Computer Science and Computer Use in Public Administration in Switzerland (1960-1984) - Ricky Wichum
2025-11-12 17:00 - 18:30 (Europe/Berlin) | Stadtpalais/Online, Theaterstraße 75, Aachen, 52062, Germany
Abstract:
In my presentation, I examine the digital culture of public administration in Switzerland from 1960 to 1990. The perspective on Switzerland is significant for the history of computing because the country lacks its own computer industry, but has an internationally well-connected computer science department at ETH Zurich. As I will demonstrate, numerous formal and informal interactions took place between ETH’s computer science department and government agencies, which significantly influenced both sides’ work with computers.
This presentation focuses on debates about data protection in Switzerland during the mid-1970s. I argue that data protection can be seen as a trading zone between academic computer science and administrative computer use. Despite their different interests, both sides agree to cooperate for a time. While the administration was eager to avoid federal laws and relied on the data protection mechanisms of the computer itself (and the computer scientists who promoted trust in the computer with public data), the academics used the bureaucratic routines of data processing and data protection as inspiration for teaching and research in the newly established discipline. Finally, I would like to speculate on whether elements of a political theory of digital societies can be found in the administrative knowledge of computer science.
This event is part of our winter term 2025/26 Lecture Series Digital Complexity: Beyond Human Understanding.
If you would like to attend, please register with events@khk.rwth-aachen.de.

Stochastic Systems - Dirk Baecker (Friedrichshafen)
2025-11-26 17:00 - 18:30 | Stadtpalais/Online, Theaterstraße 75, Aachen, 52062, Germany
Abstract:
Digital complexity eludes human understanding not only because it is based on the synchronization of incommensurable systems, but also because each of these systems operates stochastically. We owe this insight to the “synthetic intelligence” (Brian Cantwell Smith) of machine learning models. An initially random variation of model assumptions enables the discovery and description of chance-dependent structures of an object or field ‘out there’. Stochastic systems “tame” (Ian Hacking) chance with the help of chance. This may apply not only to artificial systems, but also to neural, mental, and social systems. And perhaps their stochasticity is the condition of possibility for their synchronization, which can only ever be temporary. The lecture outlines a basic understanding of technology, society, consciousness, and the brain in order to plausibly demonstrate that we are dealing with stochastic systems here. It discusses three concepts that can be used to describe the synchronization of these systems. The concept of information comes from computer science and formulates a relational understanding of information. The concept of feedback comes from cybernetics and brings the observer into play. And the concept of chance comes from stochastics and establishes a medial as well as formal understanding of reality. Digital complexity arises from the unavailability of the difference between the systems involved.
This event is part of our winter term 2025/26 Lecture Series Digital Complexity: Beyond Human Understanding.
If you would like to attend, please register with events@khk.rwth-aachen.de.

Green Work and Environmental Knowledge
2025-11-27 10:00 - 19:00 | Stadtpalais, Theaterstraße 75, Aachen, 52062, Germany
Abstract:
What is green work, who are green workers, and how are material cultures of practice and work and sustainable-society-in-transition co-produced? This workshop engages these questions, proceeding from the premise that, generally speaking, studies of environment, science, technology, society (STS), and energy have overlooked studies of material cultures of practice and work. Over the last half-century, public policies have invested increasingly large resources into environmental mitigation and statistics suggest that many environmentally-sustainable green jobs are being stimulated in the process. Yet green work remains an ill-defined “contested discourse” (Teelucksingh 2019) as evidenced in the disparity between US and European data on this subject (Apostel and Barslund 2024). This controversy and the knowledge deficit it implies raises questions of the character and culture of environmental mitigation, including the technologies, infrastructures, and material practices/social relations informed by environmental policy and green industrialization, as well as what a socially and environmentally-just society would look like for the workers expected to build and maintain it.
Schedule:
10:00 Morning coffee
10:15 Welcome and introductions: Matthew N. Eisler (University of Strathclyde)
11:00 Keynote: University Professor Ferdinanda Ponci (E.ON Energy Research Center, RWTH Aachen University)
11:40 Q&A, discussion
12:00-1:30 Lunch
1:30 Mila Davids (Eindhoven University)
2:00 Q&A, discussion
2:20 Lisa Claussmann (Paris-PSL)
2:50 Q&A, discussion
3:10 Katie Kung (LMU Munich)
3:40 Q&A, discussion
4:00 Afternoon coffee
4:15 Rosalind Donald (American University)
4:45 Q&A, discussion
5:30-6:30 Wrap-up discussion, moderated by Hannah Star Rogers or Phillip H. Roth
7:00 Dinner (Restaurant Elisenbrunnen)

Please find more information and the abstracts in this document.
If you would like to attend, please register with events@khk.rwth-aachen.de.

Reasoning in the Age of AI: Philosophical Perspectives
2025-12-16 09:30 - 17:00 | Stadtpalais, Theaterstraße 75, Aachen, 52062, Germany
Abstract:
This workshop explores the conceptual foundations of reasoning and asks whether artificial systems can genuinely be said to reason. It deals with how human thinking, which is shaped by beliefs, intentionality and experience, differs from the more formal, rule-based processes of AI. By discussing different perspectives from philosophy, cognitive science, and AI research, we aim to better understand whether artificial reasoning could ever be considered real reasoning, and what this might mean for our understanding.
Program:
09:30 Welcome (Gabriele Gramelsberger)
09:45 Markus Pantsar (RWTH Aachen): Towards an Epistemology of AI Reasoning
10:30 Jacqueline Bellon (University Tübingen): Reasoning by Accident and Intelligence beyond Belief: Is Statistical Reasoning Rational and are Humans?
11:15 Coffee Break
11:30 Jakob Ohlhorst (RWTH Aachen): Theory of Mind, (joint) Reasoning, and Large Language Models
12:15 Lunch
13:45 Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer (University Leipzig): Higher level Reason in Dialectical and Speculative Reflections. On the limited “Rationality” of Automatable Thinking
14:30 Stefania Centrone (Technical University Munich): Deductive Reasoning in Leibniz, Boole, and Beyond
15:15 Coffee Break
15:30 Daniel Wenz (RWTH Aachen): What is the Reason behind Artificial Reasoning?
16:15 Final Discussion
Please find the program and of the workshop in this document.
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Conference HaPoC 2025
2025-12-17 - 2025-12-19
The KHK c:o/re is proud to host the 8th edition of the international conference on History and Philosophy of Computing (HaPoC), taking place every two years under the auspices of the DHST/DLMPST Interdivisional Commission on History and Philosophy of Computing (www.hapoc.org).
Initiated in 2011, the conference has the aim of building an interdisciplinary community and environment to address the various facets of computing and computing technology, bringing together scholars from a broad range of disciplines to discuss the past and present cultures, practices and images of computing.
Find the program on our website or as a pdf document.

Keynote Speakers:
Liesbeth De Mol, CNRS/Université de Lille, France
Robin K. Hill, University of Wyoming, US
Alexandre Hocquet, Université de Lorraine, France
Program Committee:
Arianna Borrelli, TU Berlin and RWTH Aachen, Germany
Jianqing Chen, Washington University at Saint Louis, US
Jack Copeland, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ
Beatrice Fazi, University of Sussex, UK
Gabriele Gramelsberger, RWTH Aachen, Germany
Thomas Haigh, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, US
Andrei Korbut, CAIS Center for Advanced Internet Studies Bochum, Germany
Alfred Nordmann, TU Darmstadt, Germany
Mitsuhiro Okada, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan
Ben Peters, University of Tulsa, US
Mate Szabo, University of Southern California, US
Local Organising Committee at RWTH Aachen University:
Gabriele Gramelsberger (philosophy of science)
Stefan Böschen (sociology of science)
Dawid Kasprowicz (philosophy of science)
Phillip Roth (science and technology studies)
Saskia Nagel (ethics of science)
Torsten Voigt (science and technology studies)

A Portrait of the Scientist as a User - Alexandre Hocquet (Nancy)
2025-12-17 17:00 - 18:30 | RWTH Aachen University – Super C, Templergraben 57, Aachen, 52062
Abstract:
Why are computational chemists so peculiar ? The history of their relationship with software brings an interesting case study to understand how software may shape scientific activity. We present four key moments in this history — from 1962 to 2024 — to illustrate how visions of openness and user agency have evolved. These include a software-sharing initiative, controversies over licensing and user management, and debates about the Alphafold AI tool.
The multifaceted category of ‘users’ is key to understand discourses about opennness. We identify patterns of evolution in the relationship between software packages and the computational chemistry community. Throughout our narration, the notion of ‘users’ becomes more complex, in line with the commodification of programs into packages and the increasing complexity of the packages themselves.
Through the dyanmics of sharing, the legal consequences of software licenses, Non-Discolsure Agreements, and End-User Licence Agreements, we point out that the overall resulting pattern of evolution amounts to a kind of dispossession of scientists’ agency in their relationships with their tools. We propose to view the history of computational chemistry as the formation of a particular ‘repertoire’ where software is central and where the issue of the forms of collaboration and interaction among practitioners implies visions of openness of software development, circulation, maintenance and uses, all in friction.
This lecture is part of the 8th HaPoC Conference 2025 in Aachen.
If you would like to attend, please register with events@khk.rwth-aachen.de.

What Is a Computer Program? Or, How I Liberate(d) Myself as a Computer User - Liesbeth De Mol (Lille)
2025-12-18 09:30 - 10:30 | RWTH Aachen University – Super C, Templergraben 57, Aachen, 52062
Abstract:
The aim of this talk is to present the PROGRAMme project, a collective work amongst researchers from diverse disciplinary and ideological backgrounds who met for several years to work on the question “What is a computer program?”. In that project we develop a research programme which assumes it is possible /and/ necessary to work together across disciplinary and other boundaries to turn around a number of fundamental problems we are facing in connection to “programs”. In that regard, the project is ﬁrst of all a humanistic work: while programs have been interpreted before as an exempliﬁcation of cold, inhuman rationality, it is clear that more humanistic visions are possible. I present the project from a personal perspective and show how my version of PROGRAMme is deeply anchored in a more activist stance aimed at user liberations which, in my case, goes hand-in-hand with so-called academic nomadisms. I conclude with some concrete proposals for the future of the history and philosophy of computing.
This lecture is part of the 8th HaPoC Conference 2025 in Aachen.
If you would like to attend, please register with events@khk.rwth-aachen.de.

Art Event: The Ambiguity of Sorting
2025-12-18 18:00 - 20:00 | RWTH Aachen University – Super C – Generali Saal 639, Templergraben 57, Aachen, 52062, Germany
The Ambiguity of Sorting
How do technologies of separation bring us together?
Digital systems are based on acts of transformation from continuity and unity into discreteness and separation. These acts of transformation have been popularized in the multiple ways in which humans engage with AI systems and other forms of digital technologies. Everything we do is transformed, one could say, automatically into data. It is transformed into discrete units that can be computed. Digital technologies have become more than tools for research; people produce knowledge with them, engage emotionally through and with these systems, generating new forms and spaces of intimacy. At the same time, these technologies carry a history of creating disconnections, failing to account for different ways of engaging with the world. They are the result of a certain imaginary of the human and intelligence, one that leaves aside many other existing ways to be in the world. What kind of communities are enabled by technologies? What kind of technologies are successful in bringing communities together? Can we imagine a history of technology that is based on plural ways of understanding intelligence and the human? How can we design technologies that bring people together? How can we imagine technologies that enable communities?
The Ambiguity of Sorting is a pop-up exhibition and a panel discussion that takes place during the 8th edition of the Conference of the Society for the History and Philosophy of Computing. The event brings together installation, performance, and conversations to discuss how the history of intelligent systems embodied ideas of intelligence, the human, and how we live together. With the panel, we invite to think of a different history of computing, one where those that were not thought to be fitting within their categories were creating their own technologies all along.
With contribution by: Sasha Bergstrom-Katz, Ren Loren Britton, and Verena Friedrich
Organization and moderation: Ana Maria Guzmán Olmos
Find out more about the artists and their artworks on this website.
Header photo: Sasha Bergstrom-Katz, On the Subject of Tests: Opening Boxes, 2022. Video.

Desktop to Discourse: Philosophy Born of Wordstar and VisiCalc - Robin Hill (Laramie)
2025-12-19 09:30 - 10:30 | RWTH Aachen University – Super C, Templergraben 57, Aachen, 52062
Abstract:
While the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Philosophy and Computers started its mission with community tech help and suggestions, the path proceeded through technique, practice, and application to philosophy. To explore interesting stages along the way, this talk identifies and follows features of office software through their effects and implications to emerging philosophical questions. Some are known, some are trivial, but we find questions of potential depth concerning the affordances and constraints of naming, values, separation, and structure, all appropriate for the philosophy of computing.
This lecture is part of the 8th HaPoC Conference 2025 in Aachen.
If you would like to attend, please register with events@khk.rwth-aachen.de.

Reimagining Cities: Computational Thinking in the Post War Period - Nathalie Bredella (Hanover)
2026-01-07 17:00 - 18:30 | Stadtpalais/Online, Theaterstraße 75, Aachen, 52062, Germany
This event is part of our winter term 2025/26 Lecture Series Digital Complexity: Beyond Human Understanding.
If you would like to attend, please register with events@khk.rwth-aachen.de.

Did the Computer Drive Science? Hardware Development and Digital Complexity in the 20th Century - Ulf Hashagen (Munich)
2026-01-21 17:00 - 18:30 | Stadtpalais/Online, Theaterstraße 75, Aachen, 52062, Germany
Abstract:
The assumption that economic, technological and scientific development is driven by technological
determinism is widespread in politics, business, and society, as well as among scientists and
engineers. A notable example of this belief is the current notion that advances in scientific
knowledge are inextricably linked to the development of AI technology. Since the AI boom in the
2010s was based on the particular potential of graphics processing units (GPUs) for implementing
deep learning algorithms, the question arises as to what extent modern science in the 20th century
was already based on computers and driven by hardware innovations.
A historical review should enable a critical examination of this assumption from a broader historical
perspective. The lecture addresses the question of the extent to which the development of computer
hardware and scientific development have influenced each other since the invention of the computer
in the 1940s. Historical research has shown that the design and development of the first computers
was primarily driven by scientific problems in war research. From the mid-1950s onwards,
universities and non-university research institutions increasingly entered into “alliances with
industry” in the planning and production of new computers and eventually became customers of the
computer industry. How this bilateral producer-customer relationship and the trilateral relationship
between the computer industry, the state, and science have developed since the 1950s in terms of
research funding, the equipping of scientific institutions with computers, and their use by scientists
from various disciplines is a question that has received relatively little attention in historical research
to date.
These questions are discussed against the backdrop that, since the 1970s, the history of technology
has been committed to a model of contextualized historiography and has sought to prove in
numerous studies that the assumption that technology is an autonomous factor in the continuous
transformation of the human environment is a naïve idea.
This event is part of our winter term 2025/26 Lecture Series Digital Complexity: Beyond Human Understanding.
If you would like to attend, please register with events@khk.rwth-aachen.de.

Digital Complexity in Historical Perspective: Lessons from the Study of Technological Transitions in Data Production and Visualization - Charlotte Bigg (Paris)
2026-02-11 17:00 - 18:30 | Stadtpalais/Online, Theaterstraße 75, Aachen, 52062, Germany
