‘Some Assembly Required’, my keynote at the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education is now available on youtube.
(If you don’t see me, I’m the second person on the playlist).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K58DOSeQ0N4&feature=share&list=PLL1ugrJCNbcq8v_iIHqh8mCja6YFOuCEe
I’m addressing the Underhill Graduate Students’ Colloquium tomorrow, here in the history department at Carleton U. Below are my slides for ‘Living the Life Electric: On Becoming a Digital Humanist’
update March 7: here are my speaking notes. These give a rough sense of what I intend to talk about at various points. Bolded titles are the titles of slides. Not every slide is listed, as some speak more or less for themselves.
I wanted to be an archaeologist – I graduated in 2002.
‘Digital Humanities’ wasn’t coined until 2004.
It emerges from ‘humanities computing’, which has been around since the 1940s.
In fact, computing wouldn’t be the way it is today without the Humanities, and the Jesuit, Father Busa.
Eastern Canada’s Only Stamped Brick Specialist -Roman archaeology
Stamped brick
Eastern Canada’s only Stamped Brick Specialist, probably
….things were pretty lean in 2003…
Life from a suitcase
Comin’ Home Again
Youth development grant to study cultural heritage of my home township
Also a small teaching excavation based in Shawville
Which led to a teaching gig at the local high school.
A Year of Living Secondarily
What was it about my academic work that I really enjoyed?
Networks
Possibilities of Simulation
Random Chances and the virtues of ‘What the Hell’
Coronation Hall
Meanwhile, I enter business – 3 different startups, one of which has survived (so far!)
Heritage focus
Heritage education – learned how to install my own software, LMS
Trying to monetize the information I uncovered in my cultural heritage study
Coronation Hall Cider Mills
(Shameless Plug).
…
What are the digital humanities – think about it: modern computers were developed in order to allow us to map, forecast, the consequences of massive annihilation and death. Simulation is rooted in the desire to predict future death counts. My interest emerged from trying to simulate my own understandings of the past, to understand the unintended consequences of my understandings, to put some sort of order on the necessarily incomplete materials I was looking at. I call it ‘practical necromancy’
Do your work in public blog was originally intended to chronicle my work on simulation, but it has become very much the driver of my online identity, the calling card that others see when they intersect my work – and because it’s been up for so long, with a sustained focus, it creates a very strong signal which our algorithms, Google, pick up. This is how academics can push the public discourse: interfere with the world’s extended mind, their entangled consciousness of cyberspace & meatspace.
Allows you to develop your ideas
Forces you to write in small chunks
Exposes your work to potential audiences
My blog posts have been cited in others’ academic monographs
Has improved the readership of my published work
A quarter million page reads over the last six years.
My book: maybe 40 copies, if I’m lucky.
Basic Word Counts
Top words:
digital 1082 research 650 university 577 experience 499 library 393 humanities 386
History: 177 times
Broadly, not useful or surprising. But consider the structure of word use…
Group 1: gives you a sense of technical skills, but for the most part not the kinds of analyses that one would use that for. That’s an important distinction. The analysis should drive the skill set, not the other way around (a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail)
Group 2: European centres!
Group 3: Canada!
Job adverts – to – topics. Six broad groups based on how the adverts share particular discourses. Gives a sense of where academic departments think this field is going. If I’d done this according to individual researcher’s blogs, or the ‘about’ pages for different centres, you’d get a very different picture – game studies, for instance.
Important point: I wanted to show you how you can begin to approach large masses of material, and extract insights, suss out, underlying structures of ideas. This is going to be big in the future, as more and more data about our every waking moment gets recorded. Google Glass? It’s not about the user: it’s about everything the user sees, which’ll get recorded in the googleplex. Governments. Marketers. University Administrations. Learn to extract signals from this noise, and you’ll never go hungry again.
Keep in mind that in 1994 I wrote that the internet would never be useful for academics. My ability to predict the future is thus suspect.
So how to join this brave new world? Twitter, etc.
I’m to speak at the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education conference at Carleton in May; I’m one of the keynotes. I’ve never done a keynote before… I have a great fear of bringing coals to Newcastle, as it were. Pressed for a title and an abstract, this is what I’ve come up with (for good or ill):
Some Assembly Required
Every day, another university signs up to participate in Udacity, Coursera, or another of the monster MOOCs. Every day, another job posting makes ‘digital humanities’ a requirement. These two trends are not unrelated. Canadians have been at the forefront of massively open online courses, and in work that has come to be known as ‘digital humanities’, long before the current mania. In this talk, I want to tease apart the strands and histories that conflate these two trends. I want to look at how a perspective grounded in the digital humanities (whatever they are) is not just the latest trend, but rather a prism with a deep history through which we can refract our teaching and learning, and where MOOCs can be transmogrified into good pedagogy. Some assembly is required, and in neither trend can humans be replaced. Rather, the technology requires a humanities perspective in order for it to achieve its greatest potentials.
I’d be happy to hear people’s thoughts on this – inverting the normal order of thing, soliciting comments before the paper…
Partly as a result of speaking at this conference (and also a wedding to attend that week) I won’t be able to hit a graduate student conference on the digital humanities happening one building over.
I found another presentation on that same laptop, this time related to the agricultural vernacular… that is to say, about a barn. I was very pleased with that title… Again, the venue was the Friends of Gatineau Park annual research forum.
A presentation I gave to the Hispanic Baroque Project folks at UWO has been made available on their website. The links to each part are below.
(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7)
(there are few things more excruciating than watching yourself present. I always remember everything being far more pithier, wittier, louder, than what gets recorded. Ah perception…)
I’m entranced by the possibilities of Prezi for displaying archaeological knowledge. Prezi changes the metaphor of presentation from ‘slides’ to ‘zooming’, which (aside from a bit of nausea-inducing swirls) looks very promising.
For instance, I can imaging starting with an aerial photograph of the site – then zooming down to the ground, then zooming through to the first few days of excavation, and so on…. or alternatively, a prezi of a Harris matrix, and being able to zoom into each context to display/link to each artefact etc… (you can also pan and drag too) exciting stuff! I’ve got some materials on my other machine that I’ll be playing with.
I searched through the ‘showcase’ and found two archaeological presentations. Of the two, I think the second one by Natalie Farrell is the more effective – but then again, I haven’t tried creating one myself, so no criticisms from me until I’ve created one.
(I can’t embed them into wordpress.com, so follow the links)
http://prezi.com/oe5bw25e3utx/archaeology-and-the-speculative-turn/
http://prezi.com/5nugigpseiup/theory-and-methodology-in-contract-archaeology/
I just realized. I’ve been intermittently blogging now for three years, as of this December past. In that time, I think I’ve remained more or less true to the ‘mission’ of Electric Archaeology – to try out new techs, recount experiments, disseminate my research, in new media for archaeology and history. There have been times when I could post thoughtful, in-depth pieces; and times when I’ve merely passed on the interesting things that have turned up in my inbox. As of this morning according to WordPress, Electric Archaeology has had over 85,000 views, spread across 394 posts. There have been 329 comments made. I have 62 categories – clearly I need some rationalization there.
I sometimes toy with the idea of moving Electric Archaeology to my own space, so I can put some better analytics on it, but for whatever reason, that just doesn’t happen… 🙂
The all time most viewed posts on Electric Archaeology (the most recent posts of course are at the bottom, having had less chance to be viewed):
As I don’t expect I’ll be in Oxford any time soon 😦 , maybe somebody could take notes on William Harris’ presentation on the timber trade in the Roman world? Many thanks! I’ve been interested in that trade for a while – it is woefully underexplored – and I have some thoughts on it coming out in the Cambridge Companion to the City of Rome (due out soon, I believe!), but these are mostly cursory. I’m imagining someone like Harris probably has some very interesting things to say…
Conference: Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World
Oxford Conference on Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World
1–3 October 2009
The Oxford Roman Economy Project will be holding a three-day conference
on trade, commerce, and the state on 1–3 October, with sessions on
institutions and government stimuli, trade within the empire, and trade
across imperial boundaries. Attendance is free, but, in order for us to
plan numbers, please register with Gareth Hughes
(gareth.hughes@ orinst.ox. ac.uk).
Thursday 1 October 2009
Government intervention or stimulation through fiscal instruments,
markets, subsidies for military, long-distance supply etc.
10:00–10:30 Coffee and registration
10:30–13:00 Morning session
• Philip Kay, Oxford —Financial institutions and structures in
the last century of the Roman Republic
• Alan Bowman, Oxford —Taxation and fiscal controls
• Boudewijn Sirks, Oxford— Law, commerce, and finance
13:00–14:00 Lunch
14:00–15:30 Early-afternoon session
• Elio Lo Cascio, Rome Sapienza— Market regulation and
transaction costs in the Roman Empire
• Jean-Jacques Aubert, Neuhâtel—respondent
• General discussion
15:30–16:00 Tea
16:00–18:00 Late-afternoon session
• Hannah Friedman, Oxford—Supplying the Faynan: local resources
vs imperial will
• Salvatore Martino, Lecce —Transport in the Roman
Mediterranean: an integrated system
• Colin Adams, Liverpool — respondent
18:00 Drinks
Friday 2 October 2009
Trade and manufacture within the empire.
9:00–10:30 Early-morning session
• William Harris, Columbia — Trade in timber under the Roman
empire
• Ivan Radman, Arh. Mus. Zagreb —Prices and costs in the textile
industry in the light of the lead tags from Siscia
10:30–11:00 Coffee
11:00–12:30 Late-morning session
• Ben Russell, Oxford — Moving mountains: contextualising the
imperial stone trade
• Emanuele Papi, Siena — Import and export in Mauretania
Tingitana: the evidence from Tamusida
12:30–13:30 Lunch
13:30–15:00 Early-afternoon session
• Danièle Foy, Aix-Marseille —Lacirculation du verre en
Méditerranée antique : matières premières, produitsfinis,
vaisselle, vitres et contenants
• Michael Fulford, Reading — The pull of the north: Gallo-Roman
sigillata in Britain in the 2nd and 3rdcenturies
15:00–15:30 Tea
15:30–17:30 Late-afternoon session
• Michel Bonifay, Aix-Marseille — The diffusion of African
pottery under the Roman Empire: evidence and interpretation
• Paul Reynolds, Barcelona — Supply networks of the Roman East
and West: interaction, fragmentation, and the origins of Byzantine
economy
• Andrew Wilson, Oxford—respondent
17:30–18:00 General discussion
18:00 Drinks
Saturday 3 October 2009
Eastern and Red Sea trade, India, Arabia and the deserts.
9:00–11:00 Early-morning session
• Dario Nappo, Oxford — Costand profit in Red Sea trade
• Jennifer Gates-Foster, Texas — Eastern Desert trade
• Steven Sidebotham, Delaware —respondent
11:00–11:30 Coffee
11:30–13:30 Late-morning session
• David Peacock, Southampton — The Roman Red Sea ports and the
Chinese connection
• Barbara Davidde, ISCR Rome — The port of Qana, a junction
point between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea: the underwater
evidence
• Roberta Tomber, British Museum—respondent
13:30–14:30 Lunch
14:30–16:00 Early-afternoon session
• David Graf, Miami — The Silk Road between Syria and China
• Raffaela Pierobon Benoit, Naples Frederico II — From Palmyra
to Northern Mesopotamia: the archaeological evidence
16:00–16:30 Tea
16:30–18:00 Late-afternoon session
• David Mattingly, Leicester — Rome and the Garamantes:
practicalities and realities of Saharan trade
• General discussion
18:00 Drinks
Oh, if I but had the coin to go to conferences… (I’ll tattoo your logo where’er you want: corporate sponsorship?)
Two conferences appearing on the networks and archaeology mailing list this morning:
InterFace is a new type of annual event. Part conference, part workshop, part networking opportunity, it will bring together postdocs, early career academics and postgraduate researchers from the fields of Information Technology and the Humanities in order to foster cutting-edge collaboration. As well as having a focus on Digital Humanities, it will also be an important forum for Humanities contributions to Computer Science. The event will furthermore provide a permanent web presence for communication between delegates both during, and following, the conference.
Delegate numbers are limited to 80 (half representing each sector) and all participants willbe expected to present a poster or a ‘lightning talk’ (a two minute presentation) as a stimulus for discussion and networking sessions. Delegates can also expect to receive illuminating keynote talks from world-leading experts, presentations on successful interdisciplinary projects, ‘Insider’s Guides’ and workshops. The registration fee for the two day event is £30. For a full overview of the event, please visit the website.
And, on the premise that great conferences always take place in fanatastic locations, NETSCI09 this year is in Venice:
The aim of NETSCI is to bring together leading researchers, practitioners, and teachers in network science to foster interdisciplinary communication and collaboration.
They have a subsection on network science and humanities, which I’d love to attend. On a related note, a paper of mine has been accepted for publication with Digital Studies, on re-animating the brick production networks of first and second century Rome -a proxy for patronage networks- with an ABM that generates civil violence: a theory of civil strife through malfunctioning patronage.
And finally, a book of interest:
How useful is the concept of “network” for historical studies and the ancient world in particular? Using theoretical models of social network analysis, this book illuminates aspects of the economic, social, religious, and political history of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.
Bringing together some of the most active and prominent researchers in ancient history, this book moves beyond political institutions, ethnic, and geographical boundaries in order to observe the ancient Mediterranean through a perspective of network interaction. It employs a wide range of approaches, and to examine relationships and interactions among various social entities in the Mediterranean. Chronologically, the book extends from the early Iron Age to the late Antique world, covering the Mediterranean between Antioch in the east to Massalia (Marseilles) in the west.
This book was published as two special issues in Mediterranean Historical Review.
I’ve skimmed through the original special issues, and – I’m happy to be wrong – it seemed to me that ‘networks’ were being used more as a metaphor than an actual theory with methodological implications, as used by such people like Barabasi. (and now I’ll get some angry emails… 😉
I look at Roman networks, myself, but the questions being posed by this conference are of wider value to archaeologists and ancient historians more generally. I know some of the participants, and know they do interesting work, so it should be well worth the while! A networks perspective I think has much to offer us, especially when these networks can be explored using theories of evolving networks (see Barabasi‘s work, listed at the bottom of this post, or trawl through some of my stuff on ‘publications’):
Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World
6-9 JULY 2009
Organisers: Dr Claire Taylor, Trinity College Dublin
Dr Kostas Vlassopoulos, University of NottinghamThis conference will examine the networks of interaction within and between different groups in the classical and early hellenistic periods. Questions for exploration include:
• What constituted a ‘community’ within the Greek world?
• What networks did people create, belong to, and destroy?
• How were different groups of people interconnected, and how did they negotiate the ‘boundaries’ between them?
• How did communities change in response to social, political, economic impulses?
• How can we use network theory to access the lives and activities of people for whom little traditional evidence survives?PROGRAMME
Paulin Ismard (Université Paris Est Marne la Vallée; Equipe Phéacie): Networks of communities in classical and hellenistic Athens: cultural aspects.
Claire Taylor (Trinity College, Dublin): Social networks and social hierarchies: towards a model of social mobility in Athens.
Ben Gray (All Souls, Oxford): Exile communities and the citizen ideal in the later classical and hellenistic Greek world.
Kostas Vlassopoulos (University of Nottingham): Free spaces: contexts of interaction between citizens, metics and slaves in classical Athens.
Ben Akrigg (University of Toronto): The metic population in Athens.
Peter Hunt (University of Colorado, Boulder): Ethnic identity among slaves at Athens.
Barbara Kowalzig (Royal Holloway, London): Trading gods and trading networks: economies of trust in ancient Greece.
Vincent Gabrielsen (University of Copenhagen): Naval and grain networks at Athens.
Christy Constantakopoulou (Birkbeck, London): Beyond the polis: island koina and other non-polis entities in the Aegean.
Esther Eidinow (Newman College, Birmingham): Networks, narrative and negotiation: magical practices and polis religion.If you would like to attend, or require further information, please contact Dr Claire Taylor claire.taylor [at] tcd [dot] ie,
Dr Kostas Vlassopoulos konstantinos.vlassopoulos [at] nottingham [dot] ac [dot] uk,
or see the website: http://www.tcd.ie/Classics/cnagw/index.php.Graduate student bursaries are available to cover the cost of campus accommodation: please contact Dr Claire Taylor if you wish to apply, or download the form from the website: http://www.tcd.ie/Classics/cnagw/index.php
Selected works of Barabasi relevant to a networks perspective:
