Category Archives: Information Technology and Information Literacy

Is Tuolumne Worth It? Information Regimes Old and New

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I’m posting this from Yosemite National Park, where I’ve been for a few days. The waterfalls this year are unusually spectacular due to extremely heavy snowfall in the Sierra Nevada over the winter. I was especially keen to show my … Continue reading →

Posted in Information Technology and Information Literacy, Miscellany, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System | 2 Comments

The Return of the Phantom Time Menace

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Timothy Burke

Read enough forum threads across a wide enough range of websites and you ought to become fairly expert in predicting the range and distribution of responses and even of anticipating where you’re likely to fall in that picture yourself, should … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Production of History | Comments Off on The Return of the Phantom Time Menace

How I Talk About Searching, Discovery and Research in Courses

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I recently boiled down some of the advice I try to give students about how to carry out searches and formulate research questions, which I’ll reproduce here. I start with the basic insight that I’ve picked up from Swarthmore’s library … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Swarthmore | 17 Comments

Wait, Who Has Sinister Connections to Insiders That Influence Their Reporting?

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Timothy Burke

There’s a second story buried inside the story of events in Egypt and Tunisia. It’s the story of how mainstream American journalists find themselves perpetually staring at a magic mirror, telling themselves that they are the fairest of them all. … Continue reading →

Posted in Blogging, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Politics | Comments Off on Wait, Who Has Sinister Connections to Insiders That Influence Their Reporting?

Viruses? Assassination? Arming Insurgents? How Could That Go Wrong?

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Timothy Burke

You don’t have to be paranoid or a conspiracy freak to think that re-engineering the technology at the heart of digital communications so that it can be legally wiretapped is a bad idea. Drearily, this is another example of how … Continue reading →

Posted in Information Technology and Information Literacy, Politics | 2 Comments

A Lord Byron in Every Cyberpot

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Timothy Burke

I’m interested in seeing the film Catfish after reading A.O. Scott’s review. Still, Scott’s references to familiar examples of online deception coupled with his welcome awareness that literary and cultural fraud is an old and established part of American life … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Popular Culture | 2 Comments

Island at the Top of King Solomon’s Mines

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Timothy Burke

Re-reading King Solomon’s Mines for today’s class, I was suddenly struck powerfully by a sort of deja vu. Not about the novel itself, since I’ve read it quite a few times, both for courses and otherwise. Nor even about the … Continue reading →

Posted in Information Technology and Information Literacy, Popular Culture | Comments Off on Island at the Top of King Solomon’s Mines

If All the Other Kids Jumped Off a Bridge…

Posted on September 10, 2010 by Timothy Burke

I have surrendered to Twitter.

Posted in Blogging, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy | Comments Off on If All the Other Kids Jumped Off a Bridge…

Looking Backwards

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Timothy Burke

In a few weeks, I’m going to be talking about how searching as an act changes when the digitized texts you’re searching through are either highly specialized in their content or are from a distinctly different era of rhetoric and … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Popular Culture | 1 Comment

The Temperament of Serpents

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Timothy Burke

I went surf fishing in Delaware for the first time this summer. My previous experience had been limited to freshwater fishing, mostly for trout, some with a spinning reel using lures and bait, some fly-fishing. So I spent some time … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Production of History | 3 Comments