Founded in the mid-1980s, SIGCIS is the leading international group for historians with an interest in the history of information technology and its applications. Our primary activities include meetings held in connection with our parent society, the Society for the History of Technology; and a range of online resources hosted from this website.
Recent News
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2018 Computer History Museum Prize
Winner: Ben Peters, How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (MIT Press, 2016). Prize Citation: Benjamin Peters’s history of the Soviet Internet represents a pathbreaking contribution to the understanding of the history of computing and networking. Based on detailed empirical research in Russian archives, it extends the reach of…
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STORED IN MEMORY: 10th Annual SIGCIS Conference
We’re very happy to announce the Conference Schedule for STORED IN MEMORY, the 10th Annual SIGCIS Conference to be held in St. Louis, Missouri on October 14, 2018. This conference will once again take place on the final day of the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology. STORED IN MEMORY will…
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2017 Computer History Museum Prize
Winner: Elizabeth Petrick, Making Computers Accessible: Disability Rights and Digital Technology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015). Prize Citation: This is a groundbreaking book on an understudied topic in the history of computing. Petrick integrates histories of technology and civil rights and demonstrates the interaction of technological, social, and legal supports for accessibility. She uses disability studies…
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2017 Mahoney Prize
Winner: Erica Robles-Anderson and Patrik Svensson. “’One Damn Slide After Another’: PowerPoint at Every Occasion for Speech.” Computational Culture (January 15, 2016). Prize Citation: In “’One Damn Slide After Another’: PowerPoint at Every Occasion for Speech,” Erica Robles-Anderson and Patrik Svensson provide a highly original and insightful history of PowerPoint’s design, development, and use. They…
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MEASURE, MODEL, MIX: COMPUTER AS INSTRUMENT – 2017 SIGCIS Conference
SIGCIS is pleased to announce its 2017 Conference: MEASURE, MODEL, MIX: COMPUTER AS INSTRUMENT. The conference will be held on October 29, 2017 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, as part of the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology. The conference keynote speaker will be Joanna Radin from the Department of History at…
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Command Lines: Software, Power, and Performance, March 18-19, 2017
Command Lines: Software, Power, and Performance is a meeting that will draw together scholars from a variety of fields that study software. These fields include: the history of computing; science and technology studies; software studies; code studies; game studies; media studies; the study of women, gender and sexuality; studies of race, ethnicity and postcoloniality; and computer…
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2016 Computer History Museum Prize
Winner: Dinesh C. Sharma, The Outsourcer: The Story of India’s IT Revolution (MIT Press, 2015). Prize Citation: Dinesh Sharma has written a highly accessible book on a significant topic – the history of computing in India – that is well-grounded in sources and interviews. The Outsourcer is full of fascinating stories on the beginnings of…
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2016 Mahoney Prize
Winner: Andrew L. Russell and Valérie Schafer, “In the Shadow of ARPANET and Internet: Louis Pouzin and the Cyclades Network in the 1970s,” Technology and Culture 55, no. 4 (October 2014): 880-907. Prize Citation: This paper expands our understanding of how networks emerged and evolved. It contributed additional evidence of the international nature of ICTs,…
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SIGCIS Workshop 2016: Convergence and Divergence
SHOT-SIGCIS Singapore Workshop June 26, 2016 “Convergence and Divergence” The Special Interest Group for Computers, Information and Society (SIGCIS) 2016 annual Workshop will be held on June 26, 2016. The workshop begins immediately after the regular annual meeting of our parent organization, the Society for the History of Technology in Singapore. FINAL SCHEDULE 9:00-10:30: All SIG…
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2015 Mahoney Prize
Winner: David Nofre, Mark Priestley, and Gerard Alberts, “When Technology Became Language: The Origins of the Linguistic Conception of Compter Programming, 1950-1960,” Technology and Culture 55 (January 2014): 40-75. Prize Citation: This paper presents a history of the emergence of high-level computer languages, documenting co-evolving relationships between computer technology and communities of practice. In tracing…