iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 10h

A reminder that AAUP put together a resource for how to write and submit FOIAs that you can use to see just how much money higher ed institutions are funneling towards tech companies while deepening the surveillance state.

aaup.org

How to Use FOIA to Uncover Higher Ed Partnerships and Contracts with Tech Companies

2026, Taylor Fox, AAUP Legal Intern & AAUP Ad Hoc Committee on AI in Academic Professions

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

I wrote some scattered thoughts on generative AI and literary authorship, sparked by @vauhinivara.bsky.social's article using Pangram to detect the use of AI in a story that won the Caine Prize.

whitneytrettien.substack.com

On generative AI and literary authorship

Some musings on authorship and the boundaries of the subject in the age of LLMs.

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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Announcement!!! Big news!!! 📢📢📢 My book, The Racialization of Print, has a cover (!!), and a webpage, and pre-orders are now available! Coming in Spring, 2027, from @uncpress.bsky.social and @oieahc.bsky.social Use code 01SOCIAL30 to save 30% uncpress.org/979889313492...

Cover of my book, full title is The Racialization of Print: from John Smith to Frederick Douglsss. A very simple graphic cover with black and white and yellow background

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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 13/10/2026

Occasionally I get obsessed with giving a particular lecture, which is what happened with this one on the co-invention of race and data. IDK how useful it is without my notes but all the images are linked with sources & there are lots of links to further reading. docs.google.com/presentation...

docs.google.com

DJS F26 W03A Data Origins

DATA ORIGINS JMW Turner, The Slave Ship: Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon coming on (1840)

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

A class with only two books, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World and Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet.

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

"Collective Futures is a six-week, citywide project activating Philadelphia’s network of artist-run spaces, DIY venues, and community-based initiatives... The project highlights how artists come together to build shared platforms, experiment with new forms, and sustain creative communities."

collectivefutures.info

Collective Futures - Philadelphia

Philadelphia

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Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies @sims-mss.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Say hello to BASIRA (Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art): basiraproject.org #medievalsky --------------- Video by Emily Brooks Music by J.D. Porter Narration by Iris Péron-Ames

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Congrats to all those who nurtured this incredible network. I was a HASTAC scholar in 2009. It gave me the courage to pursue the kind of scholarship *I* wanted to when everything/everyone else in grad school told me not to. I try to carry that forward. HASTAC might be gone, but the flame stays lit.

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Sophie Weinberg @sophie-rose-reads.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Putting out a #bookhistory bat signal: does anyone have any resources on the history+production of ink balls/ball leathers? Finding it difficult to locate sources on preparing sheepskin for non-leather, non-parchment purposes…

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

At the MoMA today for THE SURREALIST BOOK, a fabulous new exhibit by Jodi Hauptman & Starr Figura. Ft. artists' books from the Zell collection, spanning surrealism to the present. I wrote the catalogue's epilogue on artsy bookmaking & "new" media. It was fun. Come see these gorgeous books.

moma.org

The Surrealist Book: Tomorrow Lives in Mirrors | MoMA

Exhibition. Oct 4, 2026–Jan 23, 2027. A book bound with shards of shattered glass. A manifesto enshrined in polished metal. Love poems seamlessly merging with solarized photographs. For artists and wr...

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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

CFP: Generative Digital Humanities, a volume on AI and DH in the long-running Minnesota Debates in DH book series. To be co-edited by @zentralwerkstatt.org, @laurenfklein.bsky.social, @lnakamura.bsky.social, and myself. Deadline Nov. 1. Please share widely! dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/page/cfp-gen...

dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu

CFP: Generative Digital Humanities | Debates in the Digital Humanities

Transforming scholarly publications into living digital works

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Why did everyone rag so hard on participation trophies, my 5yo just brought one home and I'm proud as punch. Not because I don't believe in academic achievement (duh), but because it awarded a v small thing he actually *has* been working hard on, and I could tell he appreciated it being recognized.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Very cool! thanks for sharing! I've been looking into the history of the buttons on these keyboards a bit lately. Are these metal with some kind of printed label?

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Suzanne Karr Schmidt @drkarrschmidt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

ImPRESSed Yet? I am thrilled to announce that Impressive Textiles: Premodern Printing on Fabric will be published October 27 in print and Open Access with @acmrs.bsky.social, thanks to 30 textile and print scholars, and 1 groundbreaking exhibition @newberrylibrary.bsky.social! #CoverReveal 1/5

Cover art for Impressive Textiles: Premodern Printing on Fabric!

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Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

my book is out now 🫶 💗 $18 with coupon code E26CNTNT enjoy!!!??? :)

dukeupress.edu

Content Machines: Reading and Writing in the Platform Era

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

In the 1860s, chess player Howard Staunton produced a photo-facsimile of Shakespeare's First Folio. It was one of the earliest attempts to use new technology to reproduce an old book. @folger.edu has Staunton’s proof sheets. I looked at them last week. If you like media/books/history, they're fun.

whitneytrettien.substack.com

“How on earth came the t turned into s?!!!!”

On Howard Staunton’s photozincographic facsimile of Shakespeare’s First Folio

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It makes me batty that my smart relatives eagerly consume all this half-wrong history on social media. And then share it with excitement & awe. But also would never read a trade nonfiction book. There’s a hunger to know… as long as it’s short form video by an AI voiceover reading wikipedia.

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Dot Porter @leoba.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

If you are in or around Philly, come hear me talk about the work I'm doing at @sims-mss.bsky.social , inspired by #DHMakes! Free lunch! Don't miss it - next week at @pricelab.bsky.social on Tuesday, 12pm-1:30pm. pricelab.sas.upenn.edu/events/dot-p...

pricelab.sas.upenn.edu

Price Lab for Digital Humanities

The Price Lab is the University of Pennsylvania's center for innovative uses of technology in the study and teaching of history, art, and culture.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Yep, just posted about that. Definitely was in the air. William Gaddis also became interested in the player piano around the same time.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Two years later Kurt Vonnegut's debut novel comes out, PLAYER PIANO. My favorite character is Rudy Hertz, an oldtimer & the best machinist around. When engineers come to automate the factory, they record Hertz's actions on tape. Then the tape runs the machines, like a paper roll playing a pianola.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

In an essay from 1950, Norbert Weiner describes a guy who buys a player piano. It's clear he doesn't care about music, he's only interested in the mechanics of the thing. For Weiner, this is the difference between KNOW-HOW (technical skill) and KNOW-WHAT (how to use tech for human flourishing).

Quote from Norbert Weiner reading: "Some years ago, a prominent American engineer bought an expensive player-piano. It became clear after a week or two that this purchase did not correspond to any
particular interest in the music played by the piano but rather to an overwhelming interest in the piano mechanism. For this gentleman, the player-piano was not a means of producing music, but a means of giving
some inventor the chance of showing how skillful he was at overcoming certain difficulties in the production of music. This is an estimable attitude in a second-year high-school student. How estimable it is in one of those on whom the whole cultural future of the country depends, I leave to the reader."

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Vauhini Vara @vauhinivara.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I profiled the startup behind Pangram, the AI detector everyone’s talking about. It works really, really well. I wanted to understand how they did it. and also: why people still don’t trust them. (also, news: Penguin Random House is using it.) gift link! ✨

bloomberg.com

The World’s Most Reliable AI Detector Has a Human Problem

Armed with a near-perfect detection tool, Pangram is fighting to convince the public AI cheating can be caught.

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Dr David Rundle @drdavidrundle.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Some nice #fragment news here:

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Sarah Bull @sarahebull.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

fascinated by this next layer of abstraction, where the text becomes something else entirely, a substrate where its historical and geographic idiosyncrasies can become a problem (or opportunity), and wonder how it might change, or is already changing, how we talk about digitization

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Sarah Bull @sarahebull.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

It's a contrast to the first few decades of digitization, where the point of digitization was initially conceived as preserving and disseminating books themselves in a new form. Digitization also made it possible to extract information *from* them new ways, including for scholars. I find myself +

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Exactly. If you ever have the energy to co-author something, I’d be interested in exploring together. I’ve been pondering the same stuff.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I understand where you’re coming from but hard disagree these books are not unique artifacts. They are the only evidence of whole worlds of social and culture practice. That alone isn’t enough to say each individual copy should always be saved — but that’s the place we should start the convo from.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Ah, I see. I was talking optics more than actual access (cynically). And the optics would be the way to push back on the copyright hurdles (“we are picking up slack where public institutions have lagged behind”). But yeah, hurdles are many.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Did what, not destroy the books? I’m talking about something bigger.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

It seems like rare books not as in medieval manuscripts but old stock that doesn’t sell on AbeBooks, weird old books from early 20c or mid century vanity press stuff. Rare as in not easy to find, not valuable. Exactly the kind of stuff that also isn’t scanned.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

True! Maybe just not the implications, what it will mean for our relationship to them (and how easily it can sour).

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Yes, I keep thinking about the Internet Archive. Also Amelia Acker's book on "archiving machines," and platforms as archivists (who don't seem to understand what that means).

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

They are powerful, & big, & Anthropic at least has cultural capital right now beyond its own actual worth. Build a new Library of Alexandria. Hire librarians to sort through all that shit & build a temple to it. Make us love you for saving the old while building from it the new.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

But more than anything, it's dumb EVEN/especially from the company’s perspective. "Big Tech" companies have become our de facto institutions of cultural memory. I hate it. It’s still true. Do they not realize this? Can they, like, hire an information scientist to clue them in?

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

And of course, my book historian peoples are right: books are more than their content, so when you destroy lots of books you’re destroying more than "the text." (This is lost in many internet comments.) You can’t save everything, but slurping up old shit just to pulp it is probably equally stupid.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I can’t stop thinking about Anthropic’s destructive book scanning. Obviously, it’s gross. People love books. Destroying books makes people mad. Even books they don't actually care about. AI companies know this, that’s why they try to keep their weird behavior a dirty little secret.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Actually that might be Nick Herman in the video. Still cool!

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Marie Léger-St-Jean @marielsj.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Lois Burke —formerly at Tilburg University, now at the University of Stirling— is making her pitch for the usefulness of manuscript magazines. There is for instance "The Sunbeam Magazine" (1866), edited by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)... collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/1067... #BAVS2026

*The Sunbeam Magazine* front wrapper

Source: https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/digital_objects/251120

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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

New from 404 Media: a company is selling tons of old books specifically to AI companies and says they have a strong NDA to never reveal which AI company bought all of the books. They don't want headlines of 'we scanned and destroyed millions of books for AI' www.404media.co/ai-companies...

404media.co

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop

ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

yeah exactly, we could all be publishing zines but that deflates the argument that the humanities should have any kind of impact on big picture public anything. we can't have it both ways, be niche and pure and also vital and central. we don't talk about how to thread that needle enough.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I think you could make a claim that zines, some zines, some zine culture, does this. when you're hand drawing, photocopying, putting it in local stores or coffee shops for free. maybe zines are the real rent strike!

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

publishers and folks who work in special collections &c. know all this (cf YOU) but some parts of literary studies seem to have a bit of a nostalgic bent right now. which isn't problematic in itself, except I worry it keeps misidentifying the real culprits.

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

& the bookstore uses datafied logistics (cf @miriamposner.com work), credit card/car track you home, shelf requires datafied energy inputs (see @leoflores.bsky.social thread), &c. All digital data all the way down! Until a curious author uses quill, letterpress, & sells cash by door. Yes, not alone!

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I appreciate where the slogan is coming from, it makes clear the kind of "rent" extracted under subscription; but most of my career has been spent trying to destroy the idea that "print" opposes "digital" so I actually find it muddies the water more than it clarifies, imho. to all your points here.

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Leonardo Flores @leoflores.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I love the sentiment and agree with it! But this is a very temperate zone perspective. The tropics are another manner. As someone born and raised in Puerto Rico, maintaining my book collection was a constant battle against mold, flying termites, humidity (book covers stick together), and so on.

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