David M. Berry

Vector Theory Understanding digital media, technology, theory, culture and society.

Vector Theory

An extract from a new book I am writing

stunlaw.blogspot.com/2026/02/vect...

Provenance Anxiety: Death of the Author in the Age of Large Language Models Understanding digital media, technology, theory, culture and society.

stunlaw.blogspot.com/2025/12/prov...

AI Sprints Understanding digital media, technology, theory, culture and society.

AI Sprints

stunlaw.blogspot.com/2025/11/ai-s...

Scholarslop: The Dangers of an Algorithmic Idea of the University Understanding digital media, technology, theory, culture and society.

Scholarslop: The Dangers of an Algorithmic Idea of the University - great piece by @berrydm.bsky.social

"academics will need to find new means to defend the university and contest the use of scholarslop before it is too late" stunlaw.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

Opinion | Students Hate Them. Universities Need Them. The Only Real Solution to the A.I. Cheating Crisis.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o...

Involution and Artificial Intelligence Understanding digital media, technology, theory, culture and society.

Involution and Artificial Intelligence

Geertz observed that just as wet-rice cultivation became increasingly elaborate and labour-intensive without corresponding productivity increases, I want to argue that AI exhibits a form of technological involution.

stunlaw.blogspot.com/2025/07/invo...

Editors' Choice: Prompt Anxiety - Digital Humanities Now The phantasmagorias of space to which the flaneur devotes himself find a counterpart in the phantasmagorias of time to which the gambler is addicted. Gambling converts time into a narcotic (Benjamin 1...

Editors’ Choice: Prompt anxiety digitalhumanitiesnow.org/2025/06/prom...

Remembering Eliza, one of the first chatbots: Lessons, warnings it holds for AI today Eliza was unveiled in 1966 at MIT by computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum. Here's why the chatbot remains relevant today.

Remembering Eliza, one of the first chatbots: Lessons, warnings it holds for AI today indianexpress.com/article/expl...

Prompt Anxiety Understanding digital media, technology, theory, culture and society.

"Prompt Anxiety" (by @berrydm.bsky.social)

stunlaw.blogspot.com/2025/06/prom...

API: Authoritarian Programming Interface Understanding digital media, technology, theory, culture and society.

API: AUTHORITARIAN PROGRAMMING INTERFACE

Why the Trump Administration's Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) access to legacy financial systems is so serious.

stunlaw.blogspot.com/2025/02/api-...

World's first AI chatbot has finally been resurrected after decades ELIZA is famous as a rudimentary artificial intelligence and the first ever chatbot, but versions found online today are actually knock-offs because the original computer code was lost – until now

World's first AI chatbot has finally been resurrected after decades

ELIZA is famous as a rudimentary artificial intelligence and the first ever chatbot, but versions online today are actually knock-offs because the original computer code was lost – until now

www.newscientist.com/article/2463...

The reconstruction of historical computer code, what we might call digital ruins, presents unique challenges for digital preservation and historical understanding.

stunlaw.blogspot.com/2025/01/digi...

That’s pretty impressive!

I love the walks around there to Bovisands. Looks great in photo!

Reading ELIZA: Critical Code Studies in Action Critical Code Studies: 10 years later Almost 20 years ago, Mark Marino’s Critical Code Studies manifesto in electronic book review called for scholars to explore the extra-functional significance of ...

As our December issue is due tomorrow, you can check out some interesting articles from the last month, including an article by @berrydm.bsky.social and Mark Marino on ELIZA and Critical Code Studies 20 years after Marino's Critical Code Studies Manifesto. electronicbookreview.com/essay/readin...

Reflections on Method for Critical Code Studies Understanding digital media, technology, theory, culture and society.

Reflections on Method for Critical Code Studies

Critical code studies offers a crucial intervention for understanding the algorithms by studying source code through close reading techniques

stunlaw.blogspot.com/2024/12/refl...

TEAM ELIZA submitted the full draft of our book about the code of the world's first chatbot.
Sarah Ciston, David Berry, Peggy Weil , Jeff Shrager, Arthur Schwarz, Anthony Hay, Mark Marino and Peter Millican with Foreword by Janet Murray
findingeliza.org

ELIZA Archaeology Welcome to the ELIZA Archaeology Project. This research project brings together an interdisciplinary team of scholars, artists, and programmers to explore the history and ideas around the ELIZA chatbo...

This is very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

A better (i.e historically accurate version of ELIZA) is here in case it is useful.

findingeliza.org

The Inversion and the Algorithmic Condition Understanding digital media, technology, theory, culture and society.

The Inversion and the Algorithmic Condition stunlaw.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-...

IS IT BECAUSE YOU ARE THE BARKER THAT YOU CAME TO ME

It is. ELIZA, I need your help.

electronicbookreview.com?mailpoet_rou...

who could have predicted that the full commodification of all human endeavor would result in feelings of dysphoria and meaninglessness

Very interesting. We pick up this point a bit in this paper: monoskop.org/images/2/21/... also Frederic Kaplan talks about similar ideas

Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence.

Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art
To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence.

By Ted Chiang

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

AI & SOCIETY AI & Society: Knowledge, Culture and Communication, is an International Journal publishing refereed scholarly articles, position papers, debates, short ...

CfP: Critical Code Studies and Code Conversations

We invite contributions to a Special Issue on Critical Code Studies. We take up the idea of the code conversation as a means of critically interrogating computer source code.

link.springer.com/journal/146/...

#critcode #digitalhumanities

Crash course The UK’s universities are among the best in the world. So why do many appear close to collapse?

“Universities’ management systems are not up to that task. … The quality of university leadership is variegated: the nimble mixed with the static, the precise blended in with the clumsy, and the forward-looking cheek-by-jowl with the antediluvian. “

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/pol...

New York Times source code stolen using exposed GitHub token Internal source code and data belonging to The New York Times was leaked on the 4chan message board after being stolen from the company's GitHub repositories in January 2024, The Times confirmed to Bl...

Internal source code and data belonging to The New York Times was leaked on the 4chan message board after being stolen from the company's GitHub repositories in January 2024 #critcode #digitalhumanities

www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/securit...

The Future of the University: A Proposal for a ‘Digital Research University’

stunlaw.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-...

Code as Conversation: Transmedia Dialogues Around Critical Code Studies

www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/events/37778/

#critcode

Tractable Tensions: A Review of Digital Humanities: Knowledge and Critique in a Digital Age by David M. Berry and Anders Fagerjord. By Onyekachi Henry Ibekwe

www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/18/1...

New publication (myself and James Stockman):

Schumacher in the age of generative AI: Towards a new critique of technology (2024)

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...