abstract:Predictive algorithms today share more than just semantics with the divinatory practices of the past. This article will map the parallels, contending that the similarities between the two practices are true "propositions" that radically question the way we apprehend the world, the way we draw our knowledge from it, and the way we then act within and upon it. Mindful of the limitations of such a comparative method, it will nevertheless attempt it by deploying a twofold approach. On the one hand, the article questions the epistemological nature of predictive analytics and examines their truth claims with regard to how they represent the future. On the other hand, it focuses on the ontological dimension of predictive analytics and investigates how they shape the world by bringing about the presence of the future in the here and now.
{"title":"Algorithmic Divination: From Prediction to Preemption of the Future","authors":"Christopher Lazaro","doi":"10.7560/ic58202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic58202","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Predictive algorithms today share more than just semantics with the divinatory practices of the past. This article will map the parallels, contending that the similarities between the two practices are true \"propositions\" that radically question the way we apprehend the world, the way we draw our knowledge from it, and the way we then act within and upon it. Mindful of the limitations of such a comparative method, it will nevertheless attempt it by deploying a twofold approach. On the one hand, the article questions the epistemological nature of predictive analytics and examines their truth claims with regard to how they represent the future. On the other hand, it focuses on the ontological dimension of predictive analytics and investigates how they shape the world by bringing about the presence of the future in the here and now.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"58 1","pages":"145 - 165"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47705533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:The promise of an open cyberspace driven by an empowered generation of "digital natives" has collapsed, due to the corporate capture of the internet and the psychosocial immiseration of youngsters caused by the instrumental manipulation of them at the screen interface. Certain strands in the twentieth-century philosophy of technology can throw light on these developments in terms of (1) Martin Heidegger's suggestion that the expanding influence of 'Technik' tends toward the treatment of persons as exploitable things, or "standing reserve," and (2) Jacques Ellul's contention that humans would in time and of necessity assimilate themselves to vast and autonomous technological system. Young people are now being largely shaped by "social physics," as big data–derived fodder for the creation of a hive mind in the interests of technocratic social control and corporate profiteering.
{"title":"Big Nihilism: Generation Z, Surveillance Capitalism, and the Emerging Digital Technocracy","authors":"G. Robson","doi":"10.7560/ic58204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic58204","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:The promise of an open cyberspace driven by an empowered generation of \"digital natives\" has collapsed, due to the corporate capture of the internet and the psychosocial immiseration of youngsters caused by the instrumental manipulation of them at the screen interface. Certain strands in the twentieth-century philosophy of technology can throw light on these developments in terms of (1) Martin Heidegger's suggestion that the expanding influence of 'Technik' tends toward the treatment of persons as exploitable things, or \"standing reserve,\" and (2) Jacques Ellul's contention that humans would in time and of necessity assimilate themselves to vast and autonomous technological system. Young people are now being largely shaped by \"social physics,\" as big data–derived fodder for the creation of a hive mind in the interests of technocratic social control and corporate profiteering.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"58 1","pages":"180 - 204"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47764983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:Archives represent one of the physical components of the country's heritage. They represent an important living memory containing both the past and the present upon which a country can foresee its future based on available data in order to design sound policies. The richer a country is in its heritage, the more valuable its archives will be to all of humanity, representing an accumulation of valuable experiences and information that help construct and explain both human psychology and the environment. Iraqi archives reflect the diversity of a civilization that goes back more than eight thousand years in the span of human history. The destruction and theft of Iraq's archives have impoverished humanity's shared heritage and, at the same time, resulted in an international-level cultural genocide as global and regional instruments concerned with this shared heritage compete to strengthen its protection.
{"title":"The Cultural Genocide of the Iraqi Archives and Iraqi Jewish Archive and International Responsibility","authors":"Husam Abdul Ameer Khalaf, Amanda Raquel Dorval","doi":"10.7560/ic58105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic58105","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Archives represent one of the physical components of the country's heritage. They represent an important living memory containing both the past and the present upon which a country can foresee its future based on available data in order to design sound policies. The richer a country is in its heritage, the more valuable its archives will be to all of humanity, representing an accumulation of valuable experiences and information that help construct and explain both human psychology and the environment. Iraqi archives reflect the diversity of a civilization that goes back more than eight thousand years in the span of human history. The destruction and theft of Iraq's archives have impoverished humanity's shared heritage and, at the same time, resulted in an international-level cultural genocide as global and regional instruments concerned with this shared heritage compete to strengthen its protection.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"58 1","pages":"108 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46587324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:This article contributes to the ongoing conversation about information history. The article argues for reformulating and pinpointing legitimacy and relevance as core issues characterizing information history and for drawing on theoretical input from historical disciplines such as conceptual history and microhistory. Different notions about history reflect how the individual historian approaches information as an object for historical scrutiny that ultimately allows for multiple research strategies. Information history also deals with traditional history topics such as structures versus actors, change versus continuity, and context. The article argues for seeing information history as histories of information.
{"title":"Present and Past: The Relevance of Information History","authors":"Laura Skouvig","doi":"10.7560/ic58101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic58101","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article contributes to the ongoing conversation about information history. The article argues for reformulating and pinpointing legitimacy and relevance as core issues characterizing information history and for drawing on theoretical input from historical disciplines such as conceptual history and microhistory. Different notions about history reflect how the individual historian approaches information as an object for historical scrutiny that ultimately allows for multiple research strategies. Information history also deals with traditional history topics such as structures versus actors, change versus continuity, and context. The article argues for seeing information history as histories of information.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"58 1","pages":"1 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42620531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:This article investigates how computing discourses, including user guides, news articles, and advertisements, urged personal computer users in the 1970s and 1980s to preventively care for their devices. Through hygiene recommendations related to eating, drinking, and dusting, these discourses warned that computers' "health" depended upon humans. Importantly, they interpreted care as individual responsibility by putting the onus on users to behave properly. Within this frame, such texts described repairs as unfortunate medical interventions resulting from neglect. The piece argues that computing discourses have historically defined "care" and "repair" in opposition, as acts of doting prevention and undesirable intervention, respectively.
{"title":"The Care and Feeding of the Computer: Imagining Machines' Preventive Care and Medicine","authors":"Rachel Plotnick","doi":"10.7560/ic58104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic58104","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article investigates how computing discourses, including user guides, news articles, and advertisements, urged personal computer users in the 1970s and 1980s to preventively care for their devices. Through hygiene recommendations related to eating, drinking, and dusting, these discourses warned that computers' \"health\" depended upon humans. Importantly, they interpreted care as individual responsibility by putting the onus on users to behave properly. Within this frame, such texts described repairs as unfortunate medical interventions resulting from neglect. The piece argues that computing discourses have historically defined \"care\" and \"repair\" in opposition, as acts of doting prevention and undesirable intervention, respectively.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"58 1","pages":"66 - 83"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47374734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:This case study situates an early text-to-speech computer developed for blind persons, the Kurzweil Reading Machine (KRM), within a broader history of speech synthesis technologies. Though typically no more than a footnote in the technical history of speech synthesis, the KRM was still a powerful symbol of innovation that reveals how disability can be used as a pretext for funding technology development. I argue that various boosters held the KRM up as a symbol of technological solutionism that promised to fully enroll blind people into the US political economy. However, the success of the KRM as a symbol belies its technical flaws, the federal subsidies needed to bring it to fruition, and the structural barriers to its use that were elided by its utopian promise.
{"title":"Federal Support for the Development of Speech Synthesis Technologies: A Case Study of the Kurzweil Reading Machine","authors":"S. Bell","doi":"10.7560/ic58103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic58103","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This case study situates an early text-to-speech computer developed for blind persons, the Kurzweil Reading Machine (KRM), within a broader history of speech synthesis technologies. Though typically no more than a footnote in the technical history of speech synthesis, the KRM was still a powerful symbol of innovation that reveals how disability can be used as a pretext for funding technology development. I argue that various boosters held the KRM up as a symbol of technological solutionism that promised to fully enroll blind people into the US political economy. However, the success of the KRM as a symbol belies its technical flaws, the federal subsidies needed to bring it to fruition, and the structural barriers to its use that were elided by its utopian promise.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"58 1","pages":"39 - 65"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47114418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:Advocates of an expanded public domain and less restrictive copyright policies have made Woody Guthrie a cause célèbre for their point of view. Meditations on his artistic persona are used to support their argument, as is a direct quote about copyright that is cited with surprising frequency despite lacking proper citation. This research locates the source for Guthrie's copyright quote and corrects several false assumptions about its meaning, as well as about Guthrie's wider copyright activities. For proponents of public domain expansion who have mythologized Guthrie, this research thoroughly debunks that myth.
{"title":"This Copyright Kills Fascists: Debunking the Mythology Surrounding Woody Guthrie, \"This Land Is Your Land,\" and the Public Domain","authors":"J. Guthrie","doi":"10.7560/ic58102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic58102","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Advocates of an expanded public domain and less restrictive copyright policies have made Woody Guthrie a cause célèbre for their point of view. Meditations on his artistic persona are used to support their argument, as is a direct quote about copyright that is cited with surprising frequency despite lacking proper citation. This research locates the source for Guthrie's copyright quote and corrects several false assumptions about its meaning, as well as about Guthrie's wider copyright activities. For proponents of public domain expansion who have mythologized Guthrie, this research thoroughly debunks that myth.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"58 1","pages":"17 - 38"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48989626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:This article combines humanistic "data critique" with informed inspection of big data analysis. It measures gender bias when gender prediction software tools (Gender API, Namsor, and Genderize.io) are used in historical big data research. Gender bias is measured by contrasting personally identified computer science authors in the well-regarded DBLP dataset (1950–80) with exactly comparable results from the software tools. Implications for public understanding of gender bias in computing and the nature of the computing profession are outlined. Preliminary assessment of the Semantic Scholar dataset is presented. The conclusion combines humanistic approaches with selective use of big data methods.
{"title":"Gender Bias in Big Data Analysis","authors":"T. Misa","doi":"10.7560/IC57303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/IC57303","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article combines humanistic \"data critique\" with informed inspection of big data analysis. It measures gender bias when gender prediction software tools (Gender API, Namsor, and Genderize.io) are used in historical big data research. Gender bias is measured by contrasting personally identified computer science authors in the well-regarded DBLP dataset (1950–80) with exactly comparable results from the software tools. Implications for public understanding of gender bias in computing and the nature of the computing profession are outlined. Preliminary assessment of the Semantic Scholar dataset is presented. The conclusion combines humanistic approaches with selective use of big data methods.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"57 1","pages":"283 - 306"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49132013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:Transmitting information as electrical impulses favored such story qualities as brevity, an inverted-pyramid structure, and a muted authorial voice. Historians often ascribe these attributes to the narrow bandwidth of early telegraphy, overlooking decades of innovation that expanded its information-carrying capacity. This article argues that telegraphic story qualities lodged in journalism when the network delivered too much, not too little, information. The news industry discovered that a story's telegraphic qualities contributed to the efficiency of processing texts and suited marketing. Journalists and journalism educators embraced telegraphic style as a reporter's stock-in-trade that distinguished newswriting from other forms of presenting information.
{"title":"The Telegraph, Bandwidth, and the News Story","authors":"Richard Kielbowicz","doi":"10.7560/ic57304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic57304","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Transmitting information as electrical impulses favored such story qualities as brevity, an inverted-pyramid structure, and a muted authorial voice. Historians often ascribe these attributes to the narrow bandwidth of early telegraphy, overlooking decades of innovation that expanded its information-carrying capacity. This article argues that telegraphic story qualities lodged in journalism when the network delivered too much, not too little, information. The news industry discovered that a story's telegraphic qualities contributed to the efficiency of processing texts and suited marketing. Journalists and journalism educators embraced telegraphic style as a reporter's stock-in-trade that distinguished newswriting from other forms of presenting information.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"57 1","pages":"307 - 331"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47176699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:Over the course of the past decade, coding has been positioned as a silver-bullet solution for several key issues in the US tech industry. The coding bootcamps that have sprung up in response to the contemporary coding obsession may appear innovative, but they bear a remarkable resemblance to the electronic data programming (EDP) schools that proliferated during the "software crisis" of the 1960s and 1970s. By comparing the current coding craze and coding bootcamps to the software crisis and EDP schools, this article not only draws attention to the remarkable similarities between the two periods and institutional forms but also identifies specific qualities and problematic practices of EDP schools that threaten to repeat themselves with coding bootcamps. It then concludes with some reflections about why certain "forgotten" histories of computing are more relevant now than ever.
{"title":"Everything Old Is New Again: A Comparison of Midcentury American EDP Schools and Contemporary Coding Bootcamps","authors":"Kate M. Miltner","doi":"10.7560/ic57302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic57302","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Over the course of the past decade, coding has been positioned as a silver-bullet solution for several key issues in the US tech industry. The coding bootcamps that have sprung up in response to the contemporary coding obsession may appear innovative, but they bear a remarkable resemblance to the electronic data programming (EDP) schools that proliferated during the \"software crisis\" of the 1960s and 1970s. By comparing the current coding craze and coding bootcamps to the software crisis and EDP schools, this article not only draws attention to the remarkable similarities between the two periods and institutional forms but also identifies specific qualities and problematic practices of EDP schools that threaten to repeat themselves with coding bootcamps. It then concludes with some reflections about why certain \"forgotten\" histories of computing are more relevant now than ever.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"57 1","pages":"255 - 282"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45954808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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