Alex Tarr

computational humanities ==! digital humanities

Is this a conversation worth trying to have in 2025?

US army taps private equity groups to help fund $150bn revamp Apollo, KKR, Carlyle and Cerberus among investors that held talks with federal government

Turns out they're going to turn all the army bases into data centres and then let private equity plunder them?
www.ft.com/content/0e92...

To follow!

WARNING: THIS COMPUTER MUST BE EARTHED

Top of page 1 of the 1986 BBC AIV (advanced interactive video) user guide that accompanied the BBC Domesday Project (on 2 custom laser disks), where nearly a million UK children collected data for an interactive map, photos, videos and virtual tours project?!

absolutely.
well, that and the ways in which gerunding has been normalised

depends if you'd rather get angry notes from MR or NLR readers, but for my 2p, either way is fine. Working directly with the concept as Foster's certainly requires less expository writing in my opinion.

"idiocy of rural life" vs "isolation of rural life" on the other hand...

*I honestly can't tell if this is what ChatGPT inserts into every undergrad media theory paper, or colleagues who got PhDs 20 years ago assign a lot of Jenkins, Hall and Barthes and students try to make it work for their work without much context, but it certainly triggers my own strange nostalgia.

for reasons* I keep seeing students citing Jenkins et al on "participatory culture" and its taken me back to thinking about Larry Lessig circa 2006 and then to Aaron Swartz. The things the government hounded him to death over are now effectively standard business practices of Ai teams at big tech?

Who's writing the "From Counterculture to Cyberculture" style book on how we got from a 2000s free/remix-culture liberal dream that the Internet could break the corporate stranglehold on life to this moment of Tech Corporation actively trying to end life as we know it by seizing control of culture?

Promotional image for an online book talk titled 'After Disruption.' Left side shows portraits of Trevor Owens and Shannon Mattern with text: 'After Disruption Book Talk, with Trevor Owens & Shannon Mattern.' Center panel reads: 'September 25th, 10am PT / 1pm ET, Online. Join us for a book talk with Trevor Owens, author of After Disruption: A Future for Cultural Memory, in conversation with Shannon Mattern, as they explore how libraries, archives, and museums can reclaim their role in shaping a just and sustainable digital present.' Logos of Internet Archive and Authors Alliance appear at the bottom. Right side shows the book cover for 'After Disruption: A Future for Cultural Memory' by Trevor Owens, featuring a photo of a grand library entrance.

We’re not just planning for a digital future: we’re living in a digital present. How do we make a sustainable cultural memory?

@TJOwens.bsky.social & @ShannonMattern.bsky.social discuss in the #booktalk AFTER DISRUPTION.

🗓 Thurs Sept 25
🕖 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET
🎟️ www.eventbrite.com/e/1633230118...

2/2 "...With the added sophistication of television and computers, it becomes even more tempting for us to cope by staying indoors, glued to the expanding cornucopia of one-dimensional learning, and to neglect further the hard evidence which lurks all around us outside the walls."
- Grady Clay, 1979

"Cities continue to change, in response to access to and control over their energy supplies, as well as to their will to exploit and conserve. But our ability to penetrate our surroundings-to distinguish myth from reality, wish from fulfilment has only begun to cope with environmental change..." 1/2

I'm hoping for an Ai generated Orson Welles voice over that turns the entire film into a nearly three hour advertisement for Coppola branded wines.

who writes about the origins of 'data' as something a subject possess? In something like an ontological sense- in the same way that a subject (once) possessed a soul or personality, one now *has* data. Data that is to be guarded, protected or given at will? When did "my data" enter the zeitgeist?

Most reposting to remind fellow urbanists that you can now follow @city-journal.bsky.social on bluesky!

But, of course, also welcome more feedback on the editorial.
(come for the great art by Tom Schofield, stay for the non-sequitur, but maybe prescient, swipes at Larry Ellison and Oracle)

anyone reach out to poor Cameron Dixon, the civil servant at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency which apparently had to register the .gov domain?

get.gov/posts/2024-0...

Loveless, by Japancakes 11 track album

semi-annual reminder that Japancakes covered My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" in its entirety and it is perfect.
All instrumental (the cellos and pedal steels work brilliantly) so you can put it on at your place of work today!

japancakes.bandcamp.com/album/loveless

will you be taking questions about that beautiful Rural Electrification Administration book cover?

wonder what the mood is over at the NSA this week.

Social Reproduction and the Housing Question There is broad recognition today that there is a link between the crisis of social reproduction and the housing problem. But their precise relationship is not always clear. This paper is an attempt t...

Hot off the digital press, my article in @antipodeonline.bsky.social on Social Reproduction and the Housing Question onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I understand why a studio went with "A Complete Unknown" as the recognisable lyric to use as a title for a Dylan biopic, but I still think they should have gone with "Short Pants Romance."

Looks like there's a new influx of folks here, so boosting the @cplusc.bsky.social starter pack- if you want to hear about the best new ideas in climate and economic policy in the coming dark days, this is a good place to start! bsky.app/starter-pack...

Cities, computation and capitalism Published in City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action (Vol. 28, No. 5-6, 2024)

The wonderful editors at City asked me to write an editorial for the latest issue. Here is what I had to say about Cities, computation and capitalism:
doi.org/10.1080/1360...

(lots of wonderful work I didn't have space to cite, but I hope it furthers a broader conversation and action)

Israeli forces have bombed another UN-run school in southern Gaza, killing at least 20 displaced Palestinians sheltering in the building, witnesses told Al Jazeera.

🔗: aje.io/otnvl2

Admittedly, I may be more excited about the "Drawing and Dreaming" version, but both look like absolute treasures.
a4kids.org/book/city/

and just when I was starting to think tech might just save us.

YouTube video by ThingsICantFindOtherwise Your Duty Is Clear (The Simpsons)

but also:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkg3...
"your job is to build and maintain those robots"

also with the "how are AIs *actually* going to remake cities" piece I'm working on this week :|