Here's a link to the recently published article in CPA:
Dutil, Patrice, and Peter Malachy Ryan. “The Bonds of Institutional Language: A discursive institutionalist approach to the Clerk of the Privy Council's annual report.” Canadian Public Administration 56.1 (2013): 26-46.
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/capa.12002/abstract>
Showing posts with label Digital Humanities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Digital Humanities. Show all posts
Monday, 3 June 2013
Friday, 5 April 2013
New Publication: Finance Ministers and the Budgets of Ontario
I just found out that Finance Ministers and the Budgets of Ontario was selected as a finalist for the 2012 Ontario Legislature Speaker's Book Award -- congrats to all those involved with this work!
Here's a link:
Dutil, Patrice, Peter Malachy Ryan, and André Gossignac. “From Thoughts to Words: The Budget Speech in Ontario (1968-2003)” [Chapter Nine]. Finance Ministers and the Budgets of Ontario. University of Toronto Press, 2010.
http://www.utppublishing.com/The-Guardian-Perspectives-on-the-Ministry-of-Finance-of-Ontario.html
Here's a link:
Dutil, Patrice, Peter Malachy Ryan, and André Gossignac. “From Thoughts to Words: The Budget Speech in Ontario (1968-2003)” [Chapter Nine]. Finance Ministers and the Budgets of Ontario. University of Toronto Press, 2010.
http://www.utppublishing.com/The-Guardian-Perspectives-on-the-Ministry-of-Finance-of-Ontario.html
Monday, 1 October 2012
Dissertation Link in Digital Commons: Agenda Setting
How does the Digital Commons help works to circulate you ask?
Well, I've barely had the link up to my dissertation in Digital Commons for less than a week (without even advertising that it was posted), and I've already had 50 downloads simply from its topical crosslisting functions.
So, let's see what happens when some other network pings start to connect to it:
Ryan, Peter Malachy, "Agenda Setting in English Canada in the Age of Minority Government, 2004-2011" (2012). Theses and dissertations. Paper 1162.
http://digitalcommons.ryerson.ca/dissertations/1162
Well, I've barely had the link up to my dissertation in Digital Commons for less than a week (without even advertising that it was posted), and I've already had 50 downloads simply from its topical crosslisting functions.
So, let's see what happens when some other network pings start to connect to it:
Ryan, Peter Malachy, "Agenda Setting in English Canada in the Age of Minority Government, 2004-2011" (2012). Theses and dissertations. Paper 1162.
http://digitalcommons.ryerson.ca/dissertations/1162
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Ryan Bigge’s “Road-testing the $100 laptop's 'appropriate technology'”
Ryan Bigge continues to write thought provoking and insightful inquiries into our current technological situation. His most recent piece in the Ideas section of The Toronto Star (January 20, 2008) is unique for his interesting use of journalism across media. See:
1. Bigge’s original article in The Star (with an extra movie clip on how to use the laptop):
http://www.thestar.com/article/295647
2. Bigge’s Blogge (Yes, that’s humour) -- Extra excerpts from his article which were not included in the print piece are included on his blog:
http://thebiggeidea.blogspot.com/2008/01/one-more-underperformer.html
Bigge’s story is about the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC). The charitable act of being able to purchase a laptop for $400, also provides a laptop for a child in a developing country. Despite the feel good nature of the project, I feel there are two further conversations that need to be opened up here:
1) About media use in general.
2) About the $100 laptop as a solution to the digital divide.
I’ll tackle the first item as follows: In the print version of his article, Bigge wasn’t able to fit his entire story, and so he includes extra excerpts on his Blog which add a more balanced tone to what originally read more like a McLuhanesque, techno-humanist piece in favour of the technology. The Blog remarks offer more of critical perspective to the piece with discussion of some of the issues the project has created and faced.
Another interesting point in terms of media is that the print format couldn’t offer a complete tutorial on how the laptop works, so the article provided a hyperlink to the digital video explanation starring Bigge himself (as seen at the link above). This coordination of media may in fact entice some of the techno-phobic into spending more time on-line because of the limitations and technical constraints of the print product. I know it worked for me.
This extra mediated experience only increases the use of our limited resources in terms of time and the resources of the natural environment, but offers a moment on which to comment during our current in-between media period, where we straddle several media options at once in the West. These coordinated media strategies are becoming more prevalent, and offer many narrative threads to trace for the interested, while also allowing more points of access to grab the attention of a potential audience.
I’ll develop this thought further as a part of my discussion on the $100 laptop. I was fortunate to get to visit the OLPC headquarters in Boston over the summer. Here’s some pictures from my visit:
1) One of the $100 Laptops (photographed at MIT):
2) Laptop display table at the OLPC HQ:
3) The Testing Lab at OLPC HQ:
When I read Bigge’s article, I had some rare quibbles with his description of the OLPC project based on my experiences during my own OLPC visit. As I said, I usually agree whole heartedly with Bigge, but here's a few things that I didn't find in either his article or Blog:
If one were to read only the print version of his work, Bigge seems to sit on the fence a bit when mentioning the problem of the new cheap laptop market that's formed because of Negroponte’s brainchild. In his piece, he mentions a bias for ‘appropriate technology’ that performs the logical tasks that a device should, without any useless or superfulous features that are currently being marketed. I've become a bit more Naomi Klein-ish about liberal markets since visiting the OLPC though, instead of just hoping technology will change the world. Klein's new book The Shock Doctrine talks about the entrenchment of neo-liberal markets during crises, like wars and natural disasters. Basically the idea is that when a crisis hits, big business moves in (e.g. Iraq and Haliburton).
I think something that could be added to her list is "the digital divide" crisis. Specifically, we can ask do agrarian societies need to be (or want to be) attached to the Internet?
Further, is an abundance of cheap laptops without a cradle to grave waste management solution just another environmental disaster waiting to happen? Like the billion cell phones dying in landfills, these $100 laptops aren't bio-degradable...
NB - Clarification from SJ's comment below: The OLPC Project is trying to make the laptops 100% recyclable and have a minimum impact on the environment, but they are still in the process of accessing how to ensure proper disposal according to the following site: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Environmental_Impact
I know it's all high and mighty of me writing this on my own computer, but when we were down at the OLPC they talked about how kids in the developing world were already using laptops (perhaps, not the OLPC laptops yet) in rare situations to make pornography (to make money), or selling them (for money), or hacking (for money), or being beaten by adults who would then steal the laptops (to again sell for money) – that’s just to name a few issues. Overall, in terms of liberalization, could these laptops just be a way of creating armies of third world call centre employees out of a young, cheaply trained labour force, while also taking time away from children's time learning skills they need to survive in a non-digital society? Think scary, Kittlerian style discourse networks here of the variety that occurred around the creation of the typewriter (and now, of course, the laptop).
During my visit to the OLPC, we had a number of problems on the technical side as well. For example, getting the laptops to work in the mesh network never occurred, and obviously Bigge’s own laptop all alone here in Canada will have problems linking to other mesh-network-ready computers since there are none (until other people purchase them).
Another problem during our visit included the laptop’s operating system freezing on a number of the computers we were testing. To their credit, the OLPC project admitted openly they were working on all of these issues, and the system Bigge demonstrates in his video is definitely a bit different from the one that I remember playing with. Hopefully the bugs have been worked out.
The one thing that I was hopeful about with the OLPC project was their commitment to on-going maintenance of the technology, and their focus on going to places and educating people about use and care of the laptop. However, without sustained money, the laptops do break and the issues listed above develop when there is no money to fix them. Several of my peers during the visit were emphatic about embedding the laptops in an educational environment to create a vital culture of care. Without a care network, if (or when) those developing regions become emblazoned with other problems, which they often do, the child cannot eat the laptop, which most would consider a more pressing need, but the laptop could instead be used by others to download bomb making instructions.
I thought I'd write and see what others thought, especially those who have connections to the OLPC project?
Specifically, I know that some other SDP-ers have blogged about this previously, and one of you has done the same as Ryan Bigge and contributed to the give-one-get-one campaign -- hopefull informed discussion can assuage such fears and issues as those listed above:
- Give-one-get-one: http://dpignett.blog.usf.edu/2007/11/21/give-one-get-one
- Law Professor Wendy Seltzer on the project (A comment in this post talks about Korean Laptop Boot Camps for helping Koreans get over Internet addiction): http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2007/11/14/one-laptop-per-child-plus-one.html
- Other links and pictures from people during the summer visit to OLPC:
1. http://dpignett.blog.usf.edu/2007/07/21/mit-one-laptop-per-child
2. http://www.lexferenda.com/25072007/closing-the-loop-zuckerman-and-best-on-africa-and-technology/
3. http://ictlogy.net/2007/07/
4. http://www.jorisvanhoboken.nl/?p=66
1. Bigge’s original article in The Star (with an extra movie clip on how to use the laptop):
http://www.thestar.com/article/295647
2. Bigge’s Blogge (Yes, that’s humour) -- Extra excerpts from his article which were not included in the print piece are included on his blog:
http://thebiggeidea.blogspot.com/2008/01/one-more-underperformer.html
Bigge’s story is about the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC). The charitable act of being able to purchase a laptop for $400, also provides a laptop for a child in a developing country. Despite the feel good nature of the project, I feel there are two further conversations that need to be opened up here:
1) About media use in general.
2) About the $100 laptop as a solution to the digital divide.
I’ll tackle the first item as follows: In the print version of his article, Bigge wasn’t able to fit his entire story, and so he includes extra excerpts on his Blog which add a more balanced tone to what originally read more like a McLuhanesque, techno-humanist piece in favour of the technology. The Blog remarks offer more of critical perspective to the piece with discussion of some of the issues the project has created and faced.
Another interesting point in terms of media is that the print format couldn’t offer a complete tutorial on how the laptop works, so the article provided a hyperlink to the digital video explanation starring Bigge himself (as seen at the link above). This coordination of media may in fact entice some of the techno-phobic into spending more time on-line because of the limitations and technical constraints of the print product. I know it worked for me.
This extra mediated experience only increases the use of our limited resources in terms of time and the resources of the natural environment, but offers a moment on which to comment during our current in-between media period, where we straddle several media options at once in the West. These coordinated media strategies are becoming more prevalent, and offer many narrative threads to trace for the interested, while also allowing more points of access to grab the attention of a potential audience.
I’ll develop this thought further as a part of my discussion on the $100 laptop. I was fortunate to get to visit the OLPC headquarters in Boston over the summer. Here’s some pictures from my visit:
1) One of the $100 Laptops (photographed at MIT):
2) Laptop display table at the OLPC HQ:
3) The Testing Lab at OLPC HQ:
When I read Bigge’s article, I had some rare quibbles with his description of the OLPC project based on my experiences during my own OLPC visit. As I said, I usually agree whole heartedly with Bigge, but here's a few things that I didn't find in either his article or Blog:
If one were to read only the print version of his work, Bigge seems to sit on the fence a bit when mentioning the problem of the new cheap laptop market that's formed because of Negroponte’s brainchild. In his piece, he mentions a bias for ‘appropriate technology’ that performs the logical tasks that a device should, without any useless or superfulous features that are currently being marketed. I've become a bit more Naomi Klein-ish about liberal markets since visiting the OLPC though, instead of just hoping technology will change the world. Klein's new book The Shock Doctrine talks about the entrenchment of neo-liberal markets during crises, like wars and natural disasters. Basically the idea is that when a crisis hits, big business moves in (e.g. Iraq and Haliburton).
I think something that could be added to her list is "the digital divide" crisis. Specifically, we can ask do agrarian societies need to be (or want to be) attached to the Internet?
Further, is an abundance of cheap laptops without a cradle to grave waste management solution just another environmental disaster waiting to happen? Like the billion cell phones dying in landfills, these $100 laptops aren't bio-degradable...
NB - Clarification from SJ's comment below: The OLPC Project is trying to make the laptops 100% recyclable and have a minimum impact on the environment, but they are still in the process of accessing how to ensure proper disposal according to the following site: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Environmental_Impact
I know it's all high and mighty of me writing this on my own computer, but when we were down at the OLPC they talked about how kids in the developing world were already using laptops (perhaps, not the OLPC laptops yet) in rare situations to make pornography (to make money), or selling them (for money), or hacking (for money), or being beaten by adults who would then steal the laptops (to again sell for money) – that’s just to name a few issues. Overall, in terms of liberalization, could these laptops just be a way of creating armies of third world call centre employees out of a young, cheaply trained labour force, while also taking time away from children's time learning skills they need to survive in a non-digital society? Think scary, Kittlerian style discourse networks here of the variety that occurred around the creation of the typewriter (and now, of course, the laptop).
During my visit to the OLPC, we had a number of problems on the technical side as well. For example, getting the laptops to work in the mesh network never occurred, and obviously Bigge’s own laptop all alone here in Canada will have problems linking to other mesh-network-ready computers since there are none (until other people purchase them).
Another problem during our visit included the laptop’s operating system freezing on a number of the computers we were testing. To their credit, the OLPC project admitted openly they were working on all of these issues, and the system Bigge demonstrates in his video is definitely a bit different from the one that I remember playing with. Hopefully the bugs have been worked out.
The one thing that I was hopeful about with the OLPC project was their commitment to on-going maintenance of the technology, and their focus on going to places and educating people about use and care of the laptop. However, without sustained money, the laptops do break and the issues listed above develop when there is no money to fix them. Several of my peers during the visit were emphatic about embedding the laptops in an educational environment to create a vital culture of care. Without a care network, if (or when) those developing regions become emblazoned with other problems, which they often do, the child cannot eat the laptop, which most would consider a more pressing need, but the laptop could instead be used by others to download bomb making instructions.
I thought I'd write and see what others thought, especially those who have connections to the OLPC project?
Specifically, I know that some other SDP-ers have blogged about this previously, and one of you has done the same as Ryan Bigge and contributed to the give-one-get-one campaign -- hopefull informed discussion can assuage such fears and issues as those listed above:
- Give-one-get-one: http://dpignett.blog.usf.edu/2007/11/21/give-one-get-one
- Law Professor Wendy Seltzer on the project (A comment in this post talks about Korean Laptop Boot Camps for helping Koreans get over Internet addiction): http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2007/11/14/one-laptop-per-child-plus-one.html
- Other links and pictures from people during the summer visit to OLPC:
1. http://dpignett.blog.usf.edu/2007/07/21/mit-one-laptop-per-child
2. http://www.lexferenda.com/25072007/closing-the-loop-zuckerman-and-best-on-africa-and-technology/
3. http://ictlogy.net/2007/07/
4. http://www.jorisvanhoboken.nl/?p=66
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
Open CourseWare Consortium
I recommend taking a peak at the Open CourseWare Consortium site to see some of the interesting courses available there. The site is useful to see what is happening in different disciplines around the world from instructors who have the time and ability to post their entire course content and lecture notes on-line, without having a negative impact on their careers.
Open CourseWare Consortium:
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
MIT Open CourseWare:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm
Open CourseWare Consortium:
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
MIT Open CourseWare:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm
Sunday, 19 August 2007
Back On-line...
Well, I’m back from two months of intensive work and travel. I started in Saskatoon for the Congress of the Humanities, then off to Edmonton for the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) Conference, then to Victoria for the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, then to Boston for the Oxford Internet Institute held at Harvard University this year, and after a quick vacation in calm, sedate New York City, I’m finally back home in quiet, unpolluted Toronto (yeah, right).
Whew… I need a vacation from my vacation!
Well, my plan is take the next week and write one hour each day about these events from the large swath of notes I have. So to begin, here are some links to photos taken by other participants at these events:
PHOTOS
1) Oxford Internet Institute / Berkman Center Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/oiisdp/
2) Digital Humanities Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhsi/sets/72157600401919260/
Whew… I need a vacation from my vacation!
Well, my plan is take the next week and write one hour each day about these events from the large swath of notes I have. So to begin, here are some links to photos taken by other participants at these events:
PHOTOS
1) Oxford Internet Institute / Berkman Center Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/oiisdp/
2) Digital Humanities Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhsi/sets/72157600401919260/
Wednesday, 6 June 2007
Congress of the Humanities 2007: Society for Digital Humanities Sessions
At the Congress of the Humanities in Saskatchewan, I attended several sessions at the Society for Digital Humanities (SDH) conference: http://www.sdh-semi.org/conference2007.php. I was actually in Saskatoon to present at Canadian Communication Association sessions, but that didn't stop me from hitting the Digital Humanities and the Canadian Political Science Association conference before I presented later in the week at the CCA. I like to keep up on what is happening in those areas during my spare time, because my MA was in Humanities Computing and I'm now teaching in a Politics Department.
The SDH conference started earlier than the CCA conference, so I was able to see most of its presenters on the last day. The fact that there were no concurrent panels also helped.
Geoffrey Rockwell and Sean Gouglas (who was channeling Stéfan Sinclair because he was unable to attend) described some threats that are facing the Digital Humanities as a developing research field. Google was one of the more pressing threats that were mentioned on a few occasions. Google's ability to create textual tools and their massive server farm are making digitization projects question how to proceed into the future when GoogleBooks is pretty much taking on the project of digitizing everything; however, Google's commercialization imperative limits the tools they are developing, and how public's access to the digitized works are being filtered.
I'm more inclined to believe that this "crisis" narrative is the same one that is facing the Arts, Computer Sciences, and Information Studies, as well as many other newer disciplines and fields as a general malaise of the interdisciplinary shift in the university. The new media shift is placing all fields into technology's house, so to speak. I'm inclined to think what is unique about the Digital Humanities is the community of scholars and their tool platforms. The group of people are the discipline, and the social network is reflected in the tools they create and share -- perhaps the Digital Humanities is one of the first "new" disciplines that reflects the digital social network paradigm shift (like the Association of Internet Researchers), rather than the traditional physical space of a department in a university.
Also, for the moment, Google will most likely keep developing and mostly digitizing the commercial books as their focus, before targeting the Humanities in my opinion. They may have the storage capacity to digitize and save texts, but the process of digitizing books will slow them down for some time, despite their nifty digitizaing machines. Google Analytics may also be offering some textual analysis tools, but I believe the Digital Humanities will always need to develop their own set of tools and be critical of the commercial tools that exist.
Something else that differed in the Digital Humanities Conference from the CCA and CPSA was the fact that I did not hear any talk of supporting Net Neutrality here; however, the support for Open Source code and Open documents was apparent. Geoffrey Rockwell, indeed, ended his talk by emphasizing the opportunity to work with Google so that some the Digital Humanities might be able to coordinate tools that would help in the analysis of literary and artistic texts. This is something the other conferences would never consider.
Again, in contrast, the CPSA is still very traditional in its political science focus, and I saw no informational politics covered at the conference. There were scholars interested in IP Law and Net Neutrality, but this was more attached to SSHRC issues of developing research, not technologically themed papers. This looks like an opportunity for the CPSA to open up their doors to a new generation of research.
Other sessions at the SDH focused on new techniques of annotating texts using database techniques and how to prepare books for digitization. Geoffrey Rockwell's blog covers these sessions well. I found the Gouglas and Rockwell talk to be the most engaging in terms of my own research on narrative networks though.
The SDH conference started earlier than the CCA conference, so I was able to see most of its presenters on the last day. The fact that there were no concurrent panels also helped.
Geoffrey Rockwell and Sean Gouglas (who was channeling Stéfan Sinclair because he was unable to attend) described some threats that are facing the Digital Humanities as a developing research field. Google was one of the more pressing threats that were mentioned on a few occasions. Google's ability to create textual tools and their massive server farm are making digitization projects question how to proceed into the future when GoogleBooks is pretty much taking on the project of digitizing everything; however, Google's commercialization imperative limits the tools they are developing, and how public's access to the digitized works are being filtered.
I'm more inclined to believe that this "crisis" narrative is the same one that is facing the Arts, Computer Sciences, and Information Studies, as well as many other newer disciplines and fields as a general malaise of the interdisciplinary shift in the university. The new media shift is placing all fields into technology's house, so to speak. I'm inclined to think what is unique about the Digital Humanities is the community of scholars and their tool platforms. The group of people are the discipline, and the social network is reflected in the tools they create and share -- perhaps the Digital Humanities is one of the first "new" disciplines that reflects the digital social network paradigm shift (like the Association of Internet Researchers), rather than the traditional physical space of a department in a university.
Also, for the moment, Google will most likely keep developing and mostly digitizing the commercial books as their focus, before targeting the Humanities in my opinion. They may have the storage capacity to digitize and save texts, but the process of digitizing books will slow them down for some time, despite their nifty digitizaing machines. Google Analytics may also be offering some textual analysis tools, but I believe the Digital Humanities will always need to develop their own set of tools and be critical of the commercial tools that exist.
Something else that differed in the Digital Humanities Conference from the CCA and CPSA was the fact that I did not hear any talk of supporting Net Neutrality here; however, the support for Open Source code and Open documents was apparent. Geoffrey Rockwell, indeed, ended his talk by emphasizing the opportunity to work with Google so that some the Digital Humanities might be able to coordinate tools that would help in the analysis of literary and artistic texts. This is something the other conferences would never consider.
Again, in contrast, the CPSA is still very traditional in its political science focus, and I saw no informational politics covered at the conference. There were scholars interested in IP Law and Net Neutrality, but this was more attached to SSHRC issues of developing research, not technologically themed papers. This looks like an opportunity for the CPSA to open up their doors to a new generation of research.
Other sessions at the SDH focused on new techniques of annotating texts using database techniques and how to prepare books for digitization. Geoffrey Rockwell's blog covers these sessions well. I found the Gouglas and Rockwell talk to be the most engaging in terms of my own research on narrative networks though.
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