scholarly journals The archive and the scene: On the cultural techniques of retrocomputing databases

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 732-749
Author(s):  
Jörgen Rahm-Skågeby ◽  
Anders Carlsson
Keyword(s):  
Computer Code ◽  
Digital Archives ◽  
Planned Obsolescence ◽  
Home Computer ◽  
Default Mode ◽  
Personal Stories ◽  
Digital Material ◽  
Software And Hardware ◽  
Digital Spaces

Several digital spaces are now archiving artifacts from the first 1980s home computer boom. These spaces are not only storages but also social venues and “memory banks,” and thereby depend on several concurrent practices: software and hardware developed to read, run, and preserve computer code; archiving of old software, magazines, and personal stories; contemporary conferences dedicated to retrocomputing; and making artifacts, which used to be private, publicly available. The article argues that retrocomputing can be seen as a foreshadowing in terms of managing collective digital archives, memories, and relationships to digital material. Taking the Commodore 64 Scene Database as a case, this article (1) engages with both users and cultural techniques in order to (2) theorize collective digital archives as “performative in-betweens” and (3) discuss how retrocomputing may become a default mode for people seeking access to their digital pasts in a time when planned obsolescence is rampant.

scholarly journals The Forensic Curator: Digital Forensics as a Solution to Addressing the Curatorial Challenges Posed by Personal Digital Archives

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-63
Author(s):  
Gareth Knight
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Digital Archives ◽  
Computing Technology ◽  
Digital Forensic ◽  
Timeline Analysis ◽  
Digital Material ◽  
Data Collections ◽  
Data Carving

The growth of computing technology during the previous three decades has resulted in a large amount of content being created in digital form. As their creators retire or pass away, an increasing number of personal data collections, in the form of digital media and complete computer systems, are being offered to the academic institutional archive. For the digital curator or archivist, the handling and processing of such digital material represents a considerable challenge, requiring development of new processes and procedures. This paper outlines how digital forensic methods, developed by the law enforcement and legal community, may be applied by academic digital archives. It goes on to describe the strategic and practical decisions that should be made to introduce forensic methods within an existing curatorial infrastructure and how different techniques, such as forensic hashing, timeline analysis and data carving, may be used to collect information of a greater breadth and scope than may be gathered through manual activities.

Queering the Map: Stories of love, loss and (be)longing within a digital cartographic archive

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372098600
Author(s):  
Emma Kirby ◽  
Ash Watson ◽  
Brendan Churchill ◽  
Brady Robards ◽  
Lucas LaRochelle
Keyword(s):  
Community Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Digital Archives ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Queer People ◽  
Community Spaces ◽  
Digital Spaces

The rise of crowdsourced and participatory digital platforms which aim to make visible the experiences of otherwise marginalised people are significant within the broader landscape of digitally mediated community spaces. One example of such media is Queering the Map, a digital storymapping platform where users anonymously pin ‘queer moments’ and memories to places. While the mediation of affect and intimacy in digital spaces among queer people is increasingly attended to in scholarly work, the cartographic and archival remains hitherto underexplored. Drawing on an analysis of almost 2000 micro-stories geolocated to Australia, in this article we explore various aspects of story contribution that situate Queering the Map as a lively cartographic archive. Rather than necessarily anonymous (as the platform dictates), the posts, we argue, entail various deliberated directions or gestures, encoded for audiences: what we term stories for someone. We highlight these publicly private stories’ connective and affective underpinnings, and the political potentialities (and problems) therein for queer belonging and community-building. In doing so we seek to contribute to scholarship on digital archives, crowdsourcing, and advance conceptualisations of digital intimacies.

scholarly journals Information School academics and the value of their personal digital archives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loukia Drosopoulou ◽  
◽  
Andrew M. Cox ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Information Management ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Digital Archives ◽  
Storage Space ◽  
Personal Information Management ◽  
Digital Archiving ◽  
Digital Storage ◽  
Digital Material ◽  
Depth Interviews

Introduction.This paper explores the value that academics in an information school assign to their digital files and how this relates to their personal information management and personal digital archiving practices. Method. An interpretivist qualitative approach was adopted with data from in-depth interviews and participant-led tours of their digital storage space. Analysis. The approach taken was thematic analysis. Results. Participants placed little value on their digital material beyond the value of its immediate use. They did not attach worth to their digital files for reuse by others, for sentiment, to project their identity or for the study of the development of the discipline or the study of the creative process. This was reflected in storage and file-naming practices, and the lack of curatorial activity. Conclusions. This paper is one of the first to investigate academics' personal information management and personal digital archiving practices, especially to focus on the value of digital possessions. The paper begins to uncover the importance of wider contextual factors in shaping such practices. Institutions need to do more to encourage academics to recognise the diverse types of value in the digital material they create.

scholarly journals Crosscurrents in ‘micro’ marketing: home computers and media genealogy

Artnodes ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörgen Skågeby
Keyword(s):  
Research Question ◽  
Media History ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Marketing Concept ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Home Computer ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Home Computers ◽  
Single User ◽  
Software And Hardware

From the late 1970s to the mid 1980s, many countries experienced a “home computer boom”. The “home computer” (or “micro” as it was colloquially referred to) had become a viable marketing concept because companies, having developed advanced and expensive machines for business, science and engineering applications, now identified a new market segment for more affordable, accessible, and less advanced single-user “home computers”. The domestication of the computer is, naturally, an interesting phase in media history, revealing intermedialities, continuities, and disruptions in the development of digital culture. By analysing home computer marketing as it appears from 1981 to 1985 in magazine advertisements, this paper argues that we can come to a better understanding of the mutually transformative relation between the inherently technical design and language of software and hardware engineering and the ideological and cultural language of computerisation. The key research question for this paper is: How was the inherently technical language, and indeed material operations, of software and hardware engineering transcoded into marketing concepts? Or, in other words, how was human agency and technological agency negotiated through the visual language of marketing? Answering this question will provide insights into how the impending computerisation of society started to take place at an ideological and semiotic level, which in turn is underpinned by the material capacities of media technologies. As a result, the paper identifies three tentative ‘crosscurrents’ where materialities, agencies and discourses are negotiated.

scholarly journals Archivists as Peers in Digital Public History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Owens ◽  
Jesse A. Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Public History ◽  
Digital Archives ◽  
Archival Practice ◽  
Community Archives ◽  
Knowledge Infrastructure ◽  
Digital Scholarship ◽  
Digital Material ◽  
Archival Work ◽  
Significant Opportunity

In the last 25 years we have seen the web enable new digital means for historians to reach broader publics and audiences. Over that same period of time, archives and archivists have been exploring and engaging with related strands of digital transformation. In one strand, similar focus on community work through digital means has emerged in both areas. While historians have been developing a community of practice around public history, archivists and archives have similarly been reframing their work as more user-centered and more closely engaged with communities and their records. A body of archival work and scholarship has emerged around the function of community archives that presents significant possibilities for further connections with the practices of history and historians. In a second strand, strategies for understanding and preserving digital cultural heritage have also taken shape. While historians have begun exploring using tools to produce new forms of digital scholarship, archivists and archives have been working to both develop methods to care for and make available digital material. Archivists have established tools, workflows, vocabulary and infrastructure for digital archives, and they have also managed the digitization of collections to expand access. At the intersection of these two developments, we see a significant convergence between the needs and practices of public historians and archivists. Historians’ new forms of scholarship increasingly function as forms of knowledge infrastructure. Archivists work on systems for enabling access to collections are themselves anchored in longstanding commitments to infrastructure for enabling the use of records. At this convergence, there is a significant opportunity for historians to begin to connect more with archivists as peers, as experts in questions of the structure and order of sources and records. In this essay we explore the ways that archives, archivists, and archival practice are evolving around both analog and digital activities that are highly relevant for those interested in working in digital public history.

scholarly journals Intimate Clips: Sealskin Sewing, Digital Archives and the Mittimatalik Arnait Miqsuqtuit Collective

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-99
Author(s):  
Nancy Wachowich
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Canadian Arctic ◽  
High Arctic ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Digital Archives ◽  
Collaborative Relationships ◽  
Digital Material ◽  
Insight Into

This article reflects upon the interplay of digital, material, and social relations in the context of a small-scale digital archiving project currently being undertaken by a group of women ethnographers, videographers, and sealskin seamstresses in the Canadian Eastern High Arctic Inuit settlement of Mittimatalik (Pond Inlet). I illustrate the documentation work of our Mittimatalik Arnait Miqsuqtuit Collective, situating it in the new media landscapes that have developed in the Canadian Arctic, and draw on case studies to challenge claims that new communications technology has led to the breakdown of social and environmental relationships. Clips from our digitizing work in progress offer insight into the relational ecologies emergent the making of this archive: illustrating how the unique materiality of sealskin and digital archives, the politics of Inuit hunting, the sensibilities of family and friends, and the challenges of broadband connectivity in Arctic settlements shape this initiative. Technology also emerges here as a key agent, enabling new collaborative relationships, political voice, and forms of knowledge production, but also denying others.

Quantitative Analysis Of X-Ray Images From Geological Materials

1990 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-245
Author(s):  
J. M. Paque ◽  
R. Browning ◽  
P. L. King ◽  
P. Pianetta
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Bulk Composition ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Analytical Description ◽  
Bulk Sample ◽  
Geological Samples ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Software And Hardware ◽  
And Storage ◽  
Insight Into

Geological samples typically contain many minerals (phases) with multiple element compositions. A complete analytical description should give the number of phases present, the volume occupied by each phase in the bulk sample, the average and range of composition of each phase, and the bulk composition of the sample. A practical approach to providing such a complete description is from quantitative analysis of multi-elemental x-ray images.With the advances in recent years in the speed and storage capabilities of laboratory computers, large quantities of data can be efficiently manipulated. Commercial software and hardware presently available allow simultaneous collection of multiple x-ray images from a sample (up to 16 for the Kevex Delta system). Thus, high resolution x-ray images of the majority of the detectable elements in a sample can be collected. The use of statistical techniques, including principal component analysis (PCA), can provide insight into mineral phase composition and the distribution of minerals within a sample.

A hitchhiker’s guide to microscopy and microanalysis using telecommunications, e-mail, and the Internet

1994 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 390-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nestor J. Zaluzec
Keyword(s):  
The Internet ◽  
Information Superhighway ◽  
The World ◽  
Exchange Information ◽  
On Line ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
Software And Hardware ◽  
Communication Software ◽  
Basic Ideas ◽  
E Mail

The Information SuperHighway, Email, The Internet, FTP, BBS, Modems, : all buzz words which are becoming more and more routine in our daily life. Confusing terminology? Hopefully it won't be in a few minutes, all you need is to have a handle on a few basic concepts and terms and you will be on-line with the rest of the "telecommunication experts". These terms all refer to some type or aspect of tools associated with a range of computer-based communication software and hardware. They are in fact far less complex than the instruments we use on a day to day basis as microscopist's and microanalyst's. The key is for each of us to know what each is and how to make use of the wealth of information which they can make available to us for the asking. Basically all of these items relate to mechanisms and protocols by which we as scientists can easily exchange information rapidly and efficiently to colleagues in the office down the hall, or half-way around the world using computers and various communications media. The purpose of this tutorial/paper is to outline and demonstrate the basic ideas of some of the major information systems available to all of us today. For the sake of simplicity we will break this presentation down into two distinct (but as we shall see later connected) areas: telecommunications over conventional phone lines, and telecommunications by computer networks. Live tutorial/demonstrations of both procedures will be presented in the Computer Workshop/Software Exchange during the course of the meeting.

Sensory and Cognitive Components of Auditory Processing in Individuals With Tinnitus

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 834-842
Author(s):  
Harini Vasudevan ◽  
Hari Prakash Palaniswamy ◽  
Ramaswamy Balakrishnan
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Function Analysis ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Oscillatory Activity ◽  
Default Mode ◽  
Auditory Selective Attention ◽  
Cognitive Components ◽  
Mode Function ◽  
Related Potentials

Purpose The main purpose of the study is to explore the auditory selective attention abilities (using event-related potentials) and the neuronal oscillatory activity in the default mode network sites (using electroencephalogram [EEG]) in individuals with tinnitus. Method Auditory selective attention was measured using P300, and the resting state EEG was assessed using the default mode function analysis. Ten individuals with continuous and bothersome tinnitus along with 10 age- and gender-matched control participants underwent event-related potential testing and 5 min of EEG recording (at wakeful rest). Results Individuals with tinnitus were observed to have larger N1 and P3 amplitudes along with prolonged P3 latency. The default mode function analysis revealed no significant oscillatory differences between the groups. Conclusion The current study shows changes in both the early sensory and late cognitive components of auditory processing. The change in the P3 component is suggestive of selective auditory attention deficit, and the sensory component (N1) suggests an altered bottom-up processing in individuals with tinnitus.

The Attenuation of Very Low Frequency Brain Oscillations in Transitions from a Rest State to Active Attention

2009 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 191-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzannah K. Helps ◽  
Samantha J. Broyd ◽  
Christopher J. James ◽  
Anke Karl ◽  
Edmund J. S. Sonuga-Barke
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Sampling Rate ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Adhd Symptoms ◽  
Default Mode ◽  
Very Low Frequency ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Interference Hypothesis ◽  
Mode Interference

Background: The default mode interference hypothesis ( Sonuga-Barke & Castellanos, 2007 ) predicts (1) the attenuation of very low frequency oscillations (VLFO; e.g., .05 Hz) in brain activity within the default mode network during the transition from rest to task, and (2) that failures to attenuate in this way will lead to an increased likelihood of periodic attention lapses that are synchronized to the VLFO pattern. Here, we tested these predictions using DC-EEG recordings within and outside of a previously identified network of electrode locations hypothesized to reflect DMN activity (i.e., S3 network; Helps et al., 2008 ). Method: 24 young adults (mean age 22.3 years; 8 male), sampled to include a wide range of ADHD symptoms, took part in a study of rest to task transitions. Two conditions were compared: 5 min of rest (eyes open) and a 10-min simple 2-choice RT task with a relatively high sampling rate (ISI 1 s). DC-EEG was recorded during both conditions, and the low-frequency spectrum was decomposed and measures of the power within specific bands extracted. Results: Shift from rest to task led to an attenuation of VLFO activity within the S3 network which was inversely associated with ADHD symptoms. RT during task also showed a VLFO signature. During task there was a small but significant degree of synchronization between EEG and RT in the VLFO band. Attenuators showed a lower degree of synchrony than nonattenuators. Discussion: The results provide some initial EEG-based support for the default mode interference hypothesis and suggest that failure to attenuate VLFO in the S3 network is associated with higher synchrony between low-frequency brain activity and RT fluctuations during a simple RT task. Although significant, the effects were small and future research should employ tasks with a higher sampling rate to increase the possibility of extracting robust and stable signals.

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