Dear Colleagues,
I am hoping that you might consider participating in our upcoming
conference and also that you might know someone in the area who is working
on one of these themes. Please circulate as appropriate.
Chris Leslie
—–
CFP: International Communities of Invention and Innovation (25-28 May 2016)
This next meeting of IFIP Working Group 9.7 will gather historians and
other professionals with an interest in this historical context for
computers and computer networks. We seek to round out the program of papers
from IFIP members with participants from the academic and professional
community around New York City.
At the conference, we hope to blur the dichotomy between core and periphery
and complicate simplistic notions of linear technological progress. Analog
and digital computers were developed in the context of an international
scientific community, and the first computer networks were built in an age
of growing interconnectivity between nations. Far from a deterministic view
that computers and computer networks were developed in isolation and
according to their own technical imperatives, we will show the history of
preexisting relationships and communities that led to the triumphs (and
dead ends) in the history of computing. This broad perspective will help us
to tell a more accurate story of the development of the Internet, to be
sure, but also it will provide us with a better understanding of how better
to sponsor invention and innovation in the future.
In accordance with this theme, we seek papers related to internationalism
in the history of computers and computer networks. For example:
– communities where analog computers were developed
– communication about and competition for early devices
– trade and treaties supporting computers and networks
– antecedents (Wells’s World Brain) and visions (Human-Nets’s WorldNet)
– organizations like IFIP with a mission to promote collaboration
– innovations brought in from the supposed periphery
– individuals who championed connections between nations
– communication and data networks before the Internet
– development and diffusion of TCP/IP
– connectivity efforts before NSFnet
– resistance to and success of the WorldWideWeb
– failed or thwarted efforts to develop networks or industries
– long trajectories of digital divides
– case studies revealing ethical considerations
– historiography of internationalism in computing
The conference will be hosted at New York University’s Tandon School of
Engineering in MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, New York 11201. MetroTech
Center, about 20 minutes away by subway from NYU’s Greenwich Village
location, is located in the heart of Downtown Brooklyn and within walking
distance of the Brooklyn Bridge as well as the iconic neighborhoods of
DUMBO, Fort Greene, and Brooklyn Heights.
As part of the conference program, we are arranging tours for those with an
interest in the history of computing. These will include sites like Bell
Labs, Google’s New York headquarters, and possibly IBM Watson.
It is hoped that the conference will be of interest of a broad range of
people with an interest in computing and computer networks, including
academic scholars and graduate students, but also those who are not
historians but have a professional or technical interest in computing. For
consideration, please submit a title, an abstract of 300-500 words, and
your institutional affiliation before April 15 by email (
wg9.7conference@nyu.edu). Inquires are welcome in advance of your
submission.
More information is available on the conference website:
http://wp.nyu.edu/ifip_wg97/
—
Christopher S. Leslie, Ph.D.
Co-Director and Lecturer, Science and Technology Studies
Faculty Fellow in Residence for Othmer Hall and Clark Street
Vice Chair, IFIP History of Computing Working Group 9.7
NYU Tandon School of Engineering
5 MetroTech Center, LC 131
Brooklyn, NY 11201
(646) 997-3130
—
Christopher S. Leslie, Ph.D.
Co-Director and Lecturer, Science and Technology Studies
Faculty Fellow in Residence for Othmer Hall and Clark Street
Vice Chair, IFIP History of Computing Working Group 9.7
NYU Tandon School of Engineering
5 MetroTech Center, LC 131
Brooklyn, NY 11201
(646) 997-3130
.
