How to evaluate writing spaces.
Category: Reflections
What’s in a Wiki?
What are we really asking when we ask people to contribute to a crowd-sourced project? What do they gain? What are the ethics or politics? Is it best to ask …
tech versus culture: what makes for good digital collaboration?
Late last summer, social media fellow Jennifer Stoops and I collaborated on a grant proposal together. Sometimes that meant sitting cheek to cheek in front of the same computer where, …
Illuminating the Challenges of Web Design
I have always wanted an Artichoke Lamp. I could never afford one (or really any piece of mid-century decor), so when I found a relatively inexpensive substitute that looked really …
Speaking of ‘Speaking in Code’ (Part 2)
As noon approached, lunch beckoned and the discussion became atomic, situational, one-on-one. Folks began following each other on Twitter, gathering their thoughts, etc., and just then I heard fellow historian …
Speaking of ‘Speaking in Code’ (Part 1)
Technically Speaking
Recently in our Digital Fellows weekly meetings we’ve been talking about doing skill shares with each other. A great idea, sure, but I was immediately gripped with anxiety at the …
All That is Digital Melts into Code
The world of DH is one in which lofty dreams and visions of the digital transforming the social are frequently confronted by the challenges of coding, the limitations of the real, and the contradictions--perhaps fallacies--of modernity and modernization. This analogy lends caution to DH undertakings ignorant of the realities of implementation. But this also means that all that is within the world of DH is easily collapsed onto the realm of "coding". Meaning that despite the realities of coding and implementation of DH projects, there is an assumed teleological link between project and coding. Without going into counterexamples of where this link breaks down, allow me to instead provide a brief clarification of the concept of 'coding' that I think underlies some of this confusion.
What’s in it for me?
3D Printing and Maker Culture
...While there are plenty of silly things that people make with 3D printers, like figurines of their favorite comic book characters, there are also fantastic possibilities for quickly manufacturing other things like complex geometric shapes or artistic designs...