For our next What’s New podcast, I interviewed a music critic who interviewed Prince, Bob Marley, Barry White, and Aretha Franklin in the early 80s, and as you’ll hear I spent a lot of the show saying “wow!” and “really?”
For our next What’s New podcast, I interviewed a music critic who interviewed Prince, Bob Marley, Barry White, and Aretha Franklin in the early 80s, and as you’ll hear I spent a lot of the show saying “wow!” and “really?”
Barry White on the backlash against disco music and discos in 1979: “People put titles on everything. Before those places were called discos, they were just clubs. After disco they became clubs again. Most people don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Shalanda Baker, Prof. of Law, Public Policy and Urban Affairs @Northeastern, has joined President Biden’s administration as Deputy Director for Energy Justice. We were fortunate to have Baker on @podcastwhatsnew to talk about what energy justice means.
To start 2021 with some fresh ideas and discoveries, I spoke with three award-winning graduate students about their research on a common protein involved with cancer, the geometry of oyster reefs, and making biofuel from canola. Tune in @podcastwhatsnew!
Great idea: The Science Museum (UK) used its digitized collection, API, and log of web pages with zero views to create “Never Been Seen”—a site that makes you the very first person to see an object. Nice model for serendipity. (via @sebchan’s newsletter)
New issue of my newsletter: “Humane Ingenuity 32: Faint and Loud Signals”—Relax in a virtual forest; AI selects appropriate photos for famous poems; the preservation and loss of media from the recent past. Featuring work by @melissaterras @metasemantic
Morning
Quincy Jones predicts the future of music and technology in 1984 (quoted in @matoswk75’s very good Can’t Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop’s Blockbuster Year; I needed some escapist reading this weekend)
This weekend’s reading, via @audreywatters/@hackeducation, was @bjfr’s Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education, which I highly recommend. Many helpful points about ed tech, situated in a useful/longer history + the social/professional/political context.
Last hike of the year; good summary of 2020’s mood
This chance encounter with a joyful tiny ballerina seems like a good omen for 2021
Consider this: In 24 hours, works that were published in 1925 will have a brighter digital future than works that were published in Flash in 2005.
Novice winemaking update: We ran a chromatography test overnight to see if the bacteria we added to the wine three weeks ago converted all of the malic acid to lactic acid. Pretty cool chem lab/early photography mashup. Looks like we have made progress but still have a bit to go.
I saved The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design for holiday week pleasure reading, and it is indeed pleasurable. A minor quibble: as much as I like the rough illustrations, I’m finding myself googling photos to see the subjects more clearly.
A Christmas Eve edition of my newsletter: “Humane Ingenuity 31: An Adaptive Painting” — The tale of a mysterious lab and the true story of invention and reinvention; also: machine learning when the machine was human and the year was 1900.
Our library (Snell Library @Northeastern) is celebrating its 30th anniversary. In 1990, the campus newspaper asked students what they wanted to see in the new library. Their answers were A+
Helping an elderly relative with an operating system upgrade today, I thought of Michael Oakeshott’s dictum that all change involves loss.
On this week’s @podcastwhatsnew from @NortheasternLib, @JoannaRadin, @DanBouk, and I talk about the role of data in public health, from a historical perspective and this year. With big thanks to @SariAltschuler and @cm_parsons for organizing the panel!
Morning
We spent this snowy day pressing our grapes. Started with 200 pounds of grapes, which gave us 20 gallons of fermented must, which after pressing gave us 14 gallons of wine. Next up is malolactic fermentation. We still have no idea what we’re doing, but are feeling optimistic.
This morning @lorcanD reminded me of this great visualization of mega-regions in North America and their combined library collections, which could also be the premise of a great SF novel. “The sky above the port was the color of shelves, filled with millions of books.”
Hold me closer
Old me: Hahaha, Charles Babbage thought he lost a quarter of his brainpower to organ grinders.
New me: I’ve lost a quarter of my brainpower to leaf blowers.
Entering the workplace after college is always difficult and awkward for young people, and it can be especially challenging for LGBTQIA+ students. This week on What’s New, I talk w/ Alessandra Bryant and John Cornett about their new podcast on this topic.
“The lesson of the web is that people, given the choice between the freedom of operating and managing their own platform, and running a centralized platform that they do not control, will choose the centralized platform.” —@ftrain Alas, this is correct.