Present and Past: The Relevance of Information History
by Laura Skouvig
p. 1-16
Abstract
This article presents a taxonomy of the information practices apparent in an imageboard discussion thread that was influential in jump-starting the worldwide QAnon movement. After introducing QAnon with a review of literature, the author examines 4Chan /pol/ thread #147547939 (key in introducing multiple key elements of the QAnon narrative) to enumerate and classify the information practices deployed by discussion participants. In conclusion, the article expands beyond existing research's previous focus on outright fabrication, showing that early QAnon participants' information practices are also defined in large part by suspicious and idiosyncratic modes of reading authentic sources, not simply the propagation of falsehoods.
James A. Hodges studies the evidentiary value of digital objects. He is currently assistant professor at the San José State University School of Information and junior fellow in the Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography.
This Copyright Kills Fascists: Debunking the Mythology Surrounding Woody Guthrie, "This Land Is Your Land," and the Public Domain
by Jason Lee Guthrie
p. 17-38
Abstract
Advocates of an expanded public domain and less restrictive copyright policies have made Woody Guthrie a cause célèbre for their point of view. Meditations on his artistic persona are used to support their argument, as is a direct quote about copyright that is cited with surprising frequency despite lacking proper citation. This research locates the source for Guthrie's copyright quote and corrects several false assumptions about its meaning, as well as about Guthrie's wider copyright activities. For proponents of public domain expansion who have mythologized Guthrie, this research thoroughly debunks that myth.
Jason Lee Guthrie is an assistant professor of communication and media studies at Clayton State University. He is a historian of copyright law and production cultures in the creative industries. While their shared surname inspired his interest, Jason has no connection to Woody Guthrie or his heirs.
Federal Support for the Development of Speech Synthesis Technologies: A Case Study of the Kurzweil Reading Machine
by Sarah A. Bell
p. 39-65
Abstract
This case study situates an early text-to-speech computer developed for blind persons, the Kurzweil Reading Machine (KRM), within a broader history of speech synthesis technologies. Though typically no more than a footnote in the technical history of speech synthesis, the KRM was still a powerful symbol of innovation that reveals how disability can be used as a pretext for funding technology development. I argue that various boosters held the KRM up as a symbol of technological solutionism that promised to fully enroll blind people into the US political economy. However, the success of the KRM as a symbol belies its technical flaws, the federal subsidies needed to bring it to fruition, and the structural barriers to its use that were elided by its utopian promise.
Sarah A. Bell is an assistant professor of digital media at Michigan Technological University. Her book-length media history of voice synthesis technologies is forthcoming from the MIT Press in 2023. She was a digital studies fellow at the John W. Kluge Center in 2018.
The Care and Feeding of the Computer: Imagining Machines' Preventive Care and Medicine
by Rachel Plotnick
p. 66-83
Abstract
This article investigates how computing discourses, including user guides, news articles, and advertisements, urged personal computer users in the 1970s and 1980s to preventively care for their devices. Through hygiene recommendations related to eating, drinking, and dusting, these discourses warned that computers' "health" depended upon humans. Importantly, they interpreted care as individual responsibility by putting the onus on users to behave properly. Within this frame, such texts described repairs as unfortunate medical interventions resulting from neglect. The piece argues that computing discourses have historically defined "care" and "repair" in opposition, as acts of doting prevention and undesirable intervention, respectively.
Rachel Plotnick is an associate professor of cinema and media studies in the Media School at Indiana University Bloomington who studies human-machine relationships. Her first book is published by the MIT Press. It explores push-button culture in the early twentieth century.
An Introduction to Dr. Husam Khalaf's "The Cultural Genocide of the Iraqi Archives and Iraqi Jewish Archive and International Responsibility"
by Amanda Raquel Dorval
p. 84-108
Abstract
This is an introduction to the following article, "The Cultural Genocide of the Iraqi Archives and Iraqi Jewish Archive and International Responsibility." It was written by Dr. Husam Abdul Ameer Khalaf in 2017, and I translated it from Arabic to English in 2021. Khalaf contends that the loss of Iraqi archives after Saddam Hussein's fall and subsequent US occupation in 2003 was cultural genocide. The first part of the article focuses on the losses suffered by official archives, national archives, the Ba'ath Party archives, and the Iraqi Jewish Archive. The second part examines the international laws governing the protection of cultural heritage and the extent to which the US-led Multinational Force was responsible for the loss of Iraqi archives.
Amanda Raquel Dorval is a Nuyorican Dominican artist, library professional, student, and United States Air Force veteran from New York City. Her research interests include Iraqi culture, contemporary Iraqi art, cross-cultural influences between the Middle East and Latin America, and the protection of cultural heritage in Iraq.
The Cultural Genocide of the Iraqi Archives and Iraqi Jewish Archive and International Responsibility
by Husam Abdul Ameer Khalaf and Amanda Raquel Dorval
p. 91-108
Abstract
Archives represent one of the physical components of the country's heritage. They represent an important living memory containing both the past and the present upon which a country can foresee its future based on available data in order to design sound policies. The richer a country is in its heritage, the more valuable its archives will be to all of humanity, representing an accumulation of valuable experiences and information that help construct and explain both human psychology and the environment. Iraqi archives reflect the diversity of a civilization that goes back more than eight thousand years in the span of human history. The destruction and theft of Iraq's archives have impoverished humanity's shared heritage and, at the same time, resulted in an international-level cultural genocide as global and regional instruments concerned with this shared heritage compete to strengthen its protection.
Husam Abdul Ameer Khalaf is a lecturer in international law at the Faculty of Law in the University of Baghdad in Iraq. He has written extensively on humanitarian law and the role of international law in the protection of cultural heritage, especially that of Iraq.
Amanda Raquel Dorval is a Nuyorican Dominican artist, library professional, student, and United States Air Force veteran from New York City. Her research interests include Iraqi culture, contemporary Iraqi art, cross-cultural influences between the Middle East and Latin America, and the protection of cultural heritage in Iraq.
Trusted Eye: Post–World War II Adventures of a Fearless Art Advocate by Claudia Fontaine Chidester (review)
Peter Chametzky
p. 109-111
Trusted Eye: Post–World War II Adventures of a Fearless Art Advocate
by Claudia Fontaine Chidester
FONTAINE ARCHIVE, 2021, 300 PP.
HARDCOVER, $37.98
ISBN: 978-0-988-83582-5
Lightning Birds: An Aeroecology of the Airwaves by Jacob Smith (review)
Nick Earhart
p. 112-114
Lightning Birds: An Aeroecology of the Airwaves
by Jacob Smith
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS, 2021 OPEN ACCESS, MIXED MEDIA
ISBN: 978-0-472-99905-7
Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork by Whitney Trettien (review)
Nora Epstein
p. 115-118
Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork
by Whitney Trettien
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, 2021, 328 PP.
PAPERBACK, $28.00
ISBN: 978-1-517-90409-8
E-BOOK AND DIGITAL RESOURCES,
OPEN ACCESS URL: HTTPS://MANIFOLD.UMN.EDU/PROJECTS/CUT-COPY-PASTE
Useful Objects: Museums, Science, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America by Reed Gochberg (review)
Emma Hetrick
p. 119-120
Useful Objects: Museums, Science, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America
by Reed Gochberg OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2021, 272 PP.
HARDCOVER, $74.00
ISBN: 978-0-197-55348-0
Data Lives: How Data Are Made and Shape Our World by Rob Kitchin (review)
Barbara Lazarotto
p. 121-122
Data Lives: How Data Are Made and Shape Our World
by Rob Kitchin BRISTOL UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2021, 274 PP.
HARDBACK, £18.99; E-BOOK, $28.50
ISBN: 978-1-529-21515-1
Index, a History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan (review)
Katy Nelson
p. 123-125
Index, a History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age
by Dennis Duncan W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, 2022, 352 PP.
HARDCOVER, $30.00
ISBN: 978-1-324-00254-3
A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture by Jason Lustig (review)
Aliza Spicehandler
p. 126-127