steveanderson.digital

Critical Digital Humanities is putting together a roundtable for this year’s Cultural Studies Association. The conference will be held from May 21-24, 2015 in Riverside, California at the Riverside Convention Center. This year’s theme is Another University Is Possible: Praxis, Activism, and the Promise of Critical Pedagogy. In keeping with this year’s theme, we would like to explore the question “What does critical digital humanities look like?” The goal of this roundtable is to open a dialogue about critical approaches to digital humanities. Each participant will give a brief 5-7 minute provocation followed by a discussion.

Some topics for consideration, but not limitation:

• critical approaches to digital pedagogy, big data projects, data visualization, and digital scholarship
• specific campus initiatives, classes or programs that fall under the category of “critical digital humanities”
• limitations of critical digital humanities
• theory vs. practice in DH
• cultural studies and DH
• public scholarship, public humanities, and public history

Building off of the terrific energy from THATCamp, we would like to invite the DHSoCal community to consider having a role in this conversation! If you are interested, please contact http://cdh.ucr.edu/ and let us know what you are interested in discussing by Dec 1, 2014.

(Revised and republished April 23rd, 2025)

THATCamp DHSoCal: Diving into Digital HumanitiesOctober 24th and 25th, 2014 San Diego State University

THATCamp is “The Humanities and Technology Camp,” and it is an “un-conference” meeting where humanists and technologists of all skill levels learn and build together in sessions proposed on the spot.

THATCamp DHSoCal: Diving into Digital Humanities will be held at San Diego State University, but it is organized through a unique digital humanities-style collaboration between 4 regional institutions: San Diego State University (SDSU), University of California at San Diego (UCSD), California State University at San Marcos (CSUSM), and University of San Diego (USD).

Visit http://dhsocal2014.thatcamp.org/ for more information and to register online. It is free and open to the public.

The spirit is inclusive, so, please send this email far and wide—to anyone (colleagues, students, friends) interested in learning about the digital humanities, getting involved in regional collaborations, and geeking out on the intersection between traditional humanities and digital technologies.

Join us to dive into the digital humanities!

More information on the DHSoCal digital humanities group can be found at: http://dhsocal.blogspot.com

(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)

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 introductory session on digital pedagogy.

We will introduce you to the LMS (Learning Management System) Canvas, and we'll show you some of the applications that make online teaching as good (and sometimes better) than face–2-face teaching. We’ll also discuss some of the best practices for online education in the physical classroom and in the virtual one.

Location: UC Riverside, Surge 170

Date and time: Wednesday February 19th, 2014. 4–6PM

This is the first of hopefully many sessions aimed at training graduate students (and anyone else) in digital pedagogies.

(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)

My post at Critical Digital Humanities on a recent workshop: TEI and Markup Fundamentals http://cdh.ucr.edu/2014/02/16/notes-on-tei-and-markup-fundamentals-workshop/

On February 13th I attended a workshop on TEI and Markup Fundamentals sponsored by the Graduate Quantitative Methods Program. The workshop was given by Rochelle Gold and Kimberly Hall from the Department of English at UC Riverside.

TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) is a method of encoding texts with markup language for digital representation. TEI markup focuses on rendering the semantic qualities of texts more visible. For example, sentences and clauses can be marked within a text, as well as the lines and features of a poem. This granular level of encoding allows for digital representations of these texts to carry details and information beyond their normal forms, which is valuable for critical interpretation.

→ read more at the original post

(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)

My post at Critical Digital Humanities on a recent talk:

CDH Event Archive: Rethinking Debates on Digital Learning

Yesterday CDH sponsored a talk by Professor Juliette Levy of the Department of History at UC Riverside. In her discussion, Professor Levy described her own evolution toward using digital technology in order to broaden the learning experience for her students.

Professor Levy’s talk began with a common experience many in academia have shared — traditional methods of teaching are not being adapted to the changing needs of students in our modern world.

The RSA talk by Sir Ken Robinson, which was turned into an animated video, was central to describing this need for change. There is a great chasm between the needs of students and the pace of innovation within the classroom.

→ read more at the original post

(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)

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 an insect was found in the machine, but that the computer operator taped the moth into the logbook. It's almost as if the moth was trapped in a thin sheet of amber, preserved as the pre-digital ancestor of the tricksters within our own modern devices. 

The insect was found by Grace Hopper (Wayback Machine link), a computer scientist and rear admiral in the US Navy. Google recently paid homage to Hopper with a "doodle" (below) showing her working on an early mainframe computer. Not only does the computer display an answer on a paper printout, but a moth also flies out at the end of the sequence.

(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)

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 is mesmerizing, and it’s great that the new Mac Pro is assembled in the United States. With the complexity of the global marketplace, it seems unlikely that new high-tech devices could also be completely manufactured in the US though.

Google is producing the Motorola Moto X smartphone in the US too.

(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)

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 keyboard and the subsequent enciphered letter lights up to the rear of the machine, the chances of that letter lighting up are nearly 158 million million million to 1.

(Revised and republished April 21st, 2025)

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 codebreaking team that ensured a successful landing for Allied forces on D-Day.

She initially worked in London, checking commercial codes and perusing the personal columns of The Times for coded spy messages. After showing promise, she was plucked out and sent to Bletchley to work in the research unit run by Dilly Knox. Knox had led the way for the British on the breaking of the Enigma ciphers, but was now working in a cottage next to the mansion on new codes and ciphers that had not been broken by Hut 6, where the German Army and Air Force ciphers were cracked. “It was a strange little outfit in the cottage,” Mavis said. Knox was a true eccentric, often so wrapped up in the puzzle he was working on that he would absent-mindedly stuff a lunchtime sandwich into his pipe rather than his tobacco: “Organisation is not a word you would associate with Dilly Knox. When I arrived, he said: 'Oh, hello, we’re breaking machines, have you got a pencil?’ That was it. I was never really told what to do. I think, looking back on it, that was a great precedent in my life, because he taught me to think that you could do things yourself without always checking up to see what the book said."

Mavis Batey - obituary

(Revised and republished April 21st, 2025)

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 be anything. They could be a hurricane or a tornado. It’s not about the zombies. The important thing to me is the way the people react to this horrible situation, misbehave, make mistakes and screw themselves up.

George A. Romero interview: “The Walking Dead is just a soap opera with the occasional zombie” (Wayback Machine link)

And I need to get a pair of those glasses too!

(Revised and republished April 21st, 2025)

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 had suspected. It’s so different from portable computing which seeks to maximize internal dimensions for power usage and heat.

The biggest question is the question itself – “we don’t know what the best questions are to ask that computer, that’s exactly what we’re trying to understand now” (Eleanor Rieffel @ 4:52 in the video above).

(via kottke.org)

(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025 — I can’t help but think of Everything Everywhere All At Once)

Quantum Computers Animated, Piled Higher and Deeper (PHD Comics)

The illustrations for this video on quantum computing are fantastic, especially the "0/1" transition at 1:40.

(via Hacker News)

(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)