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Ben Gross

@bhgross144.bsky.social

4.1K followers 1.8K following 2.1K posts

John Merritt Associate Director for Research Services at the Harry Ransom Center; Author of The TVs of Tomorrow-How RCA's Flat-Screen Dreams Led to the First LCDs (Chicago 2018). Posting in a personal capacity.

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Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · Aug 5

Do you:
-Love #literature? 📚
-Adore #art? 🎨
-Fancy #film or #photography? 📽️📸
-Thrill to the #theater? 🎭
-Relish #RareBooks? 📖

Apply for @ransomcenter.bsky.social's 2026-27 #fellowships!

Learn more & submit a proposal by Nov. 3: www.hrc.utexas.edu/fellowships/

#Humanities #Research #CFP #CFA 🗃️📜

A scholar examines a postcard in the Harry Ransom Center's reading room. Her photo is framed by a blue square with "FELLOWSHIP APPLICATIONS ARE NOW OPEN" written on each side. That image is positioned in front of a section of the etched windows on the Ransom Center's first floor, which showcase highlights from our collections.

More info about the Ransom Center's fellowships: https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/fellowships/

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Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 3m

Hicks concludes by reminding us that there have been many positive histories of operators serving as human brakes. Those stories deserve further scrutiny as we consider who benefits the most from #ArtificialIntelligence and how people reconfigure their behavior to benefit from #AI systems. #SHOT2025

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 8m

Hicks: What would a history of #AI look like if we took Turing's "human brakes" (i.e., operators) seriously?

One hint comes from Joseph Weizenbaum, creator of ELIZA, who believed that computers were fundamentally conservative, a way for humans to escape the burden of acting independently #SHOT2025

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 12m

So how did the elimination of the human element become associated with the growth/success of AI/computing systems?

Hicks cites rise of employee movements (e.g., IBM Black Workers Alliance) and activist organizations (Computer People for Peace) that fought the dehumanization of computing. #SHOT2025

Image source: https://techworkerscoalition.org/blog/2021/06/19/issue-13/

Image source: https://medium.com/@shwethajayaraj/a-brief-history-from-hack-manhattan-an-ode-to-the-1970s-computer-people-for-peace-fe04623d5d21

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 16m

Hicks now introduces us to René Carmille ("the first ethical hacker") who broke computational systems to save French Jews following the Nazi takeover in WWII. His example demonstrates the important/protective role humans could play.

More on Carmille: daily.jstor.org/wwii-and-the... #SHOT2025

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Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 18m

The title of our final paper, "The Polite Convention That Everyone Thinks" is derived from the 1950 paper where Alan Turing proposed what would become his eponymous test.

Our speaker, @histoftech.bsky.social, found this paper interesting for its omission of human operators (esp. women). #SHOT2025

Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology & Philosophy (Oct. 1950), Image courtesy of Manhattan Rare Books

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Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 26m

Simon concludes her story w/the 1903 establishment of the census bureau, but she emphasizes that despite further investment in data collection technologies, the nation's systems of death registration have continued to suffer to this day. #SHOT2025

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 28m

(Just to clarify: In the 1880s, Billings focused on death data; pushback in 1890 resulted from efforts to collect death *and* disease data)

Meanwhile, Hollerith is working on punch cards based on mortality statistics from different parts of the country. #SHOT2025

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 30m

In the 1890s, Billings once again sent out booklets. Physicians revolted at what they saw as government overreach re: patient care ("The census authorities are displaying more zeal than sense...").

One doctor told the NY Times that it would be professional suicide to answer his ?s. #SHOT2025

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 31m

Simon: By 1880, Billings, a well-regarded physician, had gotten involved. He was eager to collect mortality data (and also info re: disease!) and sent out booklets to physicians around the country. But only 1/3 of them were returned, and the data he received was clearly untrustworthy. #SHOT2025

Reposted by Ben Gross

Sytze Van Herck @sytzevh.bsky.social · 1h

Yseul Byeon discussed the format of a Korean television program called ‘Finding my Dispersed Family’. The producer wanted to create an apolitical tv show which led to accidental organic growth of a family search campaign. The program led to a government managed database now including DNA matches.

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Reposted by Ben Gross

Sytze Van Herck @sytzevh.bsky.social · 2h

Theodore Gordon author of ‘The Composers Black Box’ discussed electronic music as a new medium for composers in the 1960s. He showed experiments with electronic equipment using magnetic tape and reflected on theories about the medium as the message @shothisttech.bsky.social

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Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 35m

Simon jumps back in time to the 1850 (7th US Census), when death data was actively collected. Most states lacked systematic data collection & census workers were unable to collect reliable data re: mortality. And not much had changed by 1860... #SHOT2025

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 37m

Simon is less interested in punch cards than the census itself, which was seen as an administrative disaster.

Billings and his fellow "sanitarian-bureaucrats" believed that mortality stats were vital to society, which led them to work w/the census & compel better data from the states. #SHOT2025

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 39m

Our next speaker, @sarambsimon.bsky.social, is talking about the 1890 Census, but she breaks from SHOT tradition by shifting the focus from Herman Hollerith to John Shaw Billings.

At a time when there was no permanent census bureau, Billings came up w/the idea of using punch cards... #SHOT2025

John Shaw Billings and his very dignified mustache. (Wikipedia)

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Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 43m

Earle: All of this reinforces the idea that ethical behavior can be reflected numerically, but those models are based on social values. The only way to disaggregate LLMs from eugenics is to change those values, (e.g., from intelligence to care; standardization to contextualization) #SHOT2025

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Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 45m

Earle notes that AI boosters (Musk, Altman, Kurzweil, etc.) believe that cognition will be made possible by steady, exponential growth of computing power. And because computation is measurable, we can determine intelligence based on various point systems... #SHOT2025 #GoodPlace

List of points associated w/various acts featured on The Good Place, copied from https://howard-chai.medium.com/a-look-at-the-moral-point-system-of-the-good-place-7858215fd9dc

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 50m

"Tools are built for purposes with various affordances toward those purposes...But the goals & philosophies of people who use those tools also matter."

Earle reminds us that modern statistics is rooted in #eugenics (Galton/Pearson) & remains foundational to modern #ArtificialIntelligence. #SHOT2025

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Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 54m

Our next speaker, @cyborgapologist.bsky.social, is also discussing #eugenics beginning w/Galton & the Binet Scale of Human Intelligence (IQ scale, illustrated below) and moving toward today's algorithmic tools. #SHOT2025

Staircase diagram of "Steps in Mental Development" based on the Binet Intelligence scale: https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/music-and-intelligence-can-music-make-you-smarter/0/steps/265962

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Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 58m

Schroeder concludes w/?s about the afterlives of these tools. What biases are associated w/Galton's devices & are those embedded in our current medical system. Are tools free from bias or was bias embedded in their creation? In the case of the latter, how should we address such issues? #SHOT2025

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 1h

Schroeder: Galton wanted anthropometric measurements to be universal, but data points can't talk to one another across diverse geographies if they aren't collected in the same way w/the same tools. So Galton had begun to develop standardized devices (e.g., this tool to measure vision) #SHOT2025

Some of Galton's instruments for measuring vision. (https://galton.org/anthropologist.htm)

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 1h

Schroeder: Hearing/vision checks sound rather innocuous but there were some problematic biases & assumptions underlying Galton's data collection. (e.g., He referred to children of mixed-race couples as "mongrel offspring")

This data was deeply biased at best & dangerously racist at worst. #SHOT2025

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 1h

Schroeder: Galton's lab was set up at the at the International Health Exhibition in 1884. Not only was this a way to test his methods on a representative sample of the population. In addition, he felt people would embrace his ideas (& eugenic policies) if they knew how data were collected. #SHOT2025

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 1h

It's a full house in Atelier 4.500 where dozens of people have gathered for a panel on measurement, labor, statistics & AI.

Our first presenter is @nicole-lee-sch.bsky.social, whose talk focuses on Francis Galton's Anthropometric Laboratory, which she recreated in a #DisHist class.

#SHOT2025

Photograph of Galton's anthropometric lab at the International Health Exhibition. More info: https://galton.org/anthropologist.htm

Description of the Galton's Anthropometric Laboratory (More info: https://galton.org/anthropologist.htm)

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Reposted by Ben Gross

Aron Ambrosiani @aron.ambrosiani.se · 1h

And as a bonus, here’s an in-depth guide to the depicted knitting pattern 🙂 digitalpreservation-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/knitting-thr...

Knitting Through Digital Decay: A Collection of Digital Preservation Jumpers No One Asked For (But…

I’ve been truly overwhelmed by the interest in my Digital Preservation knitting patterns — thank you to everyone who has reached out…

digitalpreservation-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk

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Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 1h

So this #SHOT2025 panel has nearly wrapped up. But if you want to read more about historical issues surrounding multimedia and the preservation of born-digital collections, check out this piece on #DigiPres at @theul.bsky.social.

(Thanks for bringing this to my attention, @rhiggitt.bsky.social!)

A digital dark age? The people rescuing forgotten knowledge trapped on old floppy disks

From lectures by Stephen Hawking to the letters of British politician Neil Kinnock – it's a race against time to save the historical treasures locked away on old floppy disks.

www.bbc.com

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