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Overview

This course places contemporary excitement and fears about “Big Data” in a long historical context. Much is new about the way corporations, governments, and individuals use massive computational resources to search for patterns. But those who use big data draw on legacies from well before the computer age for data management, visualization, and analysis.

We will trace the long history of big data through four parallel strands:

  1. The rise of massive systems of data collection by states in the 19th century through institutions like the census and the military.

  2. The attempts of businesses to collect and use data to control their markets and their workers.

  3. The relationship of data to the sciences.

  4. The different eras of computing in the last 80 years, and the ways that social forces shaped the development of computing.

This class is listed as a lecture, but will be run in a hybrid lecture-discussion format.

A note on readings and schedules

The schedule printed in this syllabus is likely to change. The course website listed on the front page of the paper documents will reflect the most recent available information. Please bookmark the course site.

Course Goals

Like all history courses, this course aims to impart both knowledge about a specific subject and some broader skills.

  1. Give you a stronger vocabulary for interacting with data as a primary source and thinking about its origins, setting, and biases.
  2. Conduct and communicate archival research.
  3. Communicate clearly and respectfully in an oral setting.
  4. Write clearly and informatively about non-textual artifacts like datasets, data visualizations, and account books with a focus on clear, succinct, and precise description.
  5. Debate and describe the ways that contemporary practices of “Big Data” are shaped by and differ from a long historical context;
  6. Apply sophisticated historical models of technology shapes social change, and vice versa.
  7. Interpret historical sources of data, and recast them into contemporary terms you and your peers can understand; and
  8. Understand some of the major turning points in the history of computing, data collection, and social control.

Requirements

Readings and classroom participation

You must complete all the readings for the course and attend class prepared to discuss them. Your peers are counting on you to do so. If for any reason you can’t do the reading done by class, you should let me know in advance and still attend class.

This course relies on active, engaged participation in class activities and discussions. We will not be building toward an exam, but we will be calling back through the semester to the base of knowledge we have gained. You should come to every class having read all of the required reading (or watched the required videos, etc.) and prepared to discuss them with your colleagues. We will assess your reading and course engagement through in-class writing exercises (some collected for a grade and others not), reading quizzes, in-class group work, and related assignments.

Attendance

Because of Coronavirus, none of us want you dragging yourself to sick with something you’re sure is just a regular cold.

That said, participation is part of your grade, and it will be much harder to particpate without being here.

If you are not present, you must actually e-mail me before class explaining why. The policy for remote attendance will be worked out as we go.

Collaborative Notetaking

Each student will be responsible for serving as note-taker for a single class session. This entails two things.

  1. Taking minutes of any lecture and discussion as it occurs. This can be hard. You may use recording devices if necessary, but please destroy any recordings once you are done.
  2. Writing up a short (say, 200-300 words) summary of the class directed at a hypothetical student who did not attend class. This is not a summary of the notes, but instead an effort to step back, think about what we talked about and what sort of connections to earlier weeks it might raise.

The minutes will be kept in a single, public Google Doc. The summary is due in discussions on Brightspace before the next class meets.

Reading Responses.

You should post short reading responses in the discussion areas. These responses need not be lengthy or comprehensive, but must:

  1. Demonstrate a substantial engagement with the reading(s).
  2. Pose questions, criticisms, or connections for further discussion.
  3. Draw connections or comparisons with earlier readings.

These responses may reflect your personal opinions. Towards the end of the semester you will be writing a short position piece on contemporary issues in historical context.

You should post 13 times in all. If you have a brainstorm after class, you may post it in the previous discussion area, but don’t do this more than twice.

Papers

You’ll have four major written assignments in this class:

  1. A description of a historical piece of data collection from the period 1800-1945.
  2. A 6-8 page paper putting several readings in conversation with each other. (Maybe. I might drop this one if the reading responses are good enough overall.)
  3. A close reading of a historical advertisement from the period 1960-1990 about data use, control, or analysis.
  4. A short paper due in finals week in the style of an op-ed making an argument about data in contemporary life, without any citations from outside this class.

Behavior

You are required to be respectful to your fellow classmates and professors: listening attentively, not interrupting, and maintaining a civil discourse. Personal attacks, hostility, and mockery will not be tolerated. If you have any issues, please talk to me directly so that I can address them. Because of COVID, no food or drinks are permitted in the classroom.

Technical Snafus

This course relies heavily on access to computers, specific software, and the Internet. At some point during the semester you WILL have a problem with technology: your laptop will crash, a file will become corrupted, a server will go down, a piece of software will not act as you expect it to, or something else will occur. These are facts of twenty-first-century life, not emergencies. To succeed in college and in your career you should develop work habits that take such snafus into account. Start assignments early and save often. Always keep a backup copy of your work saved somewhere secure (preferably off site). None of these unfortunate events should be considered emergencies: inkless printers, computer virus infections, lost flash drives, lost passwords, corrupted files, incompatible file formats. It is entirely your responsibility to take the proper steps to ensure your work will not be lost irretrievably; if one device or service isn’t working, find another that does. We will not grant you an extension based on problems you may be having with technological devices or the internet services you happen to use. When problems arise in the software we are all using for the course, we will work through them together and learn thereby.

Grading

  • Reading and action responses: 25%
  • One-day report and notes: 5%
  • Presence, participation, and preparation: 15%
  • Other Graded work: 55%

Written work points.

All distributed assignments will include a fixed number of points for that assignment. Because of COVID I’m not willing to make promises about exactly what the point breakdown will be, since certain things–in particular, in-person archival research–may or may not be possible. But the general breakdown is likely to be something like the following.

  • Class report: 2 point
  • Archival presentation: 2 points
  • Archival Paper: 6 points
  • Advertisement exegesis: 2 points
  • Advertisement ontology: 1 points
  • Short final paper (Op-Ed): 3 points.

That adds up to fifteen points, so the value of the archival paper would be (6/15) * 0.55.

Work is generally graded with letters.

A means 95, A- means 92, B+ means 88, and so on.

Unexcused late work will be penalized at a rate of one-third of a letter grade for every 48 hours it is late.

The end of this syllabus includes a longer description of what sort of work will receive an “A,” a “B,” and so forth.

Schedule

2020-12-16

Assignment: Final Papers due over NYU classes by 5pm. I will respond to any requests for comments on draft first paragraphs sent by 4pm, five days before it is due..

Introductions

Thu, Sep 02

Introductions

Readings

  • (In class): Plato, Phaedrus, on the invention of writing.

Early Modern Information Overload

Tue, Sep 07

Learning how to Read

Readings

Thu, Sep 09

Shuffling Paper

Readings

  • Staffan Müller-Wille and Isabelle Charmantier “Natural History and Information Overload: The Case of Linnaeus,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43, no. 1 (March 2012): 4–15, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2011.10.021.

Tue, Sep 14

Ordering the World

Readings

  • Jorge Luis Borges “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins,” trans. Lilia Graciela Vázquez (Alamut, 1999).
  • Michel Foucault The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1994)., Introduction and Chapter 3

Preparation

  • What do you understand about the Foucault?

Thu, Sep 16

Visualization and Images

Readings

In class

  • William Playfair 1759-1823. The Commercial and Political Atlas and Statistical Breviary, ed. Howard Wainer and Ian Spence 1944- (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Assignment Distributed: Archival Data, Part 1

Tue, Sep 21

Sharing Knowledge in Early Modern China

Readings

  • Schäfer, Dagmar. “Silken Strands: Making Technology Work in China.” In Culture of Knowledge: Technology in Chinese History (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 45–73.

Information Managers

Thu, Sep 23

Accounting for Slavery

Readings

  • Ellen Gruber Garvey and Lisa Gitelman “‘Facts and FACTS’ : Abolitionists’ Database Innovations,” in "Raw Data" Is an Oxymoron (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013), 89–102.
  • Sean Wilentz Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1787-1848: Documents and Essays (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1992)., “GW Hammond, Instructions to his Overseer”
  • (In class: In class: American Slavery as it is, runaway advertisements.)

Tue, Sep 28

Industrial Revolutions

Readings

Thu, Sep 30

State Capacity

Readings

  • James C. Scott Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)., pp. 11-52, 64-83. (i.e.; Chapter 1, and the last half of chapter 2). On Google Drive, and available online from campus at https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctt1nq3vk.

note: The Scott is full of some really Big Ideas that we need for the rest of this class, told through several amazingly divergent stories about particular areas (Germany forestry, French land taxes, Filipino surnames, Parisian Streets, and so forth.) Some of these–especially the idea of “legibility”–do not show up until the very end of these selections. The details are fascinating and help you understand the issues; but the specifics here are less important than in, say, Beniger. Do not lose sight of the forestry for the trees.

Tue, Oct 05

Legibility

readings: Review or finish the Scott and bring to class.

Thu, Oct 07

The Census

Readings

  • Thomas P. Kinnahan “Charting Progress: Francis Amasa Walker’s Statistical Atlas of the United States and Narratives of Western Expansion,” American Quarterly 60, no. 2 (2008): 399–423, https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.0.0012.
  • Margo J Anderson The American Census: A Social History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988)., chapter on industrial census.

Cultures of Data

Tue, Oct 12

No class (Indigenous People’s Day)

Thu, Oct 14

Fordism

Readings

  • Stephen Meyer The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921, Suny Series in American Social History (Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press, 1981).

in_class: chaplin_modern_1936, first fifteen minutes

Tue, Oct 19

Ordinary Americans

activity: Due tomorrow: Crowdsourcing on Zooniverse

Readings

  • Sarah Elizabeth Igo The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2007)., Introduction, Chapter 1 and 2. Note that all six chapters of the Igo are online in the Google docs to accomodate anyone who cannot access the online versions through the NYU library. But I would prefer you access directly through the NYU library, where you can read/download the full book with NYU login.. Please be in touch if you have trouble with network issues, etc.

Thu, Oct 21

Quantifying Publics

activity: Due tomorrow: Second historical dataset

Readings

  • Igo, Chapters 3-4 and epilogue.

Tue, Oct 26

Your Data

activity: In class presentations.

readings: None

Thu, Oct 28

State statistics

Reading

  • China, TBD

Computing Culture

Tue, Nov 02

Imagining Computers

Readings

Thu, Nov 04

Making Programmers

Readings

  • “The Computer Girls”, Cosmopolitan, 1967
  • Jennifer Light “When Computers Were Women,” Technology and Culture 40, no. 3 (1999): 455.
  • Desk Set (20th Century Fox, 1957)., in class

Tue, Nov 09

Data-Mania

Readings

Thu, Nov 11

Punching in

Readings

  • Stephen Lubar, “Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate” 1992. link
  • More time on Miller and privacy.

Personal Computing

Tue, Nov 16

Database Populism

Readings

  • Database Populism
  • Ted M. Lau, “Total Kitchen Information System”, Byte Magazine, 1977

Assignment Distributed: Advertising History

Thu, Nov 18

The Spreadsheet

Readings

  • Stephen Levy, “A Spreadsheet way of Knowing”, Harper’s Magazine, 1984. (You can find a newer copy of this republished online, but read the PDF of the original.

Tue, Nov 23

Surveillance Statism

Readings

Thu, Nov 25

No class: Thanksgiving

Tue, Nov 30

The Information Superhighway

Readings

  • Tim Berners-Lee and Mark Fischetti Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999)., Introduction; Chapters 1, 2, and 3

Social Computing

Thu, Dec 02

Information Overload Revisited

Readings

  • James Gleick The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (New York: Pantheon Books, 2011).
  • Siva Vaidhyanathan The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011)., Chapter 2

Tue, Dec 07

Big Data and the Sciences

Readings

  • The End of Theory, Wired Magazine, 2008 link
  • The Norvig-Chomsky Debate, 2012: Norvig and Chomsky

Thu, Dec 09

Data vs. the Public

Readings

Tue, Dec 14

Surveillance Capitalism

Readings

  • Shoshana Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, excerpts.

Policies

COVID

The University has an extensive set of COVID related-policies involving masks, vaccinations, etc. that we all must follow.

If you have questions about them, please feel free to raise them in class; I may not have up-to-date answers, but this will be a moving target.

Attendance problems for reasons of ill-health will not be penalized.

Academic Integrity

Plagiarism is the serious intellectual sin in the humanities. All work you submit must be your own in accordance with CAS guidelines (https://cas.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/cas/academic-integrity.html).

Accessibility

Please inform me privately as soon as possible if you needs that need accomodating.

New York University provides reasonable accommodations to qualified students who disclose their disability to the Moses Center. Reasonable accommodations are adjustments to policy, practice, and programs that provide equal access to NYU’s programs and activities. Accommodations and other related services are determined on a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration each student’s disability-related needs and NYU program requirements.

Religious observances

Should a due date or class meeting fall on a religious observance that is not an NYU holiday, please let me know and we can make accomodations. NYU’s policy on religious observances is online: https://www.nyu.edu/about/policies-guidelines-compliance/policies-and-guidelines/university-calendar-policy-on-religious-holidays.html.

Counseling and Wellness

If you experience any health or mental health issues during this course, I encourage you to utilize the support services of the 24/7 NYU Wellness Exchange 212-443-9999.

If you are having mental health problems that are preventing you from attending class or completing assignments, please let me know as soon as possible.

Use of Electronic Devices

Laptops and tablets are allowed in class, and it is permissible to use them to refer to notes and readings. Nonetheless, I strongly encourage you to print out readings if you are able to do so; if you find the expense prohibitive, I am happy to print up to three week’s worth of readings in advance for any student who comes to office hours.

But we’re all sick of screens right now.

Web browsing, e-mail, etc., are not allowed. Not even when the activity is directly related to class discussion. If you think it’s critically important that you get a reference from Wikipedia or wherever to contribute to class, you can ask. But just post it to Brightspace afterwards.

Phones must remain in bags, pockets, etc. If I see you using a cell phone, I will mentally note a zero for the day in class participation. I may ask you to put it away, but often I will not say anything because to do so would be insulting to the peers you are ignoring.

You are not as sneaky texting under the table as you think you are.

Acknowledgements

Elements of this class draw on courses by Emily Thompson, Shannon Mattern, Lauren Klein, and others.

Language in this syllabus comes from a variety of other sources, especially Ryan Cordell at the University of Illinois.

The paper syllabus uses a template by Andrew Goldstone.

Anderson, Margo J. The American Census: A Social History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

Beniger, James R. The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Berners-Lee, Tim, and Mark Fischetti. Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999.

Blair, Ann. “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload Ca.1550-1700.” Journal of the History of Ideas 64, no. 1 (2003): 11–28. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2003.0014.

Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins.” Translated by Lilia Graciela Vázquez. Alamut, 1999.

Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic, July 1945. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/.

———. “Memex Revisited.” In From Memex to Hypertext, edited by James M. Nyce and Paul Kahn, 197–216. San Diego, CA, USA: Academic Press Professional, Inc., 1991. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=132180.132193.

Desk Set. 20th Century Fox, 1957.

Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

Garvey, Ellen Gruber, and Lisa Gitelman. “‘Facts and FACTS’ : Abolitionists’ Database Innovations.” In "Raw Data" Is an Oxymoron, 89–102. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013.

Gleick, James. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon Books, 2011.

Igo, Sarah Elizabeth. The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2007.

J., D. O. “Mercantile Agencies.” New York Daily Times. November 7, 1851. http://search.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimesindex/docview/95765241/abstract/142445A46F336CD6D70/11?accountid=12826.

Kinnahan, Thomas P. “Charting Progress: Francis Amasa Walker’s Statistical Atlas of the United States and Narratives of Western Expansion.” American Quarterly 60, no. 2 (2008): 399–423. https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.0.0012.

Light, Jennifer. “When Computers Were Women.” Technology and Culture 40, no. 3 (1999): 455.

Meyer, Stephen. The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921. Suny Series in American Social History. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press, 1981.

Miller, Arthur Raphael. The Assault on Privacy: Computers, Data Banks, and Dossiers. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1971. http://archive.org/details/assaultonprivacy00mill.

Müller-Wille, Staffan, and Isabelle Charmantier. “Natural History and Information Overload: The Case of Linnaeus.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43, no. 1 (March 2012): 4–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2011.10.021.

Playfair, William, 1759-1823. The Commercial and Political Atlas and Statistical Breviary. Edited by Howard Wainer and Ian Spence 1944-. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Priestley, Joseph. A Description of a Chart of Biography: By Joseph Priestley. ... Printed at Warrington, 1764. http://archive.org/details/adescriptionach00priegoog.

Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Vaidhyanathan, Siva. The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry). Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

Wilentz, Sean. Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1787-1848: Documents and Essays. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1992.