I have posted as a new pull-down menu at the top of this screen, the first paper assignment, which is due November 7th. We can discuss this in class next week if folks have any questions.

Hi all,

It has been brought to my attention that the selections from Anya Kamenetz’s book, DIY U, aren’t up on the group site with the other readings for Oct 6. As it turns out, we don’t have access to this text to post it in time for class. As an alternate, I am posting a PDF of her e-book, The Edupunks’ Guide, which outlines strategies for students to acquire high-quality education and credentials outside of the traditional classroom.

This is optional reading, but you are encouraged to peruse The Edupunks’ Guide and evaluate it as a response to the current cost, access, and quality crises in higher education.

In my reading in digital humanities over the past few years, I have encountered what seems to be countless references to Vannevar Bush’s article and Memex— his suggested design of an information retrieval system using microfilm—on multiple occasions. Bush and Memex are held up as historical forebears outside the academy as well. A Google search for “Memex” retrieves 2.6 million results, the top-most referring to new software being developed by the military. Perhaps more revealing of the cultural reach of Memex as a meme is that a search of Google Videos retrieves 46,000 results (!). I have become increasingly impatient at the iconic stature that Memex has achieved and the use of Bush’s article as a historic marker in the field of information science as well as, to an extent, in digital humanities.

Although, I should mention that Belinda Barnet wrote an excellent DHQ piece about Memex and Bush, noting that Bush’s machine had never been built and “All we have of Memex are the words that Bush assembled around it in his lifetime, the drawings created by the artists from Life, its erotic simulacrum.”

In 1980. Linda C. Smith performed a citation analysis of Bush’s article (which was reprinted several times) to “assess the impact of Bush’s ideas on the subsequent design and development of information retrieval systems.” Her analysis jibes with my impressions of references to Bush’s article. She indicates that while it was highly cited as a historical turning point in computing and information science, the majority of these attempts to historicize information retrieval vis-à-vis Memex, were “perfunctory,” and may indicate a lack of acquaintance with the article and Bush’s ideas. (Smith, Linda C. “‘Memex’ as an Image of Potentiality in Information Retrieval Research and Development.” Proceedings of the 3rd Annual ACM Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval. 1980. 351.)

Hello everyone–

As you know, the Wikipedia workshop will be held this evening in the Library Basement Mac Lab C196.01. Here is a quick agenda of what we will cover. Also, the handouts we will use (I will bring print copies): Editing Wikipedia and Instructor Basics. (See also the brochure created for student editors).

If attending the workshop, please create a Wikipedia account beforehand. To do so, go to a Wikipedia article page and select “Create Account.”

When I first started at the Graduate Center, one of my classmates mentioned that she was pursuing a double concentration through the MALS program in both Fashion Studies and Digital Humanities. Not being familiar with Digital Humanities at the time, I asked her what exactly that term meant. It seemed to be a bit of a surprise to her that she was unable to find a concise, clear answer to this, ultimately leaving it at “it kind of touches on everything.” This encounter was one of the primary reasons that I had wanted to tackle this Steven E. Jones piece from The Emergence of the Digital Humanities.

I don’t have a lengthy post, as I feel the author, even in the context of this being the book’s introduction, plainly laid out his goals for showing the how’s, why’s, and struggles within academia that has produced digital humanities as the popular and growing field that we now know it to be. I do however want to give further consideration to this subject of identity.

On its own, humanities is already a sprawling classification that would also fit into my classmate’s definition of “it kind of touches everything”, so when in combination with the technology-based aspect, it’s legitimate to question what it does it and what it doesn’t constitute the digital humanities. In one of his responses to this, Jones uses very appropriate imagery of a flower with many overlapping petals to elucidate the complexity of assigning firm boundaries when dealing in such a rich, and perhaps subjective area.

Thomson in this articles asks how technological improvement in time-keeping changed ordinary people’s experience of time. This reminds me of a novel I read in my early teenage years: Momo or also known as The Men in Gray written by Michael Ende (1973).

This is the story of Momo (from wikipedia)

“In the ruins of an amphitheatre just outside an unnamed Italian city lives Momo, a little girl of mysterious origin. She is remarkable in the neighborhood because she has the extraordinary ability to listen — really listen. By simply being with people and listening to them, she can help them find answers to their problems, make up with each other, and think of fun games. The expression “go and see Momo!” has become synonymous with panacea and Momo has become the friend of everyone, especially honest street- cleaner Beppo and poetic tour guide Guido (also known as “Gigi”).

Hi class,

In light of last night’s discussion on production, I though I’d post a link to a documentary about what is currently going on within the garment industry, in case anyone is interested. This film does a pretty terrific job of showing how the environment and people’s lives are being affected by various irresponsible fashion practices, as well as the reasons why they are happening.

http://truecostmovie.com

A recent internet phenomenon features a photo in which of a clumsy steam locomotive lugging a slim streamlining modern bullet train out of a typhoon affected station in southern China where the entire region lost its electricity power due to the natural catastrophe. In a country where most of its steam powered engines retired to museums, this photo caused quite a nostalgia among various generations, majority of whom interestingly chose to overlook the practical function of that locomotive. Though perhaps no longer culturally dominating, an old technology or organic power rarely just extinct globally, it either becomes less noticeable into the infrastructure, or transit into a role that is less function prominent but experience based. Schivelbusch discussed the psychological attitude we had transitioned through towards traveling in trains, which was relatively new at that time, I wonder whether that makes it a binary transition towards the roles of “out-dated” machines as well?

“As the new technology terminated the original relationship between the pre-industrial traveler and his vehicle and its journey, the old technology was seen, nostalgically, as having more ‘soul’.” This quote is also appropriate when applying to traveling by trains and airplanes. Now that the time it takes to cover the same amount of geographic ground is further drastically reduced by engines that are even more powerful, the lengthy, rhythmic railroad seem more expressive all of a sudden. One solution is “transferring the economically obsolete old technologies to a new realm, that of leisure and sports”. As the modern vision of traditional traveling, railroad companies now offer from sight-seeing routes, of which destination is no longer a priority, to Writer in Residency program during which writers are invited to enjoy the inspirational landscape while being productive in an enclosed, distraction-free environment.

One intriguing perspective the book touched upon but did not elaborate is the impact on locality and the formation of globalization from industrialized transportation. The enclosed space and the certain amount of time of limited mobility (not to mention the commodity culture within that space and time) forms its own unique cultural environment. Shortened perceptual distance resulted from decreased time spent traveling from point A to B, of which another byproduct is the instant access to a different cultural “world” from that of connectivity of industrialized traveling, especially now in the form of air travel.