Category Archives: Oh Not Again He’s Going to Tell Us It’s a Complex System

Guns as Witchcraft

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

Over the holidays, after the shootings in Newtown, I was in a conversation on Facebook in which I reiterated my point from earlier in the year that in the United States, gun ownership and gun practices are culture, and as … Continue reading →

Posted in Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics | 6 Comments

The State of the Art: 500px and Flickr as a Window Into Social Media (II)

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Timothy Burke

II. Algorithmic Culture: Code and Agency New media theorists and digital humanists, most prominently Alexander Galloway, have been writing over the last decade about “algorithmic culture”, about practices, interpretations and readings that arise within and around algorithmic media. Galloway often … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Pictures from an Institution | 1 Comment

Commentary on Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Timothy Burke

We had the first of four symposia on Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Righteous Mind last night at Swarthmore. The hope is that we can demonstrate the distinctive advantages that a “liberal arts” approach can yield when many different scholars … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Generalist's Work, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics, Swarthmore | 1 Comment

Hell Is Other Gamers (And Some Games)

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Timothy Burke

Game developers talking about “culture” are often deeply frustrating. Either they are overly credulous about how design directly and symmetrically can create a particular set of cultural practices and outlook within a game, as my friend Thomas Malaby has observed … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Humanities, Games and Gaming, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System | 1 Comment

Don’t Bring Policy to a Culture Fight

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Timothy Burke

E.J. Dionne suggests that gun control advocates have given up and are “rationalizing gutlessness”. I’ve moved in my own life from being intensely certain that comprehensive restrictions on gun ownership were an important political objective to being indifferent to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics | 6 Comments

Debt: The First 500 Comments At Crooked Timber

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Timothy Burke

Some years ago, I was talking with a senior scholar that I had known well while I was in graduate school and in my early career. This person’s scholarly work is amazing stuff, a huge presence in African history, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Blogging, Generalist's Work, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System | 13 Comments

Mechanical Turks and Mirror Stages

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I like this essay by John Jones about search algorithms, which he compares to “mechanical Turk” automatons of the 18th Century. It’s a point that’s well-understood in some circles and completely not in others. Witness the degree to which users … Continue reading →

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

Move the Data Server-Side! Occupy Sanctuary!

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Timothy Burke

Three things about Occupy, two short, one long. 1) Occupy is already a success if the model is to provoke reaction from its chief targets. It’s hard to imagine pundits passing up the chance to comment on anything: the 24/7 … Continue reading →

Posted in Games and Gaming, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics | 7 Comments

A Point Everyone Has Already Made

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I try not to restate the trending applause lines that are cresting like giant waves through Twitter and similar online spaces, but there are reasons why some short sentiments find such a warm welcome at so many handles. In some … Continue reading →

Posted in Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics | 16 Comments

What’s Not in a Datamine

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Timothy Burke

I think that research that involves quantitative studies of extremely large datasets of texts that focuses on word usage, genre classification, spatial mapping of publication and circulation, or other kinds of information that we can now collect and analyze is … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Humanities, Generalist's Work, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System | 4 Comments