Humanities Computing

Remember that artist we talked about a few weeks ago, Hasan Elahi, who "actively discloses countless mundane details of Elahi's daily activities" as an experiment in sousveillance? This article from Hydra Magazine argues that Elahi's project, which stems from the artist's ideas that "the best way to protect your privacy is to give it away," does not at all interfere with the government's surveillance programs--"it only adds variety to the realm of possible facts that may be invoked when it's your turn to play suspect."

Ted talk on the culturnomics/ngram project. According to Bonnie: "I think this TedTalk does a really good job of summarizing what the ngram article was all about and adds a little interest as well."

This short article begins the discussion of what role the Digital Humanities will play when Google comes out with glasses that have cameras built in that will enable "real-time geolocation, facial recognition software, the journaling and storing in the cache and third-party's servers of everywhere you go and see whilst wearing the glasses." He questions how we can use these gadgets to our benefit while still protecting human rights and freedom of speech.

I really like the black-and-white photo in this article that shows the group of people wearing 3D glasses--that's exactly the visual I had in my head while reading this article. It's kind of unsettling to think that that image could become an everyday reality in the not-so-distant future.

I thought this was an interesting article after looking at the corpus last week that used books online. There is great discussion of how computers and machines will enable us to look at literary texts in entirely new ways.

This is an interesting article about how "the digital humanities is really an insurgent humanities," and how this is a revolution of sharing ideas that, "affirms the value of the open, the infinite, the expansive [and] the democratization of culture and scholarship.""

Cool fonts, with many variations on the usual, plus some historic fonts from the past of typography, all for free.

This is an online summary of Roland Barthes's "From Work to Text", which you can skim as you read Hayles's article.

Paul Conneally describes the future of humanitarianism in a hyper-connected world. The idea of re-typing and transforming texts to tweets to websites and digital maps in disaster situations etc. seems like an act of uncreative writing--something that is, in a way, re-presenting information while at the same time creating a profound new piece of writing.

Dennis Allen posted this item in the blog "The Tenants of Colson Hall" a few weeks ago. Originally, the seller was auctioning this item for $399.95 and then for $599.95 and finally for $999.95. No one bought the item, but I think it would make for an interesting discussion related to Kenny Goldsmith's Uncreative Writing. I'm wondering if the intent was serious (similar to the retyping of On the Road) or if it was meant to be comical? Either way, it would make for an interesting discussion on the materiality of language.

Here is a new way literature is moving into technological applications. I've been looking for a better article on this, but most seem a bit too brief. Here the author discusses How works of T.S. Eliot and Jack Kerouac are becoming Apps. This is a really interesting move of taking flat print to deep code.

Jessica Murphy writes: "Eolas's "interactive web" patent being ruled as invalid and Berners-Lee jumping for joy about the ruling."

Careful who you de-friend! I was interested in any news around the changing of language based on our use of technology - things like using "Google" or "Wiki" as verbs, for example - and thought of "friending." When I Googled this and looked at News, there were several stories to this effect!

The previous post referenced in "Connect With Your Creation Through a Real-Time Editor"

Looks at "responsive design" and navigation menus. And if you couldn't already tell, I've fallen behind in my Webmonkey reading and am now bombing the Humanities Computing group with any article that I think is interesting and/or semi-relevant. I'll stop soon.

Another common topic has seemed to be blogs and blogging, especially following the readings for last week. This seemed like a blog post that might add to the discussion.

I thought this might be interesting, especially as we head toward the section of the class where we discuss games. Here is an excerpt from the default blurb: "Victor has worked on experimental UI concepts at Apple and also created the interactive data graphics for Al Gore's book, Our Choice. In the talk Victor showed off a demo of a great real-time game editor that makes your existing coding tools look primitive at best."

There have been a lot of posts about web tracking in light of the recent changes in Google. This is an interesting article, but one of the things I like the best is the Collusion display of who's tracking your data.

I know we would all have access to this via our reading and a Google search, but I thought I would throw it up here for easy access in case anyone was interested in checking it out.

Our reading this week touched upon the idea of "sock puppets," or fake users "often created for the purpose of talking up or praising a product" (Crumlish and Malone 305). This article explains how a company that creates and sells a program for learning and mastering guitar was fined a quarter of a million dollars for fabricating online reviews.

Keeping track of passwords is definitely a hassle for most of us, so a service that groups all of them didn't seem far off. It will be interesting to see how this develops, and if it will catch on and be secure.