The lead to that news story (first clip) is pure gold: "We were interested today to hear that more that 100 law enforcement official in Mexico are having microchips implanted in their arms. The chips allow us to be scanned sort of like a cereal box at the supermarket checkout. In Mexico, this will be one more tool in the fight against crime."

Hi Christina, here are some thoughts...

I liked the animated montage on the page. It got me was wondering whether there's a way to slow down the flicker speed of the animation. I ask this not because I think it would look better slowed down, but just in regards to the program's flexibility.

I also had the same question as Jordon: whether or not more than two images could make up a stack in the column. From what I understand in your description, this would be possible by selecting the number of rows and columns one allocated for the number of pictures, but I'm not 100 percent sure on that.

For some reason, I got kind of confused on step #4. I wasn't sure how to upload my montage, and what I could do with it even though I had saved it and was able to retrieve it. The confusion could certainly be a case of my own ineptitude, or lack of patience; I didn't have too much time on it, and just tried to set one up as quickly as a I could. This might be something to check, perhaps?

Thanks for posting this, Danuta. I'm going to try and find some time to check it out this month.

Do the exhibits come with tutorials or interactive guides? Is there at least some information about what the various tools and projects strive to achieve?

1) Crowdsourcing (before preso): Crowdsourcing is creating a pool of like-minded people engaged in similar or overlapping fields from which practitioners from a variety of disciplines can draw from to further develop and explore their own projects / ideas.

1) Crowdsourcing (after preso): Crowdsourcing is creating a digitally accessible reservoir of skilled/ knowledgeable individuals, or groups of individuals, which can drawn from by other individuals or groups in order to gain technical, practical, or theoretical assistance on whichever project it is they're working.


2) Community is notifying a complete stranger when their zipper is down, with the hope that if the situation were reversed, they'd do the same.

Hmm, seems like some leather-stretching of the Harper-administered muzzle, which is clearly on display in a quote like this: "The Canadian Press reported this week that bureaucrats at Industry Canada must run each proposed tweet through a 12-step protocol, and seek the approval of the minister's office."

It seems as though a looser and 'freer' work environment, where employees can spend as much time at work as they please, has two converse effects. On one hand, it allows for an incredible amount of flexibility concerning schedules which might maximize productivity while simultaneously allowing passionate enthusiasts to make the most of their creative potential. Conversely, it seems to create a culture of high (or absurd) expectations whereby one working efficiently and effectively working the norm is somehow penalized. As the second article which Matt posted alludes to ("What Your Culture Really Says"), having a lack of clearly-defined and openly-discussed workplace structures on the surface appears to create a 'freer' environment, but it might just be a case of obfuscating the very real and present authorial structures thus fostering greater degrees of symbolic violence and worker alienation. The problem is that workers, especially young ones, who, as mentioned in de Peuter and Dyer-WItheford's article, might be working their first professional jobs are completely unaware of what kinds of rights they have or should have. Companies should definitely provide spaces for employees to discuss their work culture, as well as outline in a clear manner the kinds of values the company strives to adhere to. Without these set parameters in place, workers have nothing to rally against. They could very well accept the alienation they feel as some kind of 'norm' that takes place everywhere.

Before working through the readings for this week, I jotted down a handful of notes as to what I thought evaluative criteria for scholarly projects in DH would look like. Since reading, I've come to understand that in order to properly engage with the ethos of DH as we've outlined in course, evaluating projects becomes a much more complex and multifarious activity than I'd initially envisioned. In this short assignment, I will form a pastiche of a few of the most salient, or what I believe to be pertinent, issues raised and shared by four texts:

1) The MLA Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media
2) Shannon Christine Mattern's "Evaluating Multimodal Work, Revisited"
3) Geoffrey Rockwell's "A Short Guide to Evaluation of Digital Work"
4) Cheryl E. Ball's "Assessing Scholarly Multimedia: A Rhetorical Genre Studies Approach"


CONSIDERATIONS FOR EVALUATION:

A) conscious, vigorous and reflective evincing of how the creator understands the medium as carrying out the academic work

Unlike journal articles and traditional conference presentations which adhere to well-established, commonly-understood genres, the creation of digital, multimodal academic work can potentially evoke sensations of confusion or ambiguity. The creator of these kinds of projects, therefore, needs to promulgate the design and presentation aspects of their work, or, more specifically, how these projects develop and present the "conceptual core" (Kuhn's term) necessary in all academic work (Mattern, 2012; Ball, 2012). I'm thinking for example of the case where a novel is submitted as a thesis in MFA programs. A student does not merely submit the novel, but accompanies said novel with another text which discusses how that novel embodies concepts, theories, objectives, etc. (In some cases, however, the author/creator might wish for the design/form to speak for itself and evaluators can evaluate according to its effectiveness at doing so.)

In cases where clarity might wane, digital authors/creators, like MFA students, need to reflect on why the medium used was 'chosen' over traditional (print based formats), and how that medium conveys the academic objectives which the study strives to achieve. Perhaps it's a case where medium is interactive and the 'interactive' element is not merely an interesting feature but central to conceptual-thinking the project hopes to evoke. If the project is attempting to shift perspectives or conceptual frameworks, and is using the medium to do so, an explanation of these objectives should be made available to both evaluators and the public at large. Evaluators can, using the medium and the explanation, then assess its effectiveness or lack therefore of.

I believe in some cases where the medium presents a genre so foreign to the standard research projects present in the field (I'm thinking of projects which distort linearity, or ones which present options for initial engagement) an author would be wise to include a type of instruction manual as to how the work is to be read/interpreted. The goal - even if the work strives to experiment with the paradigmatic parameters - should not be to alienate fellow members of the field. Ultimately, the creator/author should make a rigorous effort to show how the digital work fits into, defines, shapes and progresses the field(s) in which it seeks to communicate (MLA Guidelines).

B) Detailed accounting of the ways the community, or authoritative bodies, have been part of the project's production.

Both Mattern (2012) and Rockwell (2012) stress that academic work in DH needs to make a concerted effort to validate itself, and, as such, evaluative criteria needs to take into account this very 'validation'. These topics of authority, author-ity, and information value are ones that we've been discussing throughout our Monday sessions. If everything can be made openly accessibly for all, if everyone can contribute, how can we be certain that our information/ knowledge is valuable? Is the very definition of value not contingent on scarcity, uniqueness, and/or, in Marxist terms, time-invested labour? If we are to take seriously Foucault's notion (and I'm not entirely sure that we should) that "the author does not precede the works, he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits; in short, by which one impedes the free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, decomposition, and recomposition of fiction" (p. 899) (we can replace 'fiction' here with 'text' ('text' used in the most-encompassing sense - digital media, print, images, etc) and not alter Foucault's point in great degrees), where does this leave the authority of the author? Where does this leave need for validation?

Mattern and Rockwell don't address this point, but look at the issue (I'd argue) in terms more associated with praxis as it pertains to the current state of academia. They suggest that the creator/author needs to…


* be accurate and concise with all citations not only with respect to the conceptual work but also the design and construction of its materialized form as well as the 'human resources' (Mattern, 2012) that have contributed (credit all collaborators)
* provide links to cited sources/contributors' work as necessary
* make sure the work is accessible to everyone in the field as well as (potentially) the public at large
* make sure it adheres to spec. standards (as applicable), and that it is, or can be, properly maintained over time
* make sure the work has been effectively reviewed by 'experts' (Rockwell, 2012) or those with authority in the field. (One could maybe incorporate some of Fitzpatrick's ideas of peer-to-peer reviewing as well)
*provide a history of the project (Did it receive funding? Was it presented at a conference? Has it also been made available in print form? (Rockwell, 2012)


As should be obvious, online digital publishing, especially online multimodal publishing, needs to be more openly self-reflexive and explicitly explanatory than does traditional scholarly work.

C) Evaluators need to be flexible

Ball (2012), stated this perfectly so I will simply quote her here:

"Readers may be expecting me to provide a transferable rubric for reading, analyzing, assessing, grading, or evaluating scholarly multimedia-particularly a rubric that could be useful for tenure and promotion purposes. I hope readers keep in mind that each of these interpretive and evaluative verbs (reading, grading, assessing, evaluating) indicates a different audience-randomly and overlapping: pleasure readers, students, scholars, hiring committees, tenure committees, teachers, and authors-each of which has different needs from, and comes to the reading experience with different value expectations of, such a piece of scholarship."

Seeing as I'm already well over the word-limit, I just want to state that I can see many innovative and exciting ways for scholars in all fields to begin experimenting with new forms of presenting serious, critical, academic work. All fields on local, institutional, national and international levels will have to continually work collaboratively on establishing, and enacting evaluative criteria. As the media changes, the modes of evaluating will have too as well. Could universities somehow evaluate not just publications, but the traction that publications get? Could reviewing a number of publications count as 'valuable' academic contributions? Could contributing to the platforms/ media which are used to present studies also count as academic contributions? How could the universities keep track and assess all of this? Is it a pipe-dream to imagine that it's possible to do so, or is it, as suggested by the very presence of these discussions, already a reality that requires urgent attention?


References:

Ball, C. E. (2012) Assessing scholarly multimedia: A rhetorical genre studies approach. Technical Communication Quarterly, 21(1).

Foucault, M. (1998). What is an author? In D. H. Richler (Ed.), The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. New York: Belfort Books.

MLA Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media. Retrieved from http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital.

Rockwell, G. (2012). Short guide to the evaluation of digital work. Journal of Digital Humanities, 1 (4). Retrieved from http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-4/short-guide-to-evaluation-of-digital-work-by-geoffrey-rockwell/

Mattern, S.C. (2012) "Evaluating Multimodal Work, Revisited" Retrieved from
http://www.wordsinspace.net/wordpress/2012/08/28/evaluating-multimodal-workrevisited.

I like the idea of starting some discussions (but not all) circumscribed with a word-limit. You know, we should try it as an experiment. Maybe for the week after reading week, or the week after that, someone could put forth an argument related to the readings and we could debate it (reflect on it) in no more than 125-word posts (or 200, or whatever) and see what it's like. Later, in class we could have a discussion as to its benefits and drawbacks. It would be interesting to see how it works pedagogically, and the ways in which it might be applied to other learning scenarios. Maybe some other 'rules' or 'restrictions' would have to be put in place as well. Anyone game to try it?

I think you've raised many interesting points here, Chris, and I just have a couple thoughts to share. We can't assume everyone will be interested in our far-from-enlightening second-year paper on fill-in-the-blank. We can assume, however, that a certain body of individuals will be relate to our project - namely, the rest of the students in the same class/seminar. While part (a large one) of the point of the essay-writing task (despite what many language/communication theorists would argue) is simply the individual's working-through something with language, the last link - the social action or social function - of the process is almost always lost. In all my time in undergrad I received grades and comments on papers, but never had space allocated in class to discuss my paper with my peers, to go over the comments with the them and evaluate how effectively they carried out their project in comparison to mine. If I were to made a prof tomorrow (god, and the sense of all things sane, forbid), I would make spaces for these open, critical reflections. Students could help one another gain a better understanding of the materials discussed, of the educational process in general, and, more importantly, gain insight into how it is that they are or are not fitting into what the discipline requires. Exchanges like this, which necessitate face-to-face, tangible interaction, might really help build more of a community feel in seminars (something glaringly missing from on-line courses) as well as provide opportunities for learning about oneself and ones' peers.

I'm down for giving it a shot if other people are as well. It would be interesting to hear how someone else interpreted the project we had attempted to explain and in turn could lead to deeper discussions.

Hello all. Shawn Graham is away this week, so it wasn't possible to set up a Mallet/Topic Modelling workshop. I'm still talking to him about schedules in hopes that we might be able to set up something in the future. I'll keep you posted.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/

Perhaps what's missing here is how (or through which tools) an author can validate his/her claims in public spaces - something we've been talking about for a few weeks now. If we are to value the expert, how can we know he or she is an expert? Could special titles be offered to commentators on certain blogs? Should certain blogs be split between experts and 'laypeople'?

Last year, Popular Science closed their comment spaces on all new articles http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/why-were-shutting-our-comments, but opened up spaces for discussion on particular articles. The principle reason for doing so is that studies have shown that "a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story." In a nutshell, the expertise can be drowned out by the layman, something PopSci feels does an injustice to their site, and to science in general.

All of this echoes what we've been saying about the need for expertise, and the problematic nature of full, unmediated participation in ALL forums serious, and time-invested knowledge. Larger questions are also raised regarding the (inherent?) politicization of knowledge and knowledge-making.

Could potential answers be found in the kinds of tools that we might be able to instill in digital, public forums?

I'm really glad both of you, Danuta and Jordon, weighed in on this.To be honest, I was stuck in a kind of squirming spot between agreeing with and being irked by this article, but more so than agreeing or disagreeing, was left contemplating what it means to be an 'expert' and much more importantly, how expertise can/should/does (can't/shouldn't/doesn't) play out in public and institutional spheres. You both raised points that highlighted different thoughts that I was (and am) struggling to work out.

On the most general of terms, I think we can agree that learning has value. We've come to post-secondary institutions for many reasons, but our very act of doing so suggests that studying and acquiring knowledge are acts we would consider valuable (in the fully multifarious sense of what that word implies). I would also claim that we have advanced or progressed in a variety of ways through our studies (some of which we might say have next to nothing to do with 'academic-progression'). I think we could also agree that we have gained more specific knowledge about certain topics than we had, say 10 years ago. While each of us have advanced in our own realms, I think it would be a dubious claim to say that we are on equal footing on all topics. I would be embarrassed to sit on an 'expert' panel alongside Jordon if the topic of discussion were anything to do with criminology, hacktivism, or summertime life in Vancouver. I'd be equally red in the cheeks I had to weigh in alongside Danuta with anything to do with art curation, renaissance painters or trivia nights at the Jame St. pub. That said, I'm fairly confident that I am a far superior sunflower-seed eater than both of you combined. We are not equal in these regards. My voice on the aforementioned topics should not be valued in the same way as yours. This, I believe is the central claim made by Nicholas, and one which I at least partially agree with.

Also, I'm not so sure that he's positing a positivist, or scientifically rational contingency for all expertise. In fact, I think he's arguing quite the opposite - that it is outside of these tightly-confined academically-localized realms, that the importance of acknowledging one's diligently acquired 'social' knowledge escapes our public interactions. Also, it should be noted that at the end of the article he states that experience can be equally as valuable as academic knowledge when it comes to administering expertise. The problem, rather, for Nicholas, and also for me, becomes one of how to get 'expert' or informed/well-reasoned opinion into the public, so that proper and worthwhile debate can take place. Here, I think that all of the points raised by both of you stress just how complicated, and possibly absurd?, it is to implement, or try and implement notions of expertise in (some) public, online spheres.

I agree with Danuta when she says that limiting or restricting comments on public media like newspaper seems contradictory and counter-intuitive. I'd also agree that an effort to comment on an article suggests engaging with material, and, as Danuta mentions, lends way towards a potentially worthwhile exchange with those more in the know. Censoring inoffensive comments in what we call newspapers is certainly dangerous and counter-productive. What about other sources that are not newspapers? Imagine there was a very productive, and informative art blog that became filled with people making dubious and preposterous claims? Would there be any need to limit them there? If so, how would one go about it? I think only the moderator of that blog could make that call.

I think Jordon's first point is also a very valuable contribution to this discussion. Is the author merely seeking self-recognition? Is his plea not for more engaging and worthwhile public interaction but more "acknowledgement" of his own purported merit? If, as mentioned by Prof Greenspan numerous times in our course, communities have a way of sorting out false information on their own, should we care about individual 'experts' at all, or at least their claims to their own 'expertise.' I have to say that I also find it lulzy to expect someone in every online convo to be stating their credentials. I think most people would be happy to see experts use their expertise to engage with issues in productive ways without having to constantly draw attention to their own biographies. Defining expertise, as Jordon mentions, also lapses into relativism. There is no singular, superior expert on any particular topic, but rather overlapping forces engaging in, and morphing, social events. I believe at the end of the article, the author is trying to instruct people - in a pretty pompous manner - of more constructive ways of engaging discussions. Maybe he's just venting after reading a lot of what he might consider "trash" in the comment sections.

I find these topics fascinating. I'm interested in how people's beliefs are formed, and why for some people, these beliefs change over time while for others they do not. If we value expert knowledge, is it only because it benefits ourselves as individuals or because it has potential for social effect? If it's the latter, then surely there needs to be some concern for the dispersion of acquired knowledge. For example, I find the debates over climate change, or creationist vs evolution theories intriguing because of the powerful discursive systems that embody these motives and beliefs. With great shifts taking place in education, online interaction, and access to info, the ways in which people produce and interactive with media will play increasingly important roles.

Nice digs, Matt. Based on the comments to this link, it seems as though people are very appreciative to have access to these sources.

Interesting that you mention this, Christina. This past week, I tried reading all of the chapters from Fitzpatrick's book using the format she had provided. One feature I liked was the ability to scroll by paragraphs. By clicking (or was it double-clicking?) on the paragraph, it highlighted the graph in yellow and shifted the entire text so that the current graph moved to the top of the page. I quite liked the flow it gave to the reading. Something else I tried was reading the text while at the same time copying and pasting paragraphs and sentences into a word document. First, I would paste all text in black, but then I would highlight certain sentences or phrases in red. Additionally, I added some of my own comments in blue. I found that it made for effective reviewing of the chapters as I could easily focus on the bits that grabbed my attention. Also, I avoided all issues that sometimes arise when the margins don't allow for ample space for reflection. I could continually return to the notes and add new reflections. I also found that it made my notes easier to review seeing as, at times, my handwriting can get a bit sloppy.

Using a word document also allows the possibility of posting hyperlinks, pictures, and copying and pasting dictionary definitions to new words. For example, when I was taking a film course at Ottawa U last winter, I started taking notes on a computer and would fill my notes with images of directors, actors, and film-box covers. It made the notes a bit more dynamic and provided a visual aid which proved handy for remembering all of the information.

The question of narrative is an interesting one. As I briefly mentioned in class, an ALDS (applied linguistics and discourse studies) professor, Graham Smart has written quite extensively on the types of "storytelling" that take place in the Bank of Canada when it comes time to make the annual Monetary Policy Report. Basically, the bankers are, (at least somewhat) doing what Hayles had described as creating narratives out of databases, which leads us to consider what constitutes narrative and if changes in media affect our notions of narrative and to what extent it does so.

I also really liked your presentation, Devan. I especially liked exploring those interactive documentaries. The insomnia website was such as novel idea - just the fact that the project opens up the space to insomniac (insomniatic?) experiences (the bit about having someone call you) is really like nothing I've really seen.

Although I had wanted to write this reflection at the end of the first week, it, for some reason or another, eluded me. I'll try to formulate some of the ideas I was, and still am, thinking about with the hope that they might have still some relevance. The readings in the first week of the course, which were further augmented and dynamicized by the readings in the second, had me reflecting specifically on a book I read this past summer titled, The Stardust Revolution: Our search for our origin in the Stars and more generally on the concept of 'tools.'

In Stardust, author, and Ottawa-area resident, Joseph Berkowitz tracks the history of astronomical inquiry into the origins of the elements on earth. Most salient in this book was the manner in which the expansion and sharing of tools (including of course the knowledge, and, to reference Kuhn, the paradigmatic shifts which that knowledge provoked) allowed humans to an (and not 'the') understanding of how life came to be on earth. Without going too deeply into intricate explanations of the tools which I only vaguely understand, essentially the tools dramatically augmented our senses (seeing and hearing were the big ones - seeing obviously the biggest) in order to (re)conceptualize our understanding of the stars. For example, although the parallax method was pioneered by Freidrich Bessel , it was Henrietta Leavitt's meticulous use of the method (through 'computers' no less - this was 1912, the quotation marks are very necessary) to determine distances of stars from the earth and from one another. It was through the use of the Bunsen burner that scientists learned that each element burns a different colour set, and which meant that each element had its own light fingerprint. This discovery led to the understanding of the elements which existed in space (they could observe the colours burning in the sky). Other tools included the telescope (naturally) as well as infared telescopes (after the invention of infared, naturally). Scientists used microwaves and even radio-ways (yes, they were listening to the stars) in order to get an understanding of what was going on in space. They discovered space was full of water. They gained inside into how stars, die, and how new ones were born. Ultimately the discovered that stars are like cauldrons of elements which dusted our earth a long time ago. Finding meteorites on earth has confirmed these findings and studies are now being undertaken which seeks to illuminate the fine lines that divide life and non-life, that is, how life comes to be life. It also raises questions of what we can adequately categorize as life.

But, to return to the discussion of tools… The collaborative use of tools and knowledge (which I'm sure at times was bellicose and rife with contentions) has helped astronomers to gain an understanding of the 'objective' world they are trying to understand. Since I've been thinking about DH and what DH is trying to do, I keep returning to a feeling that DH needs to incorporate reflexive inquiries which ask questions not only concerning the development of tools, but also, and necessarily so, how our tools and inquiries are changing us, as humans - how these practices change what it means to be human. Lev Manovich's reading from last week was engaging with such discussions, as were Derrida's ideas in Archive Fever which were contested and reconceptualised by Marlene Manoff. From our first week, Rafael C. Alvarado's article, illustrates the same point as he mentions quite succinctly, "To a humanist, any computational technology is potentially tool, text and metaphor." (p. 53) In our presentation, Shawn Green echoed these thoughts as he closed his presentation with the view that tools only for the sake of creating tools (while it does seem a lucrative endeavour) is essentially a waste of time.
Extending these thoughts, Martin Heidegger in his essay, The Question Concerning Technology posits (and I'm being pretty reductive, here) that understanding technology is actually understanding our relationship to technology, or more specifically, understanding that technology can serve as a means of distancing ourselves from our acts (turning the world into an endless series of instruments with seek to order and compartmentalize our surroundings), or as a means of further 'revealing' our connections to our tools, our practices and ultimately our ways of existing in the world.

So, some practical questions arise:
What does it mean to be able to do extensive text-mining on articles produced in a certain time period? For example, I think that one huge benefit is that it allows us, in the case Green mentioned about creating programs of apartheid in Australia, to understand universal 'othering' practices in which masses can become manipulated and dominated through the discourse and actions of government initiatives. Comparing massive amounts of documents across numerous countries and time periods could allow us to see patterns of suppression and domination - especially in the discourses. In this case, the tool could prove to be a revealing tool into the human condition. But does the opening sharing of all knowledge in turn allow a more acute set of tools for those who wish to manipulate?

I've heard that there is momentum in the development of digitizing scents. I think it was my Dad who told me about this and while I'd initially thought he'd had a few when sharing that info, it turns out that these projects are in fact taking place: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/digital-scents/ . I think a question arises in terms of replicating spaces and environments. What gets lots when the entire experience of visiting a museum is made digital? Imagine the sounds, textures of ancient Greece included in the virtual museum. What changes about how we interact with places and spaces? Anything? Does completely encapsulating a place digitally somehow destroy the essence or experience of what that place can offer?

I've thought a lot about how the internet has destroyed not only modes of being but actual personalities through the intensified proliferation of information. Has anything been lost there?

For all our advances in technology what kind of technological waste are we producing? Do our computers not require some kind of rare quartz in order to function? Is this even a question worth considering in our field?
Here's an article I just stumbled upon that I'm going to read. Mayhaps, there's something worthwhile in it: http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140124-only-connect

I wonder if one of the central preoccupations with having an Ivy league school such as Yale announcing its entrance (which others might describe as a foray) into DH concerns the collaboratively antithetic reality of patents. This is something not mentioned by Svensson, who is addressing more the failure to acknowledge the origins and traditions of the field, yet might prove problematic. Obviously a school such as Yale has the financial might to bridge into the creation of DH tools if they so desired. Would they be willing to share the technology with other organizations, especially those institutions who laid the groundwork in establishing DH long before? How strict or lenient would they be in their sharing? Patent wars have the potential to be driven by excessively punctilious claims. I'm thinking of the continual lawsuits between Apple and Samsung, wherein Apples has sued Samsung for copying the rounded corners on its phones, a design which Apple has since copyrighted. I am unaware of companies/institutions suing one another over the design of software or tools, but I'm sure it happens all the time. Thus, it's not much of stretch to see the contentious issues that might arise in DH, especially as the idea of patenting technology stands in contrast to notions of collaboration. Perhaps some kind of unified pool of resources could be created which other institutions could access via membership, and in turn, pick from and alter for their own purposes. Perhaps something of this kind already exits?