Hello everyone,
The annual SHOT meeting is almost upon us. This time in
Lisbon. I have sent a message on lunch arrangements to everyone who has signed
up for it or previously let me know they were attending. If you think you are
coming but did NOT get the email with map, etc. then let me know as soon as
possible otherwise there will be no food for you. We have 40 registered so far,
and last time I saw the figures were tied with the environmental history people
as the biggest SIG!
We’ve tended to run an informal dinner (just eat drink
chat, no speeches or business) as well as the official lunch. With the need to
make lots of announcement and conduct business at the lunch the dinner tends to
be more relaxed and smaller, so it can be a good chance to get to know people
working in the field. Looking at the program we’ve got a reception on
Saturday, the banquet on Monday, so that seems to leave Sunday night, where the
only thing programmed after 7:30 appears to be an “international comics
festival” with a reception. So we’d probably meet around 8pm on
Sunday. This will only happen if I hear people are interested, and details on
final arrangements will only be sent to people who reply to this message.
As well as the lunch we have a number of computing related
sessions. I count four panels devoted to some form of IT (including cybernetics)
and three more papers scattered over panels with other themes or assembled from
individually contributed papers. That’s down from last year, but still a
very healthy trend compared with five years ago. It’s not too soon to
start thinking about the 2009 meeting (10/15/2009 - 10/19/2009 Pittsburgh, PA).
We hope to run at least one extra session and possibly an additional full day
of programming in conjunction with this meeting.
The one SIGCIS organized panel this year is 1:30-3:30 on
Sunday, Oct 12.
|
|
Room: Art’s II |
Chair:
Helmuth Trischler, Deutsches Museum , Munich
Organizer:
Thomas Haigh, University of Wisconsin , Milwaukee
Commentator:
Thomas Haigh, University of Wisconsin , Milwaukee
Janet Delve,
University of Portsmouth , “New Perspectives on “Jacquard” Looms and
the Development of Punched Cards"
Jeffrey Yost,
University of Minnesota , “Manufacturing Mainframes: The Evolving Semiconductor
Strategies of IBM and Sperry Univac, 1960- 1975”
Pierre Mounier, CNRS/Université Paris-Sorbonne, “A Department for Ordinary Business: Application
Software in the French Plan Calcul (1966-1975)”
Peter B. Meyer, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Computer Use and Earnings Inequality, 1960-
2000”
At the same time, there is one IT history paper in this
session.
|
19. Networks
and Large Technological Systems |
|
Room: Ruby II |
Chair: Johan
Schot, Eindhoven University of Technology
Commentator: Marc
Jacquinet, Universidade Aberta, Portugal
Daniela Helbig, Harvard University , Cambridge , MA , “Beyond the system’s limits: Marga von
Etzdorf’s last flight” (Robinson Prize Candidate)
Ana Paula Silva, New University of Lisbon, “ Portugal in the building of a transnational network
- a winner or a loser?”
Katja Girschik, ETH Zurich, “Taming the mass of goods and data. The emergence of a
computer-aided merchandise management system at the Swiss retailer
Migros”
Elsewhere on the program and later in the day from 3:45-5:45.
Note: Simon had to drop out, so there will just be three papers.
|
25. Computing at Transnational Cross-Roads:
Technology and Politics in the Cold War |
|
Room: Art’s II |
Chair:
Gerard Alberts, University of Amsterdam
Organizer:
Corinna Schlombs, University of Pennsylvania
Commentator:
Eden Medina , Indiana University
Corinna Schlombs, University of Pennsylvania , “The Mission of Marshall Plan technical aid:
Productivity machines for Europe ”
Petri Paju, University
of Turku, Finland, Helena Durnova, Brno University of Technology,
Czech Republic, “Computing Close to the Iron Curtain: Inter/national
Computing Practices in Czechoslovakia and Finland ”
Ksenia Tatarchenko, Paris - Sorbonne, “ Visiting Akademgorodok : “in(s) and out(s)”A
portrait of Siberian computing from an international perspective”
Simon Donig,
University of Passau , Germany , “Computing as modernisation: technology transfer and
the emergence of a culture of management in the GDR (1964-1969)”
At Monday 1:30-3:30
|
|
Room: Art’s I |
Chairs:
Andreas Fickers, University of Maastricht
Organizer:
Andrew Russell, Duke University
Commentator:
Pascal Griset, Université Paris - Sorbonne
Peter Van den Bossche, Erasmus University College Brussels, “The Interaction Between Standardization, Technology
and Market: The Early Development of the Electric Vehicle as an Example”
Jeffrey Tang,
James Madison University, “Gateway to Success: LPs, 45s, and the Format War that
Wasn’t”
Gard Paulsen,
Norwegian School of Management, “Programmed Tensions and Standardized Transitions: The
Design of CCITT’s Programming Language for Telephone Switches"
Dong-oh Park,
Science and Technology Policy Institute, Korea, “Making ‘National’ Character Code: Debates
Over Korean Standard Character Code and its Effect in Unicode” (Robinson
Prize Candidate)
Monday 3:45-5:45
|
|
Room: Art’s I |
Chair:
Nathan Ensmenger, University of Pennsylvania
Organizers:
Frank Dittmann, Deutsches Museum, Germany
Bernard Geoghegan, Northwestern University, USA
Rudolf Seising, Jena, Germany, “Cybernetics, System Theory, and Information Theory in
the 1950s and 1960s”
Lars Bluma, Ruhr
University of Bochum, Germany, “Early Cybernetic machines: artifacts, discourses, and
organisms”
Jan Mueggenburg, Vienna, Austria, “From Cybernetics to Bionics: The Biological Computer
Laboratory”
Ronald Kline,
Cornell University, “The Disunity of Cybernetics”
Bernard Geoghegan, Northwestern University, “Informed Ideology: The Politics of Information Theory
from French Structuralism to British Cultural Studies”
Philipp Aumann, Munich, Germany, “Between Ideology and Methodology. Cybernetics in
Western Germany”
Frank Dittmann; Deutches Museum Munich, Germany, “Cybernetics in GDR between euphoria and
rejection”
Tuesday 8:30 to 10:00.
|
|
Room: Diamante I |
Chair:
Thomas Misa, University of Minnesota
Organizer:
Thomas Misa, University of Minnesota
Commentator:
TBD
Per Lundin, Isabelle
Dussauge, Department of History of Science and Technology, Royal
Institute of Technology, Sweden, “Documenting the Use of Computers in Society between
1950 and 1980: Witness Seminars and Writers’ Web”
Andreu Veŕ, Barcelona
, “Internet history and Internet research methods:
Engineering the worldwide WiWiW project”
Thomas Misa,
Joline Zepcevski, Univertiy of Minnesota, “Realizing user-centered computer history: Designing
and using NSF’s FastLane (1990-present)”
And at the same time, with one IT paper
|
54. Beyond ‘Eureka!’: Maintenance and Operations
in the History of Technology |
|
Room: Art’s I |
Chair:
Alexander B. Magoun, David Sarnoff Library, Princeton
Organizer:
Kenneth Lipartito, Florida International University
Commentator:
David Edgerton, Imperial College
London
Kevin L. Borg, James Madison University, “Maintenance Made Visible: How Policy Makers Helped
Engineers Create Dependable American Cars”
Nathan Ensmenger, University of Pennsylvania, “Fixing Things That Can Never be Broken: Software
Maintenance as Heterogeneous Engineering”
Kenneth Lipartito, Florida International University, “Flying on the Ground: Maintenance, Operations and the
Space Shuttle”
Best wishes,
Tom Haigh