Linnaeus had a flower clock. (And so does the city of Viña del Mar, as #SHOT2024 participants may recall...) But what would floral computer look like? Sumner found a cartoon that attempted to answer that question! #SHOT2025
And after that thoughtful and engaging panel, #SIGCIS2024 (& #SHOT2024) has officially reached its conclusion!
Thank you to all the presenters, organizers & institutional partners who made this meeting so successful. Hope to see many of you next year in Luxembourg! #histSTM #histtech #STS
OK, everyone—it’s time for the final panel session of #SIGCIS2024 and, by extension, #SHOT2024.
I’m staying in D-207 for three presentations on labor in (& beyond) Silicon Valley. Our first speaker is Janet Toland, who is discussing efforts to patch health information systems in New Zealand.
Happy Bastille Day, #histSTM friends! @shothisttech.bsky.social’s main program wrapped up yesterday, but I’m back on UAI’s campus for #SIGCIS2024. The theme of this year’s meeting is “System Update: Patches, Tactics, Responses.”
Read the full program: docs.google.com/document/d/1...
#SHOT2024
Adebayo also received #ICOHTEC’s Maurice Daumas Article Prize for 2024. As a reminder, an open-access version of his article is available at the link below.
#SHOT2024
Finally the winner of the 2024 Da Vinci Medal is Bill Leslie. Despite describing himself as an “accidental historian of tech,” he is a brilliant scholar & wonderful graduate advisor. (Some of his students are here in Chile, including Amy Bix, Allison Marsh & @pkhardy.bsky.social!) #SHOT2024 #histSTM
The winner of the 2024 Race and Histories of Technologies Prize is Xin Peng, author of the unpublished essay “‘The Chinaman and His Phone’: Noise, Gibberish, and the Telephone’s Social Use.” #SHOT2024 #histtech #telephone
The winner of the 2024 Martha Trescott Prize is Camilla Mørk Røstvik, author of “Tampon Technology in Britain,” published in T&C in 2022.
Debbie Douglas reads a statement from Røstvik, who thanks "everyone who talks about mensturation in history and today, even when it's hard." #SHOT2024
The winner of the 2024 Bernard S. Finn #IEEE History Prize is Adewumi Damilola Adebayo, author of “Electricity, Agency and Class in Lagos Colony, c. 1860s-1914,” published in Past & Present in 2023.
https://academic.oup.com/past/article/262/1/168/7099486
#SHOT2024 #histSTM #histtech
The winner of the 2024 Levinson Prize is Madeline Ware for her unpublished essay “Kegel’s Perineometer: Reframing Vaginal Disability in the Postwar United States.”
#SHOT2024 #histmed #histSTM
The winner of the 2024 Abbott Payton Usher Prize is Faisal Husain, author of the 2023 T&C article, “To Dam or Not to Dam: The Social Construction of an Ottoman Hydraulic Project.”
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/893043/summary
#SHOT2024 #histSTM
The winner of the 2024 Sally Hacker Prize is David Nemer, author of Technology of the Oppressed: Inequity and the Digital Mundane in the Favelas of Brazil. #SHOT2024 #histSTM
More info via @mitpress.bsky.social: mitpress.mit.edu/978026254334...
The winners of the 2024 Edelstein Prize are Francesca Bray, Barbara Hahn, John Bosco Lourdusamy & Tiago Saraiva.
Dr. Bray, speaking on behalf of the authors, thanks the Society for recognizing their research into the history of cropscapes.
yalebooks.yale.edu/978030025725...
#SHOT2024 #envhist
OK, everyone—-it’s time for the final #SHOT2024 event: the awards ceremony!
Following a brief intro from @gabriellehecht.bsky.social, incoming @shothisttech.bsky.social president Debbie Douglas starts the show by announcing the winner of the Kranzberg Dissertation Fellowship: Yakut Emre Karaşahan.
Hardy also calls attention to the accretive nature of knowledge acquisition and the role of imperialist and capitalist power structures in shaping our understanding of the ocean and the seafloor. #SHOT2024
@pkhardy.bsky.social shares her thoughts on this panel’s papers. She begins by noting that our knowledge of the oceans is always mediated by technology, but our speakers have revealed the roles that outsiders (indigenous guides, sponge divers, etc.) played in this process. #SHOT2024
Galka: By 1970s, undersea prospectors discovered flaws in Mero’s map.
At the end of the decade, nodules fell out of interest, though their #ColdWar characterization as a strategic ore reserve has since given way to a new vision of nodules as crucial to today’s renewable energy transition. #SHOT2024
Galka: John Mero sought to build upon/replace the nodule taxonomy that John Murray (oceanographer on the Challenger expedition). Mero transformed seabed minerals from esoteric curiosities to valuable economic resources.
#SHOT2024
Galka: Sedimentary sciences were an exciting but contested area of oceanographic inquiry during the 19th century. The Challenger crew collected samples from the global seabed, including a variety of metal nodules.
www.lindahall.org/about/news/s... #SHOT2024
Our final speaker in this session is Jonathan Galka, who describes #ColdWar investment in applied oceanography.
In 1960, building on work done during the IGY, John Mero published a map of minerals on the ocean floor, supplanting prev. work on seabed nodules by the Challenger Expedition. #SHOT2024
Ko: The conflation of the interests of the divers and their capitalist patrons eventually enabled the UK—and later the Italians—to establish a claim to a specific section of the Mediterranean. Over time, however, the capitalist/free-market underpinnings of this legal regime was erased.
#SHOT2024
Ko: Sponge divers adopted the scaphander, but they were indebted to the foreign merchants who provided the equipment.
Abandoning free-diving for longer dives also threatened their health due to decompression sickness and death. #SHOT2024
Ko is particularly interested in the notion of a “historic right” to exploit different parts of the ocean.
To that end, she describes the traditional Dodecanese practice of sponge diving, which was threatened by the scaphander (diving suit), introduced by UK/Fr merchants in the 19th c.
#SHOT2024
Our next speaker is Nancy Ko, who invites us on a “necromantic” free dive in the Dodecanese Islands, which are located along the “world’s deadliest migration route” (North Africa—>Southern Europe”).
#SHOT2024
Gándara Chacana concludes that Patagonians and Fuegian sailors should be considered co-producers of knowledge, and their knowledge & tech were weaponized by the British in pursuit of their imperialist goals. #SHOT2024
Gándara Chacana: During the Beagle voyage, Fitzroy, et al. relied heavily on indigenous geographic and hydrographic knowledge.
At the same time, this relationship was highly asymmetrical and often violent. #SHOT2024
Enter the British! In the 1820s-30s, the Royal Navy became interested in Patagonia & Tierra del Fuego due to their strategic location b/w the Pacific & Atlantic Oceans.
Their expeditions drew on the experience of sealers like James Weddell. www.lindahall.org/about/news/s... #SHOT2024
Gándara Chacana also highlights the importance of indigenous shipbuilding techniques, which made effective use of local resources & were more effective at navigating the Patagonian shoreline.
The Spanish embraced these methods allowing for the establishment of temporary colonies #SHOT2024
Gándara Chacana’s talk examines hydrographic expeditions in Patagonia to highlight the role of indigenous knowledge & technologies to navigate the Patagonian seascape.
Indigenous guides provided crucial information about which routes to follow, where to find food/water, etc. #SHOT2024
Time to head out to sea! I’m here in A-202 for a panel entitled Technology, Sovereignty & the Grammar of Empire in the History of the Ocean Sciences.
Our panel chair, @pkhardy.bsky.social, introduces our first speaker Natalia Gándara Chacana… #SHOT2024
