Books are Falling Apart – Memory/Texts. The dissemination of reading.

AIUCD 2021 – DH for society: e-quality, participation, rights and values in the digital age

In a few days the Annual AIUCD Congress (19-22 January) will start. I did not took part in the last one or two, but this time I am in. Thanks to Covid, it will be entirely online, and therefore experimental. I think this will add a special flavour to the event. I believe it was not an easy one to organize but also one that might change long lasting habits that, in my view, needed an update. I am very excited for that.

The theme of the Congress is particularly well suited for the moment we live in, focused as it is on the social and political issue at stake involving the digital. This is something we need to address if we want to create meaningful research and teaching, otherwise Digital Humanities will be only some kind of technical navel gazing and/or a new form of shining ivory tower, so to speak, or even worst, a new kind of latinorum for a new kind of elite. And a latinorum that is much more invisible and (apparently at least) friendly than the older one.

Browsing on the program, I found many stimulating paper that I am eager to listen to, mostly the ones in which political and/or rhetorical and epistemological issues are involved. I will keep reading abstracts in the few days before the actual congress begins, and if I find interesting ideas I will probably write something on it. Stay tuned.

Giorgio Guzzetta

Covid and digital

This blog has been on hold for way too long. For personal reasons I have had to let go a few things, even important one, but It seems that it is time to get back in the game. I still think that the topics of this carnet de recherche – the future of reading, first of all – are relevant and I am willing to keep it alive.

In the past few months thinking about Viruses has been an occupational hazard for everyone in the planet. In fact, this is something that the real world has in common with the digital, provided that at present there is still a difference between the two.

During covid-induced lockdowns, we were all hooked up to our internet connections to breathe and survive. At least those of us that were lucky enough not to be attached to a ventilator and have the economical and technical means to be online 24/7 (digital divide is not a myth, is extremely real) Continue reading Covid and digital

Giorgio Guzzetta

DH Talk of the Town

Every weekend (if I have time, which is not always the case) I read news and essays on Digital Culture that I collected during the week, from various sources, trying to give them some perspective, The collection is idiosyncratic and highly personal, but not, I hope, without interests for the few readers of this blog.

[A slightly different Italian Version is published on Leggere, scrivere e far di conto]

Streaming videogames session, live or recorded (youtube), has become more and more popular in recent years. The phenomenon was described in the Guardian and The Conversation in 2014, and has been the topic of a Master’s Thesis at the University of Utrecht).

On the website in media res there was an interdisciplinry discussion on Video Game Spectatorship (8-12 january 2018), with a number of short essays:.

Continue reading DH Talk of the Town

Giorgio Guzzetta

Digital utopias: cosmopolitan vs ethnocentric vs glocal vs global…

There has been a lot of discussion about the “dream” (the modern word for what once was called utopia? ) of multiculturalism in several venues, on and offline, and the recent billet by Martin Grandjean rekindle it recently. This is indeed a thorny issues and, unfortunately, not something that you can simply solve addressing practical issues (although in the end those are the ones that count).

The first thing that I want to say is that there are different kinds of multilingualism. Continue reading Digital utopias: cosmopolitan vs ethnocentric vs glocal vs global…

Giorgio Guzzetta

Computer Science and the Humanities

In the last three years, since the beginning of my PhD, I have been reading a lot of stuff about Digital Humanities, a lot of definitions, a lot of introductions (in more than one language), and I have been discussing several times with many people, but I am still not satisfied, I am not convinced that a useful and satisfactory guide that explains in full the connection and the relationship between computer science and humanities has been as yet produced. I am not, obviously, saying that I will be the one who will write such a thing, I am still trying to find my way into it, but I am willing to try an experiment and see what comes out of it. Continue reading Computer Science and the Humanities

Giorgio Guzzetta

The dark side of the shadow of Digital Humanities

[While waiting to read the issue of difference discussing the “shadowy” digital humanities and their shadows, I recovered from my previous blog this posts discussing the MLA panel on the dark side of DH that inspired the journal issue.]

During the launching event of Art/Works: Platform for the creative arts and industries, here in Cork, at Triskel, there was a performance of the Conflicted Theatre Company dramatizing the life of an aspiring… artist? journalist? writer? not sure… the protagonist wasn’t sure either, and ended up working as some sort of answering/calling “machine” all his life, with bleak and depressing consequences, as you might expect. It was a moving look at the dark side of a “creative” career, precisely the kind of thing that the rest of the day (and the various events that happened during it) was aiming at avoiding. Continue reading The dark side of the shadow of Digital Humanities

Giorgio Guzzetta

Are Digital Literary Studies even possible?

The unabridged slides of my presentation at University College Cork (2 april 2014) – those that I did use and those I did not used.

Giorgio Guzzetta

Flipping and blending

[Originally published in Creative Amnesia May 12, 2013 @ 20:08]

This is the prezi of the presentation I gave (in collaboration with James O’Sullivan) at the ninth ICT in Education Conference hosted on the Thurles Campus of Limerick Institute of Technology on Saturday 11th of May 2013. I decided to use prezi instead of powerpoint because I thought it gave a better visual representation of the idea of ‘flipping’. I also added a draft of the basic points of my talk.

Continue reading Flipping and blending

Giorgio Guzzetta

What is Digital Humanities? An Italian perspective

[From my previous blog, but still worth reading, I believe]

There is been a lot of discussion around Digital Humanities lately, caused by (but also causing – or the other way around) what Ted Underwood called a PR crisis. This affected the current job market in humanities and literary studies, where “a lot of job postings are suddenly requesting interest or experience in DH”. Underwood has an interesting approach on this, saying that is perfectly legitimate for a literary scholar NOT to have a deep understanding of digital humanities and do his job perfectly well. Only these days there is a need to demonstrate some sort of awareness of what is happening in the DH field, even if you are not in fact doing it, Continue reading What is Digital Humanities? An Italian perspective

Giorgio Guzzetta

Hacking the moocs?

[From my former blog, Amnesia Creativa, a post on digital pedagogy and the MOOC hype.]

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a MOOC coming down through the wires and this MOOC that was coming down through the wires met a vicious digital native named baby linux…

I am sure one of the future generations will start the story in this way. But which generation will be and what story they will tell, it is still not clear. Being in the middle of a transformation of the way knowledge is managed, shaped, remember, archived (as we undoubtedly are), the question of pedagogy and education is in my view a key issue. And it will be part of what I will be writing about in this blog. Continue reading Hacking the moocs?

Giorgio Guzzetta

Man and Machine, or The algorithms of porosity

Yesterday I have been to my first DH Seminaire at EHESS, a series of meeting that started in 2011 aimed at discussing and mapping the emergence of Digital Humanities in America and in Europe while at the same time pushing towards a multilingual European network, with a number of initiatives, inspired by the Paris Manifesto (sorry, Manifeste, obviously, French style). The approach they adopted was wide and comprehensive, addressing different aspects and issues, as the definition they gave of the term DH shows. Continue reading Man and Machine, or The algorithms of porosity

Giorgio Guzzetta

Looking forward to quantum computing?

I recently read about the death of Emilio Del Giudice, one of the people that started and inspired New Humanities, a very exciting initiative taking place in one of the oldest cities in the world. Unfortunately I never met Del Giudice but I went to one of the New Humanities meeting which was very lively and interesting. I did not have time, energy, or ability, to establish a stronger connection with them. I am, however, definitely going to find the time to read Del Giudice book, and also to watch some of the videos and read the material in the website (sooner or later). And I encourage you to do the same (the site is bilingual, although the Italian version has obviously more material). To say the least, you will your brain will fill refreshed and you can start whatever you are doing with more (quantum?) energy. Continue reading Looking forward to quantum computing?

Giorgio Guzzetta

Morning Readings (28 November 2013)

I am still in the process of transferring here my previous blog. Since this is a new project, I decided not to get the whole lot of Amnesia Creativa at once. Instead I will keep that as a repository and I will transfer those posts that in some ways fits this new home, while at the same time reshaping my older home as a more creative space. I will start with this promise of a “reading diet” of a digital humanist, which I might decide to keep. Continue reading Morning Readings (28 November 2013)

Giorgio Guzzetta

Communication Theories in a Multicultural World, edited by Clifford Christians and Kaarle Nordenstreng

Christians, Clifford / Nordenstreng, Kaarle (eds.)
Communication Theories in a Multicultural World
Bern, Peter Lang, 2014

Book synopsis

This volume is an up-to-date account of communication theories from around the world. Authored by a group of eminent scholars, each chapter is a history and state-of-the-art description of the major issues in international communication theory. Continue reading Communication Theories in a Multicultural World, edited by Clifford Christians and Kaarle Nordenstreng

Giorgio Guzzetta

Social Media. A Critical Introduction, by Christian Fuchs

Christian Fuchs. 2014. Social Media. A Critical Introduction.
London: Sage.
Paperback ISBN 9781446257319
Hardcover ISBN 9781446257302

Now more than ever, we need to understand social media – the good as well as the bad. We need critical knowledge that helps us to navigate the controversies and contradictions of this complex digital media landscape. Only then can we make informed judgements about what’s happening in our media world, and why. Continue reading Social Media. A Critical Introduction, by Christian Fuchs