I don't know how this wasn't on my radar, but Robert Darnton published his _Business of Enlightenment_ with a CreativeCommons license in 2016. He really set the stage for thinking of the materiality of encyclopedias. What a gift! archive.org/details/Busi...

I love seeing old lectures published as webpages. 2004: gyre.umeoce.maine.edu/physicalocea...

Every three minute startup pitch is a comedy bit of capitalist theatre.

On Nov 3, I sampled 1K Grokipedia v0.1 articles and found that about 55% of the 1000 articles were based on Wikipedia because they used its CC license. I repeated the method on those same articles today and those CC licenses are gone. Grokipedia v0.2 looks to be all generated text now.

🚨 Bookmatch is back! 🚨 From now until December 2, make a donation of any amount to n+1 and we’ll send you the Bookmatch quiz—a personality test that will generate a reading list tailored to your tastes and whims. Try the quiz here: secure.givelively.org/donate/n1-fo...

“I see the TikTok, I see more, I get interested, I look it up online.” www.theverge.com/cs/features/...

1980s: Personal computer > Noun object 1990s: Computer network > Connected noun objects 2000s: Cloud computing > Global verb 2010s: Computation > Noun from process 2020s: Compute > Nouned verb

I have a piece in @techpolicypress.bsky.social today: With Grokipedia, Top-Down Control of Knowledge Is New Again Trying to consider the nature of the project and its vision of neutrality vs. @wikipedia.org's (without getting into e.g. article comparisons). www.techpolicy.press/with-grokipe...

It looks like Grokipedia is at least a partial fork of English Wikipedia (which is allowable under Wikipedia's license). Verbatim paragraphs on the "Encyclopedia" page and includes Wikipedia artifacts (like the use of Wikitext: {{cite book}}). [Left image is Grokipedia; Right image is Wikipedia]

@elissawelle.bsky.social Just saw the article about Grokipedia, and if anyone is looking into academic/research background about AI, Wikipedia and encyclopedias, either myself or some of my co-authors work might be useful. www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

Fine. I will have to wade more into this eventually. But for now, it took me literally 1 minute of reading my first article on Grokipedia before I couldn't help but make a head tilt: "Pre-Columbian Indigenous Societies" makes absolutely no sense for an article on "Canada."

Writing an introduction to a special issue with my co-editor and we aimed to split the writing 50/50 for 7000 words. I've had two days of concentrated "writing" – which actually means turning my initial 11000 garbage words into 3500 beautiful words.

My co-authors and I recently wrote about how GenAI hype is similiar to the hype (avant de lettre) of photography / daguerrotype in the 1800s. These commonalities exist because new media produce consistent contradictions surrounding art, culture and technology. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

I just updated my Keywords Index and it now links to over 550 short essays (sometimes articles) on concepts and terms that are necessary for studying media, information, and culture. A great place to start for literature reviews. textaural.com/keywords/

Really excited to announce that Chris Young, David Nieborg and I just published a new OA paper in Platforms & Society developing the concept of the "workflow monopoly". To do this we conducted a platform historiography of the Unity game engine / workflow suite journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The Catholic practice of prompting an LLM chatbot involves using the software and then confessing and asking for forgiveness.

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

Since grad school, I struggled to work through what discourse analysis was as a method. Inspired by a number of historians and works on method (below), here's my general model for thinking through the process.

The world’s largest encyclopedia became the factual foundation of the web, but now it’s under attack. Read more from @joshdzieza.bsky.social: www.theverge.com/cs/features/...

"Republicans investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias" thehill.com/homenews/hou... 👀

With the school year approaching, a number of scholars and myself have assembled together a Critical Wikimedia Research Bibliography. If you are teaching a course or doing research, we think you might find some good resources here. meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Critica...

Over a million views of an AI impersonation ad of Canada's prime minister. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN7d.... Published yesterday.

I've read the draft guideline for researching Wikipedia's neutrality (meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Researc...) & I will add my thoughts to the discussion. But Heather Ford has already raised a number of important concerns about it that shouldn't be ignored. theconversation.com/wikipedias-n...

"A living visual archive on cybernetics in the expanded field. Browse and contribute images of all kinds: diagrams, schematics, photos, graphic elements, and other visual fragments."

Look starlings are the new archival media

_The Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader_ by INC was a pivotal book for helping me think about different ways to research Wikipedia. Heather Ford (who initiated the Wikimedia Research Manifesto), reflects on how this text shaped her work as well. networkcultures.org/blog/2025/07...

A bunch of internet networking metaphors (host, guest, server, client) are all metaphors that imagine the The Computer as a Hotel. Which seems kind of quaint. Markus Krajewski (2018) _The Server: A Media History from the Present to the Baroque_

manifesto.wiki is a statement that I think all Wikimedia researchers should read. It was composed through the hard work of many leading the field right now: Heather Ford, Bunty Avieson, Francesco Bailo, Michael Davis, Michael Falk, Sohyeon Hwang, Andrew Iliadis, Amanda Lawrence, Francesca Sidoti.

🚨: Check out this new publication: "Uniting and reigniting critical Wikimedia research" by @textaural.bsky.social, Heather Ford, Andrew Illiadis, and Francesca Sidoti! 🔓: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #Wikimedia #Wikipedia #manifesto

I am pleased to announce the launch of the Manifesto for Wikimedia Research manifesto.wiki. As my co-authored Big Data & Society commentary explains, the manifesto is dedicated to a humanist and critical tradition of taking Wikipedia's importance seriously. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Some relations -------------------- body-performers group-organizers tool-makers machine-operators system-users world-narrators universe-abstractors cosmos-believers

YouTube's API search function is "not adequate for robust academic research, especially concerning Digital Services Act requirements". Clear and problematic conclusions by @riederb.bsky.social Adrian Padilla & Oscar Coromina #commsky #DSA #dataacess #youtube arxiv.org/abs/2506.11727

I obviously think is a fantastic ˋ°•*⁀➷ idea!

Today's inspiration

Here's a way to see and review Community Notes long before they are published on X, if ever. 89% of Community Notes proposed since the inception of the CN program have never seen daylight. notetracker.socialmediadata.org

Internet Histories Volume 9, issue 1-2 is now online. Please notice: This special double issue: Gender in Internet and Web History, has free access until the end of July. www.tandfonline.com/toc/rint20/9... #webarchiving #digitalhumanities #internethistories #internethistory #webhistory

History Folk lore Memory Memeory Meme array Signal pattern

🎉 Big update! The #InternetArchive has launched a new version of GifCities, our search engine for vintage GeoCities GIFs. Search better. Blink more! Check it out ➡️ blog.archive.org/2025/06/09/k... 🧵

As someone who studies encyclopedic collections, I appreciate what is going on here: "In less than 300kb, this picture succinctly represents the largest fully open “list of books” ever assembled in the history of humanity (a few hundred GB compressed in full)." annas-archive.org/blog/all-isb...

"Something interesting happens to language […] when a tyrannical government takes over). All of a sudden, EVERYDAY LANGUAGE is pushed toward the METAPHORICAL LANGUAGE pole [and away from the CODIFIED pole]. No longer is it desirable to "say what you mean." Gozzi, R. (1999). The power of metaphor.

This is an article from CBC Kids News. Kids News… Let that sink in.

Years ago, I read a poem. And it punctured me then. And I remembered again just now; punctured once more. Solmaz Sharif's _Look_. www.poetryireland.ie/publications...

Internet Archive lo-fi beats to scan/read Microfiche to: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPg2...

We’re hiring: Lecturer in Cultural Data & AI and Archival & Information Studies (Media Studies, @uvahumanities.bsky.social)! Join @tpoell.bsky.social, @riederb.bsky.social, myself, & other wonderful colleagues in the Critical Data & AI team. Applications due 28 May. werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Well this is good timing. @wikiworkshop.bsky.social starts today and my paper that I presented in previous years has just been published this morning. doi.org/10.1177/1461.... We describe how hatnotes on policy pages are incredibly important techniques for ascribing different forms of authority.

📢✨ New OA book out now with Amsterdam University Press: Governing the Digital Society: Platforms, Artificial Intelligence, and Public Values, edited by José van Dijck, @kfvanes.bsky.social, @silvertje.bsky.social, & @fvandervlist.bsky.social. Access: www.aup.nl/en/book/9789...

Join us for our inaugural conference! Here's the call for papers: mediatheoryjournal.org/cfp/

Just a reminder about how we might think about the future of AI and education. We've been here with this question –exactly this question– before. www.yorku.ca/rowston/arti...

Wired Magazine 1994 Issue 12. Ad for Pantone Colordrive