Hello SIGCIS, For anyone out there somewhere looking forward to spending more time in front of their computers staring at Zoom, I am pleased to bring word of the Digital Matters conference taking place at Siegen University next week. I organized it with Valérie Schafer (University of Luxembourg), Axel Volmar (Siegen University) & Sebastian Giessmann (Siegen University). Details at https://www.socialstudiesof.info/digitalmatters/. Free registration by email is required to get the Zoom links. When we had to make the call earlier this month to go from primarily in person to primarily online a lot of things got changed around, and one of those was that we went to a three day format with start times each day of 13:00 or later. So that means that North Americans can attend without having to get up absurdly early. The timeslots are budgeted for 50 minutes per talk, with the idea that this will allow some genuine interactivity and discussion. (Subtract 6 hours for Eastern time, 7 for Central, 9 for Pacific). We can offer you a wonderful and eclectic lineup of speakers. The blurb is as follows “In popular discussion digitality is increasingly equated with networked immateriality: disembodied algorithms float rhetorically in an ethereal cloud of big data. Think, for example, of the “digital edition” of the PlayStation 5 console, so called because it has no optical drive to read games, which must instead be downloaded. The implication is that the regular PS5 console is somehow not digital because its storage medium is visible to the unaided human eye. This presupposition of digital immateriality is not just a misconception to be corrected, but a productive site for interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry into media and data practices. In Digital Matters, historians, media theorists and information scholars come together for three days to examine the socio-material constituents of digital systems and artifacts. How and why did people come to deny the materiality of the digital? What can we learn by recovering it? What if we rethink digital materialities as ongoing cooperative accomplishments?” The current lineup is as follows, but _please rely on the online program in case of any last minute changes_. Most speakers will be online, but as of the last tally three of the four organizers and three speakers plan to brave Germany’s biggest ever Covid wave to be there in person. If any of you happen to be close by and would like to risk being in the same room as other humans then let me know and I’ll pass on the physical details. December 1: 13:45: Conference introduction and welcome Moderator: Valérie Schafer (C2DH, University of Luxembourg) 14:00-14:50: “Travelling machines,” Camille Paloque-Bergès (CNAM, Paris). 15:00-15:50: “Dimensions of Materiality,” Kyle Stine (Johns Hopkins University). 15:50-16:30: Break for virtual coffee. Moderator: Miglè Bareikytè (Siegen University) 16:30-17:20: “Dance Notation: Grammars for Understanding and Controlling the Body,” Quinn DuPont (University College, Dublin). 17:30-18:20: “Modularity, Materiality, and the Political Order of the Stacks,” Jean-François Blanchette (University of California at Los Angeles). December 2: Moderator: Susanne Förster (Siegen University) 13:30-14:20. “Looking for Oil (and Finding It) in the History of Computing,” Cyrus Mody (Maastricht University). 14:30-15:20. “Digital and Nature in the Anthropocene,” Felix Stalder (Zurich University of the Arts). 15:20-16:00: Break for virtual coffee. Moderator: Sebastian Giessmann (Siegen University) 16:00-16:50: “The Great eBook Conspiracy: eReaders, Publishers, and Price Competition in the Early 2000s,” Gerardo Con Diaz (University of California at Davis). 17:00-17:50: “Rematerializing Money: Payment as Palimpsest,” Lana Swartz (University of Virginia) 17:50-18:30. Break for virtual coffee or, for the adventurous, virtual cocktails. 18:30: Keynote lecture, “Some Species of Materiality.” Jonathan Sterne (McGill University). Moderated by Axel Volmar (Siegen University). December 3: Moderator: Thomas Haigh (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee & Siegen University) 13:00-13:50. “The Politics of Technical Systems,” Bernhard Rieder (University of Amsterdam). 14:00-14:50. “Digital Materiality and Historical Innovation,” Ulf Hashagen (Deutsches Museum). 14:50-15:15. Break for virtual coffee. Moderator: Tatjana Seitz (Siegen University) 15:15-16:15. “Web Materialities,” Valérie Schafer (C2DH, University of Luxembourg). 16:20-17:00. Closing roundtable featuring the organizers pondering lessons learned. Please feel free to forward this far and wide. Best wishes, Tom