What can SIGCIS learn methodologically from the history of science, environmental history, etc?
Dear SIGCIS, We just had a wonderful meeting, which I could enjoy all the more as it was the first of the seven SIGCIS workshops where I had no operational responsibilities. Nathan really did a great job with the keynote, and it was splendid to see so many people making the transition from list membership to physical participation at SHOT and SIGCIS for the first time. Better still were the people who had been "first timers" in 2013 or 2014 coming back for a second meeting, as this proves they found the experience useful. I think we accounted for a very significant fraction of the overall graduate student attendance at SHOT. My impression was that the research and delivery of the SIGCIS papers held up pretty well against the quality of material in most parts of the main SHOT program. However I also heard a suggestion from one person that many of the papers in both venues tended to be very narrowly framed, telling a particular story without really engaging with a broader literature or being explicit about what general lessons or methodological implications the work holds. To the extent that this is true, one could see an aversion to explicit historiography and to the drawing of broad conclusions as a kind of aesthetic preference rather than a failing of craft or scholarship. Still, I was wondering if list members might be able to suggest recent (say post-2010) papers from other traditions that are effective in using a focused historical study to make a compelling case that we should think differently about a topic of broad interest to the field in question. I'm not thinking necessarily about work related to IT, since the literature in many areas of history of science, environmental history, history of medicine, and other fields is more mature and appears to have developed a clearer sense of what the "big questions" are. However I have had few opportunities since grad school to read systematically in other literatures. So list members, please post away with your nominations of recent articles from other fields with an explanation of what cool thing you think the article is doing methodologically that those of us writing on the history of computing could learn from. Best wishes, Tom
I agree that it was a solid session. Nathan delivered one of the finest and most important lectures on computing that I have heard in a long iime. I agree that scholars of computing need to expand their contextual comments, especially since an increasing number of historians in many fields are recognizing the importance of IT in their domains. I have a suggestion for the young scholars: make sure your commentators receive your papers or slides long in advance of a session, not one, two or three days before you present so that they can aply their thinking thoughtfylly to your work. What I am suggesting is how highly experienced scholars operate routinely. Bottom line: Good session, loved the growing number of participants. A great shout out to th organizers. On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 5:32 PM, Thomas Haigh <thaigh@computer.org> wrote:
Dear SIGCIS,
We just had a wonderful meeting, which I could enjoy all the more as it was the first of the seven SIGCIS workshops where I had no operational responsibilities. Nathan really did a great job with the keynote, and it was splendid to see so many people making the transition from list membership to physical participation at SHOT and SIGCIS for the first time. Better still were the people who had been “first timers” in 2013 or 2014 coming back for a second meeting, as this proves they found the experience useful. I think we accounted for a very significant fraction of the overall graduate student attendance at SHOT.
My impression was that the research and delivery of the SIGCIS papers held up pretty well against the quality of material in most parts of the main SHOT program. However I also heard a suggestion from one person that many of the papers in both venues tended to be very narrowly framed, telling a particular story without really engaging with a broader literature or being explicit about what general lessons or methodological implications the work holds.
To the extent that this is true, one could see an aversion to explicit historiography and to the drawing of broad conclusions as a kind of aesthetic preference rather than a failing of craft or scholarship. Still, I was wondering if list members might be able to suggest recent (say post-2010) papers from other traditions that are effective in using a focused historical study to make a compelling case that we should think differently about a topic of broad interest to the field in question. I’m not thinking necessarily about work related to IT, since the literature in many areas of history of science, environmental history, history of medicine, and other fields is more mature and appears to have developed a clearer sense of what the “big questions” are. However I have had few opportunities since grad school to read systematically in other literatures.
So list members, please post away with your nominations of recent articles from other fields with an explanation of what cool thing you think the article is doing methodologically that those of us writing on the history of computing could learn from.
Best wishes,
Tom
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
-- James W. Cortada Senior Research Fellow Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota jcortada@umn.edu 608-274-6382
Hi,I would like to add a pragmatic comment along the same line as James. Working on Soviet history I am particularly vulnerable to problems of communicating my research results effectively and would be interested in learning from the successful models in our field. How about organizing a round-table around the texts artfully combining such methodologies: following the thread I am thinking about the winners such as Arguments that Count and "When technology became language: the origins of the linguistic conception of computer programming, 1950-1960."Ksenia De : James Cortada <jcortada@umn.edu> À : "thaigh@computer.org" <thaigh@computer.org> Cc : sigcis <members@sigcis.org> Envoyé le : Jeudi 15 octobre 2015 4h51 Objet : Re: [SIGCIS-Members] What can SIGCIS learn methodologically from the history of science, environmental history, etc? I agree that it was a solid session. Nathan delivered one of the finest and most important lectures on computing that I have heard in a long iime. I agree that scholars of computing need to expand their contextual comments, especially since an increasing number of historians in many fields are recognizing the importance of IT in their domains. I have a suggestion for the young scholars: make sure your commentators receive your papers or slides long in advance of a session, not one, two or three days before you present so that they can aply their thinking thoughtfylly to your work. What I am suggesting is how highly experienced scholars operate routinely. Bottom line: Good session, loved the growing number of participants. A great shout out to th organizers. On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 5:32 PM, Thomas Haigh <thaigh@computer.org> wrote: Dear SIGCIS, We just had a wonderful meeting, which I could enjoy all the more as it was the first of the seven SIGCIS workshops where I had no operational responsibilities. Nathan really did a great job with the keynote, and it was splendid to see so many people making the transition from list membership to physical participation at SHOT and SIGCIS for the first time. Better still were the people who had been “first timers” in 2013 or 2014 coming back for a second meeting, as this proves they found the experience useful. I think we accounted for a very significant fraction of the overall graduate student attendance at SHOT. My impression was that the research and delivery of the SIGCIS papers held up pretty well against the quality of material in most parts of the main SHOT program. However I also heard a suggestion from one person that many of the papers in both venues tended to be very narrowly framed, telling a particular story without really engaging with a broader literature or being explicit about what general lessons or methodological implications the work holds. To the extent that this is true, one could see an aversion to explicit historiography and to the drawing of broad conclusions as a kind of aesthetic preference rather than a failing of craft or scholarship. Still, I was wondering if list members might be able to suggest recent (say post-2010) papers from other traditions that are effective in using a focused historical study to make a compelling case that we should think differently about a topic of broad interest to the field in question. I’m not thinking necessarily about work related to IT, since the literature in many areas of history of science, environmental history, history of medicine, and other fields is more mature and appears to have developed a clearer sense of what the “big questions” are. However I have had few opportunities since grad school to read systematically in other literatures. So list members, please post away with your nominations of recent articles from other fields with an explanation of what cool thing you think the article is doing methodologically that those of us writing on the history of computing could learn from. Best wishes, Tom _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org -- James W. CortadaSenior Research FellowCharles Babbage InstituteUniversity of Minnesotajcortada@umn.edu608-274-6382 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
For a copule of years now, business historians have made an effort to communicate that their is a method in their workings to colleagues in other parts of business and management. Some resources around this initiative: Organizational History Network http://www.orghist.com Key readings are Bucheli, M. and R. D. Wadhwani (2014). Organizations in Time: History, Theory, Methods. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Rowlinson, M., J. Hassard and S. Decker (2014). "Research Strategies for Organizational History: A Dialogue Between Historical Theory and Organization Theory." Academy of Management Review 39(3): 250-274. Others include de Jong, A. and D. M. Higgins (2015). "New Business History?" Business History 57(1): 1-4. de Jong, A., D. M. Higgins and H. van Drielc (2015). "Towards a New Business History?" Business History 57(1): 5-29. Decker, S. (2013). "The Silence of the Archives: Postcolonialism and Business History." Management and Organisational History 8(2): 155-173. Decker, S. (2014). "Solid Intentions: An Archival Ethnography of Corporate Architecture and Organizational Remembering." Organization 21(4): 514-542. Decker, S., M. Kipping and R. D. Wadhwani (2015). "New Business Histories! Plurality in Business History Research Methods." Business History 57(1): 30-40. Eloranta, J., O. Jari and H. Valtonen (2010). "Quantitative methods in business history: An impossible equation?" Management & Organizational History 5(1): 79-107. Larsson, M., L. Magnusson and K. Ullenhag (2014). "Scholarship in Business History." Business History 56(1): 1-4. Best wishes Bernardo (Bangor University, Wales) On 15 Oct 2015, at 10:01, Ksenia Tatarchenko <ktatarchenko@yahoo.fr> wrote:
Hi, I would like to add a pragmatic comment along the same line as James. Working on Soviet history I am particularly vulnerable to problems of communicating my research results effectively and would be interested in learning from the successful models in our field. How about organizing a round-table around the texts artfully combining such methodologies: following the thread I am thinking about the winners such as Arguments that Count and "When technology became language: the origins of the linguistic conception of computer programming, 1950-1960." Ksenia
De : James Cortada <jcortada@umn.edu> À : "thaigh@computer.org" <thaigh@computer.org> Cc : sigcis <members@sigcis.org> Envoyé le : Jeudi 15 octobre 2015 4h51 Objet : Re: [SIGCIS-Members] What can SIGCIS learn methodologically from the history of science, environmental history, etc?
I agree that it was a solid session. Nathan delivered one of the finest and most important lectures on computing that I have heard in a long iime. I agree that scholars of computing need to expand their contextual comments, especially since an increasing number of historians in many fields are recognizing the importance of IT in their domains.
I have a suggestion for the young scholars: make sure your commentators receive your papers or slides long in advance of a session, not one, two or three days before you present so that they can aply their thinking thoughtfylly to your work. What I am suggesting is how highly experienced scholars operate routinely.
Bottom line: Good session, loved the growing number of participants. A great shout out to th organizers.
On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 5:32 PM, Thomas Haigh <thaigh@computer.org> wrote:
Dear SIGCIS,
We just had a wonderful meeting, which I could enjoy all the more as it was the first of the seven SIGCIS workshops where I had no operational responsibilities. Nathan really did a great job with the keynote, and it was splendid to see so many people making the transition from list membership to physical participation at SHOT and SIGCIS for the first time. Better still were the people who had been “first timers” in 2013 or 2014 coming back for a second meeting, as this proves they found the experience useful. I think we accounted for a very significant fraction of the overall graduate student attendance at SHOT.
My impression was that the research and delivery of the SIGCIS papers held up pretty well against the quality of material in most parts of the main SHOT program. However I also heard a suggestion from one person that many of the papers in both venues tended to be very narrowly framed, telling a particular story without really engaging with a broader literature or being explicit about what general lessons or methodological implications the work holds.
To the extent that this is true, one could see an aversion to explicit historiography and to the drawing of broad conclusions as a kind of aesthetic preference rather than a failing of craft or scholarship. Still, I was wondering if list members might be able to suggest recent (say post-2010) papers from other traditions that are effective in using a focused historical study to make a compelling case that we should think differently about a topic of broad interest to the field in question. I’m not thinking necessarily about work related to IT, since the literature in many areas of history of science, environmental history, history of medicine, and other fields is more mature and appears to have developed a clearer sense of what the “big questions” are. However I have had few opportunities since grad school to read systematically in other literatures.
So list members, please post away with your nominations of recent articles from other fields with an explanation of what cool thing you think the article is doing methodologically that those of us writing on the history of computing could learn from.
Best wishes,
Tom
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
-- James W. Cortada Senior Research Fellow Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota jcortada@umn.edu 608-274-6382
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
Tom & SIG: I regret that I was unable to attend the meeting, but from following it on Twitter [!] and from your comments, I see that it was a big success. I went looking in my files to see if I could find out about the humble beginnings of the SIG-the earliest I found was letter from David Allison announcing the SIG lunch, on Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 PM, at the SHOT 1990 meeting in Cleveland. In those days the meeting consisted of a lunch where we circulated a list of names and e-mail addresses if we had one (I had BITNET but no internet e-mail). As the letter from David suggests, we still communicated by regular mail a lot. I couldn't find any of the early lists, unfortunately. If any of you have one, It'd be fun to share. As this pre-dated the Internet, there is a good chance that someone saved the paper copies. One of the most memorable meetings that I can recall was at Charlottesville in 1995. We managed to convince Jean Sammet, author of those monumental histories of programming languages, to drive down from DC. Jean was treated like a movie star, with the younger scholars clustered around her in admiration. For those of you who knew Jean, try to picture that! Great to see the health & evolution of SIG-CIS. On a more serious note, the growth of the SIG, especially in comparison to other SHOT SIGS that still follow the more informal model, hints at a changing relationship between the history of computing and the history of technology in general, and by extension the relationship between SIG-CIS and SHOT. Paul Ceruzzi ceruzzip@si.edu<mailto:ceruzzip@si.edu> 202-633-2414 From: Members [mailto:members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Haigh Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 6:32 PM To: members@sigcis.org Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] What can SIGCIS learn methodologically from the history of science, environmental history, etc? Dear SIGCIS, We just had a wonderful meeting, which I could enjoy all the more as it was the first of the seven SIGCIS workshops where I had no operational responsibilities. Nathan really did a great job with the keynote, and it was splendid to see so many people making the transition from list membership to physical participation at SHOT and SIGCIS for the first time. Better still were the people who had been "first timers" in 2013 or 2014 coming back for a second meeting, as this proves they found the experience useful. I think we accounted for a very significant fraction of the overall graduate student attendance at SHOT. My impression was that the research and delivery of the SIGCIS papers held up pretty well against the quality of material in most parts of the main SHOT program. However I also heard a suggestion from one person that many of the papers in both venues tended to be very narrowly framed, telling a particular story without really engaging with a broader literature or being explicit about what general lessons or methodological implications the work holds. To the extent that this is true, one could see an aversion to explicit historiography and to the drawing of broad conclusions as a kind of aesthetic preference rather than a failing of craft or scholarship. Still, I was wondering if list members might be able to suggest recent (say post-2010) papers from other traditions that are effective in using a focused historical study to make a compelling case that we should think differently about a topic of broad interest to the field in question. I'm not thinking necessarily about work related to IT, since the literature in many areas of history of science, environmental history, history of medicine, and other fields is more mature and appears to have developed a clearer sense of what the "big questions" are. However I have had few opportunities since grad school to read systematically in other literatures. So list members, please post away with your nominations of recent articles from other fields with an explanation of what cool thing you think the article is doing methodologically that those of us writing on the history of computing could learn from. Best wishes, Tom
participants (5)
-
Bernardo Batiz-Lazo -
Ceruzzi, Paul -
James Cortada -
Ksenia Tatarchenko -
Thomas Haigh