Machine Ghost

Do you Guru?

kimlacey — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:58:40 +0000

I am happy to announce that I am the new Mind Guru for Guru Magazine, the first all-digital lifestyle science magazine! Check out more!

Building v. Sharing

kimlacey — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:04:20 +0000

Mark Sample’s recent blog post continues the conversation started back at the MLA convention in January. What do the digital humanities do? Are we digital humanists if we don’t build anything? These questions were in the air this past weekend, too, at Computers and Writing. In fact, Saturday’s town hall was devoted to the question of what defines a digital humanist. All these conversations are so interesting and important, especially since we HASTAC-ers are in the crux of it all. We come from different fields, different techie talents and interests, and we are arguably very in-tune with what’s going on in conversations about the digital. In response to Sample’s post, we here at HASTAC are a group of “sharers”–we talk about, repost, link to, and make new connections. We don’t, necessarily, build things. The recent Code forum delt with many of these issues–can we talk about software studies if we don’t know (how to) code? What are the limitations of not knowing code if we’re trying to understand the usability of technologies? We need people to make digital spaces, just as much as we need people to think through these spaces and applications. So, who gets to be a digital humanist? Why are we so interested in naming who is and who isn’t? Isn’t one of the benefits of this field its cross-disciplinarity? Can’t we be builders and sharers?

Interview with Daniel Reetz, founder of the DIY Bookscanning project

kimlacey — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:03:15 +0000

Daniel Reetz, founder of the DIY Bookscanning project, was kind enough to take the time to speak with me about the start of his project and what he sees as the future of DIY Bookscanning. What started out as a brilliant way to overcome a difficult situation has really branched into a worldwide project taking many forms. Back in 2008, Reetz realized that by using cheap cameras, he could build high-speed book scanning equipment to use on his textbooks. He purchased two cameras, gathered some supplies from a dumpster for his photo shoot, and photographed an entire textbook. Surprised that this technique worked right out of the box, Reetz knew he had something big on his hands. After writing some software to scan the books you already own, Reetz published the first DIY Bookscanning instructable in early 2009. It immediately became an internet phenomenon. In fact, the first person to copy the instructions was a village official in Indonesia who hoped to scan documents that were important to his region and unlikely to hit Googles radar. Reetz explains that there is no commercial solution for what people, like the village official, want: Its not that its too expensive, its that its not available.

However, making the DIY Bookscanners available is one of Reetzs main goals. Not every person needs her own DIY Bookscanner, but Reetz suggests that maybe one in a local library or even an apartment complex is enough. Reetz hopes that hacker communities will latch onto DIY Bookscanners, and even make them available at their public nights. For instance, rather than constructing your own scanner, you could use your groups DIY Bookscanner to scan a book or two you have on your shelf. By making the scanning a communal effort, more books could be digitized and made available. Reetz also stressed that DIY Bookscanning is a slow growth idea, meaning that the idea is to use the existing technology until it doesnt work any more and then expand it. There is no rush to expand, no necessity for explosive growth. One of the more interesting and recent trends in DIY threads is that users are now posting images of their scans noting that, this is what such-and-such camera can produce with no processing. Such threads, Reetz notes, have been started organically entirely from the community of DIY users; a lot of people had questions about quality, and the community responded by posting pictures.

As for the future of DIY Bookscanning, Reetz recognizes that it is a self-sustaining process: Its not me helping people, but people helping themselves. I love that. Because DIY is different than other scanning efforts like Googles, people can scan all sorts of interesting, and personally meaningful objects (the contents of your drawers, for example) and documents (such as rifle repair manuals or even your grandmothers diary). For Reetz, these random nooks and crannies are profoundly interesting things, and were at a level of technology where DIY Bookscanning is achievable with off-the-shelf equipment. There is a recognizable gap between the poor quality, but inexpensive, flatbeds and the excellent quality, but pricey, scanners. Reetz and his project is the remedy: I want to fill that gap with open-source, freely available technology so it can function in places where nothing else will.

Rip, mix, burn

kimlacey — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:13:38 +0000

I’m reading Alexander Reid’s The Two Virtuals and I really think he’s articulated the concept of “rip, mix, burn” really well. Especially for my interest in memory studies, “r,m,b” is especially helpful. Here it is:

Rip: the initial act of pulling something from somewhere, either from personal experience or from an external source

Mix: sending the ripped material into the rhizome/distributed consciousness. This distribution causes new, inventive experiences/compositions because they were spread among other already existing experiences/compositions.

Burn: (re-)distributing the new material across the network

I’ve been trying to find a good example of creative memory, and this is it!

Back in action

kimlacey — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 14:14:42 +0000

Four months and three chapters later, I’m back!

FPOTW

kimlacey — Wed, 12 May 2010 23:25:40 +0000

From Licklider’s “The Computer as a Communication Device”

A very important part of each man’s interaction with his on-line commu- nity will be mediated by his OLIVER. The acronym OLIVER honors Oliver Selfridge, originator of the concept. An OLIVER is, or will be when there is one, an “on-line interactive vicarious expediter and responder,” a complex of computer programs and data that resides within the network and acts on behalf of its principal, taking care of many minor matters that do not require his personal attention and buffering him from the demanding world. “You are describing a secretary,” you will say. But no! Secretaries will have OLIVERS (39).

HASTAC: Demystifying Cloud Computing

kimlacey — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 17:46:52 +0000

Demystifying Cloud Computing

This panel fit right in with HASTAC’s book club discussion of Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget. Whereas Lanier is quite skeptical of hive mind thinking and is unsatisfied with the progress of the “cloud,” these panelists took the opposite approach, delivering an optimistic (and realistic) viewpoint of the benefits of cloud computing. At the start of the presentation, Steve Campbell provided an overview of cloud computing, explaining exactly what cloud computing is and how the cloud is used by corporations and individuals alike. As described by Campbell, a simple way to think of cloud computing is a “pay-per-drink” system: you only pay for as much storage as you need. If you want to drink a pint, you only pay for a pint. Just like personal energy use, you only pay for what you need and use. If we’re on vacation, our electric bill shrinks because we’re not flipping on the lights or running our laptops well into the night. Cloud computing works the same way, but instead deals with storage and server power. Rather than companies constructing large servers for their personal use, cloud computing allows businesses (and individuals, but I’ll get into that shortly) to offload their server needs to “the cloud.”

But what is “the cloud”? According to the presenters, clouds are a huge data storage centers that serve as the offsite computing power for corporations. For individual purposes, think of Google Docs. For instance, even though I have several copies of my dissertation stored on different flash drives, I have uploaded each revision to Google Docs just in case something damages the drives. I have stored my dissertation in the cloud—I have used Google’s storage capacity for my personal use and reduced the possibility of losing access to my files. Similarly, companies can create mirror images of their servers or locate their entire network elsewhere by purchasing cloud space; therefore, in the event of a flood or other catastrophe, their server space will not be damaged (as it often was in the pre-cloud days). Interestingly, to avoid complications, companies often build excessively larger servers—on average, only 10% of the available server power is actually used. However, corporations can now shift their emphasis from time-consuming maintenance and upkeep of these large servers to much more efficient use company data and employee time. Or as the third speaker Bruce Maches put it, IT departments spent 70% of the their time “fixing stuff” and only 30% of their time producing. With cloud computing, those numbers are reversed, and productivity rates rise to 70%. By offloading server need to the cloud, companies can focus more effectively on process and outcome, and avoid questions of “how” to use and maintain their own server needs.

Sure, cloud computing is advantageous for corporations, but what does this mean for the humanities? Maches emphasized that cloud computing allows researchers to index vast amounts of data at rapid speeds—more quickly than ever before. If, for instance, a researcher needed analytics of certain Twitter or YouTube trends, the cloud can provide access to and data for individual projects. For the individual, especially for us with interests in digital humanities scholarship, cloud computing is a fruitful tool giving us access to quantified data that would otherwise be difficult to access.

HASTAC: Soweto ’76 Archive

kimlacey — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 17:46:05 +0000

I “attended” the HASTAC ’10 digital conference this weekend and here this post (and the next) are responses to my experiences. This Archive is fantastic–and I can’t think of others like it. Are there others?

Technologies of Memory in the New South Africa: The Soweto ’76 Archive

Angel David Nieves

The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) and the Hector Pieterson Memorial & Museum (HPMM) have created the Soweto ’76 3D immersive Archive, allowing visitors to experience what they have termed a “digital cultural heritage trail.” This Archive is a virtual recreation of several significant locations during the South African Apartheid. This presentation was a demonstration of that Archive, showcasing the ability for users to read and share their own memories or simply gain a better understanding of the Apartheid by “visiting” the sites. Better still, the Soweto ’76 Archive gives people access to history in a new way—rather than reading about the important locations and events of the Apartheid, the Soweto ’76 Archive brings the experience to your screen by linking related video, text, memories in one interactive interface.

A visit to the Soweto ’76 Archive is much like a visit to a very expansive museum: you can walk through buildings while reading descriptions of events related to each location. What makes the Soweto ’76 Archive stand out is the interactive features—visitors can add their own personal Apartheid experiences to this site, essentially creating a living museum. Because of this sharing, one visit to the Archive will never be like the next. The creators of the Soweto ’76 Archive hope that this interaction will raise questions about the creation of history of newly created democracies by interrogating how history is constituted and who gets a say in the creation of such history and why. By opening up the Archive to everyone, the history of the Soweto ’76 uprisings will not be limited to a few individuals, but instead it has the capacity to be comprised by individuals with personal memories they wish to share.

Even though this presentation was only a brief demo of the in-progress Archive, I can see the potential for other worldwide historic places appropriating MITH’s project. This Archive is like no other web-based experience—nowhere else can visitors actually “see” and “walk through” such important locations while at the same time contributing to its very structure. The combination of spectatorship and contribution will make the Soweto ’76 Archive truly a new way of learning about and contributing to history. If interactive museums become the new ‘trend’ in historical archiving, then we are certainly directing our collective intelligence in the right direction. The Soweto ’76 Archive is a five-year project (which I believe began in 2007), and once it is officially launched, I’m curious to see how rapidly the site grows, and how other sites of history become modeled in its likeness.

Uber-mod description

kimlacey — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:31:14 +0000

From the publisher’s description of Lanham’s The Electonic Word on Amazon:

And, yes, the book is available in electronic form; as the first in the Chicago Expanded Book series, there will be a hypertext edition, shipped on 1.4 MB high-density floppy disks.

Three words: add to cart.

Sweet marginalia

kimlacey — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:07:38 +0000

As I was flipping through my copy of High Techne that came in the mail today, I saw some pretty awesome marginalia.

The underlined quote:

Paradoxically, however, as ever more data is produced, this process inevitably leads to a multiplication of the very elements it attempts to control (13).

Marginalia:

Paradoxical nature of technology–may explain American mental health.