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@EvgenyMorozov @NewYorker #ShowUsTheMissingPages
by Lee Vinsel 13 Oct '14

13 Oct '14

Dear SIGCIS Members, I have written a follow up to my original blog post: http://leevinsel.com/blog/2014/10/12/evgenymorozov-newyorker-showusthemissi… The original post <http://leevinsel.com/blog/2014/10/11/an-unresolved-issue-evgeny-morozov-the…>has been viewed about 10,000 times as I write this email. There are hundreds of calls on Twitter for Morozov to apologize. Many are calling him a plagiarist (a term I still haven't used). I have been contacted by dozens of historians who believe that Morozov must speak out. I have encountered only one historian who buys the arguments about "highbrow journalism" and different genres, and even he backed off of it. Prominent journalism professors have said on Twitter that genre is no reason to violate norms. I believe that, if we polled historians, they would say that Morozov should apologize publicly. The irony is that, through his hardheadedness, Morozov is alienating himself from the very communities he aspires to join. OK, I'm going to hide in a cave now. I have found this whole situation stressful and unpleasant. Sincerely, Lee -- Assistant Professor Program on Science and Technology Studies College of Arts and Letters Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ 07030 AmericanScience.Blogspot.com Twitter: @STS_News

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Why don't real historians write popular works?
by McMillan, William W 12 Oct '14

12 Oct '14

I know in some cases popular history and biography are produced by real historians, but the lively discussion on this list about the failings of popular writers in the history of computing gives me the impression that the field of battle has been left to the pithy and the superficial. Is this community sniping from the hilltops, hoping that the writers down on the mass-market battlefield will march up with a white flag, an acknowledgment, and a pledge to respect real scholarship? If real historians charged down the hill with a barrage of their own popular histories, wouldn't that overwhelm the errant? Just askin'. Bill

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] historians and journalists
by Nathan Ensmenger 12 Oct '14

12 Oct '14

Since I was called out specifically in Janet Browne's email, I feel somewhat obliged to respond to the entire list. First, I would like to say that if my earlier email implied that either of these recent incidents was a reflection on the Harvard History of Science department or its faculty then I sincerely apologize. My point was simply that both of these recent incidents involved trained historians (or historians-in-training) and not newcomers or outsiders to our discipline. When I referred to both authors as being Harvard-trained, the emphasis should have been on *trained* and not on Harvard. To paraphrase another timeworn defense, many of my best friends have gone to Harvard... Janet, your email seems to imply that the article that Latif originally wrote for the Atlantic did contain an appropriate acknowledgement of the work of Mara Mills, and that the editors of that journal subsequently removed this attribution without his knowledge or consent. If so, he has a serious complaint against that journal. He should perhaps consider making it public. It would be a welcome contribution to our ongoing conversation about the relationship between academic and journalistic ethics. If editors in these genres do have such unlimited license to modify (and in this case, seriously distort) our work, then we as historians should be even more wary of contributing to such journals --- or at the very least, we need to be very careful as we read through our author contracts. On the other hand, if the version of the article that originally appeared in the Atlantic was approved by Latif, and it was only *after* the public outcry that he realized he did not properly acknowledge his (sole) source --- well, that is exactly the problem we are concerned about. I do not buy the argument that calling something journalism eliminates one's responsibility to acknowledge one's sources properly. And I should say, neither do most journalists. The fact that the article was eventually corrected is nice, but does not change the fact that it was published at all. The original version was widely disseminated for days before being updated, and the updated version contains no acknowledgement that the article had ever been modified. How many people read the original version, rather than the correction? And as far as I am aware, no apology was issued, either publicly or privately. Has Latif made one? That would be a collegial thing to do. As for Evgeny's article: he has made two distinct and somewhat contradictory defenses. The first is that his article was a book review of Eden's work, and that anyone who read it otherwise "doesn't know what they are talking about." His second defense is that the article is actually original research, and that therefore he is justified in only mentioning *Cybernetic Revolutions* as one source among many. He combines this with a long discussion about the limitations of the New Yorker format, and why it is impossible in such a format to properly cite sources and influences. The first defense is specious, as even a casual reading of just about any other book review published by the New Yorker will reveal. I am not sure what to make of the second: we are being told (by him, and I suppose, by you) that we should trust this to be the case. The fact that so many experts in this historical sub-discipline still have concerns is revealing, and perhaps ought to be taken more seriously. When I was in graduate school I took a seminar course at Princeton with Mike Mahoney and Angela Creager that explored the relationship between cybernetics, computing, and biology. In that seminar we read the manuscript version of Lily Kay's *Who wrote the book of life?* (Stanford, 2000) along with many (actually, _very many_) of her primary and secondary sources. Some of these sources were already well known to historians of science, others were not, and we might even have discovered along the some relevant materials that Kay herself had never discovered. While we may not have spent the six months of primary research that Evgeny claims is enough to make a subject one's own, we spent at least four or five. I have never worked harder in a graduate seminar, or learned more. But in that seminar I was *learning how to do historical research*, I was *not doing historical research* (or at least not doing original historical research). Without Lily Kay's map (and without Mike and Angela coming alongside as skilled guides) I would never have known such intellectual territory existed, much less known how to navigate it. Yes, by the end of the seminar the path seemed obvious (perhaps even a little well-worn), but without Lily Kay to blaze the trail, we would never had even known in which direction to set out. I like to believe that if, even as a graduate student, I had been asked to write on the relationship between information theory and genetics for the New Yorker, I would been clever enough able to figure our a way to acknowledge my intellectual debts, even without resorting to footnotes. At the very least, I hope that I would have been been appropriately humble about my own limited experience and respectful of the cumulative and collaborative process that is historical scholarship. I see none of that humility or intellectual graciousness in Evgeny's original article or in any of his subsequent communications. I agree that ours is a small discipline and that we ought to strive to be collegial, but respect is a two-way street. Finally, although I was the person who first brought these two issues to the attention of the SIGCIS list, I am not the only one who noticed these incidents or who has expressed their concerns. While it is true that my own negative experiences might have heightened my sensibilities to incidents of intellectual misappropriation by journalists, this is not some personal crusade or vendetta. To suggest that this is so is to minimize the professional judgement of a much broader community of practitioners. We all have a stake in our work being used fairly and appropriately. -Nathan --- Nathan Ensmenger Associate Professor of Informatics School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University, Bloomington homes.soic.indiana.edu/nensmeng/

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Historians and journalists
by Browne, Janet 12 Oct '14

12 Oct '14

Responding to Sharon Traweek's post yesterday may I ask from where she gets the phrase 'highbrow journalism" that is not mentioned in my post of Saturday 10th. Sincerely, Janet Browne

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Evgeny Morozov: Author of the Quixote?
by Thomas Haigh 12 Oct '14

12 Oct '14

Evgeny Morozov: Author of the Quixote? Dear Cabalists, I have called you this evening to this secret cavern deep underground to address an important matter. Ive been looking closely at the explanation Evgeny Morozov posted on Tumblr to describe the creation of his controversial New Yorker piece The Planning Machine. And you know what? We misunderestimated the guy. In fact he is even more brilliant than he says he is. Also more modest. Hard to believe, but I think I can convince you on this one. Now I know that, when the article first appeared, some in the SIGCIS community were concerned that Morozov might not have given quite enough credit to Eden Medinas award winning 2011 book Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allendes Chile. Pedants noted that the article spent about twenty paragraphs on the story of the Chilean Cybersyn network project of the 1970s, closely recapping Medinas argument and evidence. They observed that he mentioned her book only once, as the source of one specific insight. Ugly words like erasure were bandied around. Morozov was even accused of committing some kind of obscure academic misdemeanor. Plagism, maybe. Being a Phalangist? I forget the exact word. Some jealous cynics unfairly tarred the prolific and famous critic turned Harvard Ph.D. student as the James Franco of the history of science. If you look closely enough at http://evgenymorozov.tumblr.com/post/99479690995/some-notes-on-my-cybernetic -socialism-essay you will see that everything is resolved. Heres what happened. Morozov set out to write a review essay focused on Medinas book. So far, so humdrum. Any mediocrity can write a review essay. Then the magic happened. Morozov went to the library and pulled a bunch of the books Medina had cited. Some of them were very hard to read, but that didnt faze him. He read even more books. He pushed in many directions at once. He followed in Medinas footsteps to read Beers papers in Liverpool, to correspond with Beers former colleagues, and to interview Fernando Flores who initiated Project Cybersyn with an invitation to British cyberneticist Stafford Beer. He even found out some things about Beer and Cybersyn that Medina hadnt mentioned in the book. At the end of six months of very hard work Morozov had produced his own comprehensive history of managerial cybernetics, with Beer and Project Cybersyn as its main focus. A lot of review essays say more about an imaginary book that the critic would write than about the actual text under discussion. Morozov did something unique and different: he actually spent the time to recreate and transcend Medinas entire research from the same original sources. So his final New Yorker piece didnt deny anything due to Medina. She was properly credited in the one paragraph that still relied on her work. In the rest of the article Morozov was summarizing his own groundbreaking research. Unfortunately the space requirements of the New Yorker prevented him from ever writing down the longer, footnoted version of this seminal contribution, let along publishing it in a peer reviewed journal or with an academic press. It exists in his head and thats good enough for me. With just 4,000 words at his disposal in the New Yorker Morozov was generous to spend two of them evaluating Medinas work in passing as an entertaining history. Two words might not sound like much, but The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (revised edition) summed up Earth and everyone on it as mostly harmless. Heck, Ive seen posters for really bad movies that blew up fainter and shorter praise in huge letters (Energetic! Some guy youve never heard of Huffington Post). Despite this clear signposting in the tenth paragraph some dimwits did not grasp that the piece was a book review. With what little respect might be due to them, this is clear their fault, not his. He simply did not have enough space to repeat what was already obvious. Let me observe in passing that Morozov is wasting his new piece on Tumblr. With a little editing it too could be published in the New Yorker. I suggest the Shouts & Murmurs section. I have particular sympathy for Morozov as a glance at his Twitter feed over the past month shows that he is beset with idiots on all sides. People with paralyzed brains in startups. Events about bullshit. The silliness of Marshal McLuhan. The stupidity of Checky. The dullards who retweet him without recognizing his sarcasm. Bravest of all, a tweet observing Got nothing to say? Add the word ontology to it at least, it will get published. Perhaps he had, at that very moment in his research, come across Peter Galisons classic paper The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Weiner and the Cybernetic Vision. His books tell a similarly moving story. As the only person in the world who is both intelligent and principled he puts a succession of idiots, hacks, and corporate shills to shame. Its the lot of the genius to be unappreciated in his own lifetime. His plight is captured eloquently by his twitter tagline, There are useful idiots. Look around. Lets do that right now. All of you line up. Look left. Look right. One of you is an idiot. Probably that guy on your left. I think hes drooling, but its hard to tell with the light down here. The woman on the right doesnt look too sharp either. Chances are that theyre both idiots. Hell, I wouldnt be shocked if all three of you are idiots. Some of you dont even go to Harvard. So, implausible as this might seem, heres why I think Morozov is being unduly modest about his own immense potential. Over the past six months Ive been conducting my own unpublished, unwritten, research project on a little known figure of the early twentieth century: Pierre Menard. Menard is remembered a prolific yet minor scholar, author of five monographs and a number of articles on a range of topics. Like Morozov he spread his talent widely. Yet Menards true, and little acknowledged, genius lay in an entirely separate project. He was attempting a supremely audacious literary feat: reproducing Don Quixote without, and here comes the hard part, having read it since early childhood. He did not want to compose another Quixote which is easy but the Quixote itself. Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincideword for word and line for linewith those of Miguel de Cervantes. By the time of his death years of meticulous research had allowed Menard to independently reproduce significant portions of the text. He was one of the forgotten greats of world literature. Menards challenge was more formidable that Cervantes, just as Morozov faced a more difficult task than Medina. As Menard wrote, To compose the Quixote at the beginning of the seventeenth century was a reasonable undertaking, necessary and perhaps even unavoidable; at the beginning of the twentieth, it is almost impossible. It is not in vain that three hundred years have gone by, filled with exceedingly complex events. Amongst them, to mention only one, is the Quixote itself. Looking side by side at identical passages from Menard and Cervantes it is clear that Menards was the greater accomplishment. To write in an alien tongue, three centuries later and still produce the same words was a remarkable and subtle triumph. Since Menards death none have dared to take up this challenge, but given his remarkable talent as a replicator of research I think Morozov might be able to finish the job. There are other parallels. Menard was drawn to Don Quixote as an entertaining book. Morozovs research began with Medinas entertaining history. Both authors transcended their sources by reproducing them. They also share working methods. Menard spent sleepless nights scribbling thousands of draft pages, which he meticulously destroyed. As he noted, the philosophers publish the intermediary stages of their labor in pleasant volumes and I have resolved to do away with those stages. Only the brilliant end product remains. Morozov tweeted to an admirer that his method was old school: most of is (sic) in my head and occasional notes in Open Office. I am blessed with good memory. Morozovs ability to repeat interviews with Medinas oral history subjects to reproduce the same quotes she used in her book is the surest sign of his readiness for this awesome challenge. Morozov mentions interviewing Flores and Brian Eno, but again his modesty is deceptive. Im sure that he also interviewed Ángel Parra (quote p. 133) and Tomas Kohn (quote p. 132) to independently reproduce the remarks from their 2008 interviews with Medina that appear both in her book and in his article. He showed particular ingenuity in discovering that a quote Medina incorrectly attributed to a 2006 interview she conducted with Raul Espejo (quote p. 186 fn. 53, p. 288) was actually something that one of Cybersyns directors remarked at the time. Contemporary remarks are more historically reliable that those given decades later, so this is another way in which Morozovs is a more profound historical contribution than Medinas. As Jorge Luis Borges noted in Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, an entertaining history article, Menard believed that Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case. We live in that future, and Morosov is our champion. It would be a crime for him to spend years working on a Ph.D. thesis with footnotes and the other accoutrements of mediocrity. Let him instead do what only he can do: take up the project of Menard and complete the Quixote. There must be no more grumbling against this great and humble scholar. Cabal dismissed. Tom.

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Vinsel "An Unresolved Issue: Evgeny Morozov, The New Yorker, & the Perils of "Highbrow Journalism"
by Sharon Traweek 12 Oct '14

12 Oct '14

Hi I am very impressed with Lee Vinsel's analysis of the issues we have been addressing and I am eager to circulate it far and wide. I do have a suggestion and a comment. First, the suggestion: since Morozov and Nasser did not give adequate citation to the works they summarized, I think it is important that we do so in writing abut these matters. Here they are: * Eden Medina [MIT PhD], Informatics and Computing, Indiana University http://www.indiana.edu/~histweb/faculty/Display.php?Faculty_ID=69 Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile [MIT, 2011] http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cybernetic-revolutionaries * Mara Mills [PhD Harvard], Media, Culture, & Communication, NYU "...She is completing a book (On the Phone: Deafness and Communication Engineering) on the significance of phonetics and deaf education to the emergence of "communication engineering" in early twentieth-century telephony; this concept and set of practices later gave rise to information theory, digital coding, and cybernetics. ..." http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty_bios/view/Mara_Mills Access her publications at http://maramills.org/publications/ Next is my comment: I was surprised/amused that Browne regards the New Yorker as "highbrow journalism." Essays have been written in the UK and US for over 75 years differentiating class-based cultural consumption practices using the phrenological metaphors of low brow, lower-middle brow, middle brow, and upper-middle brow. See citations for many of those essays at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlebrow The New Yorker often has been mentioned as an exemplar of upper-middle brow culture; for an example, see William Deresiewicz, "Upper Middle Brow: The culture of the creative class," The American Scholar, 4 Nov 2012 http://theamericanscholar.org/upper-middle-brow/#.VDaufue0blU One part of his argument is that upper middle brow culture consumption practices are aspirational and such practices support upper brow cultural production. However, Morozov’s and Nasser’s work for the New Yorker and the Atlantic could not support the consumption of Eden Medina’s and Mara Mills’ academic work because the readers have not been given the proper names for the work being summarized. Sincerely, Sharon Traweek, Gender Studies, UCLA ________________________________ From: members-bounces(a)sigcis.org [members-bounces(a)sigcis.org] on behalf of Lee Vinsel [lee.vinsel(a)gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2014 5:55 AM To: sigcis Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] An Unresolved Issue: Evgeny Morozov, The New Yorker, and the Perils of "Highbrow Journalism" Dear SIGCIS Members, The Medina-Morozov situation continued to bother me, so I decided to write something about it. If you want me to remove reference to you or add such a reference (in cases where I write things like "One historian . . .), please let me know. Also please let me know if I have said anything inaccurate or even if you disagree with my argument. I believe that the kinds of arguments I make in this post can be right or wrong, and if I find that I have been wrong I will both make corrections and apologize publicly via the same venue. https://lee-vinsel.squarespace.com/blog/2014/10/11/an-unresolved-issue-evge… Sincerely, Lee -- Assistant Professor Program on Science and Technology Studies College of Arts and Letters Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ 07030 AmericanScience.Blogspot.com<http://AmericanScience.Blogspot.com> Twitter: @STS_News

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Historians and journalists
by Browne, Janet 12 Oct '14

12 Oct '14

I am responding to a recent post by Nathan Ensmenger relating to the improper use of scholarly work in magazine and journal review articles. I fully sympathise with Nathan’s unhappy experiences with the Washington Post. However, as examples of his personal case, Nathan takes two commentary pieces written by my colleagues at Harvard, Evgeny Morozov and Latif Nasser, both of whom have a deep commitment to making our field more widely understood beyond the academy. I would like to clarify that the history of science department at Harvard is completely scrupulous—exacting-- in what it expects from its faculty, graduates, and students when working in any medium. It seems to me that both authors here are writing within the confines of the specific genre of commentary—neither the Atlantic nor New Yorker run scholarly essay reviews as we know them. Both authors immediately went to their editors to say that their readership was unhappy with the way the narrative unfolded. Latif Nasser quickly adjusted his piece in the Atlantic Monthly to make absolutely clear that this is Mara Mills' story. Evgeny Morozov also explained on Tumblr how he independently researched and wrote his commentary on big data for the New Yorker, which then went through the fact-checking process for which the New Yorker is justly famed. I can confirm that several pages of his piece, including comments on Eden Medina’s book, were cut for space reasons. We in the close-knit community along Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge are united in applauding the excellence of Eden's book Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile. The book won the Computer History Museum book prize in 2013 and the 2012 Edelstein Prize from SHOT. I hope that SHOT readers will remain confident in the proper practices of our fellow scholars and continue to share their work with the larger public. Our readership is depressingly small enough as it is. Janet Browne, Chair (and new member of the list), History of Science Department, Harvard University.

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Apropos of our discussions on Isaacson and sourcing
by M. Hicks 11 Oct '14

11 Oct '14

Apropos of our discussions on Isaacson, there's a story in the SF Chronicle today that discusses this trend of popularizing accounts of women in tech history. I was glad to see Janet Abbate is quoted several times. I spoke to the reporter too, but unfortunately I am misquoted at one point as saying that the ENIAC women never wrote their own stories. Ugh. Oh well--just another cautionary tale about the circuitous path history takes from academia to popular culture. And a reminder that if you see someone quoted as saying something odd or incorrect, there's a good chance they didn't say it :) http://m.sfgate.com/business/article/Women-are-claiming-their-place-in-tech… Best, Marie ______________________ Marie Hicks, Ph.D. Asst. Professor, History of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL USA mariehicks.net | mhicks1(a)iit.edu | @histoftech

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historians and journalists
by Browne, Janet 11 Oct '14

11 Oct '14

I am responding to a recent post by Nathan Ensmenger relating to the improper use of scholarly work in magazine and journal review articles. I fully sympathise with Nathan’s unhappy experiences with the Washington Post. However, as examples of his personal case, Nathan takes two commentary pieces written by my colleagues at Harvard, Evgeny Morozov and Latif Nasser, both of whom have a deep commitment to making our field more widely understood beyond the academy. I would like to clarify that the history of science department at Harvard is completely scrupulous—exacting-- in what it expects from its faculty, graduates, and students when working in any media. It seems to me that both authors here are writing within the confines of the specific genre of commentary—neither the Atlantic nor New Yorker run scholarly essay reviews as we know them. Both authors immediately went to their editors to say that one sector of their readership was unhappy with the way the narratives unfolded. Latif Nasser quickly adjusted his piece in the Atlantic Monthly to make absolutely clear that this is Mara Mills' story. Evgeny Morozov has also explained on Tumblr how he independently researched and wrote his commentary on big data for the New Yorker, which then went through the fact-checking process for which the New Yorker is justly famed. I can confirm that several pages of his piece, including comments on Eden Medina’s book, were cut for space reasons. We in the close-knit community along Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge are united in applauding the excellence of Eden's book Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile. The book won the Computer History Museum book prize in 2013 and the 2012 Edelstein Prize from SHOT. It is well-written and very engaging. I hope that SHOT readers will remain confident in the proper practices of our fellow scholars and continue to share their work with the larger public. Our readership is depressingly small as it is. Janet Browne, Chair (and new member of the list), History of Science Department, Harvard University.

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An Unresolved Issue: Evgeny Morozov, The New Yorker, and the Perils of "Highbrow Journalism"
by Lee Vinsel 11 Oct '14

11 Oct '14

Dear SIGCIS Members, The Medina-Morozov situation continued to bother me, so I decided to write something about it. If you want me to remove reference to you or add such a reference (in cases where I write things like "One historian . . .), please let me know. Also please let me know if I have said anything inaccurate or even if you disagree with my argument. I believe that the kinds of arguments I make in this post can be right or wrong, and if I find that I have been wrong I will both make corrections and apologize publicly via the same venue. https://lee-vinsel.squarespace.com/blog/2014/10/11/an-unresolved-issue-evge… Sincerely, Lee -- Assistant Professor Program on Science and Technology Studies College of Arts and Letters Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ 07030 AmericanScience.Blogspot.com Twitter: @STS_News

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