future research project: history of autoincorrect
There's an interesting topic here, waiting for its Boswell. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/software-is-subbing-mistake... Stay sane and get a booster (partially for you; more for others), Jonathan Jonathan Coopersmith Professor Department of History Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-4236 979.739.4708 (cell) 979.862.4314 (fax) Voting challenges: https://theeagle.com/opinion/columnists/texas-should-be-the-model-for-secure... Preserving space archives: https://www.toboldlypreserve.space/ International standards battles: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/geek-life/history/lets-thwart-this-terri... <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/geek-life/history/lets-thwart-this-terrible-idea-for-standards-setting__;!!KwNVnqRv!R4dbJx9DOnSkoiNAwXjHq9sp5vMvdGEVtOMlWJUc6AH7iQiRA7bw1VEUYeo6i2St9sgf$> *FAXED. The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine* (Johns Hopkins University Press)
Dear Jonathan, Thank you very much for this neat example. I never use Excel so I am not sure if the autocorrect feature can be disabled in settings or not (my guess is that it surely is, but you never know). That said, I find that this is more telling about the acculturation of users to Microsoft packages than the reckless use of pieces of software, even in areas where you might think better solutions exist, especially scientific ones. After all, a lot of scientific mistakes occur because of the (incorrect) use of default settings, even in specialized software. I have this example of a recent publication in chemistry regarding calculations of NMR chemical shifts whose output turn out to depend on.... the OS the calculations are run on ! https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.orglett.9b03216# It gives me the opportunity to shamelessly self-promote my upcoming talk where I will use Jonathan's example. If you're interested in open science and its complex relationship with software "Only the initiates will have the secrets revealed" : The politics and materialities of open science ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Käte Hamburger Kolleg "cultures of research" lecture series in Aachen and [online](https://khk.rwth-aachen.de/lecture-series/) Wednesday, January 26th, 5pm CET Open Science has been pervading the scientific world in the last decade. It is a buzzword, and a promise. First, through Open Access, as a combat against corporate publishers, then through Open Data as a mean to enhance sharing practices, and more recently, and more timidly, through the promotion of Open Software. Strikingly, Open Software in science has attracted until now less interest even though Open Science itself is rooted in 1980s free software principles. This talk focuses on software in science and its diversity of entanglements with openness. Software has been "eating" the world and science is no exception. From Excel to complex "big" scientific instruments, via Photoshop or molecular modelling software suites, the vast majority of software used in science is not open, and a vast majority has nothing to do with computer science. When software is open, it is very often naively represented as a solution to all issues in science, especially reproducibility. Yet, even open software is full of epistemic issues, from governance to consistency, and the consequences of its influence on the rest of open science are often misunderstood, especially regarding licensing policies. -- *********************************************** Alexandre Hocquet Archives Henri Poincaré & RWTH c:o/re https://poincare.univ-lorraine.fr/fr/membre-titulaire/alexandre-hocquet https://khk.rwth-aachen.de/fellows/prof-alexandre-hocquet/ ***********************************************
From a little bit different of a theoretical framework, but Allison Parrish recently did a wonderful talk about spellcheck and queer phenomenology: https://posts.decontextualize.com/queer-in-ai-2021/ <https://posts.decontextualize.com/queer-in-ai-2021/> https://www.nabeelsiddiqui.net
On Jan 21, 2022, at 11:14 AM, Alexandre Hocquet <alexandre.hocquet@univ-lorraine.fr> wrote:
Dear Jonathan,
Thank you very much for this neat example. I never use Excel so I am not sure if the autocorrect feature can be disabled in settings or not (my guess is that it surely is, but you never know). That said, I find that this is more telling about the acculturation of users to Microsoft packages than the reckless use of pieces of software, even in areas where you might think better solutions exist, especially scientific ones.
After all, a lot of scientific mistakes occur because of the (incorrect) use of default settings, even in specialized software. I have this example of a recent publication in chemistry regarding calculations of NMR chemical shifts whose output turn out to depend on.... the OS the calculations are run on ! https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.orglett.9b03216#
It gives me the opportunity to shamelessly self-promote my upcoming talk where I will use Jonathan's example. If you're interested in open science and its complex relationship with software
"Only the initiates will have the secrets revealed" : The politics and materialities of open science ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Käte Hamburger Kolleg "cultures of research" lecture series in Aachen and [online](https://khk.rwth-aachen.de/lecture-series/) Wednesday, January 26th, 5pm CET
Open Science has been pervading the scientific world in the last decade. It is a buzzword, and a promise. First, through Open Access, as a combat against corporate publishers, then through Open Data as a mean to enhance sharing practices, and more recently, and more timidly, through the promotion of Open Software. Strikingly, Open Software in science has attracted until now less interest even though Open Science itself is rooted in 1980s free software principles. This talk focuses on software in science and its diversity of entanglements with openness. Software has been "eating" the world and science is no exception. From Excel to complex "big" scientific instruments, via Photoshop or molecular modelling software suites, the vast majority of software used in science is not open, and a vast majority has nothing to do with computer science. When software is open, it is very often naively represented as a solution to all issues in science, especially reproducibility. Yet, even open software is full of epistemic issues, from governance to consistency, and the consequences of its influence on the rest of open science are often misunderstood, especially regarding licensing policies.
-- *********************************************** Alexandre Hocquet Archives Henri Poincaré & RWTH c:o/re https://poincare.univ-lorraine.fr/fr/membre-titulaire/alexandre-hocquet https://khk.rwth-aachen.de/fellows/prof-alexandre-hocquet/ *********************************************** _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
Very interesting thread! I also have an article on autocorrection, but framed in terms of the importance of language standardization for nationalism and capitalism: http://computationalculture.net/out-of-bounds-language-limits-language-plann... Best, -Warren Warren SACK Professor, Film + Digital Media, University of California, Santa Cruz Editorial Group Member, *Computational Culture: A Journal of Software Studies* Book: *The Software Arts* (MIT Press, 2019) https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/software-arts On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 8:47 AM Nabeel Siddiqui <nasiddiqui@email.wm.edu> wrote:
From a little bit different of a theoretical framework, but Allison Parrish recently did a wonderful talk about spellcheck and queer phenomenology: https://posts.decontextualize.com/queer-in-ai-2021/
https://www.nabeelsiddiqui.net
On Jan 21, 2022, at 11:14 AM, Alexandre Hocquet < alexandre.hocquet@univ-lorraine.fr> wrote:
Dear Jonathan,
Thank you very much for this neat example. I never use Excel so I am not sure if the autocorrect feature can be disabled in settings or not (my guess is that it surely is, but you never know). That said, I find that this is more telling about the acculturation of users to Microsoft packages than the reckless use of pieces of software, even in areas where you might think better solutions exist, especially scientific ones.
After all, a lot of scientific mistakes occur because of the (incorrect) use of default settings, even in specialized software. I have this example of a recent publication in chemistry regarding calculations of NMR chemical shifts whose output turn out to depend on.... the OS the calculations are run on ! https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.orglett.9b03216#
It gives me the opportunity to shamelessly self-promote my upcoming talk where I will use Jonathan's example. If you're interested in open science and its complex relationship with software
"Only the initiates will have the secrets revealed" : The politics and materialities of open science
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Käte Hamburger Kolleg "cultures of research" lecture series in Aachen and [online](https://khk.rwth-aachen.de/lecture-series/) Wednesday, January 26th, 5pm CET
Open Science has been pervading the scientific world in the last decade. It is a buzzword, and a promise. First, through Open Access, as a combat against corporate publishers, then through Open Data as a mean to enhance sharing practices, and more recently, and more timidly, through the promotion of Open Software. Strikingly, Open Software in science has attracted until now less interest even though Open Science itself is rooted in 1980s free software principles. This talk focuses on software in science and its diversity of entanglements with openness. Software has been "eating" the world and science is no exception. From Excel to complex "big" scientific instruments, via Photoshop or molecular modelling software suites, the vast majority of software used in science is not open, and a vast majority has nothing to do with computer science. When software is open, it is very often naively represented as a solution to all issues in science, especially reproducibility. Yet, even open software is full of epistemic issues, from governance to consistency, and the consequences of its influence on the rest of open science are often misunderstood, especially regarding licensing policies.
-- *********************************************** Alexandre Hocquet Archives Henri Poincaré & RWTH c:o/re https://poincare.univ-lorraine.fr/fr/membre-titulaire/alexandre-hocquet https://khk.rwth-aachen.de/fellows/prof-alexandre-hocquet/ *********************************************** _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
participants (4)
-
Alexandre Hocquet -
Jonathan Coopersmith -
Nabeel Siddiqui -
Warren Sack