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#access2009pei – William J. Turkel – Hacking as a Way of Knowing
3 Oct 09
Historians and others working in a monographic mode tend to present the past as a monolith, supported by an internal structure of references; but you try to hide that fact from others, don’t let the pieces show.
Footnotes really plug our work into everyone else’s. Historians train to analyze other peoples footnotes to criticize their work at the same time as they learn to hide their own away.
Works are built from other works, a commonplace of our era. Works are made from pieces of others, in dialogue with one another: remix, remake, celebrate. The audience wants to talk back. Few-to-few model gave way to broadcasting model, giving way to many-to-many communication. Access Conference has a rich back channel, IRC, twitter, etc. Can we incorporate that into our scholarship?
How do we design scholarly works so that they can be hacked? Requires open source, open access. What would it be like if history were written by anonymous people (missed citation name); Wikipedia as example: 1.5M articles in English alone–authors with no vested interest (in principal). W is the tip of the iceberg for a new way of thinking about how we create knowledge, give it authority. Traditional forms of scholarship might offer accreditation and peer review as networked goods. W is a deeply phililogical exercise. Collaborative editing software keeps track of and makes available every edit anybody ever does.
IBM research project “History Flow” a visualization for W edits. Can see consensus building, failure thereof, bursts of interest. UC Davis project “Code Swarm” visualizes tracking history of edits to an open source software project–networked individuals making lots of changes. A role for the future of historians to sort out how these things came to be. How would you write the history of Apache, for example. Must think about the activities of thousands of people working in real time in collaborative environments: making sense of what we’re doing as human beings.
Data and object creation going on constantly and incredible rate. P.W. Anderson “More is Different” (paper), arguing that at different scales, different laws kick in. Can’t infer qualities of larger structure looking at the properties of smaller structures. Differences between properties of paper sources and data sources begin to show some of the possibilities. Data can be replicated almost without cost!
Networks allow scholars to collaborate in new ways, but in many disciplines (History) no thought of doing anything more than monographs. Big difference: can do computational analysis on ANY source. Plebeian Lives project: may be able to follow lives of up to 80% of individuals living in 18th century London. Data mining, visualization, machine learning tools will be necessary. Turkel created a machine learning program to analyze Old Bailey records. Uses statistical techniques, becomes very good at looking through documents a researcher hasn’t looked at yet and sorting probably interesting records to the fore. Old Bailey is building this into their website. Can potentially share learning machines, leading to the development of open source pre-trained learning machines.
Compression-based clustering: can use compression techniques to build a general purpose yardstick to evaluate similarity of files and then cluster related texts. E.g. of Cdn Dict of Biog, see clusters of related biographies form quickly.
Interlinking between digital world and physical world. Started with handheld computers with GIS support, historical maps–MA student walking tour with elementary students. Initially all by hand, now use semapedia.org for grassroots geotagging: layers of info over everyday places. iPhone 3Gs and Android phones include digital compasses and accelerometers; can tell which direction you are pointing it, link to existing annotations about physical environment. Huge potential to transform how we understand places and the past. Every single place is an archive of sources, everyone and everything is a time-traveller from the past. Talking about the ability to attach virtual sources to physical places and objects. The authority of people who formerly had to interpret stuff becomes less, world is perhaps more democratic. Barcodes and RFID tags can make objects knowledgeable about themselves. Bruce Sterling: every single object can become the protagonist of it’s own history.
What happens to the curated object when every object becomes a site of contestation? Students believe the future of public history looks like the holodeck. Star Trek often uses the holodeck to simulate a usable past. Ok, now students must brainstorm tools, toys, devices that will magically dispense history. What would a history appliance look like, BUT you’re not allowed to reinvent the holodeck. One group said, what about a pair of knitting needles that would remember everything they ever made? Or a reverse babel-fish: would immediately make everyone around you sound like they were speaking an ancient language? Or tangible spray: comes in an aerosol, creates a cloud you can reach into and feel what the past was like until the cloud dissolves? Students haven’t yet suggested the Star Trek replicator. Notice how people in Star Trek don’t have pockets?
A cradle to cradle universe: everything exists only temporarily, until recycled into something else. What THEN happens to the curated object? E.g. of Buddhist temples that are routinely burned and rebuilt every 20 years. Can’t get heritage status because even though the ritual is thousands of years old, but building is less than two decades. Existing sci-fi tech: immersive virtual reality, augmented reality, tangible computing, ubiquitous computing, desktop fabrication.
Project with students to create an exhibit to show the work of William Harvey. Works justly held up as a paragon of scientific writing; but some of his techniques would now be ethically repugnant. How to give people a hands-on feel for what he did, but don’t make the simulations stomach-turning? Matter is the new medium. Affordable printers made it possible to materialize documents and pictures; now reaching a price point where other kinds of objects can be created as well. Used a scanner to create 3D anatomical representations. Digital data are extremely plastic. Editing work can be done at the digital level, can then print out physical objects, moulds. Interested in embedding electronic devices into physical objects to enhance interactions (Arduino).
Virtual/tangible cycle. The Harvey project by itself not that interesting, but the new modes of working are what’s really interesting. A tight loop between the tangible stuff and the virtual representations thereof. Naturally invite open source communities to come along and play.
Ability to make stuff changes your understanding of the stuff and the research process. “Real Humanists Make Tools” t-shirt…. Most of T’s colleagues don’t really get this yet. It is hard to get stuff to work! Need new spaces to work in, new kinds of tools. Practically every kindergarten in NA is better equipped for making than every humanities department. Easy to buy tools, much harder to set up proper, safe workspaces. If we don’t have a hands on engagement with this pool of knowledge, can’t learn what it has to teach. Until recently, hobbyists are excluded from history. There’s a new respect for tinkerers, makers, doers, who can remake the world in a generation or two (or now, faster). Scholarly engagement must extend to citizen technologies. Reprap machine, a desktop fabricator that can replicate anything including itself.
So what happens to our sense of the created object when we can start turning those back into atoms? E.g. of plastics used in 3D printers: specifically inexpensive to purchase and recycle. Conceivable to have a scanner, a printer, and a recycler on your desktop. What happens if you could make anything, and give it away as open source plans? Thingiverse; Instructibles another example of people sharing how to do stuff in a free and open way. Sensor data shared through pachube, the ability to mash up things.
Possible to imagine new histories of things, of the body, of environments.
Posted by pzed on October 3, 2009 at 2.24pm
Categories: access 2009, conferences, libraries, twitter
