In a few days I will be giving a talk at the Historisches Institut at the Universität Paderborn as part of a series of talks on Verflochtene Zukünfte: Digitalisierung und Nachhaltigkeit (“Entangled Futures: Digitalization and Sustainability”).

I am particularly pleased to be back in Paderborn (if only virtually). Almost exactly a quarter century ago I was invited to the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum to give my first talk as part of a workshop on the history of software. This talk became the basis of my first major academic publication, my PhD dissertation, and my first book.

Today I take on a new role as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Research for the entire Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. My many thanks to our dean Joanna Millunchick and to my predecessor Paul Macklin.

I am pleased and honored to have been awarded a 2025-2026 Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award. I was also recognized with this same honor exactly ten years ago. It makes me particularly happy to be able to continue to learn and develop as an instructor. Many thanks to my students, teaching assistants, and colleagues who helped make my courses as excellent as possible!

The CCS Lab has its first major publication! Congratulations to James Tanfield-Taylor, Ashlee Mirizio, and Bryce Greene. Here is the citation:

James Tanfield-Taylor, Ashlee Mirizio, Bryce Greene, and Nathan Ensmenger. 2026. Beyond Microsoft and Monsanto: Denaturing the Monoculture Metaphor in Computing. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’26), April 13–17, 2026, Barcelona, Spain. ACM, New York, NY, USA,

Here is a brief abstract:

Beginning in the late 1980s, computer security researchers began discussing the risks associated with “software monocultures.” Within a decade, this metaphor had gained such prevalence that it could be invoked as self-evident, taking for granted that the industry should “avoid monoculture in computer operating systems” for reasons “just as reasonable and obvious as avoiding monoculture in farming.”

This paper explores how the agricultural metaphor of “monoculture” migrated into computing discourse, naturalizing discussions of technical vulnerabilities and centralization patterns. Building on research from science and technology studies (STS), the authors argue that the monoculture metaphor is epistemologically significant, both describing and shaping computing practices. Rather than accepting the simplified narrative that monocultures represent only technical risks, the authors draw on agricultural history to develop a more nuanced understanding of monocultures as deeply entrenched systems of power relationships characterized by dependency, monopoly control, and systemic lock-in. The authors extend this analysis to the current development of a new monoculture of computing forming with the development of energy and resource intensive AI systems and infrastructure.

I will be giving a talk at the American Society for Environmental History Conference on my work on the history of the computerization of natural resource management. The talk is entitled “How a computer sees a forest: FORPLAN and the “optimization” of natural resource management.” A brief abstract of this talk can be found here.

I was honored to have been awarded a $90k grant from the New America foundation as part of their Public Interest Technology program. Over the past year, a group of almost 20 IU students have partnered with the Laurie Burns McRobbie Serve IT Clinic to develop new tools for serving the Bloomington community using generative AI technologies. You can read all about the Serve AI grant project here.

The PhD student in the Computing, Culture, and Society research group have developed a syllabus for a semester-long survey of STS literature related to the study of Informatics. A PDF version can be found here. A Github repository licensed under the Creative Commons license can be found here.

This week I will be headed to the IEEE ICRA@40 Conference in Rotterdam to help conduct a series of oral history interviews with leading roboticists. This is part of a larger IEEE Robotics History> project with which I am involved.

I am pleased to note that the 3rd Edition of our book Computer: A History of the Information Machine has been translated into Italian and Japanese. And so, if you can read those languages, you can now order Computer. Storia dell’informatica da Babbage ai nostri giorni and コンピューティング史　人間は情報をいかに取り扱ってきたか.

I am excited to be a small part of the upcoming Granfalloon Festival hosted by the IU Arts and Humanities Council. What is a Granfalloon, you might ask? According to Wikipedia, it is an element of the fictional religion of Bokononism created by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle and is a group of people who pretend to get together for a “shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is meaningless.” Which as a name for a festival whose ostensible shared purpose is to celebrate the life and work of Kurt Vonnegut is absolutely perfect.

My role in the festivities is a public discussion of Vonnegut’s 1952 novel Player Piano. This is a wonderful novel that I used to teach regularly, and given its themes of automation and technological-driven unemployment, it is highly relevant to the current moment. My talk is part of an open event at the Wonderlab Museum of Science, Health, and Technology on Saturday, May 20 from 7:30-9pm. Tickets can be ordered here. My contribution is entitled “From Player Piano to the AI Revolution, a history of labor in the computer age?”

The much more exciting participants at Granfalloon 2023 include Ted Chiang and the Flaming Lips…