Category: observations

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Reblog> How We Write – the open access collection reviewed and highlighted

Stuart Elden on the book “How We Write”, which is a really interesting insight into different ways in which writing is practised…

How We Write – the open access collection reviewed and highlighted

How-We-Write-cover-E-216x346How We Write – the open access collection edited by Suzanne Conklin Akbari, which includes thirteen short pieces on academic writing – has been getting  a bit of attention already. It was chosen as a highlighted title on open access site Unglue.it and has been reviewed in French at Ludite! Jeffrey Jerome Cohen also talks about his piece here.

As I said when I announced the book’s publication, while free to download, it was not free to produce. It is also available to buy in paperback, or you can leave a donationwhen you download the book. This is a book that does not seek to give advice, but to show how a range of people do things in a number of different ways. Please share widely”¦

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Reblog> The pseudo-digital natives argument

Great, and incisive, post by Martin about the slips we all make in lapsing into easy-but-flawed theories… I’d say this argument also applies to how people talk about a spatial distinction between ‘offline’ and ‘online’, or mediated and face-to-face, communications as a ‘virtual’ / ‘real’ dichotomy. It’s nonsense but still has some residual appeal because we like to put space in a box (a la Descartes).

The pseudo digital-natives argument

When I did my degree in Psychology I remember a lecturer dismissing lots of theories of cognition as a ‘pseudo-homunculus” explanation. The homunculus explanations of psychology posited a little person sitting inside, driving your actions (think Inside Out). Of course, this was debunked hundreds of years ago, but a pseudo-homunculus explanation was one that went so far and then almost implied a little person. For example, theories of perception that posited a projection of the external world as if it was a cinema screen inside the head. It didn’t explain how that then led to action.

I was thinking about this with ed tech presentations. The digital natives myth has long been debunked, like the homunculus, but what we have are often pseudo-digital native explanations. I joked on twitter that we should ban presenters from talking about their children’s use of technology. I don’t really want to ban it (before people start telling me why a ban would be a bad idea), and I think sometimes it is used to effectively make a point. But often the deployment of these anecdotes (or videos even) is to sneak some pseudo-digital native juice in, without being derided for such. “Look, my daughter uses the ipad in a totally different way to me, we need to be ready for these kids in university” is often the implicit or explicit message. I blogged a while ago that there is something appealing about the digital natives idea, people want it to be true, and so it finds new ways to reassert itself. So when you hear a “my kids” anecdote in a presentation, I just ask you to do a pseudo digital natives check. Stay vigilant people.

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Interesting event: Cruel Design/Disobedient Design

Anna Feigenbaum posted this call for participation to Crit-Geog-Forum, looks like an event that’ll stimulate some discussion. Not entirely sure I believe Dismaland really does anything political but is rather already subsumed in the ideology it presumably intends to critique. I mean, I’ve just seen someone at the train station in a Dismaland t-shirt…

Nevertheless, Debbie Withers‘ involvement definitely recommends this as something that will be interesting.

The event is run by the Civic Media Hub which is worth checking out.

So see below for details:

Cruel Design/Disobedient Design

A showcase and discussion on the art and politics of designing for justice in association with Cruel Designs at Dismaland.

Event Information:
Saturday, 26 September 2015
Bristol, Hydra Books TBC
16:00 to 18:00

From anti-homeless spikes and border fences to DIY tear gas masks and union banners, design practices are used for social control and social change. In this public event with designers, curators and social justice campaigners we explore what it means to design for disobedience.

Free, ticketed event: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cruel-designdisobedient-design-tickets-18324462962

with:
Gavin Grindon / curator of Cruel Designs at Dismaland & Lecturer in Curating / University of Essex

Barnbrook / Creative Studio / London

MinuteWorks / multidisciplinary graphic design studio specialising in sustainable communications / Manchester

Occupy Design / Crisis graphics for crisis times! / London

Debi Withers / Curator, writer, researcher & publisher / Bristol

And More!

Facilitated by:
Anna Feigenbaum / Civic Media Hub & Senior Lecturer in Digital Storytelling / Bournemouth University

Sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture & Community at Bournemouth University, The University of Essex Centre for Curatorial Studies & the MeCCSA Social Movements Network

This event is the second in our series of public discussions on Civic Media and Social Justice. Our first event, Mapping for Justice, was held in London in June 2015.

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Reblog> Wanted: Members/RGS-IBG Fellows for Race, Culture & Equality Working Group

Geographers! Here’s a post by Angela Last on the RGS-IBG RCEWG – take a look please:

Wanted: Members/RGS-IBG Fellows for Race, Culture & Equality Working Group

rgsibg_race01
Left to right: Margaret Byron (Acting Chair), Richard Baxter (Acting Secretary), Patricia Noxolo, Angela Last (Acting Treasurer)

rgsibg_race02
Left to right: Margaret Byron, Divya Tolia-Kelly, Patricia Noxolo, Angela Last

We are currently recruiting staff and student members for a new RGS-IBG working groupon race, culture and equality. The group welcomes people who want to work around issues of race, diversity and equality in the academy, and in geography as a discipline, and for people who work on race as a subject.

Key objectives include networking and sharing resources on issues such as diversifying the curriculum, improving mentoring and supporting BME people in universities (students, early career and established academics), and developing closer links and working with secondary and wider education.

Current members include Richard Baxter, Wendy Larner, Tariq Jazeel, Patricia Noxolo, Caroline Bressey, Kathryn Yusoff, Parvati Raghuram, Divya Tolia-Kelly, Margaret Byron, Kye Askins, Angela Last.

In order to join the group, you do not have to be a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers, and you can also belong to other research or working groups. However, to become established as a working group, we will need 20 RGS-IBG Fellows to undersign our proposal. We understand that many people who are involved in research or activism on race matters are also often not fellows, partly because of the society’s colonial connections, partly because of the cost involved in joining the scheme. We currently have a lot of support from the RGS-IBG to address these issues. If you are interested in joining the group, or have queries regarding the group or fellowship, please contact Richard Baxter (r.baxter@qmul.ac.uk).

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Margaret Hamilton, Nasa software engineer & her ‘code’ printed out

I’ve put this picture on my office door:

Margaret Hamilton is an inspirational figure and we really should know more about her and her work!

Hamilton is now 78 and runs Hamilton Technologies, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company she founded in 1986. She’s lived to see “software engineering” – a term she coined – grow from a relative backwater in computing into a prestigious profession.

In the early days, women were often assigned software tasks because software just wasn’t viewed as very important. “It’s not that managers of yore respected women more than they do now,” Rose Eveleth writes in a great piece on early women programmers for Smithsonian magazine. “They simply saw computer programming as an easy job. It was like typing or filing to them and the development of software was less important than the development of hardware. So women wrote software, programmed and even told their male colleagues how to make the hardware better.”

“I began to use the term ‘software engineering’ to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering,” Hamilton told Verne’s Jaime Rubio Hancock in an interview. “When I first started using this phrase, it was considered to be quite amusing. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. Software eventually and necessarily gained the same respect as any other discipline.”

Right on, Margaret.

The above quote is from this piece on vox.com by Dylan Matthews is worth reading – it contains lots of interesting bits and pieces, not least the fact that Apollo code was literally ‘hard wired’: it was woven in wire… astonishing to anyone who simply fires up a text editor and then uploads via ftp etc. etc. now…

The process of actually coding in the programs was laborious, as well. The guidance computer used something known as “core rope memory”: wires were roped through metal cores in a particular way to store code in binary. “If the wire goes through the core, it represents a one,” Hamilton explained in the documentary Moon Machines. “And around the core it represents a zero.” The programs were woven together by hand in factories. And because the factory workers were mostly women, core rope memory became known by engineers as “LOL memory,” LOL standing for “little old lady.”

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Reblog> Digital Commons (trans. @patrickcrogan )

Here’s an interesting translation and commentary by Patrick Crogan of the Conseil National du Numérique open letter / petition on the ownership of knowledge:

Digital Commons

I’ve translated a part of a recent open letter /petition initiated by the Conseil National du Numérique in France and signed by 75 prominent professors and leaders of research and cultural organisations. The petition was published in Le Monde on 10 September 2015. The full text is available on the Conseil’s website: http://www.cnnumerique.fr/communs/  . I think there are some acutely made points here about the threats from the privatisation of knowledge by a parasitic knowledge economy, and the general ‘situation’ of knowledge today in the digital transition. I’m not so sure the rosy picture of open access in other western countries is fulfilled in practice currently (and the more nationalistic tones of the petition are understandable but a little regrettable in their competitive tone), but the potential of open access policy and law is clearly an important subject for today.

Promoting the dissemination of culture and knowledge

The commons will soon make their entrance into French law, on the occasion of the future law on the digital announced by Manuel Valls, after consultation with the Conseil National du Numérique. This is to be welcomed: the commons always feed the exchange and sharing practices that underly scientific production and cultural creation.

Science has always been understood as a common. Historically, the scientific method involves a collective construction of knowledge, organized around verification and validation by peers. The massive influx of digital technology into most fields of human activity is creating new situations. Networks facilitate the emergence of large distributed communities which can mobilize to create and share their knowledge. These common knowledges are all deposits made up of the initiatives, creativity and engagement of individuals in a collective goal. In a broader perspective concerning the safeguarding of a way of shared ownership and the collective management of resources according to a “communal” model, they form part of the natural resources managed by all the members of a community. The digital has reactivated this notion that has brought together the dynamics of the two major transitions that our world is undergoing: the protection of the informational commons as part of the digital transition and the protection of the natural commons as part of the ecological transition.

It is therefore time to give a proper legal basis for preserving the commons, and to adapt the law to right existing practices”¦.

“¦ Public domain information is made up of what cannot and what is no longer framed by Intellectual property laws. At present its protection is not very effective. Indeed it is defined in the hollow of the code of intellectual property, which makes it impossible to fight effectively against abusive IP claims over a work– this is what is meant by the term ‘copyfraud’. Examples are numerous: it is common that the scanning of a public domain work, or even simply photographing it, is used as a justification to claim a copyright on this work! Is it not astonishing – and this is a euphemism – that the Department of the Dordogne could claim a copyright on reproductions of the cave of Lascaux, 17 000 years after the death of its creators? Because it limits the distribution and reuse of works that make up the public domain, the copyfraud constitutes an infringement of the rights of the whole community.

Creating a positive law concerning the public domain is also the way to protect any misappropriation of items that cannot be the subject of an intellectual property right, such as information, facts, ideas, and principles. For instance Amazon has successfully filed a patent for photography against a white background”¦.

[[Note: see this post about the Amazon patent: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/amazons-latest-patent-is-sillier-than-the-peanut-butter-sandwich-patent/]]

“¦ Open Access, already adopted by our neighbors, particularly in Germany and the UK, enshrines in law the possibility for researchers who wish to publish in open access research articles that have been funded by public money, after a short embargo period. This measure aims to limit the dependence of public research institutions to major scientific publishers. Currently these are subject to a system of double payment, although since 2012 the European Commission has invited member States to enshrine open access in their legislation.

In fact, researchers funded by public money are mostly obliged, for reasons of visibility and career, to publish in prestigious scientific journals. They are therefore in a situation of dependency to scientific journals that now belong to an oligopoly comsisting of a few large publishers (Elsevier, but also Springer, Wiley, Nature). In order to publish in these journals, the authors are forced to give up their copyright. These same researchers also provide their expertise to shape the editorial choices of the journals. In this respect, the increase in subscription prices of journals does not appear to be justified, especially as the transition to digital has significantly decreased publication costs.

Meanwhile, higher education and research institutions annually spend more than € 80 million for access to electronic resources. And access costs have continuously increased. The access prices have also continuously increased by 7% per year for 10 years”¦. This situation severely limits the advancement of research while weighing on public finances.

But open access does not only aim to reduce expenditures of public institutions– open access has a real impact on the advancement of research, and in some cases on the preservation of public health: The team in charge of Liberia’s response to the threat of the Ebola virus were unable to access certain items because of their high costs, impacting on their ability to identify the virus early and develop faster prevention and care measures.

Other measures are needed to build an open digital environment conducive to research, innovation and creation. The provision to enable the automatic search of text data (text and data mining) is to allow for automated search methods in a very large volume of text or data; it is possible through this process to obtain results that would not have been discovered by another method. This would give new impetus to the entrance of French research into the age of big data and to realize very significant productivity gains. Other countries such as the UK, Japan and the United States have outpaced us in this area.

The real enhancement of cultural heritage occurs through its open use by the greatest number. This is also the historical mission of public libraries, which will largely benefit from these provisions. The circulation of open science helps us to face the transitions that confront us. A positive definition of the public domain and its incorporation in law will benefit the influence and standing of science and culture in the digital age. The United States, the United Kingdom and Germany have already understood this. What are we waiting for, before we also benefit from a wider diffusion of this open science and the new audiences and the new reputation it will bring?

List of the 75 signatories on the version published in Le Monde:

ï‚· Pierre LESCURE, Président du Festival de Cannes, Journaliste

ï‚· Bruno CHAUDRET, Directeur de Recherches CNRS, Président du conseil Scientifique du CNRS, Académicien

ï‚· Denis PODALYDES, Acteur, metteur en scène, scénariste et écrivain français, et sociétaire de la Comédie-Française

ï‚· Bruno LATOUR, Directeur scientifique de Sciences Po

ï‚· Benoît THIEULIN, Président du Conseil national du numérique

ï‚· Marc TESSIER, Président de Video Futur Entertainment Group et membre du Conseil national du numérique

ï‚· Alain BENSOUSSAN, Avocat à la Cour d’appel de Paris

ï‚· Michel WIEVIORKA, Sociologue, Président de la FMSH, Directeur d’études à l’EHESS

ï‚· Paul JORION, Anthropologue, essayiste

ï‚· Judith ROCHFELD, Professeur de droit privée à l’Ecole de droit de la Sorbonne, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1)

ï‚· Patrick WEIL, Directeur de recherche au CNRS, Président de Bibliothèques sans Frontières

ï‚· Yann MOULIER BOUTANG, Professeur des Universités en sciences économiques UTC

ï‚· Antoine PETIT, Président et Directeur Général de l’INRIA

ï‚· Nathalie MARTIAL-BRAZ, Professeur de droit Privé, Université Paris Descartes

ï‚· Melanie DULONG DE ROSNAY, Chargée de recherche au CNRS, Responsable du pôle Gouvernance de l’Information et des Communs de l’Institut des Sciences de la Communication du CNRS/Paris-Sorbonne/UPMC, Co-fondatrice de l’association Communia pour le domaine public

ï‚· Valérie PEUGEOT, Présidente de l’association Vecam

ï‚· Bernard STIEGLER, Philosophe, président de l’association Ars Industrialis et Directeur de l’Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation (IRI) du Centre Georges Pompidou

ï‚· Sophie PENE, Professeur à l’Université Paris Descartes

ï‚· Daniel KAPLAN, Délégué général de la Fondation pour l’Internet Nouvelle Génération (la FING)

ï‚· Serge ABITEBOUL, Directeur de recherche à Inria et Professeur affilié à l’ENS Cachan

ï‚· Pierre MUTZENHARDT, Président de l’université de Lorraine et Président de la commission recherche de la Conférence des Présidents d’Université

ï‚· Dominique BOULLIER, professeur de sociologie, médialab Sciences Po

ï‚· Camille DOMANGE, Chargé d’enseignement Sorbonne Paris I.

ï‚· Christine BERTHAUD, directrice du CCSD, CNRS.

ï‚· Claude KIRCHNER, Directeur de recherche Inria, Conseiller du président d’Inria, Président du comité de pilotage du Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe

ï‚· Jean-François ABRAMATIC, Informaticien et ancien président du W3C

ï‚· Brigitte VALLEE, Directrice de Recherche émérite au CNRS, rattachée au laboratoire GREYC (Caen Normandie)

ï‚· François TADDEI, Généticien, Directeur du Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires

ï‚· Albertine MEUNIER, Artiste

ï‚· Claire LEMERCIER, directrice de recherche au CNRS en histoire, présidente du conseil scientifique d’Openedition, membre du conseil scientifique du CNRS.

ï‚· Francis ANDRE, Chargé de mission Données de la recherche, Direction de l’information scientifique et technique, CNRS

ï‚· Alexandre MONNIN, philosophe, chercheur chez Inria, membre du réseaux d’experts d’Etalab

ï‚· Colin DE LA HIGUERA, Société informatique de France, directeur adjoint du Laboratoire informatique LINA à Nantes

ï‚· Christine OLLENDORFF, Directrice de la Documentation et de la Prospective, Arts et Métiers ParisTech

ï‚· Nicolas CATZARAS, Secrétaire général de la FMSH

ï‚· Maurice RONAI, Membre de la CNIL, Chercheur à l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

ï‚· Fabienne ORSI, Economiste, chercheuse à l’Institut de Recherche pour le Développement

ï‚· Pierre GINER, Artiste

ï‚· Christian PHELINE, Membre de la Commission d’accès aux documents administratifs (CADA), ancien directeur du développement des médias

ï‚· Valérie BERTHE, Directrice de recherche CNRS et membre du conseil scientifique du CNRS

ï‚· Jean-Pierre FINANCE, président de COUPERIN et du CA de l’ABES, ancien président de la CPU

ï‚· Virginia CRUZ, designer, directrice adjointe de l’agence IDSL et enseignante à l’Ecole Polytechnique

ï‚· John STEWART, Chercheur en sciences cognitives, Université de Technologie de Compiègne

ï‚· Cécile MEADEL, Professeure de l’Université Panthéon Assas (Paris II)

ï‚· Brigitte PLATEAU, Professeur des Universités, Administratrice Générale de l’Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble

ï‚· Jean-François BALAUDE, Professeur de philosophie, Président de l’Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense

ï‚· Hervé LE CROSNIER, Université de Caen Normandie

ï‚· Anne VERNEUIL, Présidente de l’Association des Bibliothécaires de France

ï‚· Sophie ROUX, Professeur d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences, ENS

ï‚· Serge BAUIN, Université Sorbonne Paris Cité, chargé de mission libre accès aux publications scientifiques au CNRS

ï‚· Margot BEAUCHAMPS, coordinatrice du Groupement d’intérêt scientifique M@rsouin

ï‚· Michel BIDOIT, Directeur de l’Institut des Sciences de l’Information et de leurs Interactions, CNRS

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‘Escaping the Anthropocene’, Stiegler on the Anthropocene

Following on from the various discussions and reflections on geography’s disciplinary mobilisation of the idea/concept of ‘the anthropocene’ I thought I’d just link to a bunch of things Bernard Stiegler has written about/in response to the concept.

I cannot pretend to be totally on top of this work. Likewise, I am not totally sure I can buy into the argument Stiegler presents in these works but it is relatively interesting nonetheless…

These are all translated and made available by the inimitable Daniel Ross:

“The Anthropocene and Neganthropology“, lecture by Bernard Stiegler at Canterbury, 2014.

“Escaping the Anthropocene“, lecture by Bernard Stiegler at the University of Durham, January 2015.

“Automatic Society 1: The Future of Work – Introduction“, the Introduction to Stiegler’s latest(?) book Automatic Society 1: The Future of Work (another series apparently!). This has been published in the new journal La Deleuziana.

 

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Round-up of the Programmable Cities Data & the City Workshop by @mhaklay

A great couple of posts offering an overview of the Data & the City workshop over at NUIM just before the RGS-IBG conference last week, very much worth reading:

Data and the City workshop (day 1)

Data and the City workshop (day 2)

Plus, there are some videos of the first session over on the Programmable Cities website. Here’s Rob Kitchin offering an interesting and informative overview of histories and key issues for studying data in/and cities: