Wed, 23 Apr 2008
Gender and Computing Conference
On May 30, 2008 the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota will present a day-long public conference devoted to a much-needed examination of gender and computing. While the National Science Foundation and other policy actors have devoted immense resources to increasing women's participation in computing, over the past two decades there has been a striking drop in women's participation in computing education and a corresponding tail-off in the U.S. workforce. Clearly, an important "missing piece" is yet to be discovered. This international conference examines gender and the diverse uses of computing in offices, libraries, schools, mass media, and the computing profession.
I will be presenting a paper called "Making Programming Masculine."
Registration for the conference is open until 20 May 2008. More information can be found here.
category: /research
Tue, 04 Mar 2008
The Mechanical Body: Building Humans, Challenging Humanity
This Tuesday, March 4, I will be giving a talk called "Cyborgs, Artificial Intelligences, and Meat Machines: Computers and the Reinvention of the Body" at Drexel University as part of their Great Works Symposium. The talk is from 3:30-4:50 in Curtis Hall, Room 340
The video of this talk is now available.
category: /media
Sun, 10 Feb 2008
The Internet & American Business
It's finally here! The Internet and American Business has arrived via MIT Press. From the jacket blub: "Tracing the impact of the commercialized Internet since 1995 on American business and society, the book describes new business models, new companies and adjustments by established companies, the rise of e-commerce, and community building; it considers dot-com busts and difficulties encountered by traditional industries; and it discusses such newly created problems as copyright violations associated with music file-sharing and the proliferation of Internet pornography."
My contribution is called "Resistance is Futile? Reluctant and Selective Users of the Internet." It explains why a series of industries -- including healthcare and higher education -- have not yet been radically transformed by the Internet.
category: /publications
Wed, 30 Jan 2008
History of Computing - Software for Europe
Just got back from the SOFT-EU Workshop in Grenoble. The workshop was part of a larger project called History of Computing - Software for Europe, which is in turn part of the larger
category: /research
Thu, 29 Nov 2007
STSC 003: Technology & Society
"We shape our technologies; thereafter they shape us."
This course surveys the ways in which technology has shaped our societies and our relations with the natural world. We will examine the origins and impact of technical developments throughout human history and across the globe— from stone tools, agriculture, and cave painting to ancient cities, metallurgy, and aque- ducts; from windmills, cathedrals, steam engines and electricity to atom bombs, the internet, and genetic engineering. We will pay attention to the aesthetic, religious, and mythical dimensions of technological change, and consider the circumstances in which innovations emerge and their effects on social order, on the environment, and on the ways humans understand themselves.
category: /teaching
STSC 260: Cyberculture
Free speech, free software, MOOS, MUDs, anime and cyberpunk. All of these are elements of a broad set of social, technical and political phenom- ena generally associated with the emergence of a nascent "cyberculture." In this seminar we explore the ways in which recent developments in information technology -- the computer and the Internet in particular -- relate to changing contemporary notions of community, identity, property, and gender. By looking at an eclectic collection of popular and scholarly resources, including film, fiction and the World Wide Web, we will situate the development of "cyberculture" into the larger history of the complex relationship between technology and Western society.
category: /teaching
Sat, 10 Nov 2007
Computers & Ethics
Nathan Ensmenger, "Computers as Ethical Objects," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 29:3 (2007), 86-88.
category: /publications
Tue, 04 Sep 2007
Beauty and the Geek
One of our recent graduates is on television! Will was actually a CS major, but he minored in our
No doubt Will will do us all proud in his appearance Beauty and the Geek this fall.
category: /misc
Mon, 16 Jul 2007
Top-Secret Rosies
I just finished filming a segment for a documentary by local film-maker LeAnn Erikson. I was just one of the talking-head historians. The real heroes of the film are the women who worked as mathematicians and "human computers" during the Second World War (including those who programmed the ENIAC computer right here at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering).
View the trailer online.
category: /media
The Research Channel II
Case Files in the History of Computing
This is the second in a series of symposium hosted by the Franklin Institute and the History & Sociology of Science department celebrating the opening of a new section of the electronic case files archives.
The focus of the presentation was on the early history of the computing industry, featuring key individuals including Hollerith, Burroughs, Eckert, Mauchly, Bardeen, Brittain, and Shannon. Professor Ensmenger provided a general overview of the history of computing.
The full video can be is running on the Research Channel.
category: /media
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