So I went to Amazon to pick up Constance Classen’s The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch, which I’m looking forward to reading. This is what I found: While I’m definitely interested in picking up the book, and while it is clearly eligible for super saver shipping, this is the first over-$1500 academic …
Continue reading “And now, an academic paperback for over $1500”
Yesterday’s New York Times caught up with a story that’s been making the rounds of the internet music circles since Zoe Keating published her finances about a year ago: in many cases, Spotify pays so little they might as well not be paying artists at all. Sure, artists get fractions of cents in royalties, but very …
Continue reading “Once Again, the Political Economy of Communication People Had It Right”
When I first moved to Montreal in 2004, people would tell me they were going to “London” and I’d get excited for them because I thought they were going to the UK. Then they’d say “London, Ontario” and it would be slightly disappointing. Nine years later, last night, I’m checking in at the airport to …
One of the problems with the move to digital humanities and big data is a kind of “gadget logic” taken from the advertising rhetoric of consumer electronics. Lots of the reportage around digital humanities work on the big data side of the field focuses on what computer could do that people couldn’t. By that I …
Continue reading ““Look! Now you can…”: Gadget Logic in Big Data and the Digital Humanities”
A Facebook conversation started by Tara Rodgers got me thinking about the tools we use as writers. Obviously, the creative process is highly idiosyncratic and personal at some level even though none of us are as unique as we think we are. Try everything; select what works. The proliferation of new tools is exciting but it …
Last week in my Historiography seminar I taught Hayden White’s classic 1966 The Burden of History. This is the third time I’ve taught him (last two times were in 2000 and 2004) and each time, certain aspects of his argument seem fresh, others seem dated. What’s wonderful is that those labels change each time. Here …
A guest post on Profhacker.
