Category: HaPoC News

The HaPoC Council is pleased to announce a new funding stream for externally organised event that take place in 2020. We will provide up to two grants of 250USD to support research events that have a topic clearly related to history and philosophy of computing areas.

To apply for such funding, organisers are asked to send to info@hapoc.org the following documentation

– Details of the event, including website
– A 1-page document describing how the event relates to HaPoC
– Details of current and perspective funding, including the intended allocation of the HaPoC grant

For events taking place in the current year we welcome requests at any time, with decisions taken on a first come first served basis.
Organisers who are granted HaPoC support will be kindly asked to make this support clearly known on all communications related to the event, including website and eventual publications.

*HaPoP 2020*

Fifth symposium on the History and Philosophy of programming
27 May 2020, Paris, France

Co-located with NewCrafts 2020, 28-29 May 2020

https://www.shift-society.org/hapop5/

In a society where computers have become ubiquitous, it is necessary to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of computer programs, not just from the technical viewpoint, but from a broader historical and philosophical perspective. A historical awareness of the evolution of programming not only helps to clarify the complex structure of computing, but it also provides an insight in what programming was, is and could be in the future. Philosophy, on the other hand, helps to tackle fundamental questions about the nature of programs, programming languages and programming as a discipline.

HaPoP 2020 is the fifth edition of the Symposium on the History and Philosophy of Programming, organised by HaPoC, Commission on the History and Philosophy of Computing. As in the previous editions, we are convinced that an interdisciplinary approach is necessary for understanding programming with its multifaceted nature. As such, we welcome participation by researchers and practitioners coming from a diversity of backgrounds, including historians, philosophers, computer scientists and professional software developers.

/Programming as an art, a craft or a science/

This edition of the symposium will be colocated with NewCrafts, an international software development conference for professional developers who care about quality code and improving their practices. In recent years, NewCrafts featured many talks on software craftsmanship, programming paradigms, architecture, but also ethics and philosophy and history of computing.

To initiate an inspiring conversation between the NewCrafts and HaPoP communities, we are particularly looking for talk proposals that discuss the question in how far programming can/has been/should be understood as an art, a craft and/or a science and what that implies both for the practice of programming as well as for our understanding of computer programs. We may not be able to answer this question, but we believe it will lead to useful insights about the nature of programs and programming.

/Selected topics of interest for the symposium/

Possible and in no way exclusive questions of relevance to this symposium are:

Can/has been/should be programming understood as an art, a craft and/or a science?
Are we getting better at writing programs that solve the given problem?
Is programming a specialist discipline, or will everyone in the future be a programmer?
What are the different scientific paradigms and research programmes developed through the history of computer programming?
Is it possible to eliminate errors from computer programs?
What is a program? How did the notion of a program change throughout the history?
How are programs and abstractions born, used and understood?
What was and is the relationship between hardware and software developments?
How did theoretical computer science (lambda-calculus, logics, category theory) influence the development of programming languages and vice versa?
What are the novel and most interesting approaches to the design of programs?
What is a correct program? Historical and philosophical reflections on issues in formal specification, type checking and model checking.
What is the nature of the relationship between algorithms and programs?
What legal and socio-economical issues are involved in the creation, patenting and free-distribution of programs?
How do we understand the multi-faceted nature of programs combining syntax, semantics and physical implementation?
How is programming to be taught?

/Dates, format and submissions/

For the symposium, we invite submission of two-page extended abstracts (including footnotes, but excluding references). Accepted papers will be given a 30 minute presentation slot including discussion. As with the previous editions, we also intend to submit a proposal for a special issue of a suitable journal for publication of full papers based on the symposium presentations.
Important dates

Submission deadline: *1 March 2020*
Author notification: *1 April 2020*
HaPoP symposium: *27 May 2020*

/Important links/

Submission web site: https://easychair.org/account/signin?l=PRJGt7pZiwCv3QpOfMAmKd#
Financial support: Coming soon
Registraton site: Coming soon

/Program committee/

Liesbeth De Mol (co-chair, CNRS – UMR 8163 STL Université de Lille)
Tomas Petricek (co-chair – University of Kent)
Arnaud Bailly (Aleryo)
Martin Carlé (Ionean University)
Andrea Magnorsky (Independent)
Ursula Martin (Oxford University)
Baptiste Mélès (CNRS, UMR 7117 Archives Henri-Poincaré
Pierre Mounier-Kuhn (CNRS & Université de Paris-Sorbonne)
Romeu Moura (Independent)
Mark Priestley (Independent)
Giuseppe Primiero (University of Milan)

/Registration/

Program committee of the symposium, as well as registration information will be announced soon. Please check this page regularly for updates. We will be also sharing updates via the HaPoC Comission web page (register to get updates via email) and on Twitter at @HaPoComputing.

HaPoP-5 co-chairs are Liesbeth De Mol and Tomas Petricek. If you have any questions regarding suitability of a topic or format of the extended abstract, please contact Liesbeth at liesbeth.de-mol@univ-lille.fr or Tomas at tomas@tomasp.net. For quick questions, you can also use @tomaspetricek on Twitter.

Computing in the world: A historical and philosophical analysis

Call for Papers
for a special issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (ISR)

Guest Editor:
Mario Verdicchio
Researcher, School of Engineering, University of Bergamo, Italy

Journal Editor:
Willard McCarty
Professor emeritus, Dept. of Digital Humanities, King’s College, London, UK

Over the last half-century, computing has become ubiquitous in many parts of the world and in most if not all fields of endeavour. Almost no aspect of our lives remains unaffected. It is again time to take stock, but this time in such a way as to bring out and bring together differences and commonalities across the full range of disciplines. For this issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (published by Taylor & Francis, https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/yisr20/current) the editors seek to publish articles in the physical, social and human sciences that demonstrate in their conjunction the genuinely meaningful interdisciplinarity of the digital machine.

As a methodological tool, the computer is obviously interdisciplinary – its ubiquity in research of all kinds makes the case. However, it has quite different effects from one discipline to the next. By design, a computer requires input in discrete binary terms and so raises the question of how this requirement differentially affects each area of work. Furthermore, we may argue, the remarkable, proven adaptability of computers to widely varying problems, degrees of complexity and experimental, even imaginative application evokes tendencies and affects practices differentially across the disciplines in which they are used. Some disciplines have become largely computational, or grown a computational branch; others, for which the tradeoff is less attractive, are resistant. Why? Compare, for example, physics, biology, sociology, literary studies, the arts.

Thus we welcome contributions from scholars wanting to participate in the debate concerning the effects of computers on their disciplines. We welcome articles with a particular focus on the relation between the conceptual and methodological framework of an area of expertise and the abstractions, analogies, encodings, models, simplifications and translations imposed by the data and operations of computing. Broad statements of what can and cannot be automated, and how automation affects research, are far less telling and useful than analyses based on examples of work in specific fields. We are looking for arguments backed up by details. Historical and philosophical approaches are of particular interest.

Timeline

Deadline for 300-word abstract submission: January 31st, 2020.
Abstracts notification: March 1st, 2020.
Deadline for 8000-word paper submission: June 28th, 2020.
Papers notification: September 28th, 2020.
Deadline for final version: December 31st, 2020.
Special issue release: 2021, Q1.

All correspondence to:
Mario Verdicchio
mario.verdicchio@unibg.it

The Programme for the 5th Edition of the International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Computing (Bergamo, Italy, 28-30 October 2019) is now available

https://hapoc2019.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/3

All authors and audience members can register at

https://hapoc2019.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/10

Looking forward to seeing you all in Bergamo!

The list of accepted abstracts for papers to be presented at the 5th International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Computing, to be held in Bergamo 28-30 October 2019, is now available at

https://hapoc2019.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/11

You can also register for the Conference at

https://hapoc2019.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/10

We hope to see many of you there!

The submission deadline for Abstract to the 5th International Conference on the History and Philosophy of computing has been extended. New dates:

Submission deadline: May 13, 2019 (extended)
Notification of acceptance/rejection: June 30, 2019
Conference dates: October 28-30, 2019

5th International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Computing
28-30 October 2019
Bergamo, Italy
Website: https://hapoc2019.sciencesconf.org
Email: hapoc2019@sciencesconf.org

Today more than ever computers have taken center stage in our lives: science, economy, politics, art, there is no single human endeavour that has been left unaffected by Information Technologies. Whether this impact is positive or negative, is still very much up for debate. People connected to the Internet can enjoy an unprecedented amount of information and computing power at their disposal, but more and more negative side effects of a widespread use of computers are brought to our attention: automation bias, echo chambers, shortened attention spans, job displacement, election hacking are just a few examples. The latest AI-hype fuelled by computationally feasible machine learning techniques have brought to reality philosophical topics previously relegated to mental experiments and theoretical discourses. The trolley problem has never been more popular thanks to self-driving cars. The need to conduct a systematic and well-informed discussion in a context ranging from theoretical and mathematical problems to labour and resource exploitation issues is evident. The broken dialogue between young and aggressively finance-oriented tech moguls and old-school politicians fumbling for regulation of little-known phenomena is not promising.

HaPoC’s appeal to historical and philosophical reflection aims at addressing this shortcoming. We aim to bring together researchers exploring the various aspects of computation: historians, philosophers, computer scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, designers, manufacturers, practitioners, artists, logicians, mathematicians, each with their own experience and expertise, all part of a society impacted by computation, and all necessary to the creation of a better discourse.

Main Topics

For HaPoC 2019, we welcome contributions from scholars who intend to participate in the debate on the impact of computers on culture, science, and society from the perspective of their area of expertise, and who are open to engage in interdisciplinary discussions across multiple fields. Topics include but are not limited to:
– History of computation, computers, algorithms, programs, paradigms, software and hardware companies and communities, …
– Philosophy of computation, philosophy of the mind in relation with computer science, ethics of computer science, epistemology of computer science…
– Foundational issues of computation, limits of computability, the Church-Turing thesis, formal systems, semantic of programs, …
– Computation in the Sciences, experiments and simulations with computers, big data analytics, epistemological issues, …
– Computation in Society, social networks, news and content distribution, automation, digital divide, privacy and security, …
– Computation in the Arts, digital art, interactivity, computer games, affective computing, human-computer interaction, …

How to submit

We cordially invite researchers working in a field relevant to the main topics of the conference to submit a short abstract of 180-200 words and an extended abstract of at most a 1000 words (references included) through EasyChair at:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=hapoc2019

Accepted papers will be presented in 30 minute slots including discussion. Abstracts must be written in English. Please note that the format of uploaded files must be in .pdf. Submissions without extended abstract will not be considered.

IMPORTANT DATES
Submission deadline: April 30, 2019
Notification of acceptance/rejection: June 30, 2019
Conference dates: October 28-30, 2019

Travel Grants

The HaPoC Council is happy to announce the availability of four HAPOC travel grants of $250 each to support participation at the conference. An accepted paper is required in order to be eligible for the grant. In order to apply, please send the following details to info@hapoc.org:

CV and a brief (up to 200 words) description of why you require financial support
The title of your HaPoC 2019 submission
Detailed budget indicating any other funding possibilities (if available)

Post-proceedings

A special issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (Taylor & Francis)

https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/yisr20/current

will be dedicated to the works presented at HaPoC 2019. The tentative calendar is as follows:

HaPoC conference: 28-30 October 2019
Special Issue Call for Papers: December 2019
Deadline for submissions: 01 June 2020
Reviewing process: July to September 2020
Notifications: 30 September 2020
Deadline for revised papers: 31 December 2020
Special Issue publication: beginning of 2021

The 16th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON LOGIC, METHODOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY will be held in Prague (Czech Republic) from 5th to 10th August 2019. The Commission for the History and Philosophy of Computing will contribute to the programme with 2 Symposia:

– BigData: Philosophy of Big Data (organised by Paula Quinon, International Center for Formal Ontology, Warsaw University of Technology / Department of Philosophy, Lund University)
Jens Ulrik Hansen, Philosophizing on Big Data, Data Science, and AI
Gregory Wheeler, Prolegomena to Machine Epistemology
Wolfgang Pietsch, On the epistemology of data science – the rise of a new inductivism
Domenico Napoletani, Marco Panza and Daniele C. Struppa, Finding a Way Back: Philosophy of Data Science on Its Practice
Sabina Leonelli, Semantic interoperability: The oldest challenge and newest frontier of Big Data
Helena Kossowska, Big Data in Life Science
Alejandro Espinosa‐Rada, Big data needed for network science or network science for social networks?

– IdCFAS: Identity in Computational Formal and Applied Systems (organised by Nicola Angius, Università degli Studi di Sassari and Giuseppe Primiero, Università degli Studi di Milano)
Ansten Klev, Definitional Identity in Arithmetics
Alberto Naibo and Luca Tranchini, Harmony, Stability, and the intensional account of proof-theoretic semantics
Massimiliano Carrara, Copies and Replicas of Computational Artefacts
Nicola Angius and Giuseppe Primiero, Second-Order Properties of Copied Computational Artefacts
Roberta Ferrario, Organisations and variable embodiments

HaPoC 2019: 2nd Call for Abstracts
5th International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Computing
28-30 October 2019
Bergamo, Italy
Website: https://hapoc2019.sciencesconf.org
Email: hapoc2019@sciencesconf.org

Today more than ever computers have taken center stage in our lives: science, economy, politics, art, there is no single human endeavour that has been left unaffected by Information Technologies. Whether this impact is positive or negative, is still very much up for debate.

People connected to the Internet can enjoy an unprecedented amount of information and computing power at their disposal, but more and more negative side effects of a widespread use of computers are brought to our attention: automation bias, echo chambers, shortened attention spans, job displacement, election hacking are just a few examples. The latest AI-hype fuelled by computationally feasible machine learning techniques have brought to reality philosophical topics previously relegated to mental experiments and theoretical discourses. The trolley problem has never been more popular thanks to self-driving cars.

The need to conduct a systematic and well-informed discussion in a context ranging from theoretical and mathematical problems to labour and resource exploitation issues is evident. The broken dialogue between young and aggressively finance-oriented tech moguls and old-school politicians fumbling for regulation of little-known phenomena is not promising.

HaPoC’s appeal to historical and philosophical reflection aims at addressing this shortcoming. We aim to bring together researchers exploring the various aspects of computation: historians, philosophers, computer scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, designers, manufacturers, practitioners, artists, logicians, mathematicians, each with their own experience and expertise, all part of a society impacted by computation, and all necessary to the creation of a better discourse.

Main Topics

For HaPoC 2019, we welcome contributions from scholars who intend to participate in the debate on the impact of computers on culture, science, and society from the perspective of their area of expertise, and who are open to engage in interdisciplinary discussions across multiple fields. Topics include but are not limited to:
History of computation, computers, algorithms, programs, paradigms, software and hardware companies and communities, …
Philosophy of computation, philosophy of the mind in relation with computer science, ethics of computer science, epistemology of computer science…
Foundational issues of computation, limits of computability, the Church-Turing thesis, formal systems, semantic of programs, …
Computation in the Sciences, experiments and simulations with computers, big data analytics, epistemological issues, …
Computation in Society, social networks, news and content distribution, automation, digital divide, privacy and security, …
Computation in the Arts, digital art, interactivity, computer games, affective computing, human-computer interaction, …

How to submit

We cordially invite researchers working in a field relevant to the main topics of the conference to submit a short abstract of 180-200 words and an extended abstract of at most a 1000 words (references included) through EasyChair at:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=hapoc2019

Accepted papers will be presented in 30 minute slots including discussion. Abstracts must be written in English. Please note that the format of uploaded files must be in .pdf. Submissions without extended abstract will not be considered.

IMPORTANT DATES
Submission deadline: April 30, 2019
Notification of acceptance/rejection: June 30, 2019
Conference dates: October 28-30, 2019

Travel Grants

The HaPoC Council is happy to announce the availability of four HAPOC travel grants of $250 each to support participation at the conference. An accepted paper is required in order to be eligible for the grant. In order to apply, please send the following details to info@hapoc.org:

CV and a brief (up to 200 words) description of why you require financial support
The title of your HaPoC 2019 submission
Detailed budget indicating any other funding possibilities (if available)

Post-proceedings
A special issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (Taylor & Francis)

https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/yisr20/current

will be dedicated to the works presented at HaPoC 2019. The tentative calendar is as follows:

HaPoC conference: 28-30 October 2019
Special Issue Call for Papers: December 2019
Deadline for submissions: 01 June 2020
Reviewing process: July to September 2020
Notifications: 30 September 2020
Deadline for revised papers: 31 December 2020
Special Issue publication: beginning of 2021

HaPoC 2019: Call for Abstracts

5th International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Computing
28-30 October 2019
Bergamo, Italy
Website: https://hapoc2019.sciencesconf.org
Email: hapoc2019@sciencesconf.org

Today more than ever computers have taken center stage in our lives: science, economy, politics, art, there is no single human endeavour that has been left unaffected by Information Technologies. Whether this impact is positive or negative, is still very much up for debate.

People connected to the Internet can enjoy an unprecedented amount of information and computing power at their disposal, but more and more negative side effects of a widespread use of computers are brought to our attention: automation bias, echo chambers, shortened attention spans, job displacement, election hacking are just a few examples. The latest AI-hype fuelled by computationally feasible machine learning techniques have brought to reality philosophical topics previously relegated to mental experiments and theoretical discourses. The trolley problem has never been more popular thanks to self-driving cars.

The need to conduct a systematic and well-informed discussion in a context ranging from theoretical and mathematical problems to labour and resource exploitation issues is evident. The broken dialogue between young and aggressively finance-oriented tech moguls and old-school politicians fumbling for regulation of little-known phenomena is not promising.

HaPoC’s appeal to historical and philosophical reflection aims at addressing this shortcoming. We aim to bring together researchers exploring the various aspects of computation: historians, philosophers, computer scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, designers, manufacturers, practitioners, artists, logicians, mathematicians, each with their own experience and expertise, all part of a society impacted by computation, and all necessary to the creation of a better discourse.

MAIN TOPICS

For HaPoC 2019, we welcome contributions from scholars who intend to participate in the debate on the impact of computers on culture, science, and society from the perspective of their area of expertise, and who are open to engage in interdisciplinary discussions across multiple fields. Topics include but are not limited to:

– History of computation, computers, algorithms, programs, paradigms, software and hardware companies and communities, …
– Philosophy of computation, philosophy of the mind in relation with computer science, ethics of computer science, epistemology of computer science…
– Foundational issues of computation, limits of computability, the Church-Turing thesis, formal systems, semantic of programs, …
– Computation in the Sciences, experiments and simulations with computers, big data analytics, epistemological issues, …
– Computation in Society, social networks, news and content distribution, automation, digital divide, privacy and security, …
– Computation in the Arts, digital art, interactivity, computer games, affective computing, human-computer interaction, …

HOW TO SUBMIT
We cordially invite researchers working in a field relevant to the main topics of the conference to submit a short abstract of 180-200 words and an extended abstract of at most a 1000 words (references included) through EasyChair at:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=hapoc2019

Accepted papers will be presented in 30 minute slots including discussion. Abstracts must be written in English. Please note that the format of uploaded files must be in .pdf. Submissions without extended abstract will not be considered.

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission deadline: April 30, 2019
Notification of acceptance/rejection: June 30, 2019
Conference dates: October 28-30, 2019

TRAVEL GRANTS
The HaPoC Council is happy to announce the availability of four HAPOC travel grants of $250 each to support participation at the conference. An accepted paper is required in order to be eligible for the grant. In order to apply, please send the following details to info@hapoc.org:

– CV and a brief (up to 200 words) description of why you require financial support
– The title of your HaPoC 2019 submission
– Detailed budget indicating any other funding possibilities (if available)

POST-PROCEEDINGS
A special issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (Taylor & Francis)

https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/yisr20/current

will be dedicated to the works presented at HaPoC 2019. The tentative calendar is as follows:

HaPoC conference: 28-30 October 2019
Special Issue Call for Papers: December 2019
Deadline for submissions: 01 June 2020
Reviewing process: July to September 2020
Notifications: 30 September 2020
Deadline for revised papers: 31 December 2020
Special Issue publication: beginning of 2021