Bots, Seeds and People: Web Archives as Infrastructure

The field of web archiving provides a unique mix of human and automated agents collaborating to achieve the preservation of the web. Centuries old theories of archival appraisal are being transplanted into the sociotechnical environment of the World Wide Web with varying degrees of success. The work of the archivist and bots in contact with the material of the web present a distinctive and understudied CSCW shaped problem. To investigate this space we conducted semi-structured interviews with archivists and technologists who were directly involved in the selection of content from the web for archives. These semi-structured interviews identified thematic areas that inform the appraisal process in web archives, some of which are encoded in heuristics and algorithms. Making the infrastructure of web archives legible to the archivist, the automated agents and the future researcher is presented as a challenge to the CSCW and archival community

Media Art in Worship: The Potential for a New Liturgical Art, Its Pastoral and Theological Challenges

(Excerpt) Greetings to you all, my colleagues in liturgy, my sisters and brothers in Christ! The black-and-white photography we encountered as part of our liturgy in the Chapel of the Resurrection yesterday and today represent art, meditation art that can stir our imaginations and refresh our souls. Professor Aimee Tomasek of Valparaiso University asked her students to create these for us based on their reading of yesterday\u27s gospel and hymn of the day. Students\u27 work is always refreshing. So, too, are all the water metaphors in which we have been steeped in our liturgies here during this institute

Slashdot, open news and informated media: exploring the intersection of imagined futures and web publishing technology

"In this essay, my interest is in how imagined media futures are implicated in the work of producing novel web publishing technology. I explore the issue through an account of the emergence of Slashdot, the tech news and discussion site that by 1999 had implemented a number of recommendation features now associated with social media and web 2.0 platforms. Specifically, I aim to understand the connection between the development of Slashdot’s influential content-management system (CMS) - an elaborate publishing infrastructure called “Slash” that allowed editors to choose reader submissions for publication and automatically distributed the work of moderating the comments sections among trusted users - and two distinct visions of a web-enabled transformation of media production.

Media Art in Worship: The Potential for a New Liturgical Art, Its Pastoral and Theological Challenges

(excerpt) I am especially pleased to be among you, because I have had the gift of reflecting on worship in the ELCA in the past, thanks to the late Paul Nelson of blessed memory and Scott Weidler of your Worship Office. They asked me to create a video series to accompany The Use of the Means of Grace. Perhaps some of you know that series. It’s entitled These Things Matter: Word, Baptism and Communion. A second video series I help develop was a Lenten series of reflections on worship entitled God is Here