Museletter: February 1999

Table of Contents: February is Black History Month: A Tribute to Giles Beecher Jackson (1852-1924) Library Assistants on the Move New Faculty Publications Ask Dr. Catalog New Computer Lab Printing Policy January/February Dates in Legal History Spring, 1999 Semester - Regular Hourshttps://scholarship.richmond.edu/museletter/1033/thumbnail.jp

In the Beginning... A Legacy of Computing at Marshall University

This book provides a brief history of the early computing technology at Marshall University, Huntington, W.Va., in the forty years: 1959-1999. This was before the move to Intel and Windows based servers. After installation of an IBM Accounting Machine in 1959, which arguably does not fit the modern definition of a computer, the first true computer arrived in 1963 and was installed in a room below the Registrar’s office. For the next twenty years several departments ordered their own midrange standalone systems to fit their individual departmental requirements. These represented different platforms from different vendors, and were not connected to each other. At the same time, the Marshall Computer Center developed an interconnected, multi-processor environment. With the software problems of year 2000, and the I/T move to the new Drinko Library, several systems were scrapped. New systems were installed on the pc server platforms. This book includes images of the various systems, several comments from users, and hardware and software descriptions

The Kasparov-World Match

The Kasparov-World match was initiated by Microsoft with sponsorship from the bank First USA. The concept was that Garry Kasparov as White would play the rest of the world on the Web: one ply would be played per day and the World Team was to vote for its move. The Kasparov-World game was a success from many points of view. It certainly gave thousands the feeling of facing the world’s best player across the board and did much for the future of the game. Described by Kasparov as “phenomenal ... the most complex in chess history”, it is probably a worthy ‘Greatest Game’ candidate. Computer technology has given chess a new mode of play and taken it to new heights: the experiment deserves to be repeated. We look forward to another game and experience of this quality although it will be difficult to surpass the event we have just enjoyed. We salute and thank all those who contributed - sponsors, moderator, coaches, unofficial analysts, organisers, technologists, voters and our new friends

Planning Support Systems: Progress, Predictions, and Speculations on the Shape of Things to Come

In this paper, we review the brief history of planning support systems, sketching the way both the fields of planning and the software that supports and informs various planning tasks have fragmented and diversified. This is due to many forces which range from changing conceptions of what planning is for and who should be involved, to the rapid dissemination of computers and their software, set against the general quest to build ever more generalized software products applicable to as many activities as possible. We identify two main drivers – the move to visualization which dominates our very interaction with the computer and the move to disseminate and share software data and ideas across the web. We attempt a brief and somewhat unsatisfactory classification of tools for PSS in terms of the planning process and the software that has evolved, but this does serve to point up the state-ofthe- art and to focus our attention on the near and medium term future. We illustrate many of these issues with three exemplars: first a land usetransportation model (LUTM) as part of a concern for climate change, second a visualization of cities in their third dimension which is driving an interest in what places look like and in London, a concern for high buildings, and finally various web-based services we are developing to share spatial data which in turn suggests ways in which stakeholders can begin to define urban issues collaboratively. All these are elements in the larger scheme of things – in the development of online collaboratories for planning support. Our review far from comprehensive and our examples are simply indicative, not definitive. We conclude with some brief suggestions for the future

Medium practices

In this essay I develop a topic addressed in my book, Film Art Phenomena: the question of medium specificity. Rosalind Krauss's essay 'Art In the Age of the Post-Medium Condition' has catalysed a move away from medium specificity to hybridity. I propose that questions of medium cannot be ignored, since they carry their own history and give rise to specific formal traits and possibilities. The research involves close critical analysis of four moving image works that have not previously been written about: two made with film, and one each with computer and mobile phone. The analyses are conducted by reference to my ideas about how technological peculiarities inform and inflect practice: I see the work's material composition, its form and final meaning as intricately bound up with each other. Film, video and the computer give rise to specific forms of moving image, partly because artists exploit a medium’s peculiarities, and because certain media lend themselves to some methodologies and not others. I do not seek hard distinctions between these media, but discuss them in terms of predispositions. For example, I discuss a 16mm cine film in which the shifting visibility of grain raises ideas around movement and stillness. The aim is to develop a definition of medium specificity, in relation to the moving image, that is not essentialist in the way previous versions were criticised for being, that is, based on ideas of "material substrate" (Wollen). I argue that film is a medium of stages, in contrast to the modern tapeless camcorder, in which all functions of recording, storage, playback and even editing are contained in a single device. Supported by a travel grant, I presented a version of this essay at the International Conference of Experimental Media Congress, Toronto, in April 2011, along with a selection of works: http://www.experimentalcongress.org/full-schedule

Cyphers: On the Historiography of Digital Architecture

This dissertation reflects on the methods and concepts employed in constructing a history of digital architecture. By focusing on the methodological issues, it complements and expands the research developed for the monographic study Digital Architecture Beyond Computers (DABC) and the book chapter “Crypto Architecture”. In both pieces digital architecture is understood to cover a period of time that stretches well beyond the appearance of the modern digital computer (after World War Two). The notion of computing numbers and symbols to apprehend and intervene in our reality is in fact a much older idea than the invention of the modern digital computer. This dissertation reflects on the approach suggested by both writings by analysing the conceptual basis of computation in order to devise an appropriate historiographic approach to digital architecture. The aim of the investigation is to move beyond a technologically‐driven, utilitarian view of computation in favour of a more conceptual position that foregrounds computation’s fundamental logic and the role of the disciplines that informed and continue to inform it. This broader perspective aims at establishing a relation between the artifacts and the processes of digital architecture; that is, between what digital architecture is (which DABC explores through case studies in which computation and design affected one another), and how it is generated (the techniques and methods deployed to design architecture). This dissertation introduces a specific conceptual figure to articulate the historiography of digital architecture: the cypher. Cyphers address the fundamental challenges emerging from constructing a history of digital architecture, they organise the vast collections of case studies forming the history of digital architecture, foreground the conceptual motivations behind computation, and acknowledge the role that different disciplines (philosophy, logic, semiotic) have played in shaping what we call digital architecture

Towards a Critical Understanding of Deepfakes: Developing a Teaching Module and More

Recently, computer-generated and computer-altered videos known as deepfakes have raised widespread concerns about the harms they may cause to democratic elections, national security, people’s reputation, and people’s autonomy over their words and actions as represented in videos and other media. How can we build towards a critical understanding of not only deepfakes, but also photos, videos, and the role of many other media objects surrounding us that inform us about the world? In this thesis, wanting to take a historical approach and noting the newness of deepfakes, I first investigate a historical case study regarding a manipulated photo from a 1950 U.S. Senate election campaign. Examining hearings conducted by the Senate into the use of misleading media in the election, I investigate how the incident sparked a debate between different groups of people over the trustworthiness of photographs and their proper role in elections. Next, I move forward in time and discuss the nature of deepfakes, presenting a brief history focusing on the different communities—academic, hobbyist, and commercial—that have played a role in the development of different, but related, technologies that all fall under the umbrella term of deepfakes. Some of this history is incorporated into the third part of this thesis, in which I present a teaching module I developed with the goals of guiding students to think critically about photos and videos and of raising awareness about deepfakes

Flipping a Course on Computer Architecture

This paper reports on an experiment with a flipped classroom for a Computer Architecture course. In a flipped classroom, students access content out of the classroom and then engage in a discussion in-class, rather than the other way around. This seemed like an ideal strategy for a course that can easily focus on the minutiae of architectural details and computer history. The results showed that students liked the interactive and practical aspects of the course but were particularly negative about pre-lecture readings. These results suggest that students need to learn how to learn in different ways, and move away from the exclusive strategy of in-classroom, content-centric lectures