---
# System prepended metadata

title: Data Stories 2021
tags: [' christopher warren', ' cmu english', syllabus, ' data', ' carnegie mellon']

---

---
title: Data Stories 2021
image: https://i.imgur.com/IGpSLEG.png
tags: syllabus, data, carnegie mellon, christopher warren, cmu english
---


![](https://i.imgur.com/oTZYZE3.png)


# ![](https://i.imgur.com/IGpSLEG.png =84x84)  F2021 DATA STORIES SYLLABUS

last updated 9/8/2021

ENGL 76-314/714
Prof. Christopher Warren (he/him/his)
cnwarren@cmu.edu
Carnegie Mellon University
Literary and Cultural Studies
T, TH 8:35-9:55
Porter Hall A19D (remote via Zoom if needed)
Fall 2021
Digital Humanities Slack [signup](https://cmu.libanswers.com/form?queue_id=4981)

>![](https://i.imgur.com/2REATyy.png =24x24) Delving into someone else’s infrastructure has about the entertainment value of reading the yellow pages of the phone book.  One does not encounter the dramatic stories of battle and victory, of mystery and discovery that make for a good read”   - Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, [*Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences*](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sorting-things-out)

> ![](https://i.imgur.com/2REATyy.png =24x24) Other than the humiliation of having my house raided by law enforcement, I have genuine concerns for my safety should someone come directly to my house because of this faulty data...It's like having a target pointed directly at you. I feel like I'm sitting on a time bomb" - Tony Pav, Ashburn, VA, quoted by Kashmir Hill in ["How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell"](https://splinternews.com/how-an-internet-mapping-glitch-turned-a-random-kansas-f-1793856052)



> ![](https://i.imgur.com/2REATyy.png =24x24) We need stories...that are just big enough to gather up the complexities and keep the edges open and greedy for surprising new and old connections" - Donna Harroway, "Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin" [[pdf]](http://environmentalhumanities.org/arch/vol6/6.7.pdf)

![](https://i.imgur.com/CXG1PJW.png =84x84) TABLE OF CONTENTS
-
[TOC]

![](https://i.imgur.com/Pn8u8MN.png =84x84) WHAT STUDENTS CAN EXPECT FROM THE COURSE
-

	
Every dataset has a story. In this class, you're the data detective. You'll learn to reassemble the weird casts of algorithms, data miners, researchers, data janitors, pirates, data brokers, financiers, etc. whose activities shape culture. You'll encounter a range of "farm to table" data stories, some going back hundreds of years, and develop resources and strategies for contextual research. You'll explore cases such as the London cholera epidemic, Google Books, Netflix, the Oxford English Dictionary, the Strava map, and the Queen Nefertitiscan alongside several pieces of art and fiction that capture aspects of data stories typically obscured elsewhere. The research methods you'll encounter will include book history, media archeology, history of information, infrastructure studies, ethnography, narratology, and digital forensics. You'll read scholarly articles, novels, journalism, and popular non-fiction; you'll test algorithms; and you'll develop individualized long-form research and writing projects informed by computational methods in data studies, journalism, and art.


Students at the end of the course should be able to:

- Detail cases in contemporary culture and historical contexts alike of the people, standards, technologies, and infrastructures responsible for collecting, maintaining, and transmitting data.
- Assess contemporary writing about data through the lens of narratology.
- Analyze ways that data of various kinds facilitate and/or frustrate narrativization.
- Develop and complete individualized long-form research and writing projects informed by computational methods and contemporary developments in data studies, journalism, and art.
- Evaluate work from a variety of perspectives speaking to data’s past and future impacts on individuals, communities, and societies.


![](https://i.imgur.com/PjOr6oa.png) HOW WILL WE KNOW IF WE'VE SUCCEEDED?
-

Ultimately, the course will be a success if students start to write about data the way Michael Pollan writes about food.

![](https://i.imgur.com/6dXhvA4.png =84x84) COPING WITH THE PANDEMIC
-


We are living together through an anxious and tumultuous time.  Within the culture of this class, we happen to have the relationship of professor and student.  However, we are fellow humans first and foremost.  Your wellbeing, the welfare of our shared civil society, and our collective planetary citizenship are more important to me than whether you complete the obligations for this course in the most exemplary fashion.  Please take good care of yourself and the people you love, and communicate with me if you need accommodations.  


![](https://i.imgur.com/09ESHFh.png) RESPECT FOR DIVERSITY
-
It is my intent that students from all diverse backgrounds and perspectives be well served by this course, that students’ learning needs be addressed both in and out of class, and that the diversity that students bring to this class be viewed as a resource, strength and benefit. I intend to present materials and activities that are respectful of diversity: gender, sexuality, disability, age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race, and culture. Your suggestions are encouraged and appreciated. Please let me know ways to improve the effectiveness of the course for you personally or for other students or student groups. In addition, if any of our class meetings conflict with your religious events, please let me know so that we can make arrangements for you.

![](https://i.imgur.com/6N193HE.png =84x84) BOOKS
-
Please buy or arrange dependable access to the following books:

* Burrington, Ingrid. *Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure*. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2016.
* Gitelman, Lisa. *“Raw Data” Is an Oxymoron*. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013.
* Gleick, James. *The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood*. New York: Vintage, 2012.
* Johnson, Steven. *The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic-and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World*. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007.
* Rosenberg, Daniel, and Anthony Grafton. *Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline*. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.
* Shakespeare, William.  *Othello*.
* Sloan, Robin. *Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel*. Picador, 2013.



![](https://i.imgur.com/0NdnjHD.png =84x84) MAJOR DUE DATES & PERCENTAGES OF GRADE
- [x] "HOW TO PUBlISH IN..." PRESENTATION - September 28th  - 15%
- [x] DATA STORY 1 ~1400 words - October 12th - 20%
- [x] DATA STORY 2 (~2000 - 5000 words) - FIRST DRAFT - December 1st - 10%
- [x] DATA STORY 2 PEER REVIEWS - December 2nd  - 5%
- [x] FINAL PORTFOLIO - December 9th
    - [ ] REVISED DATA STORY 1 - 20% 
    - [ ] REVISED DATA STORY 2 (~ 2000 - 5000 words)  - 20% 
- [x] ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION - 10%


![F21 Data Stories at a Glance](https://i.imgur.com/lq7NI3t.png)


## ATTENDANCE & ZOOM PROTOCOLS
Class meetings will be in person unless otherwise specified.  If it becomes necessary to switch to Zoom, the expectation is that students will attend with their cameras on.  

## ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
Students must abide at all times by Carnegie Mellon's Academic Integrity standards, which can be found at https://www.cmu.edu/policies/student-and-student-life/academic-integrity.html. 

## ![](https://i.imgur.com/quqfXun.png =84x84) PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE OF ASSIGNMENTS





**MEETING 1: TUESDAY August 31, 2021**
>![](https://i.imgur.com/2REATyy.png =24x24) Food that comes with a story—whether it’s organic, fairly traded, humanely grown, sustainably caught or whatever—represents a not-so-implicit challenge to every other product in the supermarket that dares not narrate its path from farm to table." - Michael Pollan, ["Produce Politics"](https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/the-way-we-live-now-produce-politics/),  2001  

>![](https://i.imgur.com/2REATyy.png =24x24) For fruits and veggies, there’s organic. For coffee and clothes, there’s fair trade. Now, algorithms have their own certification mark: a seal of approval that designates them as accurate, unbiased, and fair." - Katherine Schwab, ["This logo is like an 'organic' sticker for algorithms"](https://www.fastcompany.com/90172734/this-logo-is-like-an-organic-sticker-for-algorithms-that-arent-evil),  2018 

Pre-read:

* Michael Pollan, "Produce Politics," https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/the-way-we-live-now-produce-politics/
* Lois Beckett, "Everything We Know About What Data Brokers Know About You," *ProPublica* (2014), https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-what-data-brokers-know-about-you
* Russell, N. Cameron, Joel R. Reidenberg, Elizabeth Martin, and Thomas Norton. [“Transparency and the Marketplace for Student Data.”](https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=758094094127080000094027071001125100117048027015062035073082086022110000074031123024022049040100011047021030068083003031095005014090074078042000086086106017065080022089054056120015010099075101024000077127103069102015065001124008085084115075075029079116&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE) SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, June 6, 2018. 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wqn3gR1WTcA" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Introductions
Class Exercise: A Farm-to-Table Data Story
Discussion: Why Narrate?

**MEETING 2: THURSDAY September 2, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/RA0makS.png)  ![](https://i.imgur.com/6XsNmcw.png)  **FARM TO TABLE (1)** 



ASSIGNMENT DUE:

* Tim Harford, "Demand Transparency When The Computer Says No" from *The Data Detective* [canvas]
* Katherine Schwab, "This logo is like an 'organic' sticker for algorithms," *Fast Company* (2018), https://www.fastcompany.com/90172734/this-logo-is-like-an-organic-sticker-for-algorithms-that-arent-evil
* Valentino-DeVries, Jennifer, Natasha Singer, Michael H. Keller, and Aaron Krolik. “Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It Secret.” *The New York Times*, December 10, 2018, sec. Business, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html
* Kashmir Hill, "How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell," https://splinternews.com/how-an-internet-mapping-glitch-turned-a-random-kansas-f-1793856052
* Taeyoon Choi, "CPU Dumplings", https://taeyoonchoi.com/poetic-computation/cpu-dumplings/
    > <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kF6o4EJ07IE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>


**MEETING 3: TUESDAY September 7, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/RA0makS.png)  ![](https://i.imgur.com/6XsNmcw.png) **FARM TO TABLE (2)**

ASSIGNMENT DUE:

* Michael Pollan, "The Processing Plant" from *The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals*, pp. 85-99
* Ribes and Jackson, "Data Bite Man: The Work of Sustaining a Long-Term Study" in *"Raw Data" is an Oxymoron*, pp. 147-166
* Miriam Posner, "See No Evil," *Logic Magazine*, https://logicmag.io/04-see-no-evil/
* Frank Pasquale, *The Black Box Society*, Ch. 2, "Digital Reputation in an Era of Runaway Data", pp.19-58


> **EXTRA**
Data Visualization Best Practices, Including Introduction to Tableau Public
Friday, September 10, 2021
11:00am - 12:30pm
Being able to effectively communicate your data to an audience is a necessary part of any project. This workshop will investigate how to harness visualization tools to tell a story . We will discuss how different types of graphs and charts are perceived and how they can be used to answer different questions. Tableau Public is a free data visualization tool. You can create interactive graphs, dashboards, maps and tables from virtually any data.
Register & find account creation information: https://pitt.libcal.com/event/8088008


**MEETING 4: THURSDAY September 9, 2021**
![Storytelling](https://i.imgur.com/H9FpN5G.png) **CONCEPTS OF STORYTELLING** 

> ![Vonnegut](http://cdn8.openculture.com/2014/02/04124519/kurt-vonnegut-the-shapes-of-stories_502918a226d9a_w1500.jpg =350x541)
ASSIGNMENT DUE:

* D’Ignazio, Catherine. “Putting Data Back into Context.” *DataJournalism*. 2019. https://datajournalism.com/read/longreads/putting-data-back-into-context.
* Hayden White, "Explanation by Emplotment" from *Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe* (1973), pp.7-11
* Kurt Vonnegut, "At the Blackboard." Lapham's Quarterly, 2015. https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/arts-letters/blackboard.
* Smith, Joshua. “Is Your Data Story Actually A Story?” Medium, August 19, 2019. https://medium.com/nightingale/is-your-data-story-actually-a-story-3d1fa52394d9.
* Robert Shiller, "Seven Propositions of Narrative Economics" from *Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events*. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. [canvas]
* Liveley, Genevieve. “Russian Formalism.” In *Narratology*. Oxford University Press, pp.112-119.http://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780199687701.001.0001/oso-9780199687701-chapter-6. [canvas]




**MEETING 5: TUESDAY September 14, 2021**
![Storytelling](https://i.imgur.com/H9FpN5G.png) **THINKING ABOUT STORYTELLING** 



ASSIGNMENT DUE:


* visit: Brian Clifton, Sam Lavigne and Francis Tseng, *White Collar Crime Risk Zones* (March 2017), https://whitecollar.thenewinquiry.com/
* Complaint, National Fair Housing Alliance v. Facebook, US District Court, SDNY, https://nationalfairhousing.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/NFHA-v.-Facebook.-Complaint-w-Exhibits-March-27-Final-pdf.pdf
* Bowker and Star, *Sorting Things Out*, Ch. 1, "Some Tricks of the Trade in Analyzing Classification" [Canvas]
* Holt, Bossler, and Seigfried-Spellar, "Acquisition and Examination of Forensic Evidence," from *Cybercrime and Digital Forensics*, pp. 527-570 [Canvas]
* State Of New Mexico v. Tiny Lab Productions; Twitter Inc.; Mopub, Inc.; Google, Inc.; Admob, Inc.; Aerserv Llc; Inmobi Pte Ltd.; Applovin Corporation; And Ironsource Usa, Inc. [complaint] https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/295-new-mexico-kid-apps-complaint/206d4ea39896e264fe3a/optimized/full.pdf




**MEETING 6: THURSDAY September 16, 2021**
![Storytelling](https://i.imgur.com/H9FpN5G.png) **WRITING DATA STORIES**  

Guest Speaker Jake Appel, Chief Strategist, [O'Neil Risk Consulting and Algorithmic Auditic (ORCAA)](https://orcaarisk.com/)



ASSIGNMENT DUE:

* Weingart, Scott B. “The Route of a Text Message, a Love Story.” *Vice*, February 22, 2019 (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzdn8n/the-route-of-a-text-message-a-love-story).
* Alexis Madrigal, "How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood," https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/how-netflix-reverse-engineered-hollywood/282679/
*  Angwin and Larson, "How We Analyzed the COMPAS Recidivism Algorithm," https://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-analyzed-the-compas-recidivism-algorithm [UPDATED Permalink: https://perma.cc/622Y-45WG]
> ![](https://i.imgur.com/1kUcXAX.png =64x64) <iframe style="border: solid 1px #dedede;"  src="https://app.stitcher.com/splayer/f/39714/48055711" width="220" height="150" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
* /Reply All, "The Roman Mars Mazda Virus"
> <iframe style="border: solid 1px #e4edf2;" src="https://www.stitcher.com/embed/56516/59983096" width="220" height="150" frameborder="0"></iframe>

OR

> <iframe scrolling="no" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="152" allowtransparency="true" allow="encrypted-media" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/5X3PF75Kz712JaK2liiZlW"></iframe>




**MEETING 7: TUESDAY September 21, 2021**

ASSIGNMENT DUE:
![](https://i.imgur.com/RZcHCcs.jpg =250x)* Ted Chiang, *The Lifecycle of Software Objects* [Canvas]


![](https://i.imgur.com/5ywm2aP.jpg)
Archive box of Oxford English Dictionary quotation slips, late 19th/early 20th century [[British Library]](http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large126816.html)


**MEETING 8: THURSDAY September 23, 2021**![](https://i.imgur.com/GTXhRer.png) + ![](https://i.imgur.com/kZl1YGz.png =84x84) + ![](https://i.imgur.com/huIKU73.png =84x84)

* Crawford, Kate, and Vladan Joler. “Anatomy of an AI System.” 2018. http://www.anatomyof.ai.
* John Cheever, “The Enormous Radio" [Canvas]
* Arkansas vs. James Andrew Bates [search warrant], http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3473740-Arkansas-vs-James-Andrew-Bates-Amazon-Echo-and.html




### ![](https://i.imgur.com/0NdnjHD.png =84x84) STUDENT PRESENTATIONS

**MEETING 9: TUESDAY September 28, 2021**
Choose One:

**How to Publish Your Data Story in...**

- [ ] The Atlantic
- [ ] [The Cut > Science of Us](https://www.thecut.com/scienceofus/)
- [ ] [Bitch > internets](https://www.bitchmedia.org/topic/internets)
- [ ] Big Data and Society
- [ ] [Beyond Citation: Critical Thinking About Digital Research](https://www.beyondcitation.org/)
- [ ] e-flux
- [ ] Jacobin
- [ ] [The Markup](https://themarkup.org/)
- [ ] Library and Information History
- [ ] Logic Magazine
- [ ] Media, Culture, and Society
- [ ] Nature > Futures Science Fiction
- [ ] [The Pudding](https://pudding.cool/)
- [ ] [Wired](https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-pitch-stories-to-wired/)
- [ ] "Raw Data" is an Oxymoron, vol. 2
- [ ] Comparable Publication/Resource of Your Choice


**MEETING 10: THURSDAY September 30, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/P6mYB1q.png =84x84) **HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES**
ASSIGNMENT DUE:

* 1 Chronicles 21:1-18 (KJV), https://www.biblestudytools.com/kjv/1-chronicles/passage/?q=1-chronicles+21:1-18
* Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton, *Cartographies of Time*, Chs. 1 and 2
* Daniel Rosenberg, "Data before the Fact" in *"Raw Data" is an Oxymoron*



**MEETING 11: TUESDAY October 5, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/P6mYB1q.png =84x84) + ![](https://i.imgur.com/5LW6Zh8.png =64x64) + ![](https://i.imgur.com/kZl1YGz.png =84x84)  
ASSIGNMENT DUE:


 William Shakespeare, *Othello* (1603), Folger Digital Texts, https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/othello/entire-play/



**MEETING 12: THURSDAY October 7, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/P6mYB1q.png =84x84) + ![](https://i.imgur.com/D2N5I3G.png =84x84)+ ![mapping](https://i.imgur.com/DIaImUm.png)



ASSIGNMENT DUE:

* Steven Johnson, *The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic-and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World*

> ![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Snow-cholera-map-1.jpg =500x)


**MEETING 13: TUESDAY October 12, 2021**


 ![](https://i.imgur.com/0NdnjHD.png =84x84) + ![](https://i.imgur.com/i2azi1l.png) 
 ### DATA STORY 1 DUE


**MEETING 14: TUESDAY October 19, 2021**

ASSIGNMENT DUE:  
![](https://i.imgur.com/P6mYB1q.png =84x84) + ![](https://i.imgur.com/huIKU73.png =84x84) + ![mapping](https://i.imgur.com/DIaImUm.png)
* Ellen Gruber Garvey, "Facts and FACTS: abolitionists' database innovations" in *"Raw Data" is an Oxymoron*
* Catherine D'Ignazio, "The Detroit Geographic Expedition and Institute: A Case Study in Civic Mapping," https://civic.mit.edu/2013/08/07/the-detroit-geographic-expedition-and-institute-a-case-study-in-civic-mapping/
* Garance Burke, Martha Mendoza, Juliet Linderman, and Michael Tarm, "How AI-powered Tech Landed Man in Jail with Scant Evidence," https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-algorithm-technology-police-crime-7e3345485aa668c97606d4b54f9b6220


<a data-flickr-embed="true" data-header="true" data-footer="true"  href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnygoldstein/albums/72157659791797068" title="Interrogating Algorithms"><img src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/714/21770796674_c3e64db3e6_z.jpg" width="640" height="480" alt="Interrogating Algorithms"></a>

[illustration: Johnny Goldstein, "Interrogating Algorithms", Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)]


> **EXTRA**
> Cleaning and Transforming Data with OpenRefine
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
12:00pm - 2:00pm

**MEETING 15: THURSDAY October 21, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/BoWZy2c.png) **LABOR**

ASSIGNMENT DUE:

* Virginia Eubanks, *Automating Inequality*, Ch. 4, "The Allegheny Algorithm," pp. 127-173
* Russell, Andrew, and Lee Vinsel. "Hail the Maintainers." Aeon (2016), https://aeon.co/essays/innovation-is-overvalued-maintenance-often-matters-more
* Lilly Irani, "Difference and Dependence among Digital Workers: The Case of Amazon Mechanical Turk," *South Atlantic Quarterly* (2015), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273109578_Difference_and_Dependence_among_Digital_Workers_The_Case_of_Amazon_Mechanical_Turk
* Ciaran Cassidey and Adrian Chen, The Moderators [Documentary], https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/16/15305562/the-moderators-documentary
> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/k9m0axUDpro?rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

**MEETING 16: TUESDAY October 26, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/XhBY8mi.png =84x84)

ASSIGNMENT DUE:


* Exploring art (through selfies) with Google Arts & Culture, https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/arts-culture/exploring-art-through-selfies-google-arts-culture/
* Ally Marotti, "Google's art selfies aren't available in Illinois. Here's why." Chicago Tribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-google-art-selfies-20180116-story.html
* Ayana Lage, "Google’s 'Arts & Culture' App Is Being Called Racist, But The Problem Goes Beyond The Actual App" *Bustle*, https://www.bustle.com/p/googles-arts-culture-app-is-being-called-racist-but-the-problem-goes-beyond-the-actual-app-7929384
* Kashmir Hill, "Your Face is not Your Own" https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/18/magazine/facial-recognition-clearview-ai.html

**MEETING 17: THURSDAY October 28, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/6MqOyYi.png)  **EQUITY AND DIVERSITY**

* Mimi Onuohu, "The Point of Collection", *Points*, https://points.datasociety.net/the-point-of-collection-8ee44ad7c2fa
* Mimi Onuohu, "Missing Datasets", https://github.com/MimiOnuoha/missing-datasets
* "Feminist Data Visualization with Catherine D’Ignazio" [podcast, 0:51:51], https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/data-stories-podcast/data-stories/e/52329685?autoplay=true
> ![](https://i.imgur.com/1kUcXAX.png =64x64)  <iframe style="border: solid 1px #dedede;"  src="https://app.stitcher.com/splayer/f/39714/52329685" width="220" height="150" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
* Caroline Sinders, "Feminist Data Set," http://soho20gallery.com/caroline-sinders-feminist-data-set/
* Katharine Schwab, "This Designer Is Fighting Back Against Bad Data–With Feminism,"" *Fast Company*, https://www.fastcompany.com/90168266/the-designer-fighting-back-against-bad-data-with-feminism




**MEETING 18: TUESDAY November 2, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/9pkRGAm.png) **DATA & ANONYMITY** [with guest speakers Pranay Jain and Gavin Bennett ([Braze](https://www.braze.com/product/data-and-analytics))]  

ASSIGNMENT DUE:


* Latanya Sweeney, "Simple Demographics Often Identify People Uniquely"
* Robert Hackett, "Researchers Caused an Uproar By Publishing Data From 70,000 OkCupid Users," http://fortune.com/2016/05/18/okcupid-data-research/
* Andrew Liptak, "Strava’s fitness tracker heat map reveals the location of military bases," *The Verge* (2018), https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/28/16942626/strava-fitness-tracker-heat-map-military-base-internet-of-things-geolocation
* Norman Paradis, "The Golden State Killer case shows how swiftly we’re losing genetic privacy," *Vox* (2018), https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/5/3/17313796/genetic-privacy-killer-golden-state-serial-killer-genealogy-genome


> ![](https://i.imgur.com/MC5s4CK.jpg)


**MEETING 19: THURSDAY November 4, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/kZl1YGz.png =84x84) **FICTION**

ASSIGNMENT DUE:

* Roald Dahl, "The Great Automatic Grammatizator"
* Arthur C. Clarke, "Steam-Powered Word Processor"
* Gleick, *The Information*, Ch. 4 (Babbage and Lovelace chapter)

**MEETING 20: TUESDAY November 9, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/CdaR2al.png =84x84) **GOOGLE BOOKS**
ASSIGNMENT DUE:

* Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel, *Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture*, pp. 15-17, 55-66
* Wilson, Andrew Norman. “The Artist Leaving the Googleplex.” E-Flux, no. 74. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/74/59791/the-artist-leaving-the-googleplex/.
* Scott Rosenberg, "How Google Book Search Got Lost," *Wired*, https://www.wired.com/2017/04/how-google-book-search-got-lost/



**MEETING 21: THURSDAY November 11, 2021**

![](https://i.imgur.com/kZl1YGz.png =84x84) **FICTION**

ASSIGNMENT DUE:


* ![](https://i.imgur.com/Eb5xjqy.jpg =150x) * Robin Sloan, *Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore*       

**MEETING 22: TUESDAY November 16, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/vEw08rp.png) **NETFLIX**
ASSIGNMENT DUE:


* Interview with Caitlin Smallwood (Netflix) from *Data Scientists at Work*
* Ed Finn, "House of Cards: The Aesthetics of Abstraction" in *What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing*, 87-112
* *Nosedive*, *Black Mirror*. Netflix.  

![](https://media1.tenor.com/images/3ba78c3b7dcb64bbfe6b557e8e642b18/tenor.gif?itemid=6224975)


**MEETING 23: THURSDAY November 18, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/CT8wqWS.png =84x84) **INFRASTRUCTURE**
ASSIGNMENT DUE:

* Ingrid Burrington, *Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure*




**MEETING 24: TUESDAY November 23, 2021**


![](https://i.imgur.com/P6mYB1q.png =84x84) + ![](https://i.imgur.com/Fw6bhWJ.png =84x84)  


ASSIGNMENT DUE:

* Gleick, *The Information*, pp. 51-77
* Scott Weingart, "Cetus," *The Scottbot Irregular* (2016), http://scottbot.net/cetus/
* Matthew Stanley, "Where Is That Moon, Anyway? The Problem of Interpreting Historical Solar Eclipse Observations" in *"Raw Data" is an Oxymoron*




**MEETING 25: TUESDAY November 30, 2021**![](https://i.imgur.com/Y7MBAlq.png =84x84) + ![](https://i.imgur.com/kZl1YGz.png =84x84) **ARCHIVES**

* L. Annette Binder, "Dead Languages" from *Rise*
    >![](https://i.imgur.com/WfkdPtX.jpg =150x)
* Jill Lepore, "The Cobweb: Can the Internet Be Archived?", *The New Yorker* (2015), https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/cobweb"
* Glenn Fleishman, "Archiving a Website for 10,000 Years," *The Atlantic* (2016), https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/archiving-a-website-for-ten-thousand-years/482385/?utm_source=atltw
* Rosen, Jody. “The Day the Music Burned.” The New York Times, June 11, 2019, sec. Magazine https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html.


**MEETING 26: THURSDAY December 2, 2021**
![](https://i.imgur.com/zk9jMhG.png)  DATA STORY PEER REVIEWS

ASSIGNMENT DUE:  

UPLOAD DRAFT DATA STORY 2 FOR PEER-REVIEW (CANVAS)
 

### FINAL PORTFOLIO DUE THURSDAY DECEMBER 9TH 5 pm
![](https://i.imgur.com/0NdnjHD.png =84x84)  + ![](https://i.imgur.com/i2azi1l.png) + ![](https://i.imgur.com/2ZwQzlb.png =84x84)



---



## ADDITIONAL RESOURCES (AKA, STUFF I WANTED TO INCLUDE BUT COULDN'T MANAGE TO FIT IN)

* Jer Thorp, "The Weight of Data"
    > <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q9wcvFkWpsM?rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
* Alexander, Leo. “The Treatment of Shock from Prolonged Exposure to Cold, Especially in Water.” 1945. [Report on Data derived from Nazi medical experiments] https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/special_books/16.
* "Big data problems we face today can be traced to the social ordering practices of the 19th century," http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/10/13/ideological-inheritances-in-the-data-revolution/
* Ian Bogost, "My Cow Game Extracted Your Facebook Data", *The Atlantic* (2018), https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/my-cow-game-extracted-your-facebook-data/556214/
* Amatriain, Xavier. “Big & Personal: Data and Models Behind Netflix Recommendations.” In Proceedings of the 2Nd International Workshop on Big Data, Streams and Heterogeneous Source Mining: Algorithms, Systems, Programming Models and Applications, 1–6. BigMine ’13. New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1145/2501221.2501222.
* Angwin, Julia and Surya Mattu. “Amazon Says It Puts Customers First. But Its Pricing….” Text/html. ProPublica, September 20, 2016. https://www.propublica.org/article/amazon-says-it-puts-customers-first-but-its-pricing-algorithm-doesnt.
* Angwin, Julia and Surya Mattu. “How We Analyzed Amazon’s Shopping Algorithm.” Text/html. ProPublica, September 20, 2016. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-analyzed-amazons-shopping-algorithm.
* BBC Scotland, "The Secret Rules of Modern Living: Algorithms", https://www.netflix.com/watch/80095881?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2C9ab8dcad9b19ddb24dbd49ea26607340907961ca%3A36a5345c2df4604a4a0aa711200dea370da825ce%2C%2C
* Bellanova, Rocco, and Gloria González Fuster. “No (Big) Data, No Fiction? Thinking Surveillance With/Against Netflix.” SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, January 1, 2018. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3120038.
* Blum, Andrew. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. HarperCollins, 2014.
* Bounegru, Liliana, Tommaso Venturini, Jonathan Gray, and Mathieu Jacomy. “Narrating Networks.” Digital Journalism 5, no. 6 (July 3, 2017): 699–730. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2016.1186497.
* danah boyd and Kate Crawford, "Critical Questions for Big Data"
* Brier, Steve and Eileen Clancy. Beyond Citation: Critical Thinking About Digital Research, https://www.beyondcitation.org/
* Burrington, Ingrid.  Where the Internet is Located, http://videos.theconference.se/ingrid-burrington-where-the-internet-is-located (9:54)
* Burrington, Ingrid.  "From Server Farm to Data Table", 33C3 (2016),
    > <iframe src="https://archive.org/embed/33C3-From_Server_Farm_to_Data_Table" width="640" height="480" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" allowfullscreen></iframe>
* Byrnes, Kevin. Harvest. Indevu Fims, 2016. https://vimeo.com/189449163.
    > <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/189449163?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
* Carroll, Matt. “Spotlight Shines on a Spreadsheet.” MIT Technology Review. Accessed August 27, 2018. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601545/a-spreadsheets-star-turn/.
* Mar Cabra and Erin Kissane, "The People and Tech Behind the Panama Papers: How Long-Term Infrastructure-Building Enabled the Biggest Leak in Data Journalism History," https://source.opennews.org/articles/people-and-tech-behind-panama-papers/
* Ryan Calo, "Digital Market Manipulation"
* Chalmers, Melissa K., and Paul N. Edwards. “Producing ‘One Vast Index’: Google Book Search as an Algorithmic System.” Big Data & Society 4, no. 2 (2017)
* Adrian Chen, "The Agency", *New York Times Magazine* (2015), https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html
* Chiang, Ted. Stories of Your Life and Others, 2016.
* Chiang, Ted. Exhalation, 2019.
* Courtland, Rachel. “Bias Detectives: The Researchers Striving to Make Algorithms Fair.” Nature, June 20, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05469-3.
* Kate Crawford, Anatomy of an AI
     > <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uM7gqPnmDDc?start=430" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
* Dourish, Paul. The Stuff of Bits: An Essay on the Materialities of Information. 1 edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2017.
* Eggers, Dave. The Circle. Penguin, 2013.
* Fama, Katherine A. “Domestic Data and Feminist Momentum: The Narrative Accounting of Helen Stuart Campbell and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.” Studies in American Naturalism 12, no. 1 (November 3, 2017): 105–26. https://doi.org/10.1353/san.2017.0006.
* Fulsom, Ed.  "Database as Genre"
* Gibson, William.  Pattern Recognition
* Anna Grimshaw, *At Low Tide*
* Gutierrez, Sebastian. Data Scientists at Work. Berkeley, Calif.: Apress, 2014.
* Hedstrom, Margaret. Epistemic Infrastructure in the Rise of the Knowledge Economy 1, 2018.
* Hicks, Marie. Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing. 1 edition. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017.
* Hu, Tung-Hui. A Prehistory of the Cloud. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2016.
* Ignatius, David. The Quantum Spy: A Thriller.W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.
* Irani, L. C., and M. S. Silberman. “Turkopticon: Interrupting Worker Invisibility in Amazon Mechanical Turk,” October 31, 2015. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/10c125z3.
* Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.
* Kitchen, Rob. "Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts"
* Mattew Kirschenbaum, "Unseen Hands," in *Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing*, 139-165
* Lowell, Spencer, and Text By Malia Wollan. “Arks of the Apocalypse.” The New York Times, July 13, 2017, sec. Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/magazine/seed-vault-extinction-banks-arks-of-the-apocalypse.html.
* Lupi, Giorgia, Stefanie Posavec, and Maria Popova. Dear Data. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2016.
* Lupi, Giorgia. “Data Humanism” https://medium.com/@giorgialupi/data-humanism-the-revolution-will-be-visualized-31486a30dbfb
* Stephen Marche, "What Happens When an Algorithm Helps Write Science Fiction," Wired (2017), https://www.wired.com/2017/12/when-an-algorithm-helps-write-science-fiction/
* Martinez, Antonio Garcia. Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley. New York: Harper, 2016.
* Miéville, China. *Embassytown*. London: Macmillan, 2011.
* Parrish, Allison, "Word Breakers: Rewordable and The Raw Material of Word Games" 
    > <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KoL0-JW4yjE" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
* Rajarshee Mitra. *AlphaGo* (2017). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGyCsVhtW0M.
    > <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jGyCsVhtW0M" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
* Moe, Kristine. “Should the Nazi Research Data Be Cited?” The Hastings Center Report 14, no. 6 (1984): 5–7. https://doi.org/10.2307/3561733.
* Mussell, Jim. “Doing and Making: History as Digital Practice.” In *History in the Digital Age*, edited by Toni Weller, 79–94. Routledge, 2013.
* NAPA CARDS: Narrative Patterns for Data-Driven Storytelling, http://napa-cards.net/
* Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: NYU Press, 2018.
* O’Beirne, Justin. “Google Maps’s Moat,” 2017. https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat/.
* O’Neil, Cathy. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. London: Penguin Books, 2018.
* Paglen, Trevor. Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World. Updated edition. New York, N.Y.: Berkley, 2010.
* Post, Stephen G. “The Echo of Nuremberg: Nazi Data and Ethics.” Journal of Medical Ethics 17, no. 1 (1991): 42–44.
* Pipkin, Everest. "It Was Raining in the Data Center", https://medium.com/s/story/it-was-raining-in-the-data-center-9e1525c37cc3
* Putnam, Lara. “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast.” The American Historical Review 121, no. 2 (April 1, 2016): 377–402. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/121.2.377.
* /Reply-all/ "Gleeks and Gurgles" <iframe scrolling="no" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="152" allowtransparency="true" allow="encrypted-media" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/0MTLiSGiPy5wjpCAKUq6ov"></iframe>
* Rothman, Joshua. “The Many Lives of Iron Mountain.” The New Yorker, October 9, 2013. https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-many-lives-of-iron-mountain.
* Schäfer, Mirko Tobias, and Karin Van Es, eds. The Datafied Society: Studying Culture through Data. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017.
* Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
* Stern, Joanna. “Facebook Really Is Spying on You, Just Not Through Your Phone’s Mic.” Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2018, sec. Tech. https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-really-is-spying-on-you-just-not-through-your-phones-mic-1520448644.
* Tseng, Francis, and Willie Osterweil. “The Founder.” The New Inquiry (blog), November 14, 2017. https://thenewinquiry.com/the-founder/.
* Wardle, Tim, Dir, *Three Identical Strangers*.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt7664504/.
* <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c-OF0OaK3o0?controls=0" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
* Wernimont, Jacqueline. “Privacy, Security, and Your ‘Data Shadow.’” HASTAC. https://www.hastac.org/blogs/jacqueline-wernimont/2018/02/09/privacy-security-and-your-data-shadow.
* Jennifer Egan, "Great Rock and Roll Pauses, by Alison Blake" from *A Visit From the Goon Squad* (2010), https://www.scribd.com/document/52497593/Extract-A-Visit-from-the-Goon-Squad-by-Jennifer-Egan
* Claire Voon, "Artists Covertly Scan Bust of Nefertiti and Release the Data for Free Online," Hyperallergic (2016), https://hyperallergic.com/274635/artists-covertly-scan-bust-of-nefertiti-and-release-the-data-for-free-online/
* Claire Voon, "Could the Nefertiti Scan Be a Hoax — and Does that Matter?", Hyperallergic (2016), https://hyperallergic.com/281739/could-the-nefertiti-scan-be-a-hoax-and-does-that-matter/
* Cory Arcangel, "The Warhol Files: Andy Warhol's Long-Lost Computer Graphics," *ARTFORUM* (2014), https://www.artforum.com/print/201406/the-warhol-files-andy-warhol-s-long-lost-computer-graphics-46874






**ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS**
I'm grateful to many students, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances for helpful suggestions for this syllabus.  I especially want to thank Everest Pipkin, Shannon Mattern, Nathan Pensky, Matt Burton, Scott Weingart, Molly Steenson, Anupam Basu, Dan Shore, Ted Underwood and Ruth Mostern.  I've borrowed considerably from Shannon Mattern's own "Data Archive Infrastructure" [syllabus](http://www.wordsinspace.net/data_archive/fall2018/) for The New School, from Jacob Gaboury's UC Berkeley [syllabus [pdf]](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56675ef925981d4412e0a14e/t/5b7c6cba4d7a9ce1a7d9b8cd/1534880954623/Gaboury+-+Film+240+-+Politics+of+Code.pdf) for "The Politics of Code," and from Molly Wright Steenson's Carnegie Mellon School of Design [syllabus](https://medium.com/@maximolly/syllabus-interaction-and-service-design-concepts-2018-541c9be39e44) for "Interaction and Service Design Concepts," and I thank all of them and many other interlocutors (formal and informal) for their generosity.     