Humanities Computing

Twitter etiquette - knowing when to be personal and when to be professional - or recognizing the lack of a line between the two.

A brief history of storytelling.

This is the hypertextual poem by Stephanie Strickland called "The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot," to which Hayles refers in her article "Electronic Literature: What Is It?" Hayles's idea that we must recognize "the specificity of new media without abandoning the rich resources of traditional modes of understanding language, signification, and embodied interactions with texts" is absolutely at work in this poem.

Since Mikenna bookmarked a New York Times article about Pinterest, I've been thinking about what makes that site different (and, in my opinion, more successful) than other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. According to this Huffington Post article, "What sets Pinterest apart and makes it so appealing is its focus on who we want to be -- not on what we're doing, where we've gone, how important we are or how beloved. While much of the content shared on existing social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare screams, 'Look at me,' Pinterest posts urge, 'Look at this.'" While I agree with that idea to some extent, I wonder if we can ever engage in social media/social networking without an air of "look at me." This made me think of Goldsmith's idea of Internet identity: "On the Internet, these tendencies move in different directions, with identity running the gamut from authenticity to total fabrication" (84). So, maybe Pinterest allows its users to create a more authentic identity for themselves while Facebook and Twitter promote more fabricated identities.

I found this site for a company that creates products that allow us to mix our real-world and digital experiences at once. One interesting product creates the image of fire or waves on a pool table that chases the pool balls as you hit them. I wonder in what way this is like e-literature.

Eric, some of these technologies reminded me of Hayles's explanation of site-specific installations for interactive literature. I'm not sure how "literary" these things would be considered, but I found there to be an interesting parallel between the two ideas.

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.

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."

Here's an interesting interview with N. Katherine Hayles (author of this week's readings) for a program called The Artist's Craft. Hayles talks about some of the concepts found in this week's readings and also touches upon some new ideas. I find the material to be extremely accessible in this Q&A format.

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.

Red Hat, the world's largest, most successful open source software company and one I'd like to work for in the very near future, submitted this blog post last month about SOPA and PIPA. It explains how such bills could devastate online collaboration, innovation, and the sharing of ideas and technology.

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.

This is the entry point for the work of Loss Pequeno Glazier, what the text notes as a unique online work in which text is generated every ten seconds. I really needed some kind of visualization of this since description just doesn't quite get me there. Click begin to try it out

In our reading this week, there is an emphasis on how the Electronic Literature Organization is working to preserve online narratives that somehow become out of date. Here is a huge reason why that is so important. As we move toward a dependence on mobile technology, Flash is officially out.

Very interesting article about publishing houses' efforts to keep up with the e-book world. Ties in nicely to some points Hayles made in "Print is flat; code is deep."