Transliteracies is hosting a design charrette at UCSB on February 26, 2010, for its participants and invited guests. The charrette focuses on the Transliteracies RoSE (Research-oriented Social Environment) project, now in beta development (accessible to Transliteracies participants). But it also branches out in breakout groups to consider critical research problems related to socially-mediated computing and knowledge production—including expertise and networked public knowledge, data-mining and visualization of social networks, information credibility, fluid ontologies and metadata for social and historical research, and online reading and research environments.

The worldwide contest was designed to engage undergraduate and graduate students in the newly emerging, interdisciplinary field of “social computing.” Participants were encouraged to imagine how society and technology will interact 10 to 20 years from now – far enough in the future to stretch our imagination of technology, yet near enough to be plausible.

Contest entries consisted of a description of the envisioned technology as well as an imaginative realization, embodiment, or illustration of the idea. The entries were judged on the basis of creativity, understanding of technology and society, explanatory clarity and organization of the description, and the quality of the imaginative realization, embodiment, or illustration. (See the original contest announcement.) (Note: this contest is now over.)

The Winners:

First Prize ($3,000): “SENSe” by Karen Tanenbaum and Joshua Tanenbaum, graduate students, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University

Second Prize ($1,000): “Experiential Skin Diving” by Daniel Luis Kamakura, undergraduate, English major, Duke University

Third Prize ($500): “Anatomical Analytics” by Chris Castiglione, graduate student, New Media Programme, University of Amsterdam

The contest committee would like to also recognize these outstanding Honorable Mentions: – “Mexican Laser Light Extravaganza“ by Justin Andrew Gutierrez, undergraduate, Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts/Music, UC San Diego. – “Continuous Media Mobilities” by Jordan Kraemer, graduate student, Cultural Anthropology, UC Irvine. – “Virtual Health Centers” by Mariano Mora-McGinity, graduate student, Media Arts and Technology, UC Santa Barbara.

See the full Winners Announcement for more details.

The Transliteracies History of Reading Group sponsored a discussion of Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social, led by Bill Warner. Latour’s recent book both introduces Actor-Network-Theory and challenges contemporary assumptions about what we call the “social.” Professor Warner led a discussion of the following sections of Latour’s book:

Reassembling the Social

• “Third Source of Uncertainty: Objects too Have Agency” (63-86)


• “First Move: Localizing the Global” (173-190)


• (optional) “Introduction” (1-17)

On Wednesday, March 18 at 4:00 pm, Brian Cummings gave a talk entitled “Augustine and the History of Reading: from Post-Medieval to Prenaissance.”

Brian Cummings is Professor of English at the University of Sussex, where he was Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies from 2004 to 2008. He is the author of The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford University Press, 2002), which was named a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year for 2003.

This event is co-sponsored by UCSB’s Renaissance Studies program and the IHC’s History of Material Texts RFG.

The History of Reading Group hosted a one-day, interdisciplinary conference that provided a forum for sharing recent research findings in the history of reading, with an eye toward investigating the technologies that shape reading as a social experience. The keynote speakers were Adrian Johns (University of Chicago) and Elaine Treharne (Florida State University).

Sponsored by the University of California’s Transliteracies Project and the IHC’s History of Material Texts RFG.

On Friday, February 20 at 12:00 pm, Ramesh Srinivasan gave a talk entitled “Intersections Between the Cultural and the Digital: New Models for Technological Appropriation.”

Srinivasan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Studies and Design|Media Arts at the University of California Los Angeles. He earned a doctorate in design from Harvard University, a Master of Science in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT Media Laboratory and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.

On Thursday, February 19, Johanna Drucker gave a talk entitled “I.nterpret” in UCSB’s South Hall 2635. The talk drew upon her essay “Humanities ‘Tools’” forthcoming in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Drucker, the Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, is currently the Digital Humanities Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center for 2008-09 where she is working on a project titled, “Diagramming Interpretation.”

The University of California Transliteracies Project and UC Santa Barbara Social Computing Group announce the “Social Computing in 2020” Bluesky Innovation Competition. What will social computing technologies and practices be like in the year 2020?

• Eligible: Undergraduate or graduate students anywhere in the world.


• Awards: 1st prize, $3000 USD; 2nd prize, $1000, 3rd prize, $500.


• Submission Format: Description of an idea + Imaginative realization, embodiment, or illustration of the idea in a variety of possible formats (e.g., an essay, story, script, application sketch, fictional business plan, etc.).


• Deadline: January 30, 2009.


• Full Competition Announcement: Guidelines & Submission Details

Students from any discipline—humanities, arts, social sciences, computer science, engineering, etc.—are encouraged to apply. The competition emphasizes visionary, thoughtful, or critical concepts rather than technical knowledge as such.

For more information, see the full competition announcement. Inquiries may be directed by email to socialcomputing@lsmail.ucsb.edu

In 2008-2009, Transliteracies continues to pursue its turn in the direction of “social computing” issues by bringing its three research working groups (Social Computing, History of Reading, New Reading Interfaces) into conjunction around the topic of the collective dimensions of information, reading, and annotation. Research activities this year include:

• Planning and working meetings of the research working groups (including the graduate-student Bluesky Group associated with the Social Computing Group)
• The Bluesky Innovation Competition on “Social Computing in 2020”
• High-priority research reports on current humanities and other text-mining initiatives with an eye on suggesting additional social-computing functionality
• Development of a plan for a graduate research and training program in social computing
• A possible design workshop or charette related to the relation between expert knowledge (e.g., scholarly knowledge) and networked public knowledge (e.g., Wikipedia).
• Additional lectures and workshops.

• Possible collaboration with the Canadian Public Knowledge Project and or INKE.

  Current general-purpose planning documents include:

• Planning slides for Transliteracies activities in 2008-2009 (year-four-plan-short.pdf)
• Planning timeline for 2008-2009 (planning-timeline-2008-2009.doc)
• High-priority research report topics (high-priority-research-report-topics.doc)
  UCSB Social Computing Group Workshop. Friday, May 30, 2008 at UCSB.
  The UCSB Social Computing Group held a workshop on Friday May 30th on the present and future of social computing with guests Joan DiMicco (IBM Collaborative User Experience Group), Tad Hirsch (MIT Media Lab), Peter Kollock (Sociology Dept., UCLA), Larry Sanger (a founder of Wikipedia, Editor-in-Chief of the Citizendium), and Nancy van House (School of Information, UC Berkeley). The workshop is a small-scale, by-invitation-only event designed to facilitate brainstorming.
  The Transliteracies Paradigms Lecture Series Co-Presents: Lectures by and an Interview with McKenzie Wark.
  The Transliteracies Paradigms Speaker Series, along with the UC Irvine Software Culture Speaker Series, recently sponsored a visit to UC Irvine by McKenzie Wark, author of GAM3R 7H3ORY and A Hacker Manifesto. Wark gave two lectures while at UCI, one on GAM3R 7H3ORY and another on his upcoming project, totality.tv Videos of these talks are available to Transliteracies members only.

  In addition, Kim Knight had the opportunity to interview McKenzie Wark on his experiences publishing GAM3R 7H3ORY using the CommentPress commenting system for WordPress. Video of the interview is available to the general public.
  

  The Transliteracies History of Reading Group has released “In the Beginning was the Word: A Visualization of the Page as Interface.”
  
  “In the Beginning was the Word” is a Flash animation that visualizes the shifting dynamic of the “page” as historical interface. The project was collaboratively conceived and researched by the History of Reading Working Group and co-authored by William Warner and Kim Knight. The site for the animation includes an introductory essay by William Warner.
  
  The Transliteracies Paradigms Lecture Series Presents: Raymond Siemens, “Converging Knowledge Domains and the Study of the Electronic Book,” Friday February 8, 11 am – 12:30 pm, UCSB South Hall 2635
  
  On Friday, February 8, Dr. Raymond Siemens gave a talk entitled “Converging Knowledge Domains and the Electronic Book.” This talk was the first Paradigms lecture of 2008 and the third in the overall series.

  The video of Dr. Siemens’ talk is now available online for members of the Transliteracies Project.
  

  Rama Hoetzlein’s December 2006 Paradigms lecture, “Quanta: Knowledge Organization for Interdisciplinary Research,” is now publicly available online.
  
  The video files for the inaugural Paradigms lecture, “Quanta: Knowledge Organization for Interdisciplinary Research” by Rama Hoetzlein, are now available to the general public.
  
  Conversation Hour With John Willinsky and Alan Liu, January 30, 2008, 11-12:30, UCSB South Hall 2509
  
  John Willinsky of the Department of Language and Literary Education, University of British Columbia, will be visiting with Alan Liu, UCSB English Department in South Hall 2509 on Wed., January 30th, 11-12:30, for an unstructured conversation about literacy, scholarly and public access to knowledge, and new media technologies. We invite others who might be interested to join us for an exchange of views and project briefings.
  
  New Reading Interfaces Roundtable at Modern Language Assoc. Convention, Dec. 28, 2007, noon-1:15 pm, Missouri Room, Sheraton Hotel, Chicago, IL
  
  Convened for the Association for Computers and the Humanities by Rita Raley, who leads the Transliteracies research working group on New Reading Interfaces, this session at the MLA is focused on one of Transliteracies main research issues. Participants include (full abstracts online):
  
  
  
  • “Tag Clouds: Reading the Poetic Interface,” Jeremy H. Douglass, Univ. of California, San Diego
  
  
  • “Toward a Semantic Literary Web: Three Case Histories,” Joseph Paul Tabbi, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago
  
  
  • “Reading Shaw’s Legible City,” Elizabeth Swanstrom, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara
  
  
  • “Reading the Margins of The Magic Book,” Sarah Jane Sloane, Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins
  
  
  • “Texts in Virtual Contexts: Reading Scholarly Work in 3-D Environments,” Victoria E. Szabo, Duke Univ.
  
  
  
  
  Transliteracies New Reading Interfaces Symposium, May 12th, 9 am – 6 pm, SH 2635, UCSB
  
  The New Reading Interfaces Working Group will convene on Saturday May 12th to showcase the research completed over the past year and to discuss the group’s direction for 2007-2008.
  
  Transliteracies Paradigms Lecture: “The Humanities and the Scientific Study of Comprehension” by Andrew Elfenbein, May 3rd, 4 pm – 5:30 pm, SH 2635, UCSB
  
  “Paradigms” is a focused lecture series that showcases important research approaches with the potential to influence the direction of the UC Transliteracies Project on online reading. Andrew Elfebein, Professor of English at the University of Minnesota, will give the second in the series of Paradigms lectures on Thursday May 3rd at UCSB. Professor Elfenbein has been a leader in introducing the perspectives and methods of recent cognitive science to the study of literary texts. His important article on this topic, “Cognitive Science and the History of Reading,” appeared in PMLA 121.2 (2006) 484-500. (Read the Transliteracies Research Report about this article.) Elfenbein is an affiliate member of the U. Minnesota Center for Cognitive Sciences
  
  Transliteracies reports on “Newspaper 2.0” workshop
  
  Katrina Kimport of the Transliteracies Project reports on “Newspaper 2.0,” a workshop held on February 10, 2007, to explore challenges and opportunities in the new Internet-enabled newspaper marketplace. The workshop brought together journalists, scholars and leading thinkers who shared a common interest in the future of daily and weekly journals—with a particular interest in Santa Barbara as a region where new approaches might be explored. The workshop was sponsored by the UCSB Center for Information Technology & Society (CITS) with supplementary sponsorship from the UC Transliteracies Project. It was hosted by Doc Searls, a CITS Research Fellow and journalist with feet in both the print and online domains. During the workshop, Kimport blogged news of the event on the Transliteracies site.
  
  Transliteracies starts “Paradigms” Lecture Series
  
  “Paradigms” is a focused lecture series that showcases important research approaches with the potential to influence the direction of the UC Transliteracies Project on online reading. Rama Hoetzlein, a Ph.D. student in the UC Santa Barbara Media Arts & Technology program, gave the first talk in the series on his Quanta system and “Knowledge Organization for Interdisciplinary Research.” Andrew Elfenbein of the University of Minnesota is next up with a talk on May 3, 2007, on the implications of recent research in cognitive psychology on online reading practices. (Videos of the talks are available to Transliteracies project participants.)
  
  Transliteracies in the News
  
  Sue Thomas, Professor of New Media in the Faculty of Humanities at De Montfort University, UK, reports on the Transliteracies Conference held at UC Santa Barbara on June 7-8, 2005 (article: “Transliteracy—Reading in the Digital Age”)
  
  Transliteracies Awarded UC Funding as Multi-Campus Research Group
  
  Transliteracies has been granted status as a University of California Multi-Campus Research Group (MRG) for 2005-2010, with total funding of $175,000 from the UC system and another $175,000 in cost sharing from UC Santa Barbara.
  
  UCSB Conversation Roundtables on Online Reading
  
  Transliteracies hosted the UCSB Conversation Roundtables on Online Reading on June 17-18, 2005. (conference materials | more photos)