Now in its seveth year, the LibLab Fellows program is an experiment in library-based learning guided by a critical consideration of just what we mean by “the digital.” Fellows engage theory and practice of digital scholarship through open lab hours and weekly discussion meetings during the fall semester.
We will be making use of the data visualization platform Observable, working on what might be called the “Computational Essays” during the course of the semester. You can explore some of past work along with notebooks that inspired us here.
Week 1: Pshhhkkkkkkrrrrkakingkakingkakingtshchchchchchchchcchdingding*ding
An introduction to the terrain.
Observable notebook for this week’s discussion.
- Madrigal, Alexis C. “The Mechanics and Meaning”. The Atlantic.
- The Programing Historian: Introduction to the Bash Command Line
-
Pratusevich, Michele .Terminus (2011).(optional)
- Text-based adventure game that teaches users how to use terminal commands.
Week 2: Do Artifacts Have Politics?
What can things do? Considering the perspective of Science and Technology Studies.
- Winner, Langdon. “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” from The Whale and the Reactor (1986).
- Biss, Eula. “Time and Distance Overcome” from Notes from No Man’s Land (2009).
Week 3: Considering Infrastructure
Before we can go further into networked technologies, we ought to have a starting point – What do we mean when we say internet?
- Abbate, Janet. “Government, Business, and the Making of the Internet.” The Business History Review (Spring 2001)
- Visions for the Future Internet A collection of essays, short stories, poetry and art work reflecting on the question of what is the internet and its history. As you browse the site focus on one section (Timeline, Enter, Power, Shift, Delete, ALT, Escape) that most interests you. Come prepared to share your thoughts and opinions
Week 4: Getting used to Observable + Intro to Data
No readings this week. We will spend our time getting to know Observable and some of its quirks. Also, since our projects require us to get our hands dirty with data, we will chat about how we use data in our daily life and what we will need to consider to choose a dataset for our project.
To that end, Lisa Gitelman and Virginia Jackson write in the introduction for “Raw Data” Is an Oxymoron,
“Data need to be imagined as data to exist and function as such, and the imagination of data entails an interpretive base.” If you are interested in reading more, you can access the ebook here Raw Data is an Oxymoron
In preparation
- Find an Observable notebook that is data-driven and appeals to you. You can always begin in the explore section of Observablehq.com but feel free to look elsewhere.
Week 5: Language of Visualization
What are we doing exactly when we render data (or anything) visual or legible? Public health, natural catastrophe, electoral politics, and social inequality. Chart, map, and graph. Increasingly, our understanding of the world is mediated by dynamic representations of data attempting to model real world phenomena. In the process, what do we gain access to and, oppositely, what is effaced or made invisible?
- Drucker, Johanna. “Graphical Approaches to the Digital Humanities.” A New Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schreibman et al. (2016): 290–302.
- Mattern, Shannon. “How to Map Nothing.” Places Journal (March, 2021)
- Daniels, Matt. “The Language of Hip Hop.” The Pudding (2017). Take a look at this page and the vizualisation. No need to read it completly.
- Choi, Taeyoon. “Errantic Poetry.” from Poetic Computation. taeyoonchoi.com
- Optional D’Ignazio, Catherine and Klein, Lauren. “On Rational, Scientific, Objective Viewpoints from Mythical, Imaginary, Impossible Standpoints.” (chapter draft) In Data Feminism (MIT, 2020).
- optional in class readingOsman, Jenna. from Motion Studies. PEN Poetry Series. November 25, 2015.
Week 6: When Computers Were Women: Feminism & Technology
- Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181
- Kane, Nancy. “Cyborg Manifesto,” Encyclopedia of Gender and Society. (this may help you frame some of the strangeness of the Haraway piece and point out its significance)
- Light, Jennifer. “When Computers Were Women.” Technology and Culture.
Week 7: Observable + privacy
Is the internet listening? Is the internet listening to everybody? What if, by design, we can never know for sure? This week we will focus on the porous border between technical, social, and personal implications of continuous data collection.
- The New Organs Watch the 10 minute video and explore the landing page.
- Cyril, Malkia. “Watching the Black Body.” In McSweeney’s 54, pp. 0134-0146.
- FBI report for Black Identity Extremist
- Brunton, Fin & Nissenbaum, Helen. Chapter 3 “Why is Obfuscation Necessary.” In Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest.”
Week 8: Algorithms
The question of “What is an Algorithm?” is as important as the question of “What does an Algorithm do?” There is a tension at play in what these authors are writing about and as you read and watch, pay attention to their answers to both questions. How would you answer?
- Benjamin, Ruha. Short chapter 2.”Default Discrimination Is the Glitch Systemic?” In The New Jim Code
- Schmidth, Ben. “Do Digital Humanists Need to Understand Algorithms?” Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Gold, Matthew and Klein, Lauren.
- Machine Bias in Propublica by Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu and Lauren Kirchner,