International History Track at HCC 16 in Phuket

The Human Choice in Computers (HCC) conference series will celebrate its 50th year in 2024. The overall theme for the conference “Humans, Technological Innovations and Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Consequences.” The conference will be held in Phuket, Thailand, from 8 to 10 September 2024.

HCC is organized by IFIP’s Technical Committee 9 (TC 9), which studies the interactions between information and computer technology (ICT) and society. Under the umbrella of TC 9, Working Group 9.7 (WG 9.7) is focused on the history of computing.

Accordingly, WG 9.7 will sponsor a track of papers at HCC 16 about the history of AI. We are particularly interested to hear from scholars who can show how the international history of computing sheds light on the current development and future directions of generative artificial intelligence. Thinking about other researchers, museums, archives, and educators, the best papers will suggest how to improve contemporary practice. What were the most important developments related to today’s use of AI? How can international insights improve the historical understanding of AI? In what way did historical choices impact the development of how we define AI today?

As an international organization, we are particularly interested in papers that detail historical AI projects or research from around the world. A potted history of AI might start with in the 1950s, with famous milestones like the Turing Test and the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. Papers could consider international antecedents and concurrent research that enhances the history of AI with stories from outside the U.S. and UK. Cultural representations of artificial intelligence, such as Czech writer Karel Čapek’s 1921 play R.U.R., could also provide an effective starting point for analysis.

The HCC conference series has, for 50 years, offered computing professionals and academics and opportunity to work together to consider the best uses of computers. Emphasizing “human choice,” HCC seeks to advise practitioners and the public about the choices we face as a society. Thus, papers using historical analysis to elucidate human choice in computing are most appropriate for this track of HCC 16.

Papers that consider any aspect of the history of AI are welcome, including:

  • International case studies
  • Experiences of other technology that can be applied to AI
  • First-hand or personal narratives
  • Social, economic, or institutional histories
  • Insights from feminist, queer, postcolonial perspectives
  • Forgotten paths and opportunities for re-innovation
  • Critiques of historiography
  • Analysis of science fiction or other cultural representations

In order to participate in this track at HCC, please submit your full conference paper (3,000 to 5,000 words) before 31 January 2024. During the submission process, please indicate your interest in the history of AI track sponsored by WG 9.7 in the comments field, as shown below:

The practice of HCC is to publish papers in a Springer proceedings volume in advance of the conference. More details are available on the HCC 16 conference page. Papers for the history of AI track at HCC 16 should be submitted here: https://equinocs.springernature.com/service/HCC2024 (please make sure you add a comment that your paper is for consideration in WG 9.7’s history track). Speakers will pay for their own travel, accommodation, and registration fee. 

Working Group 9.7 is also organizing a separate Histories of Computing in Asia workshop, which will run concurrently with HCC16. More information about this workshop is available at https://ifipwg97.org/workshops/hca2024/