Abstract: Although the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the rise of networked computing in the United States overlapped at the same point in history — the mid 1980s to early 1990s — the epidemic is often overlooked in mainstream narratives of internet and computer histories. This research introduces the role that LGBTQ+ people and people with AIDS played in the adoption of personal computing through a collection of born-digital archival records; the largest of which exists solely on paper. In this talk, Brewster will demonstrate how the materiality and maintenance of born-digital records affects and informs a cultural understanding of computer-mediated community memory practices. Through this work, she envisions new ways of thinking about care and maintenance in the digitization of records.

Bio: Kat Brewster is a PhD candidate in Informatics at UC Irvine, whose research focuses on computer history, digital culture, and archives, with an emphasis on LGBTQ+ populations. Through collaborative research networks and archival work, her scholarly contributions analyze equitable design practices, digital platforms, and how we remember queer life online. Her current research project looks at the history of computer bulletin board systems by and for people with HIV/AIDS and the communities they built online to make life worth living.