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Oct 10, 2015: Visualizing History Histography is a data visualization project by Martin Stauber, and it’s pretty amazing. “Histography" is interactive timeline that spans across 14 …
Sep 20, 2015: Deep LA Conference at The Huntington I’ll be presenting a paper at the “Deep L.A.” graduate history conference taking place at The Huntington on October 3rd. The conference is sponsored …
Sep 19, 2015: The Census Has Always Been "Big Data" The Census has always been “Big Data,” with or without computers and the automation of information. Census and Sensibility: A Little History of Big …
Sep 18, 2015: Digital Imaginaries at AoIR Something tells me I should have applied to the Association of Internet Researchers annual conference this year – the theme is “Digital Imaginaries.” …
Sep 18, 2015: The New Video Arcades: Like A Working Museum, with Beer Great article over at Polygon on new video game arcades: What it's Like Running an Arcade in 2015 It's a costly business, and it's no secret that …
Aug 11, 2015: People Working in Computer Room As part of my dissertation I’m working with the Southern California Edison Photographs and Negatives collection at the Huntington Library. The …
Aug 8, 2015: Univac 494 marketing photographs I came across this Univac photograph online, showing three people working in a computer room. Using a reverse Google Image Search, it appears that …
May 24, 2015: I’ll See You Online: Teaching Assistants, Google Hangouts, and the Online Classroom This paper was presented at the Cultural Studies Association annual conference in Riverside, CA in May of 2015. When asked to be a teaching assistant …
Apr 28, 2015: Amazon: The New Consumer's Bible From November 2013, Derek Thompson writing for The Atlantic: The Amazon Mystery: What America’s Strangest Tech Company Is Really Up To (Wayback …
Apr 23, 2015: Anything Mechanical, Give it a Good Bash “Percussive Maintenance,” by Duncan Robson What a great supercut. Montage videos like this are good conversation starters, and they help run a thread …
Apr 18, 2015: McConaughey Reacts to Star Wars Matthew McConaughey’s reaction to Star Wars teaser #2 (an Interstellar and Star Wars remix) I feel the same way, but I cried more. I love when he …
Apr 7, 2015: Whatever You Do, Don't Shout "Cut" The Story of the Indiana Jones Bridge Scene The night before I said to Steven [Spielberg], whatever you do, if you stop cameras don’t shout-out …
Mar 30, 2015: A Constant State of Alarm - The Undersea Network Excerpts from The Undersea Network, Duke Press, 2015, by Nicole Starosielski. These excerpts are found in an article on The Undersea Network, at …
Mar 29, 2015: Undersea Cables and Cybersecurity in Australia Australia’s vulnerable submarine cables, by Jessica Woodall at The Australian Strategic Policy Institute Scattered across the ocean floor in …
Mar 28, 2015: Finding the Death of the Mainframe Stewart Alsop, editor for Infoworld magazine in the 1990s eating his words, "Death to the Mainframe," 2001 (Computer History Museum) I came across a …
Mar 28, 2015: Sea Monsters and Submarine Cables Vintage-style map of submarine cables by TeleGeography (Wayback Machine link). This year’s map pays tribute to the pioneering mapmakers of the Age of …
Mar 27, 2015: We Don't See Mainframes as Legacy Technology Half-century milestone for IBM mainframes, by Mark Ward at BBC News, April 7th, 2014. IBM System/360 Model 65 Computer, 1965 (image via Computer …
Mar 27, 2015: IBM System/360 - 50th anniversary IBM recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the System/360 mainframe, which was announced on April 7, 1964. IBM press announcement text for the …
Mar 27, 2015: MLB Instant Replay - "Less Incentive To Go Crazy" From Field to Video Room: How Baseball’s Replay Review Will Work, by Richard Sandomir at the New York Times (2014). Interesting how changing the rules …
Mar 27, 2015: Baseball, Archives, and Video Metadata An article from 2010: For Baseball Archivists, a Tag Ends Every Play, by John Branch at the New York Times “Your archive is only as good as what you …
Mar 26, 2015: Grace Hopper documentary - "The Queen of Code" The Queen of Code at FiveThirtyEight (Wayback Machine link) (YouTube video no longer available) Also, an interview with the director of the short film …
Mar 26, 2015: Teacher-Facilitators The Deconstruction of the K-12 Teacher, by Michael Godsy at The Atlantic (2015): There is a profound difference between a local expert teacher using …
Mar 25, 2015: Creating Digital Professionals BBC gives children mini-computers in Make it Digital scheme, by Jane Wakefield at BBC News, 2015: The initiative is part of a wider push to increase …
Mar 7, 2015: Just a Little Acronym We Thought Up xkcd comic on Douglas Engelbart and the "Mother of All Demos" in 1968 http://xkcd.com/1234/ The video below is the “Mother of All Demos” at the …
Mar 5, 2015: It Looks Like 20 Feet If only I had this when I was still riding ramps! www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNL9kuWwFes (video no longer available) NYTimes on Jim Parsons and Intel …
Mar 5, 2015: 5 MB of Data on 62,500 Punched Cards “Programmer standing beside punched cards” “This stack of 62,500 punched cards — 5 MB worth — held the control program for the giant SAGE military …
Mar 3, 2015: Punch Card Jam Needs Some Force In 2010, representatives from the Computer History Museum visited a company in Texas still using an IBM 402 mainframe for everyday accounting jobs: …
Feb 25, 2015: Mainframes are so 50 years ago I came across this tweet as an advertisement in my own Twitter feed. It’s meant to be ironic, mainframes are still around, it’s more so the way …
Feb 23, 2015: Computers Never Lie About Love “Comput-Her Baby” - a short film by Dave Goldson and Neal Chastain, 1968 A satire on computer dating and matchmaking. The song “Strangers in the …
Feb 19, 2015: The Machine That Changed the World - video series Thanks to Andy Baio, all five parts of The Machine That Changed the World are available online: …
Feb 19, 2015: I Desire to Become Data Fragments on Machines, a film by Emma Charles An interesting and very artistic take on the materiality of digital culture, and the physical structures …
Feb 18, 2015: Digital Archaeology at The Deleted City In an heroic effort to preserve 10 years of collaborative work by 35 million people [Geocities], the Archive Team made a backup of the site just …
Feb 18, 2015: Outside the Spacecraft - NASM Outside the Spacecraft, an interactive museum exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. High resolution photographs, insight into …
Feb 18, 2015: Archive Team - Robots.txt is a suicide note ROBOTS.TXT IS A SUICIDE NOTE ROBOTS.TXT is a stupid, silly idea in the modern era. Archive Team entirely ignores it and with precisely one exception, …
Feb 17, 2015: The Holmdel Computer Center - Part 2 The Holmdel Computer Center, Part 2 – AT&T Archives (Wayback Machine link) This rare look inside a Bell Labs computer center, specifically the one at …
Feb 17, 2015: The Holmdel Computer Center - AT&T archives There’s some interesting artwork on the timeshare computer…reminds me of the “nose art” on military aircraft. In my archival research I’ve come across …
Feb 17, 2015: Fred Soper - Wikipedia I happened across an historical US passport for Fred Soper (1893-1977), the American epidemiologist and public health administrator, while doing some …
Feb 17, 2015: Historical Discourse and Hollywood Films The Case for Hollywood History, Francine Prose at the New York Review of Books, 2015: It’s so much easier and less threatening to talk about whether …
Feb 14, 2015: Control Data Cyber 170 mainframes Two Control Data Cyber 170 mainframe computers, side by side – one online, and one as a spare. (Photograph via Library of Congress) SITE BUILDING 002 …
Feb 13, 2015: Careers and Digital Lifespans Campus digital workhorse running final laps after 35 years (Wayback Machine link), by Barbara Palmer, Stanford Report, 2003: The remarkable thing is …
Feb 13, 2015: It was physically demanding labor Hello, Goodbye - CDS Bids Farewell to Mainframe, Ushers in New Beginning In 1998 the Catalog Distribution Service of the Library of Congress shutoff …
Feb 12, 2015: Digital Matisse Speaking of museums and their digital presence, MoMA has an interactive exhibit covering their recent Matisse exhibition. I was lucky enough to be in …
Feb 12, 2015: UCLA Differential Analyzer - 1948 film UCLA’s 1948 Mechanical Computer Was Simply Gorgeous To Watch in Action (Wayback Machine link), by Matt Novak at Paleofuture, 2013. I’ll need to get …
Feb 11, 2015: Files and Folders Before Computers Filing Cabinets, a Neglected Piece of Business History, by Linda Gross, the Hagley Library: Dr. Robertson is an associate professor of media history …
Feb 10, 2015: Matthew Kirschenbaum - Track Changes Kirschenbaum’s Tumblr blog on his book project - http://trackchangesbook.tumblr.com Matthew Kirschenbaum’s Literary History of Word Processing, …
Feb 10, 2015: Gladwell on the Social Life of Paper Paper strips shown at faa.gov (Wayback Machine link) Malcolm Gladwell’s 2002 article on paperwork at The New Yorker. “The Social Life of Paper” …
Feb 9, 2015: Museums and Digital Presence It’s wonderful to see museums considering their digital presence as an extension of their purpose – online exhibitions and other digital projects …
Feb 9, 2015: Q & A with Craig Robertson on The Passport in America Craig Robertson, by Christopher Klein at the Boston Globe, 2013. The assumption behind the system set up after World War I was that you needed an …
Feb 9, 2015: Paperwork Studies as an Historical Field The Paper Trail Through History (NYTimes gift link), by Jennifer Schuessler, the New York Times, 2012: Ms. Gitelman’s argument may seem like an odd …
Feb 8, 2015: Project poster and talk last October Last October I gave a “brown bag” talk (Wayback Machine link) over lunch in the History Department Library at the University of California, Riverside. …
Feb 8, 2015: Paperwork Explosion This video, created by Jim Henson in 1967 for IBM, makes a great first post. So much anxiety, so little time, if only there was someone to help…like …
Jan 22, 2015: My post on Wikipedia Edit-a-thons at NCPH Public History Commons A few months ago, I wrote about a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon workshop at the UCR Library on the CDH (Critical Digital Humanities) and HGSA (History …
Nov 24, 2014: Cultural Studies Association - Critical DH Roundtable call for participants Critical Digital Humanities is putting together a roundtable for this year’s Cultural Studies Association. The conference will be held from May 21-24, …
Nov 20, 2014: All Things Digital at UCR At a few recent meetings we’ve talked about the new digital projects and resources being developed at UC Riverside, as well as other opportunities for …
Sep 27, 2014: THATCamp DHSoCal THATCamp DHSoCal: Diving into Digital HumanitiesOctober 24th and 25th, 2014 San Diego State University THATCamp is “The Humanities and Technology …
Feb 17, 2014: Digital Pedagogy workshop for TAs Ever wondered what digital pedagogy is? Want to know what it’s like to teach online? Wonder no more. On February 19th, 2014, join us for an …
Feb 16, 2014: Notes on TEI and Markup Fundamentals workshop My post at Critical Digital Humanities on a recent workshop: TEI and Markup Fundamentals …
Feb 15, 2014: Event Archive: Rethinking Debates on Digital Learning . 12 Feb 2014 My post at Critical Digital Humanities on a recent talk: CDH Event Archive: Rethinking Debates on Digital Learning Yesterday CDH sponsored a talk by …
Feb 12, 2014: Notes on Virtual Lectures The virtual lecture that Professor Levy gave to her CHASS F1RST class on Monday went very well. This was the first time we attempted to produce a …
Feb 11, 2014: Virtual Lectures and the Digital Classroom This winter quarter I am a research assistant working on digital pedagogy and instruction at UC Riverside for Professor Juliette Levy. The class …
Feb 6, 2014: Moth in Relay In 1947 a moth was found in a relay switch on the Mark II electromechanical computer, a true computer "bug." What's most interesting here isn't that …
Nov 19, 2013: Lincoln's shadow Today is the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln casts quite a shadow in history. There was a grand speech before Lincoln's at …
Nov 18, 2013: Assembled in the USA Apple - Making the Mac Pro (2013) I love videos like this, especially the “How it’s Made” series on the Discovery science channel. The robotic ballet …
Nov 17, 2013: How the Enigma Machine worked Murlyn Hakon of Bletchley Park explains how the Enigma Machine worked. The remarkable thing about Enigma, is that when you press a letter on the …
Nov 16, 2013: Mavis Batey: Bletchley Park codebreaker Mavis Batey was one of the codebreakers working at Bletchley Park during World War II. She recently passed away at age 92. Batey was part of the …
Nov 16, 2013: George Romero: It's not about the zombies Horror film legend George Romero on zombies: I always used the zombie as a character for satire or a political criticism... I think the zombies could …
Oct 17, 2013: Quantum Computing and Pizza Bagel Entanglement Google, NASA, and D-Wave are teaming up to take quantum computing to the next level. The case or container of the D-Wave is much more empty than I …
Aug 23, 2013: Quantum Computing 101 Quantum Computers Animated, Piled Higher and Deeper (PHD Comics) The illustrations for this video on quantum computing are fantastic, especially the …
Jul 31, 2013: Rewiring Class Emails and Student Interaction with Piazza In a previous post I wrote about the experience of teaching an online class as a TA. One of the primary tools we used for the course was Piazza, and …
Jul 30, 2013: Infectious Information: History and the Dissertation Quarantine On July 22nd, 2013, the American Historical Association published to their blog a statement regarding the embargo of dissertations (Wayback Machine …
Jul 25, 2013: The back-end of online classes In "Who is Driving the Online Locomotive," (Wayback Machine link) Rob Jenkins asks some pertinent questions about the force and direction of online …
Jul 18, 2013: Digital pedagogy and the online classroom A few days ago I finished grading for an online summer class, The History of Latin America (HIST75V). I was the TA (teaching assistant) for Professor …
Jun 5, 2013: Hipsters and nice-looking web pages Unintentional Hipster Faculty (Wayback Machine link) Making a nice-looking Web page is just too hard. The physicists across the street are …
Jun 4, 2013: BAM Colloquium this Friday Please join us for the Year-End Colloquium for Graduate Students in "BAM." Designated Emphasis in Book, Archive, and Manuscript Studies – …
May 18, 2013: CDH event: Animated Music Screening and Talk - May 30th Cindy Keefer, Archivist, Curator & Director . Center for Visual Music Preserving Visual Music : The Archives of the Center for Visual Music THURSDAY . …
May 17, 2013: The Quantum Cloud Google Buys a Quantum Computer Google did not say how it might deploy a quantum computer into its existing global network of computer-intensive data …
May 17, 2013: Geographies of Detention at UCR Arts Block UCR ARTSblock presents the exhibition: Geographies of Detention: From Guantánamo to the Golden Gulag June 1 – September 7, 2013* California Museum of …
Apr 17, 2013: The "3000-pound spreadsheet machine" If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It: Ancient Computers in Use Today (Wayback Machine link) Companies traditionally used the 402 for accounting, since the …
Feb 15, 2013: Keeping TaB with diet soda TaB soda was named by an IBM mainframe (Wayback Machine link) – now it makes sense. The name was supposed to relate to keeping “tabs” on your weight …
Aug 31, 2012: Yosemite - Summer 2012 About a month or so ago my wife and I went on a camping trip with some friends in Yosemite National Park. It was much warmer than we thought it would …
Aug 30, 2012: Map of the Inca Empire This map of the Inca Empire (Wayback Machine link) is great for showing the rapid expansion of the Incas across the Andes region. On the original map …
Aug 29, 2012: Map of Spanish Viceroyalties I came across this map of Spanish viceroyalties (link no longer available) a few months ago, and since it can be difficult to find good maps online I …
Aug 14, 2012: Ruins of the Acropolis, 1966 - Athens, Greece These photos (Kodak slides) were also taken by my grandparents while on vacation in 1966, and they've been scanned but not altered. The first image is …
Aug 14, 2012: Roman Ruins, 1966 - Rome, Italy These photos of Roman ruins were taken in 1966 by my grandparents. These images are scanned Kodak slides, and they have not been altered. The first …
Mar 13, 2012: A Courtesy - Not an Obligation I’m not a “curator” Some might as a courtesy, but it shouldn’t be considered an obligation. via DF (Revised and republished April 21st, 2025)
Mar 10, 2012: The artistry of the postmodern GIF Animated GIFs: The Birth of a Medium | Off Book | PBS Digital Studios (Revised and republished April 21st, 2025)
Aug 12, 2011: Presenting in Seattle I just returned from a history conference in Seattle. It was the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association …
Aug 9, 2011: Lake Tahoe Milky Way Night Time Lapse on Vimeo Lake Tahoe Milky Way Night Time Lapse (Revised and republished April 21st, 2025)
Aug 9, 2011: New Digital Humanities Minor at UCLA I'm interested to find out more about this new program at UCLA. It seems like an excellent way to get students propelled into Digital Humanities …
Aug 6, 2011: Born Digital newspaper project This summer I've been working on the "Born Digital" project at the Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research (CBSR) at UC Riverside. The Born …
Apr 25, 2011: Blogging, 18th-Century Style Harvard Historian Robert Darnton on Blogging, 18th-Century Style – The Getty Iris. An 18th-century information society? It bugs me when people say, …
Apr 23, 2011: Remember The Conference I'm in San Antonio, Texas, today (right down the street from ) to present a paper at the PCA/ACA conference. It's a joint conference of the Popular …
Feb 27, 2011: Book Review: The Conquest of Nature In our class tonight on Environmental History: "Nature, Space, and Place," we'll be discussing David Blackbourn's, The Conquest of Nature: Water, …
Nov 14, 2010: The Shadow Scholar The Shadow Scholar - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education (Wayback Machine link). ...and two other related articles: The Term …
Oct 8, 2010: The Mexican Suitcase Images of War, Finally Unpacked - The New York Times, 2010 (Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)
Aug 16, 2010: The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D., Matthew Might, 2010: You push at the boundary for a few years, until one day the boundary gives way. (Revised and …