“Go thou my incense upward from this hearth”
“Go thou my incense upward from this hearth”
Walden Pond
Given that there are now over a half-million podcasts, and visibility is largely dominated by big producers, this is a good idea: the launch today of Lyceum, a community of educational podcasts and listeners that curates and connects: www.lyceum.fm
I know this is hard to believe, but there is a dog in this photo, camouflaged with the floor
New issue of my newsletter Humane Ingenuity is out—more on the use of AI/machine learning in libraries, archives, and museums; some pushback on a binary view of what libraries should be; and a very old piggy bank. (You can also subscribe to the newsletter.)
On the latest What’s New: supply chain expert Nada Sanders, who explains why many CEOs (like Tim Cook at Apple) are now operations rather than product gurus, how automation and AI are changing business, and how we can make all of this more humane. Tune in!
Our hound puppy now has a distinctive three-note bay that rivals the NBC chimes.
I was on The Agenda on TVO Monday with two other academics to talk about “The Lost Art of Reading,” and the video of that show is now available. Discusses my Atlantic piece on the decline of print books in colleges, and asks what we can/should do about it.
My iPhone just autocorrected “weekend” to “Weeknd” we are doomed
My teenage daughter just watched her first live television show.
Cormac McCarthy’s tips on how to write a great science paper (broadly applicable and not just for bleak science papers)
New issue of my newsletter Humane Ingenuity is out, featuring a bit of a love letter to Micro.blog; how to teach a robot to crack a whip (and, um, why); and some follow-up on AI in libraries, archives, and museums. You can also subscribe to receive all the issues via email/RSS.
This week on the What’s New podcast: How ballet dancers communicate spatial information to their partners through their fingertips, and how to teach a robot to crack a whip—my conversation with Dagmar Sternad about her Action Lab. Tune in!
The technology of the printing press with moveable type arose during Leonardo da Vinci’s lifetime; did he ever consider publishing his notebooks?
If you want to get away from the world/social media, I wholeheartedly recommend Northeastern’s combination anechoic chamber + Faraday cage, which completely kills all electromagnetic and sound waves. Supremely quiet and no wireless signals of any kind. Nice and relaxing.
Some good notes and links from @mia_out about a workshop this week on museums and artificial intelligence that acts as a nice counterpart to my newsletter issue on AI in the archives yesterday.
We’re hiring a project archivist to work on the Civil Rights & Restorative Justice project, which collects and compiles documents and data on racially motivated violence in mid-20th century America. Important position on an important project—join us.
I met Cokie Roberts when Carla Hayden was sworn in as Librarian of Congress, and chatted with her for a while about history and libraries. She was really thoughtful, funny, and genuine.
The third issue of my newsletter Humane Ingenuity is now out, on using artificial intelligence in archives and what that tells us more generally about an ethical and culturally useful interaction between AI and human beings. Subscribe to get this and future issues.
10 points to the University of Chicago for having “Is a hot dog a sandwich?” as one of their application essays this year.
The third issue of my Humane Ingenuity newsletter, which will cover in depth the use (and potential abuse) of artificial intelligence in archives and special collections, will go out to subscribers tomorrow. Still time to sign up for your own copy.
Boston suburbs have an M. Night Shyamalan vibe today
After 9/11, Ruth Sergel and Here is New York set up a private booth so that people could record their memories, alone, unscripted, and unedited. Those recordings are now in the September 11 Digital Archive and watching them is still incredibly raw.
A corollary is that the remaining online venues that bring me agita, not joy, are free.
I’ll write about this in a future issue of my newsletter, but it has struck me recently that the remaining online venues that bring me joy, not agita, are services for which I pay $5 a month: Microblog (social media), Reclaim Hosting (blog), Feedbin (RSS), Buttondown (newsletter)