One of the hallmarks of Johanna Druckers’ scholarship is an interest in how knowledge is produced. In SpecLab, her experiments at the titular laboratory centered on “reconceptualization of premises and parameters, not a reassessment of means and outcomes.” This sentiment gives a generous acknowledgment of the benefits computer-assisted quantitive methods made in humanities research, while also recognizing the “invisible” constraints orthodox methodologies inherit from the disciplines and industries of origin (Drucker, 27). Recent publications build on some of her earlier experiments to demonstrate that what is presented to us as self-explanatory artifacts actually require more thought, context and interpretation than we’re trained to deploy in our every day encounters with, say, data visualizations. Along similar lines, Drucker draws our attention to the hidden costs of the transition away from physical media to digital media for academic publication this week. One small nuance present in Pixel Dust caused me to reflect on why I’m prone to accepting Drucker’s lines of augment.

Drucker demonstrates an understanding of relevant digital technologies outside of an academic context which views the “back-end” as cruical to the frontend. The thoroughness of comprehension merges in the specificity of one example used when description some misunderstandings of the transition to digital media for academic publication. The company named in “the misperception…that everything digital is available on Google” strikes a chord with me given the origin PageRank, the key algorithm in that companies competitive advantage in the 1990s IT tech ecosystem. I would argue that Drucker knowingly references Google because of the influence of citation analysis on this algorithm, borne out of finding a quantitative method of evaluating the importance of published scientific articles. As Google put describes the logic:

PageRank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites (citation courtesy of the Wayback Machine)

Much like her example of the codex, Drucker emphases the continuities in the backend logic between older forms of media and their descendants. In this case, leaving discovery up to Google search results likely reinvigorates the same forces that constricted traditional academic publishing, both financial and institutional, through backlinking other SEO strategies that favor

Drucker’s implication of the backend as critical subject matter to understand the transition to digital formats reflects the true costs, rather that the price. One misconception has to do with the distribution of costs over the lifetime of an academic product. Whereas physical books and journals had large upfront costs, the cost of digital publication goes beyond licensing fees, or even the “author-pays” model mentioned in Fitzpatrick’s chapter in Generous Thinking. Drucker also counts the cost of maintaining the digital medium itself, often not appended to price tags. To draw the analogy using a physical book, it’s as if there were occasions where the pigments in ink stopped rendering, and someone needed to jostle them to recompose as letters and text on a page. Or the pages would occasionally fall out of the binding, become disordered on the ground.

I think there are reasonable responses to these problems offered in the motivations behind Gil’s Ed. And in general, the reading from this week and last about infrastructure shows a gradual movement towards systems thinking. As someone who’s being propelled rapidly into a more “backend position” in a professionally, I find a lot of sympathy with Drucker’s instinct to scrutinize the complex tradeoffs in the “invisible work” required to create and maintain digital platforms.

I’ve been thinking about our conversation last night about the arguably willful blindness to “invisible” infrastructure and logistical processes that characterizes our period. The brief conversation about history made me think of the “commodity” section of Emerson’s famous essay on Nature. There, Emerson celebrates the rise of new technologies that mirror and are consonant with natural forces–the steam engines that improve upon windpower and so on–and whose benefits are widely distributed for the general welfare.

Needless to say, now that it has dawned on us that we’re in the Anthropocene and that the benefits of tech don’t generally trickle evenly through the population, we find ourselves in very different place…

In a bit of kismet, the NYTs Wirecutter department featured an article on the Framework laptop, an attempt to build an eminently repairable laptop designed to last 10+ years. Dig in: it’s fascinating in an era dominated by Apple’s utterly opposite approach.

Project description:

For my project, I wanted to create a map depicting a story of a particular copy of the book that was published in the late 1840s in Imperial Russia. That copy is a unique one in the sense that it has stamps and inscriptions of previous owners and institutions this copy was part of. Thanks to these stamps and inscriptions, it was possible to recreate, in part, the way the copy travel through the times, the countries, and the people and institutions. It should be also pointed out that this story has blank spots–it’s unclear who owned the copy at a certain point, and this is something that still could be researched and analyzed.

Platform:

I decided to choose Palladio as a tool to illustrate the book’s itinerary. First of all, I jotted down all the places that were known to me–two cities in what now Russian Federation is (back then, it was Imperial Russia), one city in what is now Ukraine (back then, it was the Austro-Hungarian Empire), and two cities in the United States (both in New York state). The first city in Russia is the city the book was printed in; the other city in Russia is a place where one of the owners of the copy lived; the third city on the map is a city where a library received this copy as a donation; the fourth town in the US in a place where this book was; and the fifth, the city it ended up in. 

I found the exact geographical locations of these places and included latitude and longitude the way it was recommended. For that, I used an Excel spreadsheet. I followed the guidelines the tool has about datasets and it took me lots of time to finally come up with a dataset that the tool would accept and turn it into a map. Although I prepared the dataset initially in a way it was recommended in their guidelines, it did not work and that was really confusing.

Outcome:

The map I came up with could have been more clear: for example, it could have mentioned the approximate dates (when known) the copy “spent,” so to say, in a certain place. It could also show the trajectory of its itinerary: how did it move from what place and when. To make it even more interactive, it could have included the images of the institutions which had or have the copy in their possession. To better present this information, a different tool could have been used. 

A different avenue:

I would probably want to have a map or a set of maps that could clearly illustrate the itinerary of that copy, on the one hand. At the same time, on the other hand, I would want these visualizations to work in a way that could be treated as illustrations to a write-up or essay about this story. This means, the data set may need more data to be found, analyzed, and included, so it could be reproduced well enough on the visuals.

I’d like to try something a bit different tomorrow and wanted to tip my hand a little bit to get you thinking.

First, as mentioned previously, think of something to bring, or just a story to tell, about something you’ve fixed or hacked. It can be as simple as a mended shoelace or as complex as a broken website or bit of software.

Second, rather than march through the readings and sites as usual, I’d like to work more synthetically. So I’d like to break us into small groups for the first part of class and work on three separate questions, each of which might be addressed with several of the articles and sites on the syllabus. Might be a total fail, but might be really fun and inspiring. Here are the questions, which are also on this Dropbox Paper doc. We’ll use the latter to jot notes in our discussion tomorrow. You don’t need to do a thing before class, but I thought it might jog your thought process while reading to have these questions in your minds:

1. One of the foundational concepts of the traditional humanities is the “transvaluation of values” (Nietzsche), that is, a skeptical stance towards received ideas of the good, the moral, the beautiful, et al. and a boldness in imagining new and unprecedented scales of evaluation. What are some entrenched values that this weeks authors seek to “transvaluate” in Nietzsche’s sense? By all means suggest your own, but you might think about some of the following: innovation, disruption, novelty, progress. What terms recede in importance and what terms emerge to replace them in the authors’ analyses?
2. How do digital technologies and/or the digital humanities look different from the perspective of the Global South? How might close observation of “makers” and “inventors” in these “underdeveloped” spaces teach those of us in the “developed” world new approaches? How might humanistic study, and DH in particular, benefit from attention to seemingly marginal people and spaces who, in fact, comprise the global democratic majority?
3. What are some objects and processes discussed in this round of readings that are hard to see, hard to grasp, hard to comprehend? How do the readings/sites help us to think bigger or smaller or quicker or simply different? What research might emerge out of paying attention to ordinarily invisible aspects of our built landscape that ground the “clouds” we use in our everyday work and play?

This has been my favorite week of readings thus far, lending a new way of engaging with my mapping project investigating food supply chains. In addition, as an interdisciplinary learner, the concept of studying the relationships between networks (visible and invisible) is something very intriguing to me. Novinskie’s work on creating a praxis of “care” particularly struck me as it afforded an extra layer of meaning and truth-seeking to focusing on even the smallest of sites/topics within larger networks to expose their invisibility.

That said, I was also moved by Jackson’s piece “Rethinking Repair” and how to flip my project in, say, focusing on “breakdowns” and “errors” in food supply chains as the impetus for study. This might be in the form of tracking stale food or evaluating waste. For me, the concept of studying sites of repair, and in a sense, error, is also something I’ve come across before in thinking of all of the various types of foods and common ingredients today that have come as a result of an “accident.” Could I map those interactions, sometimes a cultural misunderstanding, in working through their “breakdowns”?

On the other hand, I could take Gil’s approach in illustrating a “technology of disobedience,” and showcasing how/where we make use of foods and ingredients for other purposes – which reminded my of all the things my Italian grandmother does in the kitchen.

I could also think further about Posner’s article in thinking just how disruptive a trace of an otherwise invisible food supply chain is for a capitalist economy based on scale. Reading Posner’s work, my trouble finding sources for many of the foods in my home felt right on target, and it got me thinking about the various food businesses who might already be employing a sort of blockchain technology – including Nestle and Walmart:

Of course, there are quite a few benefits if companies were to do this: fresher food, waste reduction, guaranteed “uniqueness” of a product, improved food safety and more. That said, the probability of adoption feels low given the raise in prices it would spark for both consumer and producer, and the fact that while some companies (Bumble Bee tuna) purport to be doing this, the feature did not work when I gave it a try for my map. Perhaps I could investigate this technology further in my next project and weigh the outcomes.

All that said, here is where my cynical side comes in – why would companies endeavor on this path other than the attempts to be “good people” and transparent entities? Of course we hope that’s enough, but where do these things fit into an economy based on such large scale…if at all. Jackson touched on this a bit in “Rethinking Repair,” but I’m curious to discuss more on how making these systems transparent can also make them sustainable, in both an ecological and trust-worthy sense moving forward.

This past week I attended the “Creating interactive, visual, data driven websites in WordPress” workshop hosted by the GCDI Digital Fellows. The workshop focused mostly on how to embed various forms of content on a WordPress page, and in turn, also helped to give me a better idea of the types of content I can create on the Commons for course assignments and research. One of the most important takeaways I had from the workshop was that embedding content is key for online publications – it keeps readers focused on the content at hand (stopping them from clicking out of your writing and getting lost in others tabs on the internet), and allows you to make more dynamic sites to showcase your research.

A few key terms outlined at the beginning of the workshop:

• Embed: How to place content on your website directly to keep readers engaged and not link them elsewhere
• Shortcode: An advanced shortcut that allows you to add features to your website that would normally require coding

Although the beginning of the workshop was tailored to individuals who had no previous background with the Commons and WordPress in general, they discussed types of privacy settings, general settings and page templates I found helpful:

• In general, you can keep some pages in draft form and/or with certain privacy restrictions to keep your unfinished (or finished work) outside the public eye.
• When you need to create group projects involving multiple users, simply go to your Dashboard -> “Users” -> “Add New Users” – users will then receive an invitation via email
• It’s always good to consider the legal aspects involving some final WP publications, i.e. consider the ethical questions when posting social media research – you can often ask a user directly for their consent!
• There are three types of templates you can choose from when creating a new Page on the Commons: Default (good for blogging), Teaching (good for setting up a course), Academic Portfolio (resume building)

We then moved into discussing WordPress Plug-ins and embedding for the majority of the workshop:

• The automatic WordPress Block Editor set for Commons pages comes with a variety of pre-set plug-ins for embedding content like YouTube/SoundCloud/Vimeo/etc. You can find the list here!
• Some sites/tech will not work this way, for instance Tableau. To directly embed these types of displays, try finding a shortcode on Google – or checking out this useful guide to Shortcodes on WordPress!

An example in action:

(Using Spotify embed – you can give a playlist for people to listen to while reading your research!)

Italo Disco

Italo Disco · Playlist · 75 songs · 220K likes

Hi all, sorry for the late post. Being sick the whole week I decided to begin this project wasn’t ideal and definitely kept me from really diving in. I wouldn’t usually share that but, sense we are sharing our experiences with the project I feel like it fits. As usual with most mapping based projects, the hardest part is finding the data you want in a form where it can be mapped. I searched for plenty of different ideas and datasets but, usually let to a lot of frustration. Sooner or later the idea of mapping the California wildfires came to mind. At first I thought I would only be able find a dataset with coordinates like long/lat which would only give me something like an origin or where the fire started. I also figured I’d only find a dataset with this years data but, lucky, I was wrong! I ended up finding out there is data out there of all California wildfires since 1950 and the perimeters of those fires.

With that, I was able to take the data into ArcGIS and map it onto an interactive map of California. The data had a few different fields to play with. The ones that I kept ended up being:

• YEAR_: The decade the fire occurred
• STATE: The state the fire occurred in
• FIRE_NAME: The name of the fire
• ALARM_DATE: Date the fire was reported
• CONT_DATE: Date the fire was contained
• CAUSE: What caused the fire
• GIS_ACRES: How many acres the fire spread across

WIth that information we are able to see where, how and when a lot of these fires are occurring. To wrap the whole project together, I built a website where I could house the map and any other information I added to the project.

Link to map: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/ffade26171e64634a0e6e44c21517c26

After testing various mapping platforms, including spending copious amount of time trying to teach myself Tableau, I decided to go with ArcGIS and ArcGIS Storymaps to showcase historic sites in the northeast that are implementing inclusive narratives to include the lives of free and enslaved people who lived and worked at these sites. I currently work for an historic site that is beginning to implement enslaved narratives through the use of art installations and community conversations. The following information is provided on my Storymap to situate the reader to what this Storymap entails:

In February 2020, staff from various museums gathered at Philipsburg Manor, New York to discuss how they are rethinking their current narratives to create inclusivity by including stories of enslaved and free peoples who lived and worked on these properties.

This network of like-minded institutions has acted as a space to work through the challenges of the interpretation of inclusive narratives. In the summer of 2021, this group created the Northern Slavery Collective, which has currently manifested as a Facebook Group and Page for the cohort to collectively share ideas, events, questions, and challenges of this interpretation process.

The organization is in its early stages, which is hopeful to expand publicly through a website and social media as a resource to the public and educational communities for understanding and learning about these forgotten stories. The public facing goal is to end the myth that slavery did not exist in the North or was mild in comparison to slavery in the South.

My Process

As I stated, I first spent hours converting census information into an excel to be inputed into a Tableau map to see the variation of enslaved population sizes between the North and the South. I felt this data to be a little flat, and couldn’t find what story I was trying to tell. The data was hard to manipulate, and the population sizes weren’t giving me what I wanted. It showed the vast difference in slave populations between the North and South while I wanted to show just how much slavery was actually involved in the North. While the numbers were smaller, enforced enslaved laborers in the North provided greatly to the development of Northern societies, including infrastructure and commodities. These are the stories I wanted to tell. Thinking back on the Northern Slavery Collective, I thought those historic sites would be a great way to share these stories.

Storymaps

I’ve used Storymaps in the past, so I knew what I was capable of doing and not doing. The interactive maps provide a user friendly visual, but the lack of multiple media pieces for each map entry is a let down. Also, the UI is a bit finicky when trying to sort the order of the sites on my map. I included the description listed above as an overview of the Storymaps, followed by a map of the various historic sites in the Northeast overlaid with the 1790 census population that I created in ArcGIS. (The ability to create maps in ArcGIS which can then be added to Storymaps was a huge bonus!) Below this visual is another map showing the locations of the historic sites with an image of the site that is interactive.

I have been debating whether or not I want to include more details on this map section because I currently like the clean look. When I add text, it appears below the historic site titles where I wish it would only be visible when the historic site is clicked. When this happens, a new view pops up that can include more description, such as address and website.

Since I wanted to include the stories of these sites and include more images, I created another section for this purpose. Here I list the various sites and included descriptions that were provided mostly by the Historic Hudson Valley’s People Not Property project at Philipsburg Manor. This section is still being worked on as there are numerous sites to cover.

ArcGIS map

As I stated before, I implemented a layered map of census data and historic site locations. ArcGIS made it very simple in that a user had already created a beautiful census map that I could use. When hovering the mouse over a region you can see the full details of the various census fields, including enslaved persons. By adding pinpoints of the historic houses, you can visually see houses in areas that are listed as having 0 enslaved people in those regions. This stark visual helps debunk the myth that slavery was not present in the north.

Overall, I think ArcGIS Storymaps was very user friendly for a non-Digital Humanities student and is very visually pleasing. I’m glad I attempted to try a different software, so in the future if I need to create a map with data and I have a longer time period, I would consider using Tableau after taking an informational workshops or watching many tutorials.