SIGCIS 2025
Power Surge
September 25-27, 2025
Online via Zoom
The 16th annual conference of the Special Interest Group in Computing, Information, and Society [SIGCIS]
Registration is Open!
Conference Schedule
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Lily Geismer
Professor of History,
Claremont McKenna College
"Democrats and Tech:
Past, Present, and Future"
The Democratic Party and the tech industry have cultivated a symbiotic relationship since the 1960s. However, that relationship is appearing increasingly fraught. In light of these developments, this talk will examine the evolution of this relationship and what the changing political dynamics mean not only for the Democratic Party, but also for understanding the history of computing and technology.
Past, Present, and Future"
The Democratic Party and the tech industry have cultivated a symbiotic relationship since the 1960s. However, that relationship is appearing increasingly fraught. In light of these developments, this talk will examine the evolution of this relationship and what the changing political dynamics mean not only for the Democratic Party, but also for understanding the history of computing and technology.
About SIGCIS 2025: Power Surge
The SIGCIS Conference is the leading annual international meeting for researchers of computing and information history. The Conference is organized by members of the Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and Society, part of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT).
From the rapid uptake of commercial AI tools in the workplace to the increasingly dominant role the tech industry is playing in politics, the combustible confluence of technology, power, money, and politics is moving fast and things are breaking. Scholars and practitioners know to be wary of cycles of hype and fear around new technologies. But to many, what’s happening today feels like a definitive break from the past, akin to an unexpected power spike that exceeds the normal operating voltage of a circuit. For SIGCIS 2025, we ask: What are the stakes of studying the history of computing at a time when technology's perceived excesses are unraveling political institutions, legal doctrines, and professional norms? When technology works as intended for some and "glitches" for others (Benjamin 2019), when political agency is superseded by the technologists' visions of autonomy (Marx 2010), and when labor is devalued in the name of machine productivity (Bix 2000), we assert that locating this moment within the longer history of computing can help us grapple with the contemporary politics of power.
The 16th annual conference of the Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and Society (SIGCIS) employs a broad definition of the history of the politics of computing to facilitate a timely discussion of the relationship between political power and digital technologies. What role does the tech industry play in engineering political, cultural, and economic orders? How do the changes in systems of government funding and patronage steer the goals, tasks, and values of professional and research communities in computer science and engineering? How do political and economic ideologies create demand for certain technologies and shape their adoption? Whether one sees this moment as a breaking point or as a fundamental continuity, this year's theme "Power Surge" also connotes the potential for resistance and response to excesses of computing’s technologies, institutions, corporate actors, and legal doctrines. What modes of effective push-back does the history of computing present to us?
"SIGCIS 2025: Power Surge" invites scholars, museum and archive professionals, journalists, IT practitioners, artists, and independent researchers across the disciplinary spectrum to consider how the history of computing and information technology can offer fresh perspectives on tech policy and regulation, the institutional contexts in which computing technology is developed and deployed, and how computing technologies mediate the politics of everyday life.
From the rapid uptake of commercial AI tools in the workplace to the increasingly dominant role the tech industry is playing in politics, the combustible confluence of technology, power, money, and politics is moving fast and things are breaking. Scholars and practitioners know to be wary of cycles of hype and fear around new technologies. But to many, what’s happening today feels like a definitive break from the past, akin to an unexpected power spike that exceeds the normal operating voltage of a circuit. For SIGCIS 2025, we ask: What are the stakes of studying the history of computing at a time when technology's perceived excesses are unraveling political institutions, legal doctrines, and professional norms? When technology works as intended for some and "glitches" for others (Benjamin 2019), when political agency is superseded by the technologists' visions of autonomy (Marx 2010), and when labor is devalued in the name of machine productivity (Bix 2000), we assert that locating this moment within the longer history of computing can help us grapple with the contemporary politics of power.
The 16th annual conference of the Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and Society (SIGCIS) employs a broad definition of the history of the politics of computing to facilitate a timely discussion of the relationship between political power and digital technologies. What role does the tech industry play in engineering political, cultural, and economic orders? How do the changes in systems of government funding and patronage steer the goals, tasks, and values of professional and research communities in computer science and engineering? How do political and economic ideologies create demand for certain technologies and shape their adoption? Whether one sees this moment as a breaking point or as a fundamental continuity, this year's theme "Power Surge" also connotes the potential for resistance and response to excesses of computing’s technologies, institutions, corporate actors, and legal doctrines. What modes of effective push-back does the history of computing present to us?
"SIGCIS 2025: Power Surge" invites scholars, museum and archive professionals, journalists, IT practitioners, artists, and independent researchers across the disciplinary spectrum to consider how the history of computing and information technology can offer fresh perspectives on tech policy and regulation, the institutional contexts in which computing technology is developed and deployed, and how computing technologies mediate the politics of everyday life.