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.

“What needs to be said is not that one way of life is better than the other, but that this is a place of the most far-reaching conflict; that the historical record is not a simple one of neutral and inevitable technological change, but also one of exploitation and of resistance to exploitation; and that values stand to be lost as well as gained.” (93-94.) This quote captures a core tension at work within E.P. Thompson’s analysis of the interplay between the technological tool of the clock (and in fact the normalization of the systematic marking of time itself) with the structuring of the labor force to adapt to the exigencies of industrial capitalism. Thompson’s study lays out the centuries-long transitioning of labor from “task-orientation” in which work varied in length and intensity according to need to systematic, time-controlled, work-discipline within industrial production designed to maximize efficiency and labor’s value to the employer; i.e. the remaking of time as currency no longer to be “passed but spent.”

Notwithstanding Thompson’s tendency to gloss over exploitation also present in earlier, more flexible labor models, for example the unpaid labor of women and children within home-based piecework, he richly depicts the transition through which employer control over work-time was regularized and internalized, and sometimes repelled.  Through this process workers learned to demarcate their time and establish boundaries between work, now the expenditure of labor for purpose of survival, and life, now viewed as leisure time separate from work.  Or in more direct usage of Marxist terminology, the separation of workers from their work-process and species being.  I found Thompson’s thick usage of primary documents, and sharp irony, particularly salient as he mapped out the imposition and internalization of the Puritan moral order. Work and efficient time usage is sanctified as the highest aspiration of a virtuous life whereas leisure among the masses is a scourge to be eradicated – even worse when combined with incivility, as Thompson notes “this clearly, was worse than Bingo: non-productivity, compounded with impertinence.” (90) And in the spirit of capitalism, the technological instrument of the imposition of time-discipline enabling capital’s extraction of surplus value would also become coveted by those whose labor value was being extracted as an object of consumption.  Thus, the watch became a fashion accessory desired not merely for its functionality but also as a status symbol – which Thompson reinforces in his biting observation about retirement gifting “for fifty years of disciplined servitude to work, the enlightened employer gave to his employee an engraved gold watch.” (70)

To what extent does Thompson’s analysis apply to the interplay between technology, work and life as we experience it today in the 21^st century? Certainly, our present day technological instruments, MacBooks, Iphones, etc structure both our work and everyday life and, to a certain degree, have become objects of acquisitive consumption which we upgrade and accessorize beyond immediate necessity.  For many of us our smart phones have become extensions of our bodies, never leaving our hands.  However, more pertinent is the manner in which digital technology has penetrated and transformed the ways in which we experience both work and everyday life.  While digital technologies optimally could enhance worker flexibility and control over work time, the current balance of power has enabled capital to utilize flexibility for their own purposes – with workers peppered with continual emails and text messages, spending their evenings responding to the latest correspondences in preparation for the following day or inputting edits into collectively produced google-docs.  If prior time-control of hours of work established a demarcation between work and life which would drain work of meaning, today many workers look wistfully upon a time when they could leave the job-site with the expectation that, unless urgent, no after-hours work communication would occur.  Certainly these changes have benefited some employees including those who can now utilize flexible work for child and elder care, doctor’s visits, trips to the gym, etc – although the ability to take advantage of this flexibility varies greatly depending upon status and position.  Moreover, while the “uberization” of work touts worker flexibility in actuality it more frequently transfers the imposition of time-discipline from being employer-imposed to system-imposed while enabling capitalists to evade regulatory accountability to employees.  Meanwhile, the new cohort of flexible workers juggle multiple demands for inadequate compensation amidst an expectation of permanent availability – and without established work hours as a means to demand compensation for real hours of work.  So capital has transcended the need for clock-imposed work-discipline to generate profits and has learned to incorporate newer, digital technologies to its benefit.