The Terminator 2: Judgment Day has been on my mind a lot lately for two reasons. One, I am planning my annual post-semester winter-holiday decorating, gingerbread baking movie watch-list. Two, SkyNet’s sentience and destruction of humanity is feeling more and more real these days. Well, perhaps not SkyNet exactly. But it certainly seems like technology is hurdling us towards something, and it ain’t good. Was?!? Andy Baio’s critique of art created by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2, “Opening the Pandora’s Box of AI Art,” touched on a visceral unease with the pace, acceptance, and championing of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and data…
Visualizing Data from The Money Chair
The Money Chair I loved to tip-toe into my grandfather’s den and sit in the world’s most opulent seat- The Money Chair. Overstuffed and a deep green, this chair earned such an esteemed nickname not because of its hue but because of the earthy smell of leather. “You smell that? That’s the smell of money!” my grandfather told me when he first brought it home, his retirement present to himself. I would sit in The Money Chair and stare at his endless shelves of magazines that stood taller than me. Time. National Geographic. Life. Issue after issue lined up neatly….
Dinosaurs eat data, humanists inherit the Earth
Apparently dinosaurs, data, and the digital is a thing around here, dear readers. If that is not your jam, the helicopter is still running. You can hop off this island right now. But for the rest of you? Hop in, buckle up, and welcome to Cassie’s Park. From “A-ha” to “Aaaaahhhhhhh!” My foray into digital history and digital humanities (which for the remainder of this blog, I will collectively refer to as “DH” for simplicity) started with wonder. Creating digital things had seemed entirely untouchable, especially for a (proud) community college alum who (at the time) aspired to be a…
Place, Time, Maps
Made of Stars The stars and city lights melted together. At the top of the stairs, the lights looked like an urban model of spacetime, with the million twinkling spots bending and warping with the gravitational pull of life. The soft lights bent, rolled, and traveled across the contours of hillsides, valleys, and canyons that San Diego State University looked across. There were many beautiful buildings on the campus to take in the views, but the top of the stairs leading up from Parking Lot 16 remained my favorite vantage point. I had many evening conversations here, overlooking Mission Valley….
