Investigating the algorithms that govern our lives – Columbia Journalism Review

Investigating the algorithms that govern our lives – Columbia Journalism Review

TO GET STARTED:

“How big data is unfair”: A layperson’s guide to why big data and algorithms are inherently biased.
“Algorithmic accountability reporting: On the investigation of black boxes”: The primer on reporting on algorithms, by Nick Diakopoulos, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland who has written extensively on the intersection of journalism and algorithmic accountability. A must-read.
“Certifying and removing disparate impact”: The computer scientist’s guide to locating and and fixing bias in algorithms computationally, by Suresh Venkatasubramanian and colleagues. Some math is involved, but you can skip it.
The Curious Journalist’s Guide to Data: Jonathan Stray’s gentle guide to thinking about data as communication, much of which applies to reporting on algorithms as well.

About — Graphic Means

About — Graphic Means

“It’s been roughly 30 years since the desktop computer revolutionized the way the graphic design industry works. For decades before that, it was the hands of industrious workers, and various ingenious machines and tools that brought type and image together on meticulously prepared paste-up boards, before they were sent to the printer.

The documentary, Graphic Means, which is now in production, will explore graphic design production of the 1950s through the 1990s—from linecaster to photocomposition, and from paste-up to PDF. Support the production of this independent film, by pre-ordering your copy here.

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PS: Major props go to Doug Wilson and his team, the makers of Linotype: In Search of the Eighth Wonder of the World. Watching that film clarified so much of what I’d missed in the previous decades of typesetting. And it charmed, and entertained while doing so. If you haven’t watched the film yet—go do that ASAP!
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Interviews

Paul Brainerd: Co-founder of Aldus (producers of Pagemaker)

Colin Brignall + Dave Farey: Letraset typeface designers

Lou Brooks: illustrator, curator of The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies

James Craig: author and educator

Steven Heller: writer, educator, designer

Cece Cutsforth: designer, educator

Tobias Frere-Jones: typeface designer

Ellen Lupton: designer, author, educator

Carolina de Bartolo: designer, writer, educator

Gene Gable: designer, writer, consultant

Ken Garland: designer, author, educator

Malcolm Garrett: designer, educator

Walter Graham: author, paste-up expert

Dan Rhatigan: typeface designer

Frank Romano: design historian, author, educator

Adrian Shaughnessy: designer, writer, publisher

Ian Swift: designer

Joe Erceg: designer

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Bookshelf | Literary Hub

Bookshelf | Literary Hub

In which bookshelves are installed at the New York Public Library

When the New York City Public Library opened on May 23, 1911, the building spanned over two city blocks and boasted one of the most impressive collections of books—and bookshelves—in the world. “ It is impossible to think of New York without the New York Public Library, ” notes Henry Hope Reed, during the centennial celebrations of the library. “[Its] presence is that of some great natural fact. It would appear to have always been there.”

During its initial construction, the newspaper media talked up the library’s bookshelves something fierce. Since the library was to hold over three million volumes, shelving and storing a collection of that size was no small undertaking. In 1905, initial schematics of the library ’ s bookshelves were published in the New York Times and Scientific American; articles claimed that the library had a set of bookshelves constructed on a practically unheard-of scale, unlike any other shelves in any other library built before it. On October 1, 1905, the Times practically fell over itself, gushing with enthusiasm:

The skeleton of a bookcase that will hold 3,500,000 volumes — without exception the largest bookcase in the world — that is what one may see to-day back of the great central hall of the majestic marble structure that is slowly rising in Bryant Park.

It is just completed, this marvelous network of steel bars and uprights, and exemplifies the very latest methods and appliances for the shelving of books. There is nothing like it in the great libraries of the Old World . . . In the Congressional Library . . . the modern steel bookcase is in use, but not in the solid, impressive mass, distinguishing it over all others, that is shown in the New York Public Library . . . Above it will be placed the spacious reading room of the library, on either side the various halls, offices, and exhibition rooms. Thus surrounded, this monster bookcase becomes, architecturally, the heart of the whole structure, the treasure for whose protection this marble palace is built. Even now, with this maze of steel laid bare, it is difficult to appreciate its immense capacity for the shelving of books. A bookcase holding three and a half million volumes means a series of shelves that if laid together, end to end, would measure over eighty miles.

Continue reading “Bookshelf | Literary Hub”

Bookshelf (Object Lessons) by Lydia Pyne – Google Books

Bookshelf – Lydia Pyne – Google Books

History tells us that we put books on a shelf. Cicero and his library suggest, however, that books don’t go on just any shelf; books ought to be shelved on a proper bookshelf.

What makes a bookshelf a bookshelf is not a given thing; every bookshelf has its own unique life history; every bookshelf speaks to its own cultural context. Bookshelves are dynamic, iterative objects that cue us to the social values we place on books and how we think books ought to be read. What makes a bookshelf a bookshelf are the recurring decisions made about its structure, architecture, and function.

Happiness to mindfulness, via wellbeing: how publishing trends grow | Books | The Guardian

Happiness to mindfulness, via wellbeing: how publishing trends grow | Books | The Guardian

I’ve written before about my problems with literary decluttering. But who in their right mind would want to keep eight copies of a directory that barely changes from year to year except for the entries that are out of date? Well – sigh! – me. And here’s why. Many volumes ago, I was asked to write an essay on a literary editor’s life for this sturdy compendium of information for people aspiring to a writing career. While extolling the value of making lists, I wrote that it helped to spot the signs of new publishing trends.

My trend-spotting habit dates back to 1999, when it was all commodity books (powered by the success of Mark Kurlansky’s Cod). In 2002, there was a fad for cute micro-histories with titles almost as long as the text – who today remembers Lord Minimus: The Extraordinary Life of Britain’s Smallest Man?

And so it goes. By 2008, it was all about happiness, with a generical range that took in the historical, the scientific and the philosophical: clearly something more interesting was happening than a dozen books with the same word in the title. By 2012, everything was a biography, as the (yet again) updated essay noted: “We’ve had biographies of food, of cities, of an ocean, the Ordnance Survey map and even cancer.”

The point about trend-spotting is that it helps to find a shape in what can seem like one damned book after another. It’s particularly pleasing when, like the happiness boom, it connects different disciplines and appears to be driven by something more significant than simply publishers out to replicate the last big thing. Happiness led to wellbeing, which in turn led to mindfulness. This says something about social neuroses and efforts to analyse, solve and exploit them. With hindsight, it doesn’t seem coincidental that this strand of thinking and publishing coincided with the financial crash of 2007-8.

And hindsight is what those eight volumes of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook give me. They represent a historiography of my reading life, and the points at which it intersected with the wider culture, long after the books involved have been jettisoned.

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Watch this space.

Linotype: The Film — “History of the Linotype Company” Hardcover Book

Linotype: The Film — “History of the Linotype Company” Hardcover Book

Written by film participant Frank Romano, this is THE definitive history of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. In fact, we wish this book had been published when we were making the film! If you are curious about the Linotype or the Linotype Company, this will become your ultimate reference.

The book contains 464 pages of in-depth history of the people, places, and products manufactured by the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. Frank Romano traces the history of corporate acquisitions, product development, and competing machines all with his usual wit and experience. He also writes about his own personal history working at Linotype starting in 1959. There are hundreds of color reproductions of advertisements, publications, photographs, and typeface specimens. It also includes 120 pages listing every font manufactured by Linotype or its subsidiaries.

In the Future, We Will Photograph Everything and Look at Nothing – The New Yorker

In the Future, We Will Photograph Everything and Look at Nothing – The New Yorker

My guess is that it wants to kill the software, but it doesn’t want the P.R. nightmare that would follow. Remember the outcry over its decision to shut down its tool for R.S.S. feeds, Google Reader? Nik loyalists are even more rabid.

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“The definition of photography is changing, too, and becoming more of a language,” the Brooklyn-based artist and professional photographer Joshua Allen Harris told me. “We’re attaching imagery to tweets or text messages, almost like a period at the end of a sentence. It’s enhancing our communication in a whole new way.”

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In other words, “the term ‘photographer’ is changing,” he said. As a result, photos are less markers of memories than they are Web-browser bookmarks for our lives.