Humanities Computing

Just have your computer change one word, and look at all the beautiful chaos it creates...

This article highlights Iran's response to reports like the one found at Ars Technica that I posted earlier today. "Iran has denied online reports surfacing Tuesday that it plans to cut access to the Internet in August and replace it with a national intranet, according to a statement by the ministry of communication and information technology." But, according to the article, Iran "...does have plans to establish a 'national information network' billed as a totally closed system that would function like a sort of intranet for the Islamic republic."

A brief article that provides legal background info on the issue.

CISPA could be used to go after WikiLeaks and other sites.

A simple and straightforward guide.

More on badges in higher education.

Control that extends far beyond what was discussed in "The Internet Treats Censorship as a Malfunction and Routes Around It?"

This seems like a smart commentary on many of the issues we're seeing in the book and it helps modernize the Miller v California debate. It's again, largely focused on the idea of policing rights which focuses on freedoms of expression.

I wanted to add this link to the famous court case of Miller v California that helped define pornography and its protection (or lack thereof) under the first amendment. There is a lot to discuss here regarding offensiveness and "social value" especially in regard to the fact that the case dates back to the 70's. Perhaps the same case would be tried differently today.

"Print will survive. Books will survive even longer. It's print as a marker of prestige that's dying." Discusses Wikipedia as an extension of its predecessors' vanity and inherent print medium. 

A nice theme for the weekend-- Social Media blurs religious traditions OR makes them stronger, depending on your point of view.

Wikileaks leads to art.

The new Google CEO, who has been on the job for a year talks about the privacy policy which garnered a lot of criticism. Interestingly and not surprisingly, he presents this case a week before the announcement of Google's first quarter earnings

Questions of names and online identity come up in this article, which talks about how Google Plus has changed its policy of requiring people to use their real names when registering for accounts.

This is the latest on the Google/Viacom copyright issue over videos on youtube.

After class I was looking to find some background information on Julian Assange, mainly because I know very little about his negative reputation. Here is an interesting blog emphasizing the impact of reputational crisis, which is really interesting, especially considering that this information is even available from this university to the public.

How e-mail users are using ZigMail to sort through spam.

Considering how often we look at TED talks, I thought it might be worth including this fake TED talk used as a clip for the new Ridley Scott movie, Prometheus. I know this probably looks a little like getting off track, but I thought it was interesting that the author claims that humans have become gods through their acts of technological creation (in his case, "cyberkinetic individuals). Science fiction often does a great job extrapolating certain ideas or issues, and I think in some ways we can find links to the issue and use of Wikipedia in which we can freely take place in the act of creation or manipulation of a text and even the meaning behind the entries we change. Obviously this is not necessarily created in our own image the way a cyborg would be, but it is still using McLuhan's idea of the extension of man into the cyber world. The question we're left with here though, is whether or not we deserve the moniker of "creator" if we create anonymously.

And we know we couldn't avoid adding the thoughts of Michael Scott on the use of Wikipedia. Obviously, some of our sources seem to take a more genuine approach at propagating the veracity of Wikipedia, but the Office's use of Michael Scott as a supporter does represent people's general fear of the quality of contributor on the site.