Schedule

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Schedule

2020-12-16

Assignment: Final Editorials 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

• Ann Blair “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.
• Patrick Rael, How to Read a Secondary Source

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

• Go back to Foucault and try to come back with one more observation.
• Joseph Priestley A Description of a Chart of Biography: By Joseph Priestley. ... (Printed at Warrington, 1764), http://archive.org/details/adescriptionach00priegoog., 1-18. (I’m putting the whole book online: skim the rest if you like. Read this primarily with the Foucault in your head; what’s different about Priestley’s episteme that he needs to explain timelines this particular way? )
• After reading Priestley, look at the specimen chart from his book https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/PriestleyChart.gif and a scan of the full charthttps://pages.uoregon.edu/infographics/timeline/pages/biography/img/Chart of biography.jpg

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

• James R Beniger The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986)., Chapter 6, “Industrial Revolution and the Crisis of Control”
• D. O. J. “Mercantile Agencies.” New York Daily Times, November 7, 1851, http://search.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimesindex/docview/95765241/abstract/142445A46F336CD6D70/11?accountid=12826.
• T. “Mercantile Agencies.” New York Daily Times, October 29, 1851, http://search.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimesindex/docview/95772455/abstract/142445A46F336CD6D70/12?accountid=12826.

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/discussions

readings: None

Thu, Oct 28

Your Data, 2

activity: In class presentations/discussions

readings: None

Computing Culture

Tue, Nov 02

Imagining Computers

Readings

• Vannevar Bush “As We May Think,” The Atlantic, July 1945, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/.
• Vannevar Bush “Memex Revisited,” in From Memex to Hypertext, ed. James M. Nyce and Paul Kahn (San Diego, CA, USA: Academic Press Professional, Inc., 1991), 197–216, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=132180.132193.

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

• Arthur Raphael Miller The Assault on Privacy: Computers, Data Banks, and Dossiers (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1971), http://archive.org/details/assaultonprivacy00mill., pp. 34-69, 254-274

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

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

Interfaces

Readings

• Run two pieces of historical software in emulation. https://archive.org/details/mac_Paint_2. Visicalc (1979). Make a drawing and also save a file, exploring the operating system. Response papers on the operating system are welcome.

• Review Levy; post discussion to Brightspace if desired

• Read FILE NOT FOUND: A generation that grew up with Google is forcing professors to rethink their lesson plans, The Verge, Sep 22, 2021. Come prepared to discuss in class, but do not write a response on this one.

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

Assignment Distributed: Final Editorial

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

• Paul Edwards, A Vast Machine (selections).
• Feb 15: To Tame Coronavirus, Mao-Style Social Control Blankets China https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/business/china-coronavirus-lockdown.html
• Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, selections.

Tue, Dec 14

Surveillance Capitalism

Readings

• Shoshana Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, excerpts.

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.

T. “Mercantile Agencies.” New York Daily Times. October 29, 1851. http://search.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimesindex/docview/95772455/abstract/142445A46F336CD6D70/12?accountid=12826.

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.