For the latest instalment of the Fish and the Painting I have been wrestling with topic modeling. I say wrestling not because the coding is hard but because the analytical value of topic modeling is so hard. Topic modeling has become a kind of go-to…
It’s like hitting a painting with a fish. This was the quip that a well-known British novelist made when asked about using computation to study literature. You could, but why would you? I think it’s becoming increasingly clear to people all of the ways data…
In 1967, Guy Debord published The Society of the Spectacle. In it, he tried to show us how virtual real life had become, that is, the extent to which social and political life was increasingly dominated by media and mediation. The recent Canadian election made…
The NovelTM partnership is going into it’s 6th and final year. It has been a tremendous experience. As a team we’ve produced more than a hundred articles, trained over 200 students, held annual workshops, created a methods commons, and soon a collective data set for other…
A lot of the hoopla around big data has revolved around a hierarchy of scale. After all, it’s called BIG data. This has had understandably gendered connotations in its promotion and reception. I found myself thinking about this problem when I was discussing my summer…
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “That’s right.” – Sunspring, a film written by AI The term gonzo data science was used by the creator of the AI that was used to write Sunspring. He works at Google. Gonzo journalism was a term coined…
I’m on sabbatical this year. It will officially begin on Tuesday when classes normally start. I’ll be in a cabin, one similar to these beautiful Cape Cod Cabin structures to celebrate in the woods with nature. I’m trying to create as many rituals as possible…
In the old days, people used to talk about gaming the system. It meant manipulating the rules to produce a desired outcome. The term was popularized by software engineers in 1975. Today, we hear a lot more about “gamification,” another term popularized by software engineers.…