timesharing systems, search algorithms, electronic publishing and text editing, etc.) Documenting the longer-term influence of ARPA’s support for what looked at the time like a failed investment is interesting as example of this continuing in the 1980s.

 

Best wishes,

Tom

 

Thomas Haigh

Professor & Chair, UWM History Department

Chair, IEEE Computer Society History Committee

Director, ACM History Committee Turing Awards Project

See more at www.tomandmaria.com/Tom