My new book will be out in early December 2025 via @mitpress.bsky.social Details at: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255348... #HistSci #Computing #History #Books 🗃️

Rolling into freshman year of high school with this in-wallet.

His ROOMBA that had been sending detailed maps of his house god knows where, and bricking itself when he tried to disable the spyware INCREDIBLE freaking story Can we have Things with No Internet please, happy to pay extra

Our healthcare system isn’t broken, it’s rigged.

Nice 10 minute video on the history of Siri by my Computer History Museum colleague Marc Weber. www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3nA...

Ken Thompson on why Unix and C have been so enduring. An excerpt from my recently published oral history with him for CHM and the ACM. youtu.be/1HyFsZ5t4tk

Happy to report that my oral history interview with Barbara Liskov -- ACM Turing Award winner and CHM Fellow -- for the Computer History Museum is now online! youtu.be/lhcGCekk4pk

My oral history interview with Ken Thompson -- of Unix, C, Go, computer chess, and other fame -- for the Computer History Museum and the ACM is now online! computerhistory.org/blog/a-compu...

History of semiconductors question: Reading about 1966 law in South Korea that offered foreign companies tax exemptions on goods manufactured there for export. This is when Fairchild and other US IC makers opened assembly factories in South Korea, creating local subsidiaries. /1

Lovely letter today from TransUnion telling me that they allowed my SSN and DOB to be hacked, and then offering me free credit monitoring and fraud assistance from...TransUnion.

"0.3 per cent of the world’s land area – yes, just the land – would be needed to meet the current energy demand from solar alone, which is LESS THAN THE CURRENT LAND FOOTPRINT OF FOSSIL FUEL INFRASTRUCTURE."

I have a new book coming out this autumn via @mitpress.bsky.social ...details at: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255348... #HistSci #Computing #History #Books 🗃️

STS and computer history people: please RT, boost, and follow @sigcisconf.bsky.social !

schadenfreudescrolling

Great panel on the effort to recover the text from the Herculaneum scrolls using digital technologies. From the Computer History Museum. youtu.be/ObbcqmWFNYs?...

Really looking forward to this upcoming event at the Computer History Museum. It is on the use of neural networks and other technologies to identify the writing on scrolls that were carbonized and buried in 79CE in Herculaneum! In-person and On-line. computerhistory.org/events/ai-de...

I had the pleasure of interviewing Saydean Zeldin, a key programmer for the Apollo Guidance Computer and a software entrepreneur, for the Computer History Museum's Oral History Program. Watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCTr...

Really looking forward to this upcoming event at the Computer History Museum. It is on the use of neural networks and other technologies to identify the writing on scrolls that were carbonized and buried in 79CE in Herculaneum! In-person and On-line. computerhistory.org/events/ai-de...

“Engineers and computer scientists, please defend humanities research just as loudly as you might defend research in STEM fields.” With thousands of funding cuts across the humanities, it’s vitally important that engineers stand up to support the humanities.

🖥️ In the 1980s, the race to develop accessible and affordable home computers had begun, and a British computer scientist was leading the charge. Our latest blog post explores the career of one of its pioneering programmers, Sophie Wilson. Find out more: bit.ly/4iwKtD3

TOMORROW: Join online or in-person (CA) for a dynamic & timely public forum on tech and the future of news, featuring top newsmakers, experts, and changemakers. We appreciate the support we've received from the CHM-- check out this event "Making News With Data" by following the link to register! 💻👩‍💻

Just got word from my college roommate - who is the state archivist for the state of South Dakota - that due to the DOGE shutdowns of IMLS, they can no longer fund InterLibrary Loan in SD. This means exchange between libraries, ability to get books delivered across the system, is gone as of 4/30.

TODAY at 2 PM ET: Join us in-person or virtually for a conversation about Building the Indigenous Internet, with Ashley Cordes, Majerle Lister, and @lnakamura.bsky.social! 📍 Weiser Hall 10th Floor, University of Michigan & Zoom More info and register: events.umich.edu/event/130932

Highly recommended: spectrum.ieee.org/ai-chatbot

Has anyone written a straightforward Marxist analysis of the impulse to replace labor with 'AI' in our current moment, and the continual pursuit of this dream by DODGE, Trump's tariff 'calculations,' 'edtech,' consumer products, etc. despite the continual abject inadequacy of the tech?

Dick Kramlich, 1935-2025 computerhistory.org/blog/dick-kr...

Excited for this upcoming CHM event on the past, present, and future of data journalism. Registration open for in-person and on-line. As always, free! computerhistory.org/events/makin...

A really fantastic debate between two leading experts at CHM this week on large language models and the fundamental question of their ability to understand. Please watch and circulate. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtIQ...

Tuesday's Great Chatbot Debate, now on CHM's YouTube channel. I answered the question by providing a definition of "understanding" and showing why LLMs don't understand and why it can seem like they do. >> youtu.be/YtIQVaSS5Pg?...

If you're interested in language, AI, and cognition, this is the *must-watch* video of the week: Debate a few days ago between Dr. @emilymbender.bsky.social and Dr. @sbubeck.bsky.social on whether chatbots can "understand". Was a lively and fun debate to watch. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtIQ...

Getting my notes organized for my opening statement -- expecting this to be entertaining Note: virtual attendance is possible! computerhistory.org/events/great...

After five years of effort, we've released the source code for AlexNet, an extremely important system in the recent history of artificial intelligence. Our thanks to everyone who helped us make this happen. Read more here, and access the code. computerhistory.org/blog/chm-rel...

What does the IMLS fund, you ask? You can look up grants to your state, but just for example, in 2022 they helped Iowa libraries with summer reading programs, broadband access, online resources, job training, and more. /2 www.imls.gov/grants/award...

Screenshot in case the main post gets taken down

Excited for this public debate next week at the Computer History Museum on the question of whether or not we can see Large Language Models as possessing real understanding. Join us in-person or on-line. A collaboration with IEEE Spectrum. computerhistory.org/events/great...

🚨NEW🚨: Donald Trump is attempting to strip away federal support for libraries. We will NOT let that happen. Last night the President signed an order to gut the Institute of Museum & Library Services. But together, we know we can show up & defeat it. Full EO: www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Interlibrary loan looks like magic and works off of the labor of dedicated library employees. Now under attack by boring people who don't read.

IMLS is the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It's about $200 million per year for libraries and $50 million for museums. Not a lot for the federal budget, but a huge piece of the culture and knowledge system - which is why MAGA is eliminating it.

This promises to be a very interesting debate on a crucial topic. At the Computer History Museum in partnership with IEEE Spectrum. Live and livestream. Register today! computerhistory.org/events/great...

The Computer History Museum's really excellent public programs are now available as audio podcasts. They are on all the usual platforms. Here is one on what is to me the most interesting thing happening in contemporary computing. It's not AI. open.spotify.com/episode/0QxI...

Wouldn't a nice attack be to train a LLM on poisoned data so that it generates code with sophisticated vulnerabilities in it, and then release the weights but not the training data and call it open source? With just the weights, wouldn't this attack be invisible? www.darkreading.com/application-...

Gozo sociology of scientific knowledge…on economists and inequality. youtu.be/CivlU8hJVwc?...

Very much looking forward to a visit to the Computer History Museum to check out their new exhibit on chatbots and A.I. www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDWy...

Very proud of our new exhibit on the history and present of chatbots at the Computer History Museum. youtu.be/sDWyhUzkROA?...

Here’s a history of computing story I’m pretty sure you don’t already know. spectrum.ieee.org/ibm-demo

After five years of effort, I was delighted to collect for the Computer History Museum yesterday the Sycamore quantum computing processor used in Google Quantum AI’s 2019 “beyond classical” milestone.

Global atmospheric pollution threatens both our health and environment. Chemist James Lovelock’s Electron Capture Detector (ECD) transformed how we detect harmful chemicals in the air. Discover how his groundbreaking device shaped our understanding of the environment: bit.ly/41ghhLN

I've been experimenting with Google's NotebookLM, using a couple hundred pages of docs from a FOIA to the NSA about its involvement in MOS microchips in the 1960s. Took 15 years to get the FOIA! Here's a fake podcast that I generated with NotebookLM about the docs. soundcloud.com/dcbrock/nsa-...

Scott Budman from the NBC Bay Area television station did a very nice job covering the public opening of our new exhibit at the Computer History Museum, "Chatbots Decoded: Exploring AI." www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAlp...