“No, I didn’t eat your pillow, why do you ask?”
“No, I didn’t eat your pillow, why do you ask?”
New issue of my newsletter: “Humane Ingenuity 16: Imagining New Museums”—A future museum’s first diorama; Museum in a Box; the rise and fall of Leiden’s booksellers; OCRing old Japanese docs; improving sentencing algorithms; life hacking as a modern malaise
As part of Northeastern University Library’s partnership with the Boston Public Library to develop and support community-driven research projects using archival and other historical materials, BPL is hiring a Community History and Digitization Specialist.
On the latest What’s New podcast, a history and analysis of life hacking—why do some people go to extraordinary and sometimes bizarre lengths to track and improve their productivity, and what does it tell us about modern work and life? feat. Joseph Reagle
New issue of my newsletter is out: “Humane Ingenuity 15: Close but Not Quite”—How to find jazz solos that quote “Hey Jude”; How to find old tales about giants & goblins; How to open a bookstore; How to preserve digital art. (Subscribe to Humane Ingenuity.)
New issue of my newsletter is out: “Humane Ingenuity 14: Adding Dimensions”—The Library of Necessary Books; the Sheridan-Verplank Scale of Autonomy; follow-up on smartphones in archives; haunting photos of the economy. (Subscribe to Humane Ingenuity.)
New research shows that infants have many innate concepts, including ones related to physics, math, language, and ethics. Yet surveys show that adults can’t believe that we are born with ideas. On a new What’s New podcast, Iris Berent reveals the human mind.
I used to find the Blue Screen of Death to be disconcerting on giant screens in public places, then I found it humorous, and now I find it oddly comforting, like a rotary phone—that there is still some dumb retro tech in our large systems.
Really like a German compound noun I heard Patricia Williams use in a talk last week: Waldeinsamkeit = the feeling of being alone in the woods (plus as a New Englander I like the Thoreau/Walden Pond echoes)
For those in the Boston area: To commemorate the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment, we are hosting a transcribe-a-thon of the Library of Congress’s Suffrage Papers on 1/28 @Northeastern. (Please sign up in advance for pizza calculations).
Patricia Williams pushing back against the problematic mental state of our age of smartphones and social media: “To be human is to be relieved of constant watchfulness.” (So well put, @Northeastern’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr event this afternoon)
New issue of my newsletter: “Humane Ingenuity 13: The Best of Both Worlds”—Historians are no longer reading in the reading rooms of archives; instead, they are taking photos. What this means—plus some helpful tools. (Subscribe to Humane Ingenuity.)
On the first What’s New podcast of 2020, I talk with Jessica Silbey about her forthcoming book, Against Progress: Intellectual Property and Fundamental Values in the Internet Age. Does copyright still promote the arts and sciences, or do we need a new approach? Tune in!
How are books like breakfast cereal? The ones that are on eye-level shelves in libraries are taken off and read much more than the ones that are on low or high shelves. (Shelf #1 is the highest; shelf #7 is the lowest.)
I don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows
Kate Eichhorn’s keynote at the Coalition for Networked Information meeting in December, “Forgetting and Being Forgotten: Growing Up in a Digital Era,” was excellent. It’s now available online and worth your time. (Her associated book is also recommended.)
From a distance I took this photo of a family at sundown, and now I really wish I had their contact info so I could send it to them
Eye-opening survey by @ianmilligan1 reveals the changing practice of historians: Over 90% now use research trips to take photos of archival documents that they will examine when they get home; on average, they take 1,000 photos; 40% take over 2,000 photos.
I like how my web host, @reclaimhosting, has a server for installing new software called “Fugazi,” but it would be extra cool if it played “Waiting Room” while installing the software
“What will the new decade bring? Ducks, I hope.”
As the father of boy-girl twins, I consider Star Wars to be an extended metaphor.
Winter at its most beautiful is more beautiful than any other season.
