Sign in

Jacob Gaboury

@jacobgaboury.bsky.social
4.3K followers 554 following 57 posts

Associate Professor of Film & Media, UC Berkeley (he/him) Media History | STS | Queer Theory | Digital Visual Culture Book: Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics (2021) Now: Screenshot Histories & Queer Computing jacobgaboury.com

PostsRepliesMedia
Jacob Gaboury @jacobgaboury.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
My department is hosting a day long symposium in honor of our recently retired colleague Mary Ann Doane from 10am-6pm on November 13th at UC Berkeley. It's an incredible lineup of former students and colleagues - full details and registration in the link below! filmmedia.berkeley.edu/news/symposi...
A young Mary Ann Doane lecturing in front of an audience
030
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Video Game History Foundation @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
We've passed over 5000 out-of-print magazines in our digital archive! This is a big milestone that wouldn't have been possible without our community of supporters, collaborators, and industry partners. And it's about to keep growing. Learn more...
gamehistory.org
VGHF Digital Archive passes 5000 magazines. Here's what's next. | Video Game History Foundation
We've passed a big milestone for our digital archive. Let's talk about where our magazine collection is going next...
2349100
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Tyler Shoemaker @t-shoemaker.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Next month marks the 60th anniversary of the JHU conference where Derrida delivered “Sign, Structure, and Play.” We’re taking the opportunity to revisit (and reopen?) the structuralism question with regard to AI. If you’re in the Triangle, come by!
1219
Jacob Gaboury @jacobgaboury.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
For anyone in the Bay Area, @hannesbajohr.de and @antoniosomaini.bsky.social have organized an exciting 3-day workshop on AI and culture this week. I'll be speaking on a Thursday panel with @nwbaer.bsky.social and @shanedenson.bsky.social! german.berkeley.edu/latent-space...
Poster for "The Latent Spaces of Culture" conference at UC Berkeley.
0165
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science @mpiwg.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
New book by Director emerita Lorraine Daston: "Diversity: The History of a Wandering Value" 💐 "The long history of #Diversity as an #Aesthetic and economic value helps explain the recent rapid rise of diversity as a #Moral and political value." 🔗 tinyurl.com/yke6f86z #HistSci
Book cover. The title and the author's name are featured in white letters on a blue background. Below, there is an oil painting of a bouquet of flowers in red, pink, yellow, white, and blue.
02410
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
xiaochang @xiaochang.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Look what arrived at my office! Thanks to @joecalamia.bsky.social and @uchicagopress.bsky.social for all the amazing work they did to turn my thoughts into a material object that actually exists in the world (and for the complimentary copies)!
Box with copies of the book Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture (University of Chicago Press 2026) by Xiaochang Li
1238
Jacob Gaboury @jacobgaboury.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
My department at UC Berkeley is hiring a TT Assistant Professor in "Critical/Experimental Film and Video Production." It's a wonderful and dynamic department and one of the fastest growing programs on campus. Applications are due September 30th, please share widely! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05434
aprecruit.berkeley.edu
Assistant Professor - Critical/Experimental Film and Video Production - Department of Film & Media
University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!
03125
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Peter McDonald @pdmcdonald.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Come and join me tonight as I talk about The Impossible Reversal and the origins of game design in management training. ROMchip will be hosting me for a talk on their twitch channel with a Q&A afterwards! 7pm ET, and more info here: www.tickettailor.com/events/romch...
tickettailor.com
Select Tickets – ROMchip Presents: Peter McDonald on The Impossible Reversal: A History of How We Play – Twitch
ROMchip Presents: Peter McDonald on The Impossible Reversal: A History of How We Play – Twitch, Tue Jul 14, 2026 - **Tickets serve as calendar reminders for the event; they are not required to attend....
131
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Jason Scott @textfiles.com · 04/07/2026
OK, let's start the search. Adrienne Shaw is on the lookout for two titles of early LGBTQ software that predate Caper in the Castro. One is called VAPOR PALACE. The other features Tom of Finland art but has no discovered name yet. The search is on - if you know more details or... have a copy? ping.
419391
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 01/06/2026
There is something in here for everyone: Marxists, logistics obsessives, obsolete-software enthusiasts, and those are all the kinds of people I know about. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
yalebooks.yale.edu
Seeing Like a Supply Chain
A history of the technology of supply-chain management from punch cards to neural nets, and how the ambiguity built into that technology helps companies and ...
2231491
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 12/05/2026
This neat site assembles all kinds of ancient OSs (more like window managers) which reminded me of the hyper-obscure one that I learned Desktop computing on, called GeoWorks Ensemble. It pretends to be Windows but if you poke anything it crumbles back into DOS. Glorious. www.typewritten.org/Media/
1244
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Internet Archive @archive.org · 04/05/2026
VANISHING CULTURE is out now! From #InternetArchive, this book looks at what is disappearing online. It asks what it means when the record of ourselves starts to vanish 🕳️ 📖 Download: archive.org/details/vani... 🛒 Purchase in print: www.betterworldbooks.com/product/deta... #DigitalMemory #Books
Book cover titled “Vanishing Culture” on a teal background. Pixel-art style graphics show a VHS tape, open book, film reel, chain link, and vinyl record dissolving into digital fragments. At the bottom, a cursor icon points to the word “SAVE,” alongside an archive-style building icon, evoking digital preservation.
228790
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Slava Greenberg 🩼🏳️‍⚧️✡️🇺🇦🧶 in 🇳🇱 for 🍉 @slavagreenberg.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
Save a queer bookstore!
092
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
cass @cassiusa.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Immediately rushing to teach this in my grad seminar
051
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Rahul Mukherjee @rahmuk.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
My CIMS department at Penn is hiring for a Visiting Assistant Professor position in Media Studies: apply.interfolio.com/180872
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
032
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Alyssa S. @drsepinwall.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Coming back to read @jacobgaboury.bsky.social's Screenshots Or It Didn't Happen more carefully to teach it this week. It's a really great article, even beyond the 🔥 title! Histories of transformation in computer users relation to the screen & of gaming 🗃️ www.romchip.org/index.php/ro...
romchip.org
Screenshots or It Didn’t Happen | ROMchip
263
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
@melaniemitchell.bsky.social on Brian Cantwell Smith "The difference between reckoning and judgment...highlights the need for a textured map of intelligence’s kinds ... to explain why reckoning systems are so astonishingly powerful in some respects, yet fall so spectacularly short in others.”
substack.com
On Brian Cantwell Smith and the Promise of AI
Today I had the bittersweet pleasure of participating in a symposium honoring the late philosopher Brian Cantwell Smith, a good friend whom I’d known for over 30 years.
022
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Patrick LeMieux @alt254.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
Hey! At 1PM PST/4PM EST I'm playing a modular synth set focusing on house music and samples of home themes for the @romchip.bsky.social fundraiser! Learn more at donate.romchip.org and watch the stream (live now) at www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal
1148
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories @romchip.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
We're starting our 3rd annual fundraiser momentarily -- join us! www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal
0119
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Shane Denson @shanedenson.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
CFP: Stanford-Leuphana Summer Academy on Humanities and Media 2026: Periodization After a one-year hiatus, the Stanford-Leuphana Summer Academy on Humanities and Media is back! The theme for 2026 is Periodization, and we'll meet for the week of June 22-26 in Berlin. How, why, and with what…
blog.shanedenson.com
CFP: Stanford-Leuphana Summer Academy on Humanities and Media 2026: Periodization
After a one-year hiatus, the Stanford-Leuphana Summer Academy on Humanities and Media is back! The theme for 2026 is Periodization, and we'll meet for the week of June 22-26 in Berlin. How, why, and with what epistemic implications is history divided into temporal segments? Periodizations—whether in the form of epochs, ages, turning points, or more heroic “eras”—belong to the most fundamental and at the same time most frequently contested historiographical operations in literary, art, and media studies.
094
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Jeffrey West Kirkwood @jeffreykirkwood.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
My new text on parallel processing and the financial nature of AI is online open source (along with a bunch of other killer texts) in the new volume Reckoning with Everything edited by Bernhard Siegert and Benedikt Merkle for Meson Press meson.press/books/reckon...
meson.press
Reckoning with Everything. The Becoming-Environmental of Computing › meson press
Computation must and has always had to “reckon with everything.” This volume brings together contributions that seek to describe the environmentality of computation based on selected settings.
1229
Jacob Gaboury @jacobgaboury.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Happening now! Join us: berkeley.zoom.us/j/94576327580
berkeley.zoom.us
Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting
Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise cloud communications.
050
Jacob Gaboury @jacobgaboury.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Only a few hours away! Please join us for this wonderful conversation.
010
Jacob Gaboury @jacobgaboury.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Happening tomorrow! Join us at 4:30pm EST!
030
Jacob Gaboury @jacobgaboury.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
What a fantastic idea for a class! Excited to see the pairings each week.
050
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Jacob Gaboury @jacobgaboury.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
On Thurs 1/29 from 4:30-5:30EST I will be co-hosting a book event with @gkafer.bsky.social for @scmsmst.bsky.social! We will be in dialogue w/ Anna Munster (UNSW) and Sarah Murray (UMich) about their new books on AI: "DeepAesthetics" and "Powered by Smart". Join us! berkeley.zoom.us/j/94576327580
Cover images for Anna Munster's book "DeepAesthetics: Computational Experience in a Time of Machine Learning" and Sarah Murray's "Powered by Smart: A Prehistory of Everyday AI".
0114
Jacob Gaboury @jacobgaboury.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
On Thurs 1/29 from 4:30-5:30EST I will be co-hosting a book event with @gkafer.bsky.social for @scmsmst.bsky.social! We will be in dialogue w/ Anna Munster (UNSW) and Sarah Murray (UMich) about their new books on AI: "DeepAesthetics" and "Powered by Smart". Join us! berkeley.zoom.us/j/94576327580
Cover images for Anna Munster's book "DeepAesthetics: Computational Experience in a Time of Machine Learning" and Sarah Murray's "Powered by Smart: A Prehistory of Everyday AI".
0114
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Alyssa S. @drsepinwall.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
‪I didn't know about this journal, and just peeked at the last issue. This title is amazing! "Screenshots or It Didn’t Happen: Screen Photography and Early Game Cultures" Jacob Gaboury Congratulations @jacobgaboury.bsky.social! www.romchip.org/index.php/ro...
romchip.org
Screenshots or It Didn’t Happen | ROMchip
242
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Video Game History Foundation @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
It's Giving Tuesday at the VGHF! We've had an incredible 2025, but we need your help to make sure we can continue doing our charitable work in 2026 and beyond. We just launched our annual Winter Fundraiser campaign, please give if you're able (and share this post!). gamehistory.org/donate
6508282
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Patrick LeMieux @alt254.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
Ding ding ding! We are now here at @wonderville.nyc for the third and final session of the OCTOPAD OPEN! You can find us at 1186 Broadway in Brooklyn from 3-8PM! For more info check out: www.wonderville.nyc/events/the-o...
A blue poster featuring two hands grasping bundles of NES controllers but instead of 8 buttons on 1 controller here there’s 1 button on 8 controllers…times two! The text reads “The Octopad Open at Wonderville; Saturday Nov. 8 from 3-8pm; 1186 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11221.”
1113
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 09/09/2025
It’s in 😬😱
Seeing Like a Supply Chain:
Data in the Circuits of Global Trade
Miriam PosnerContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Systems at War in a Hostile Universe: The Informatic Roots of Logistics
2. Exploding the BOM: Digitizing Production in the Cold War
3. Phantoms, Backflushes, and the Trumpet of Doom: The Dilemmas of Just-in-Time
4. Inventing SCM
5. The Sensate Company in the Animate Cloud
6. Transferring Risk in a Calamitous World
3130113
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
San Francisco Review of Whatever @sfreviewofwhatever.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
SAN FRANCISCO REVIEW OF WHATEVER ISSUE TWO RELEASE PARTY REMINDER! TOMORROW, Thursday, August 28, at 6 p.m. onward, at Et al., 2831A Mission Street. There will be readings with an element of chance! And pizza and beers, and whatever else turns up. See you tomorrow! Looking forward. xx
SFRW • Issue Two Release Party • Thursday, August 28 at Et al.
• Readings with an element of chance
Featuring Sophia Wang Michael Walker • Ted Barrow
• Amanda Guest • Craig Calderwood • Anne Walsh
Rose Linke • Christina Svenson • Rod Roland
183
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
Prof. Susan Stryker puts on her "academic drag" & marshals the "cultural capital" of her doctoral training in gender studies to say that Gavin Newsom did not do his homework well enough & he would fail her class. 🔥🔥🔥
13313
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
Two things that seem clear to me after listening to ppl talk about this are: 1) that there just is no good options for SCMS right now. Speaking out means taking a risk, but so does staying silent. People are already being fired, reprimanded, or self-censoring out of fear of these.
172
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Duke University Press @dukepress.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
In "Indigenomicon," @arsavium.bsky.social examines the differences between settler colonial studies and Indigenous studies by bringing video game studies into conversation with Black studies, queer studies, and Indigenous feminist critique. Read the intro for free now: buff.ly/RM90jF8
Cover of Indigenomicon: American Indians, Video Games, and the Structures of Dispossession by Jodi Byrd. The cover art features a stylized, pixelated landscape that transitions into a painted forest scene. A river runs along the bottom, where a figure sits in a canoe. In the background, a wooden palisade, tall trees, and two stork-like birds in flight are depicted.
22716
Jacob Gaboury @jacobgaboury.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
I'll be chatting on KQED this morning at 10am PST, if you'd like to tune in!
072
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
As the deadline to submit comes up, please consider whether SCMS is a venue that aligns with your values.
0115
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
Hey, hey... @sigcisconf.bsky.social--@shothisttech.bsky.social's Special Interest Group for Computing, Information & Society--is on Bluesky! Follow them if you're interested in #ComputerHistory or the social & political impact of digital technologies like #AI. #histsci #histtech #histSTM 🗃️📜📚
media.tenor.com
a man wearing glasses is sitting at a desk in front of a computer monitor .
ALT: a man wearing glasses is sitting at a desk in front of a computer monitor .
0199
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Shane Denson @shanedenson.bsky.social · 15/07/2025
I made a piece of software! It’s called the film|minutes video|graphic workstation. It’s pretty niche but cool if you want to take notes or do very close readings of films/videos.
916650
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
xiaochang @xiaochang.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
Okay, while I'm here, something sound studies and media tech history folks may find of interest: the Ray Dolby papers were recently processed and are now available for research at Stanford's Silicon Valley Archives. A bunch of stuff has been digitized too: exhibits.stanford.edu/dolby
"Copy of series of graphs showing the 'guitar' spike alone and with various Dolby SR adjustments."
0164
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories @romchip.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
Our peer-reviewed article this issue is 📸 SCREENSHOTS OR IT DIDNT HAPPEN by @jacobgaboury.bsky.social 📺about the long history of screenshot photography within game culture 🏆 romchip.org/index.php/ro...
a photograph of a long-haired child, standing next to their TV, which displays the end screen of a video game
1153
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
You can find almost the same use of light in AI slop. Unlike CGI renderings, AI images aren't based on a simulation of light being reflected from objects in virtual space but on a statistical distribution of color values on a flat surface, which makes them more akin to painting than photography 3/
An AI image shared by Same Altman in 2023
1807
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Jacob Gaboury @jacobgaboury.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
The new issue of @romchip.bsky.social is out, and includes new work by me on the history of video game screenshots and the way we photographed our game screens to capture images of ourselves: romchip.org/index.php/ro... The rest of the issue is fantastic, check it out!
A screen photograph of the game Paperboy (1985).A photograph of a young girl in front of the end screen for Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988).A photograph of a television and its domestic context, with the TV showing the end screen of Contra (1987).A screenshot showing a raiding guild after defeating Ragnaros in the Molten Core raid dungeon of World of Warcraft (2004).
34518
Jacob Gaboury @jacobgaboury.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
The new issue of @romchip.bsky.social is out, and includes new work by me on the history of video game screenshots and the way we photographed our game screens to capture images of ourselves: romchip.org/index.php/ro... The rest of the issue is fantastic, check it out!
A screen photograph of the game Paperboy (1985).A photograph of a young girl in front of the end screen for Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988).A photograph of a television and its domestic context, with the TV showing the end screen of Contra (1987).A screenshot showing a raiding guild after defeating Ragnaros in the Molten Core raid dungeon of World of Warcraft (2004).
34518
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Marc Steinberg @msteinbrg.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
Platforms and the Moving Image book now out! Edited by Philipp Keidl and Jana Zündel, featuring the work of many amazing scholars, and mostly junior scholars, including work on Netflix, IMDb, KaraGarga, smart homes, Disney+, ALTBalaji, and much more - meson.press/books/platfo...
meson.press
Platforms and the Moving Image › meson press
Platforms and the Moving Image offers a multifaceted look at how digital platforms shape and are shaped by economic, cultural, and political forces. The collection examines the effects of gaming, soci...
1277
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Oliver Haimson @haimson.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
Can't believe book pub day is here!! *Trans Technologies* is officially published today! Use discount code MITP30 for 30% off today only (unfortunately available only in the US) www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/777584...
penguinrandomhouse.com
Trans Technologies by Oliver L. Haimson: 9780262551861 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
How technology creates new possibilities for transgender people, and how trans experiences, in turn, create new possibilities for technology. Mainstream technologies often exclude or marginalize tran...
54723
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...
What’s a technology that you think is overhyped?

I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry.

Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto.

It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.
15496623143