iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Barack Obama's citation for the presidential medal of freedom in 2016 praised her work for "[setting] the foundation for modern, ultra-reliable software design and engineering."

footnote from Moonbit with text of Obama citation for presidential medal of freedom in 2016.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

RIP Margaret Hamilton. We wrote some about her wonderful work on the Apollo 11 project and her leadership of the Command and Lunar module components of AGC code in Moonbit (punctum books, 2019). news.mit.edu/2026/margare...

remarks cards with Hamilton's name from scans of the AGC code

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

These titles always make me think about the English prof. book project from the film Smart People: "You Can't Read!"

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Going into my present project with this kind of energy.

Book covers: How to Read a Page, How to Read a Book, How to Read a Model

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I'm basically this person. The CM (also appearing in this film) was paired with a host computer and discussed in ways that echoed Rosenblatt's fantasy of "coupling of a perceptron with a conventional digital computer [that] might carry us over the remaining obstacles of grammar and syntax.”

screengrab from Jurassic Park ("It's a UNIX system! I know this")

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

There has been little scholarly work on the media history of the GPU. This freshly published OA article is my attempt to show the lines of influence from learning machines in the 1950s through 1980s HPC and MPP systems to the TPUs and GPUs of the present. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

marketing image from Nvidia of the DGX Spark paired with a MacBook.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Spammers now puffing up even the most minor contributors to repositories.

Spam email noting my super minor contributions to like the most important repository on the Internet.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

What ever happened to the Art of Google Books? Here's an interesting artifact from a Cambridge UP volume titled "Research Genres." Perhaps it depicts a common feeling when conducting research....

distorted cover image for a book titled Research Genres. "Genres" bleeds into noise.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Bound to be one of the most important critical and theoretical books on the meaning of neural networks (and not just for vision). Congratulations to Leonardo Impett and Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org! Freshly published from meson press and University of Minnesota Press. @uminnpress.bsky.social

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

They've been there from the beginning of machine learning!

Charlie Rosen of SRI dressed as gremlin to move blocks in front of the path planning (and world-model making) computer vision robot Shakey (1966-1972).

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

And here I thought most people were partaking in Critical Digital Humanitiesless Fridays this Lenten season.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

My contribution to the digital in the humanities discourse: I have a new chapter freshly out titled "The Digitalization of the Humanities: Recent Trends and Future Prospects." It's in a Morgan Kaufmann collection titled "Digital Transformation in Artificial Systems." 1/n

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Gearing up for another day in the classroom with "Critical AI." Responding to students asking why so much focus on critique?

Slide from "Critical AI" course with concluding lines to Birhane et al's "Multimodal Datasets" paper: "We critique because we care. And it is good to care."

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

My section of Perceptron opens with a poem written by Frank Rosenblatt. It's one of the few non-technical writings he left after his early and tragic death. It's titled "Courage" and we have it because it was read at his memorial and by virtue of family connections, into the Congressional Record.

Courage is to smile
When the doctor jabs the needle
Into frightened flesh, thinking
(But not saying) “Look, Mother,
How brave I am!”
Courage is to see dreams crumble,
And then shaking out the dust,
To dream again; to apprehend
The ambush hidden in the path
And still go forward; to explore
Within the hidden craters
Of your own desires; to submit
The working and creations of your mind
For public judgment.
And courage
Is to hope
When others have surrendered.
And courage
Is to face surrender
When others hope.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

This book is the result of more than six years of research, thinking, and writing and I’m so excited to share it with all of you! It began with work on Rosenblatt that informed my last book, The Birth of Computer Vision. www.upress.umn.edu/978151791421...

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

I am pretty thrilled to announce the publication of Perceptron, a creative-critical reading of Frank Rosenblatt and his world-changing invention. I co-authored Perceptron with Rena J. Mosteirin @renamosteirin.bsky.social, my collaborator and partner in all things. punctumbooks.com/titles/perce...

Box of freshly arrived copies of Perceptron. Front cover displays an image of Frank Rosenblatt's U.S. passport.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

these are cable management geniuses--how did they do that?

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Why was Marvin Minsky such a jerk?

Minsky showing a slide titled "Examples of Early AI Research" and no mention of Frank Rosenblatt.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Visiting @renamosteirin.bsky.social’s poem at the @poetrysociety.org in Brooklyn today! So happy and proud of her. Read “Your Father Came from a Movie.”

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

I return to the Eleanor Gibson- Frank Rosenblatt nexus that motivated some earlier work of mine on the history of the confusion matrix to think about Rosenblatt's comparative cat-child-machine studies.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

I've got a new essay out. "Early Machine Learning and Artificial Animal Intelligences" appears in the latest volume of the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association in a special issue titled “Intelligence” and edited by Naomi Michalowicz and Nathan Jung. muse.jhu.edu/pub/140/arti...

Title reading "Early Machine Learning and Artificial Animal Intelligences"

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Here he is looking more happy with Katherine Sergeant Angell White.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

And I've wanted to write about E.B. White for a while....even if he's occasionally a bit dour looking. This is him visiting Dartmouth for an honorary degree.

E.B. White in cap and gown to receive an honorary degree at Dartmouth College.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

I’m about half way through this brilliant and very clear account of what went wrong with the humanities and language in the past and how to move forward in the AI-informed present. Well-researched, provocative, and funny—perfect summer ready for theory heads! Congrats @leifw.bsky.social!

Weatherby’s just published Language Machines

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

I’m okay at spotting owls (although @renamosteirin.bsky.social found this one) but not so much luck with the pellets. If you’re in Maine, check out the UNE owl pellet project: sites.une.edu/maine-owl-pe...

Barred owl sitting on a post in downtown Lyme, NH.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Our Neukom Postdoctoral Fellows! Application deadline for this fellowship is Dec 1st. neukom.dartmouth.edu/funding/facu...

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

With Tom Kurtz’s passing and thinking about our present concerns with GenAI, I’ve been reflecting on the shape of the project that created BASIC and brought timesharing to Dartmouth. This work was funded under the “Course Content Improvement Program” of the NSF.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Teaching the excited students of ENGL 54.41 "Critical AI" this fall at Dartmouth College.

In the classroom with a two faculty members facing group of smiling students

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 22/01/2024

New book panel (Zoom!) on Machine Vision tomorrow, Jan 23rd (18:00 Oslo, 12pm ET, 9am PT) feat. Jill Walker Rettberg, Jussi Parikka, and me. Register here: uib.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 16/01/2024

If you are interested in the history of computer and machine vision and machine learning, please join this Zoom-based panel with Jill Walker Rettberg, Jussi Parikka, and me! Wed, January 23rd at 12:00pm Eastern/9:00am Pacific. Zoom registration here: uib.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Covert art for Machine Vision, Operational Images, and Birth of Computer Vision

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 01/10/2023

Trying to do research while an academic administrator.

Illustration from edition of Emerson’s essays. This one was paired with “Self-Reliance”

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 25/09/2023

Frank Ferdinand’s work touched many thousands of lives and he was widely mourned. Some of his records are held by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the JDC Archives

Image of an older Frank Ferdinand Rosenblatt

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 25/09/2023

Back in NY, continuing work for the JDC, he started a publishing company. Frank-Maurice (after himself and his first-born son) took over a failed press and began publishing in 1925. They published beautiful books on topics including Jewish tales and legends as well as literary work and translations.

Image of title page of The Magic Flight: Jewish Tales and Legends by Yossef Gaer

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 25/09/2023

After the PhD, he went to work for two major Jewish organizations: Joint Distribution Committee and the Bureau of Jewish Social Research. This brought him back to Russia, Lithuania, and Czechoslovakia. He raised funds from American Jews to help aid the estimated 1.5m Ukrainian Jewish pogrom victims.

Article quoting Frank F. Rosenblatt on the situation in Europe.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 25/09/2023

Let’s talk about Frank Rosenblatt’s father today. Frank Ferdinand Rosenblatt is the other Dr. Frank Rosenblatt (Frank, the younger, did not have a middle name). He was born as Ephraim in Luboml in Volhynia, Ukraine and likely on May 11, 1884 (records differ on the year).

A photo of a younger Frank Ferdinand Rosenblatt

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 25/09/2023

I have a forthcoming co-authored (w/ Rena Mosteirin) biographical account of the Perceptron and Frank Rosenblatt (Perceptron, punctum books, S24). I want to share some of my research into this fascinating figure and his foundational work on what we are (unfortunately) once again calling AI.

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