Week 2 Reflections

One the things that most struck me most were some of the points raised by Berners-Lee regarding the issue of privacy and the implications of having more powerful data-processing technologies. Berners-Lee writes, “How can content providers get feedback out the demographic make-up of those browsing their material without compromising individual privacy? Though boring in small quantities, the questions individuals ask of search engines, in bulk, could be compromising information.” Living at a time where Google is both noun and verb and understanding how what we perceive to be banal information has become such a valuable commodity, I cannot help but be amused. What are the limitations and ethics of utilizing aggregate data? How do we construct a concept of privacy? What risks do data tracking practices pose to social justice movements (i.e. thinking of PRISM as a link to COINTELPRO)?

The second reflection I have is more of an earnest question. Why, when we talk about the history of computing and the advent of the internet, do people seem less inclined to mention the development of the technology out of ARPANET? Tracing a kind of origin point here seems to follow two paths, from what I have seen. The most common approach to discussing the origins of computing makes the assumption that we want to discuss the iteration of the internet as we mostly commonly experience it now; I think this approach is also often very utopic in its envisioning of the possibilities of digital communication and the creation and maintenance of digital cultures. In other words, if we begin here, it allows us to regard the internet as a realm of possibility that ought to help us (in the “global village” sense of us) work together and collaborate across borders and boundaries. We see some of this sentiment echoed in the manifestos we read last week. I’m really left to wonder how it might shift the rhetoric if we were to begin our discussion with the suggestion that internet technology has an important tie to the U.S. military-industrial complex. Is there a reason why so many discussions eschew or disavow ARPANET, perhaps? Was the development of the technology really two entirely separate projects so much so that one is not connected to the other?

Week 3 Reflections

 “Leveraging OSGi provides access to a large amount of industry-standard code—prebuilt, pretested, continuously updated components—and know-how that would otherwise take years to reinvent/re-implement, thus helping reduce time to market, development, and cost of maintenance.” Börner 

“One such important challenge is the rethinking, shaping and implementing of cyberinfrastructure for the humanities. What type of research infrastructure do we need? How do we align ourselves with science and engineering driven agendas, and how can we make a strong and grounded argument for humanities cyberinfrastructure?” Svensson

This week’s readings provided a variety of points of entry, but I wanted to point out these two quotes because they pose interesting logistical questions. How do we construct a DH approach to collaboration? Is it simply the practice of sharing code? If we are in the practice of building infrastructures for projects, each one standing atop the proverbial shoulders of another, what do we risk in terms of methodology or self-interrogation? Where do we draw the line between sharing knowledge and the reification of epistemological approaches? When collaboration cycles through the use of previous structures, for the sake of time and ease, does that prevent us from manifesting a different kind of structure all together, perhaps one that challenges dominant forms of knowledge production online, coding including? Consider Safiya Noble’s suggestion of a feminist internet search engine. The coding for this would, ostensibly, reflect a different politic. Here, building on previous infrastructure would, at the very least, be questioned. If algorithms are artifacts and artifacts produce and reproduce a set of cultural norms and assumptions, then what are the limits of collaboration in terms of perpetuating these assumptions? On the other hand, there are very real, logistical constraints. Time, for instance, is no small commodity. The technology — idealism and ideology aside — does have limits and projects always have a timeframe. This is the uncomfortable relationship between intent (what we want) and necessity (what needs to happen).

Ben also brings up an interesting point about training in the field of DH. I agree with the assertion that DH folks must clearly outline their approach, and I would push further that it is prudent for those espousing a DH approach to have some working understanding of infrastructure and computer science. In fact, I would consider that an issue of ethical responsibility. Let me use a rather sloppy but hopefully adequate analogy regarding the tendency for folks with little to no experience with the backend of things writing about technology broadly or attempting a critique of infrastructure. I think it’s a bit like writing about the history of a Spanish author but only reading the translated texts as opposed to trying to learn Spanish and engage with the author’s work in its original language. It is important to understand the limits of the language and to consider what is lost in translation. It is important to note the gaps, the limits and possibilities, of engaging materials in certain ways. As we work out what is our isn’t a DH project, so too must we grapple with what constitutes a DH approach and DH practices.

Week 4 Reflections

It occurred to me that the DH field is so white, in response to McPherson, because brown people, brown women, in particular, are so broke. Thanks, capitalism.

Facetiousness aside, Ann Daramola has a great, two-part interview with Media Make Change, called “To Queer Code: Ann Daramola on Learning and Teaching Computer Programming” in which she partially addresses the same question. Daramola argues that white men are the dominant population in computer science fields in part because they have time to break things – she calls this “tinker time.” The founder of Girls Who Code argues that girls are not taught to fail and try – they are encouraged to look and appear perfect. Here, we have the twin powers of capitalism and patriarchy.  If time is the commodity, brown folks don’t have time to play, to tinker – we’re too busy trying to keep mouths fed and get through our daily struggles. We aren’t able to accrue commodity objects in the same way, and we are certainly not taught that it is acceptable to “break” anything. As women, we are taught to perform perfection and again, error is discouraged. Coded into the language we use to describe experiences in computer programming are also the very problems our culture perpetuates and is contingent upon.

That said, my optimistic view of DH is that it will not reify hegemonic thinking but I also don’t think the field adequately addresses difference – these are the issues many of these authors are pointing out, after all. There has to be some way that difference has a real, political influence as opposed being presented as mere pluralism (consider here, the de-politicization of multiracial education into multiculturalism). This is, I think, part of McPherson is pointing out when she talks about modularity, discrete categories, and the emergence of the lenticular logic.

Our discussion leads ask the poignant question, “[i]s it possible somehow to reconfigure programming, in the very structure of our code as well as the projects we undertake, as a part of liberatory praxis?” In terms that may be more familiar to those in cultural studies, I can take that question further and ask, “To what extent can we decolonize our technological practices?” and things get even more complicated as a result. I would refer to the work of Micha Cardenas and the Electronic Disturbance Theater as a good instance of how we can address this (more specifically of the Transborder Immigrant Tool). Their projects both often challenge hegemonic uses and approaches to technology and coding but in many ways, also utilize the same language. This is part of the hacktivism culture that Losh discusses.

Week 5 Reflection

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Marika’s comments and her citation of Yee’s experience in the archive reminds me very much of Benjamin writing in 1936 with the seminal, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (or Reproducibility).” In the first half, he laments the loss of the aura of authenticity – the experiencing of being and seeing an object in a particular context. What do we do when a stunning painting then becomes produced and reproduced ad nauseam and appears taped up on a college student’s wall? In the second half of that essay, Benjamin is startlingly optimistic in so much that he recognizes that new technology also creates new contexts of experience.

I have worked with both physical and digital archives as it relates to the queer community (of which I have a very strong attachment to, which is to say a strong affective response to). While there is an undeniable kind of intimacy (and at times, a fear) that is produced through the act of touching an item and grappling with the material reality, digital archives simply create a new context and thus a new kind of experience. While perhaps the level of intimacy is not the same, I also wouldn’t say that I was any less interested or struck by what I was reading/seeing/hearing via the computer.

Price writes, “A theoretical possibility of digital scholarship — the indefinite expansibility — has become a lived reality in our case.” This line strikes me as particularly profound, especially since we so often have to come to terms with our own limitations in creating sustainable projects. Still, as a possibility, this is monumental — and why, I think, it isn’t prudent to take a hardline stance for or against digital scholarship, collections, and exhibits – whatever the nomenclature and its baggage. Expansiveness, alternate temporalities, strange affinities and webs between content and categories, and an interesting kind of simultaneity are just as possible and even mappable (or trackable) in digital projects.

I want to consider, also, the visibility of metadata. A work of art hanging in a gallery may have a small plaque attached to it if it was donated or on loan, but otherwise there is a series of channels of travel and movement of this piece that we are never exposed to. Digital archives, interestingly enough, provide excellent avenues for exploring this data and linking ideas and photos and objects through metadata. Documentation and provenance, so to speak, are often meticulously recorded when the information is available. A kind of movement, both literal and figurative, then becomes possible.

I also don’t think there’s necessarily a loss of affective attachment either. Again, it just manifests in new ways. Dr. Noble once described her experience attempting to find lynching photos through the Library of Congress schema. She thought she might find it under “racism” but instead she found these photos archived under the tag “black history.” As she retold the story, her horror and dismay was apparent. I often recall this story precisely because it is so jarring. It is a terrible reminder of the issues of categorization that we do need to problematize and a reminder of how deep our affective (here, political and emotional) responses can be in the digital archive.

Week 6 Reflections

HyperCities is a collaborative project that works towards showing how all cities are themselves collaborative projects, made up of contingencies and deep running relationships in all forms. Cities and cites are places rich and rife with narration. In the same place where someone experienced their first kiss, someone else may have been shot. What does it mean to recognize this layering? What does it tell us about our own lives and about the kinds of futurities we might envision if it is increasingly possible to build a relationship with the past through digital technology? How might we use technology different if we think of it not only as an artifact of modernity but also a doorway into experiencing history differently? The authors in HyperCities write, “thick maps betray their conditions of possibility, their authorship and contingency, without naturalizing or imposing a singular world-view. In essence, thick maps give rise to forms of counter-mapping, alternative maps, multiple voices, and on-going contestations” (19). HyperCities offers a means of contestation, a way of exposing the realities of a particular place.

When I discuss mapping, I often call the critical lens with which I work “critical cartography” mostly because I am interested in how colonialism has carried over into GIS. Like week 4’s readings suggested, I wish there was a significantly less celebratory tone when it comes to digital mapping projects and more of a consideration of indigenous scholars work. In Mishuana Goeman’s Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations, Goeman works towards unsettling settler space through the recentering of Native women’s writing. Goeman’s methodology also makes possible a reapproaching to cybercolonialism in cyber studies that works towards the social and spatial justice of indigenous peoples. One of Goeman’s crucial points is her exposure of the link between mapping, scientific objectivity and the description of landscape and native peoples. Goeman contends that the description of landscape attempts to contain landscape in such a way that enables the conception of land ownership In this context, Goeman argues, indigenous peoples become part of the “flora and fauna” (18). This rendering of Native peoples into and as landscape makes possible the taking of these lands within the logic and narrative of modernity. As such, Native peoples are placed in a time of both backwardness and past-ness. Indigenous peoples are thus displaced both spatially and temporally. In spite of some DH articles that provide extensive and insightful interventions in information studies and the critique of the colonial gaze at it applies to the cartographies created and promoted by, for example, our friends at Google, I have yet to read a single article that addresses the implications of this mapping as it pertains to the lives and lands of indigenous peoples. Thus, even the most productive articles discuss the mechanisms of colonialism in cyberspace or cybercolonialism without ever addressing the material ramifications and therefore not only fails to construct a meaningful dialogue but actively contributes to the elimination of indigenous peoples by engaging in an act of forgetting.  This perpetual “leaving out’” indigenous peoples contributes to the very erasure of indigenous peoples from contemporary dialogues.

Week 7 Reflections

“It is now possible to explore reconstructed buildings and urban spaces, re-create the experience of citizens from other eras, challenge long-held reconstruction theories, and gain insights into the material culture of past civilizations in ways never before possible.” 

I want to start by challenging Snyder on the ability for spatial recreation to make it possible to “recreate the experience of citizens from other eras” or the ability to recreate an experience of any being simply through an understanding of space. What I mean is that I would not confuse nor conflate space with its social context. I would also not approach DH projects and the politics of representation with the belief that it is also replication – of a certain context, etc.

I was reminded of an article by Ross Gibson in which Gibson argues that maps contain within them a kind of narrative structure. In the case of digital mapping projects, these interactive maps compel the viewer to populate the space with story.  He argues that because the viewer can “enter” and “exist” scenes freely (i.e. zooming in and out at varying degrees) that this allows a “blending of distance and involvement”. Ross argues this blending and movement serve as stimuli for what he terms “narrative hunger” whereby viewers examine scenes for cues about how to react to the scene. If they find no reliable cues, the hunger increases. This illustrates the human desire to populate place with story. I find Ross’ work provocative – at least in regards to the theorization of “narrative hunger” and what affective relationships users/viewers/consumers are capable of building with technologies. At the same time, I am again troubled by the lack of critical examination of privilege as it is tied to access and viewership. Perhaps Ross chooses to side-step these issues because it would be absurd to argue that the narrative hunger experienced by an affluent, white, heterosexual male viewing a map would somehow not reenact narratives of colonialism. In many ways, Ross’ theorization of narrative hunger yields yet another avenue for colonial violence to occur.

That said, I think there are some incredible opportunities for VR and 3D modeling to actively contribute to practices which might help preserve those most impacted by colonial violence – indigenous people. I do want to consider what VR and 3D modeling can do with regards to archaeology and not simply with our understanding of space. The Field recently lent their collection of mummies to the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. Included in this collection is a set of Peruvian mummies which, by utilizing available technology, have been rendered into ornate and detailed 3D renderings – including burial objects. I am left to wonder if the 3D models and 3D printing of associated funerary objects mark an important shift. This modeling is still only made possible via the disinterment of indigenous individuals, after all. Perhaps to answer part of Marika’s question – here is the possibility of finding dense layers of meaning in a virtual body.

Week 8 Reflection (Discussion Lead)

Week 9 Reflections

Another question we might ask is what does DH, as a developing field, have to learn from its intellectual and academic predecessors, especially as it pertains to the process of evaluation? Britt’s comment about the standardization of practices and the worry about this sounding “the death knell” are well taken, but I think so many of the questions we ask about DH are just slightly updated versions of rather old questions.

How do we illustrate the way knowledge is communally produced? How do we create an evaluation method that doesn’t reify hegemonic approaches to knowledge production? How do we exist within and simultaneously resist the influence of the oppressive context in which we must function? How do we make our practices and methodologies transparent so as to demystify the process? How can we manifest our politic in our practices? What are the (in this case) technological limits and constraints which we must consider? And perhaps more importantly, how do we find a way to survive – that is, how can we be properly compensated for our labor without succumbing to the status quo?

Perhaps I am significantly less optimistic because I have watched programs that were created with the very idea of pushing back against the university and of the concept of false universality become a part of the university. Look no further than our own ethnic studies departments (and my own department included). These departments were started out of a significant historical and intellectual movement which was monumental in the history of United States. But guess what? If you want to get tenure, you must vw recognizable and legible to the powers that be. I appreciate the optimism, but the university is going to win this one because they have something we need – money. I have also, from my very jaded perch, watched professors call their projects DH projects and espouse a different politic. And yet, somehow, students are still exploited labor, and professors still get full credit and, ultimately, more recognition. I appreciate the utopist (re)visionings of the world, but we ought to temper our approaches with a healthy dose of reality and the knowledge that while computer technology is bright and shiny, the questions that are “arising” are iterations of very old questions that people of color, women of color, and queer people of color, have been trying to cope with for ages.

Soap box aside, I want to advocate for a more pragmatist approach which I think Burdick et al. ultimately try to provide us with their “Provocations.” The unfortunate reality is that some form of standard has to be established, however loose, because it may also be one of the few ways in which we can hold people who argue they’re doing DH work accountable to the field (especially when they’re not self-critical about questioning their own limits of their scholarship which is, I think, absolutely necessary to any field which wants to question the status quo). Stringent standards might also include a rubric which advocates especially for the recognition of student labor in meaningful ways (even beyond compensation) and for a critical self-awareness. The implementation of these types of “standards” would be, I would argue, crucial to the development of the field as a whole and would necessarily result in a meaningful change in practices.