Serve AI grant project #research

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... more

IEEE History of Robotics #research

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... more

Black History Month and the History of Computing #research

In celebration of Black History Month, I have been reflecting on what my scholarship might have to say about the history of African American computer programmers. On the website on... more

NSF Grant - The Future Matrix of Care #research

I am very pleased to be one of the co-PIs on the recently awarded NSF Grant 1928547, FW-HTF-P: The Future Matrix of Care: Communities, Networks, and Technologies. This planning grant... more

IEEE Golden Core Award #media #research

I am pleased and honored to be the recipient of the IEEE Golden Core Award. A small number of Golden core awards are granted each year to persons who “served... more

The Secret History of Women in Coding #research #media #gender

In today’s issue of the New York Times, the journalist Clive Thompson has published a brilliant excerpt from his forthcoming book Coders. In it he references my work on the... more

The Future of Artificial Intelligence #media #research

At the end of November the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge University hosted a two-day event gathering historians and practioners from around the world. I was... more

More Tech & Gender #media #research

The spate of popular media culture coverage of my research on women in computing that surrounded the publication of the Google Manifesto continues unabated. On Equal Pay Day (April 10),... more

Tech, Gender, and the Environment #media #research

This past week two very different aspects of my work got picked up by the national press. The first was my early work on women in computing, which was featured... more

Contextualizing the Google Manifesto #media #research

“We’re just starting to acknowledge the work that these women did — but that’s a fault of our history, not a function of their lack of presence. They were invisible,... more

Computing is Work #research #media

On July 6-8, the Universität Siegen is hosting an international conference on computing and work organized by Thomas Haigh & Sebastian Gießmann. The idea behind the conference is that “close... more

SHIFT-CTRL at Stanford #research #media

In early May I will speaking at the SHIFT-CTRL conference at Stanford University. The conference, which is being convened by Tom Mullaney and Ben Allen is aimed at exploring new... more

The Dirty Bits Traveling Show #research #media

I have been traveling and talking about my new environmental history of computing project a fair bit recently. I am particularly excited about my forthcoming talk at the University of... more

The Art of Software Maintenance #research #media

It often surprises my students when I tell them that as much as 60-80% of all software development effort (time and money) goes into software maintenance. After all, software is... more

2015 SIGCIS Keynote #research

I was pleased to be asked to present this year’s keynote address at the annual Special Interest Group for Computers, Information and Society workshop. The theme this year was on... more

IU Institute for Advanced Study Grant #research

The Indiana University Institute for Advanced Study has awarded me an Individual Research Award Grant for work on my forthcoming book on the environmental history of computing. Many thanks to... more

Annals of the History of Computing #research

As of January 1, 2015 I will be taking over as the editor-in-chief of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. The Annals has served as the premier journal... more

The Computer Boys in the News #media #research

My first book, The Computer Boys Take Over, has been attracting attention in the news recently, largely because of its discussion of gender and computer programming. This article in Fastcompany... more

The Cult of Masculinity in Computing #research

Update: I titled my first book after its central characters, adopting a contemporary term for these new specialists — “the computer boys” — that for me neatly captured mixed sense... more

When Good Software Goes Bad #research #media

For the upcoming MICE (Mistakes, Ignorance, Contingency, and Error) Conference in Munich I have prepared a paper entitled “When Good Software Goes Bad: The Surprising Durability of an Ephemeral Technology.”... more

Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics Fellowship #research

The Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics has awarded me a Research Fellows Grant for the academic year 2014-2015. This grant will be used to fund research on my global... more

Computer Security and the Sociology of Risk #research

At the heart of the discipline of computer security is the problem of risk: how to analyze and quantify risks that are for the most part invisible, intangible, and not... more

New appointment in the History & Philosophy of Science #teaching #research

I am very pleased to announce that I have been appointed an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. I am thrilled to be part... more

Chess as Drosophila awarded 2013 Maurice Daumas Prize #publications #research #media

My article “Is Chess the Drosophila of AI? a Social History of an Algorithm” (Social Studies of Science, 2012) was recently awarded the 2013 Maurice Daumas Prize by the International... more

Towards an Environmental History of Computing #research

For the upcoming Society for the History of Technology Conference, I have been working on a paper that situates the history of computing in environmental history. This is about more... more

From Mechanical Brains to Philosophical Zombies #research

From Descartes and Leibniz to Dennet and Searle, philosophers of the mind have struggled to understand the relationship between the mind and body. How did purely material structures and processes... more

Visualizing Complexity: Flowcharts as the Boundary Objects of Software Development #research

Datamation Magazine, September 1963 From the very earliest days of electronic computing, “flow diagrams” (later “flowcharts”) have been used to represent the conceptual structure of complex software systems. In much... more

Is Chess the Drosophila of AI? #media #research

A couple of years ago I presented a paper at the University of Minneapolis on my ongoing research project on computerized decision models. Although the paper was ostensibly about computer... more

History of Software, European Styles #media #research

On September 13 I will be giving a keynote address at the Software for Europe conference at the Lorentz Center for the Sciences in the Netherlands. The talk will focus... more

Society for the History of Technology: From Computer Operations to Operating Systems #research

Like many terms of art in electronic computing, the concept of the “operating system” represents an appropriation of earlier, pre-computer processes and procedures. Today, of course, we think of an... more

On the Internet, Everyone is a Crypto-Fascist #research

For a recent graduate seminar run by my friend and colleague John Tresch, I prepared an essay on the economic principles embedded in Godwin’s Law. The result was a very... more

Society for the History of Technology #research

At the recent Society for the History of Technology conference, held this year in Lisbon, I presented a paper called “Fixing things that can never be broken: Software maintenance as... more

Gender and Computing Revisited #research

A PDF version of my paper from the recent Gender and Computer conference at the Charles Babbage Institute is now available online. Here is a brief abstract of the paper:... more

Gender and Computing Conference #research

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... more

History of Computing - Software for Europe #research

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... more