technology – Etienne Benson

visualizing cyberculture

Having asked students in the class on ‘Cyberculture’ that I’m currently teaching to try coding something in Processing that relates, in some way, to the themes of our first few weeks of reading and discussion, I figured it was only fair to try it myself.

We’ve been reading Fred Turner, Gabriella Coleman, Steven Levy, and others on the origins of free software, the countercultural roots of Internet ideology, and the idea of a ‘hacker ethic’. Perhaps the sketch below has something to do with those themes, or perhaps not.

Click below to start, and again to stop. Code is here.

‘a microscope in the field is worth two in the lab’

From the archives … though unfortunately I can’t remember which, and the photocopy I have of this ad for the Nikon H “hand or field microscope” only indicates the date of publication: April 1968.

The man’s clothing seems more appropriate to the office than to the field (or the lab, for that matter), but I suppose the rolled sleeves indicate that he is “at work.”

I don’t think you could find a clearer illustration of the twentieth-century effort to bring lab-like instrumentation and rigor to field biology. Of course, most biologists didn’t approach the “lab in the field” with such literal-mindedness.

According to this account by Bill Amos, the Nikon H, which was only on the market for a few years, was based on a field-microscope design from the 1930s.

Click the image for a larger version with legible text.

roundtable on wired wilderness

Thanks to the efforts of Jake Hamblin and three very generous and perceptive reviewers, a series of reviews of Wired Wilderness, with my response, is now available via H-Environment Roundtable Reviews. (Or go straight to the PDF.) Very grateful to all for the chance to think again and to clarify some of the goals of the book!

Demarcating Wilderness and Disciplining Wildlife: Radiotracking Large Carnivores in Yellowstone and Chitwan National Parks

Demarcating Wilderness and Disciplining Wildlife: Radiotracking Large Carnivores in Yellowstone and Chitwan National Parks, in Civilizing Nature: National Parks in Global Historical Perspective, ed. Bernhard Gißibl, Sabine Höhler, and Patrick Kupper (New York: Berghahn, 2012), pp. 173-188.

the art of surveillance

bumpkin-bird-small — a bird caught by a “camera trap” on bumpkin island

In the summer of 2008 I was lucky enough to be able to collaborate on an artistic experiment on camouflage and surveillance on one of the islands in the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. It’s hard to believe that was almost four years ago. On the principle that late is better than never, I thought I’d attempt to describe what we did and why it turned out to be such an exciting experience/experiment.

The Camoufleurs project was initially dreamed up by historian of science Hanna Rose Shell and architect Dan Hisel, who successfully proposed it to the coordinators of the Bumpkin Island Art Encampment, then in its second year. At the time, Hanna was in the process of writing what would turn out to be a fascinating book about the history of camouflage. Dan had also been studying the history of camouflage and teaching his students about its relevance to architecture. Continue reading “the art of surveillance”

One Infrastructure, Many Global Visions: The Commercialization and Diversification of Argos, a Satellite-Based Environmental Surveillance System

One Infrastructure, Many Global Visions: The Commercialization and Diversification of Argos, a Satellite-Based Environmental Surveillance System, Social Studies of Science 42, no. 6 (2012): 846-71.

a revolutionary new technology … from 1960

In the past day or two a bunch of people have forwarded me an article in the New York Times about a new wildlife tracking device, touted by the author and some of his interviewees as potentially revolutionary for ecology and wildlife management — as revolutionary, the author suggests, as the smartphone and Facebook have been for human communication.

Revolutionary claims are no surprise in science journalism, but this one seems unusually thin. The collar combines an accelerometer with a GPS receiver, but the main advance seems to lie in calibration efforts that the developers are doing with a captive mountain lion (“Mischief”) in Colorado to match movement patterns with certain activities — stalking and killing a rabbit, for instance — and to calculate the corresponding expenditure of energy. Nice if it works, but not exactly Copernican. Continue reading “a revolutionary new technology … from 1960”

Category: technology