SIGCIS at SHOT Conference

This year’s annual conference for the Society of History and Technology took place 4-7 October 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference took place at the Copenhagen Business School amid the buzz of students studying and socializing throughout the buildings.

During the opening plenary on Thursday evening, SIGCIS member Eden Medina was awarded the society’s prestigious Sidney Edelstein Prize for her book Cybernetic Revolutionaries (MIT Press, 2011). The book offers an historical analysis of the utopian politics of computer technology in Chile before, during, and after Allende’s presidency. During the plenary, Medina also provided thoughtful commentary on furthering a transnational perspective on the histories of technology.

As part of the SHOT main program, SIGCIS sponsored several panels, including “The Social Origins of Personal Computing” which was organized by Peter Collopy. Thomas Haigh helped to organize two other panels: “International Information Identities” and “International Information Societies.”

This year’s theme of transnationalism was also evident in several other computing-related papers, including “Negotiating Competing Sociotechnical Imaginaries between Taiwanese Technologists and United Nations Officials: A Cold War Technical-aid Program in Electronics Science and Digital Electronic Computing, 1958–64” by Honghong Tinn and “Floating Boundaries and Intertwining Relations Between Design and Manufacturing in the History of Laptop Production” by Ling-Fei Lin.

On Friday, SIGCIS hosted the group lunch during which first-time student attendees received travel awards. The lunch culminated in a book auction, with books donated by SIGCIS members and MIT Press.

This year’s SIGCIS workshop took place on Sunday. The theme was “Information Identities: Historical Perspectives on Technological and Social Change.” The workshop consisted of a plenary talk and six sessions. During the opening plenary titled “Understanding the Computerization of Small States: Users and Users of Computing Technology in Cold War Sweden,” Per Lundin described the history of computing in Sweden as a counternarrative to typical US-centered histories.

The works in progress session consisted of two papers followed by a discussion. The range of work represented in these papers included Ramesh Subramanian’s research of the female computer scientist Starr Roxanne Hiltz, whose prescient work foreshadowed present-day digital sociology. During this session, Lilly Nguyen also presented her dissertation research on software disc shops in Vietnam.

Several other doctoral students presented their research during the dissertation session later that afternoon. Sally Deffor spoke about the impact of digital technologies on news storytelling in her comparative paper, “A Critical Evaluation of the Impact of the Digital Platform on the Role of Storytelling: Case Study of the BBC and the SBC.” Giuditta Parolini described the importance of computational techniques and statistical inquiry in her paper, “The Computerisation of the Rothamsted Statistics Department.” Finally, Rebecca Perry presented her research on the world of 3D programmers in her paper, “Digital 3D Modeling and the Seduction of the Real.”

In keeping with this year’s conference location, the panel “Three ICT Innovations that Transformed Danish Society: The Nordic Way” brought new insight to computer histories of the Danish state. Henning Jensen’s work elucidated the history of Dankort, the national debit card system. Søren Duus Østergaard presented his scholarship of the Danish tax system and Stig Kjær Andersen presented research of the Danish electronic health records system.

The final session of the workshop focused on the history of networks. Andrew Russell argued for an approach that recognized the convergence of computers and networks in his paper, “Histories of Networking vs. The History of the Internet.” Mariann Unterluggauer described the organization NetAffair in the context of European networking. Valerie Schafer and Romain Badouard also presented their research on Internet governance in Europe as part of their paper, “Appropriating, Governing, and Using the Internet in Europe, 1970s–2000s.” Alex Bochannek from the Computer History Museum offered thoughtful remarks synthesizing the varied papers.

In my opinion, the workshop provided an interesting overview of the state’s important role across the multiple contexts representing during the talks this year—Taiwan, Sweden, Denmark, and France. The history of collaboration between governments and industry in the history of computing is thus well established across these different countries. However, to push the call for transnational...