Tom Scheinfeldt
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foundhistory.bsky.social
Tom Scheinfeldt
@foundhistory.bsky.social
900 followers 240 following 350 posts
Dad, Husband, Swimmer, Historian, Professor of Digital Humanities at UConn. Online at https://foundhistory.org
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foundhistory.bsky.social
I’m reading Dan Wang’s “Breakneck,” which says China is run by engineers and America by lawyers. But look at who actually built American tech and finance.

We are not a nation of lawyers OR engineers. We are a nation of the Liberal Arts.

buff.ly/QVbLr9m
November 25, 2025 at 3:30 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
Right now, a late-November game between two 2-8 teams is meaningless. In my vision, it’s a fight for survival. Let’s adopt the English soccer pyramid for college football. Premier Division. Second Division. Promotion and Relegation. Every game matters.

foundhistory.org/how-to-pick-...
How to Pick A National College Football Champion
Take a page from English football
foundhistory.org
November 23, 2025 at 4:23 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
Meet the new newsletter. Same as the old blog.

After 20 years of blogging, Found History is now a newsletter. Free, open access, and based on an open source platform as always. Please subscribe!

foundhistory.org
Found History
by Tom Scheinfeldt
foundhistory.org
November 22, 2025 at 5:24 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
Universities treat commercially viable research as business—patenting, licensing, and spinning off. It’s time to treat big-time college sports the same way.

It's time to treat the football team as "tech transfer."

foundhistory.org/a-solution-f...
A Solution for College Sports
Treat the football team as tech transfer.
foundhistory.org
November 20, 2025 at 2:50 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
Have you ever wanted to talk to an archive? This week I prototyped an AI “reference interview assistant” and scanning request workflow for institutions that use ArchivesSpace.

Read more in the latest Found History newsletter, and if you would like a demo, please DM

foundhistory.org/making-an-ai...
Making an AI Frontend for ArchivesSpace
Have you ever wanted to talk with your finding aid?
foundhistory.org
November 19, 2025 at 2:56 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
If you’re at #DLFForum #DLF2025 stop by the Digital Scholar table to see what’s new with Zotero, Omeka, Sourcery, Tropy, PressForward and more!
November 18, 2025 at 3:47 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
I'm at @clirnews.bsky.social DLF Forum today grappling with the AI paradox: we hate Big AI's extractive practices but people are using these tools anyway. @anildash.com's piece on Mozilla offers a way forward: Don't just protest, build better alternatives.

foundhistory.org/learning-fro...
Learning from Firefox: Building Better AI for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
People Like AI. What Do We Do That?
foundhistory.org
November 17, 2025 at 7:25 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
After 20 years of blogging, the new Found History is live and reimagined as a newsletter! Please subscribe at foundhistory.org

#dh #digitalhumanities #newsletter #blog #history #technology #design
Found History
by Tom Scheinfeldt
foundhistory.org
November 15, 2025 at 12:55 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
Friends in central Connecticut: Let's reopen the Waterbury to NYC Metro North line!

c.org/nchV98Xps4
This campaign needs you now
Urge Connecticut to study Maybrook & Housatonic Line reactivation
c.org
November 13, 2025 at 1:16 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
I’ve been writing about and experimenting with generative AI systems a lot lately. AI figures much less prominently in my teaching, but as we approach the end of the semester in my History of Digital Culture class, it just so happens that AI is on the syllabus for today.
Ten Things You Need to Know About AI
Author’s note: Regular readers will know that I’ve been writing about and experimenting with generative AI systems a lot lately. AI figures much less prominently in my teaching, but as we app…
buff.ly
November 12, 2025 at 3:30 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
A suitcase-sized hydroelectric generator that can power 12 homes from a small stream without a dam. Why aren’t these everywhere?

engineerine.com/germanys-por...
Germany’s Portable Hydroelectric Breakthrough: Clean Power in a Suitcase
German engineers have built a suitcase-sized hydro generator that powers 12 homes using just a small stream — no dams, no grid, no fuel. Drop it in water and get 5 years of clean electricity. The…
engineerine.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Reposted by Tom Scheinfeldt
jwherrman.bsky.social
In one specific way, Grok might be the most honest and transparent AI project out there nymag.com/intelligence...
As absurd and undignified as Grokipedia's founder-centric origin story may be — How good could Wikipedia be if its page about me is so rude? — Elon Musk's attempt to remake his own information environment is instructive and, if not exactly candid, usefully transparent (or at least poorly concealed). You won't hear Musk joking about "his own fictionalized version of reality" in 2025 — now he prefers to speak in messianic terms about apocalyptic threats, no matter the subject. But Grokipedia, and Musk's AI projects in general, invite us to see LLMs as powerful and intrinsically biased ideological tools, which, whatever you make of Grok's example, they always are. We know an awful lot about what Elon Musk thinks about the world, and we know that he wants his own products to align with his greater project. In Grok and Grokipedia, we get to see clearly what it looks like when particular ideologies are intentionally encoded into AI products that are then deployed widely and to openly ideological ends. We also get to recognize how thoroughly familiar parts of the spectacle are, as chatbots rehash the same pitches to audiences, and invite many of the same obvious criticisms, as newspapers, TV channels, and social-media platforms before them — when Fox offered its "fair and balanced" alternative to other cable networks, Mark Zuckerberg claimed to be returning to his company's "free speech" roots, or the New York Times reminded us that the "truth" is hard, actually. Now, it's AI companies winking as they tell us to trust them, engaging in flattering marketing, and giving in to paternalistic temptations without much awareness of how their predecessors' decades of similar efforts helped lead the public to a state of profound institutional cynicism. As novel and versatile as LLM-based chatbots are, their relationship to the outside world is recognizably and deeply editorial, like a newspaper or, more recently, an algorithmically sorted-and-censored social network. (It's helpful to think of OpenAI's "bias evaluation" process, or Grokipedia's top-down reactionary political correctness, as less of a systemic audit than a straightforward edit.) What ChatGPT says about politics — or anything — is ultimately what the people who created it say it should say, or allow it to say; more specifically, human beings at OpenAI are deciding what neutral answers to those 500 prompts might look like and instructing their model to follow their lead. OpenAl's incoherent appeal to objective neutrality is an effort to avoid this perception and one that anyone who runs a major media outlet or social-media platform knows won't fool people for long. OpenAI would probably prefer not to be evaluated by these punishing and polarized standards, so, as many other organizations have tried before, it's claiming to exist outside them. On that task, I suspect ChatGPT will fail.
November 11, 2025 at 2:24 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
My AcadiMeet series wraps up with a final lesson: Building this app wasn't just about learning about AI. It was about recovering my identity as a builder. If you've put off a project because of fear of the first line of code, this post is for you.

foundhistory.org/2025/11/ai-c...
AI Coding Collaboration for Digital Humanists (Part 4): Performance, Polish, and Problem Solving
Author’s note: This post is the final installment in a series on AI Coding Collaboration for Digital Humanists (and other competent imposters). The series chronicles the development of AcadiM…
foundhistory.org
November 10, 2025 at 8:57 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
The Kids Are Alright: My colleague, John Murphy, explores the budding realization among Gen Z that maybe their phones aren’t helping.

buff.ly/3vrrLcE
The Youth Rebellion Against the Infinite Scroll
Why college students are slowly, quietly reclaiming their attention.
buff.ly
November 7, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Reposted by Tom Scheinfeldt
tcarmody.bsky.social
You could just see this as working the refs: if you think you’ve got a shot at the govt guaranteeing your debt, why not try? But if OpenAI has genuinely reached the limits of all the financial engineering they’ve done to mitigate their capital risk, that’s a very bad sign
unusualwhales.bsky.social Unusual Whales @unusualwhales.bsky.social · 20d
BREAKING: OpenAI is requesting US government support to help guarantee financing for the massive investments in AI chips and data centers it needs for expansion, per Bloomberg.
November 6, 2025 at 1:51 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
Annual "Most Important Video Game of All Time" debate tournament in DMD2010: History of Digital Culture is in the books. Students submit nominations (and historical reasoning) in advance. Seeds are determined by number of nominations. This year's winner: Minecraft

buff.ly/TIfgc4s
Tournament Manager
Tournament Manager is an all in one tournament management application. Use Tournament Manager to create, manage and run a tournament. Make sure to have your tournament participants subscribe to your…
buff.ly
November 5, 2025 at 3:11 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
Building AcadiMeet required five sessions, but AI forgets everything when it hits the chat length ("context") limit. In this post, I describe how to avoid a hand-off crisis and move seamlessly from one chat window to the next. Hint: the solution hinges on proactive documentation.
AI Coding Collaboration for Digital Humanists (Part 3): Mastering Continuity
Author’s note: This post is the third in a series on AI Coding Collaboration for Digital Humanists (and other competent imposters). The series chronicles the development of AcadiMeet, a sched…
buff.ly
November 4, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by Tom Scheinfeldt
mkirschenbaum.bsky.social
Very proud to have worked on this statement of the Modern Language Association with @annamillsoer.bsky.social and other colleagues on the MLA’s task force on AI in Research and Teaching. It is a direct call for faculty input into Ed Tech decision-making, especially AI: www.mla.org/Resources/Ad... 🧵
Screenshots of the following text: Statement on Educational Technologies and AI Agents The following statement of endorsement was drafted by the MLA Task Force on AI in Research and Teaching. The Executive Council approved it as an MLA statement in October 2025. Software, specifically learning management systems (LMSs), is as important to teaching and learning as physical classrooms and facilities. The recent and hasty integration of generative AI features into those systems is already redefining student and instructor relationships, evaluative standards, and instructional outcomes—with no compelling evidence that any of it is for the better. At the same time, so-called agentic browsers are becoming widely available to the public. These offer AI “agents” that can navigate LMSs and complete assignments without any student involvement. All of this is unfolding at a time when contractual arrangements between institutions and commercial vendors often lack transparency, with worrisome implications for data collection and student privacy. Screenshots of the following text: The Modern Language Association therefore unequivocally 1. Advocates for full faculty and instructional involvement, including faculty of languages, literatures, and the humanities, at all levels of decision-making in the selection, procurement, and responsible implementation of instructional technology systems and software, including those incorporating AI.

The instructional mission cannot be fulfilled in the absence of faculty expertise, and this expertise extends not only to the “content” of the curriculum but also to the infrastructures and environments—virtual and otherwise—in which learning happens.
  2. Calls upon law- and policymakers, LMS vendors, and companies offering agent-based AI browsers to cooperate in order to prevent misuse and to ensure that academic institutions have the ability and option to block agentic AI when needed.

Without dedicated outside cooperation from lawmakers and technology providers, academic institutions may not have the technical capacity to do so on their own. If we do not act, we risk seeing the development of a fully automated loop in which assignments are generated by AI with the support of a learning management system, AI-generated content is submitted by an agentic AI on behalf of the student, and AI-driven metrics evaluate the work on behalf of the instructor.
November 4, 2025 at 1:09 AM
foundhistory.bsky.social
Doodle fatigue? Try AcadiMeet (acadimeet.org).

Free. No ads. Privacy-first. Scheduling for the academic life.

New this weekend: Calendar view, better mobile support, improved meeting selection UI.
Screenshot of AcadiMeet mobile UI Screenshot of AcadiMeet mobile UI
November 3, 2025 at 12:21 AM
foundhistory.bsky.social
New at AcadiMeet (acadimeet.org)! Recurring commitments! Block off recurring (biweekly, monthly, etc.) meetings in your polls and poll responses.

Also Part 2 in my series about working with AI to build AcadiMeet, including advice for rapid prototyping, passing code, and debugging. buff.ly/UgXXJGD
AcadiMeet
acadimeet.org
October 31, 2025 at 4:31 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
The second installment in my series on "AI Coding Collaboration for Digital Humanists" is out. The new post focuses on prototyping and execution, with practical tips for each stage of development.

foundhistory.org/2025/10/ai-c...
AI Coding Collaboration for Digital Humanists (Part 2): From Prototype to Production
Author’s note: This post is the second in a series on AI Coding Collaboration for Digital Humanists (and other competent imposters). The series chronicles the development of AcadiMeet, a sche…
foundhistory.org
October 31, 2025 at 12:02 AM
foundhistory.bsky.social
New at Acadimeet: Full timezone support. Schedule meetings in your timezone. Invitees respond in theirs. Everything gets synced up and calendar invites sent for everyone's correct timezone.

#Productivity #HigherEd #DH
AcadiMeet
acadimeet.org
October 27, 2025 at 2:17 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
I'm launching a blog series to chronicle my work with Claude to build AcadiMeet (acadimeet.org), including the strategic methods and communication patterns I used to launch the app.

The first post argues that the best way to begin is to focus on vision, not code.

foundhistory.org/2025/10/ai-c...
AI Coding Collaboration for Digital Humanists (and Other Competent Imposters) – Part 1
Author’s note: This post is the first in a series on AI Coding Collaboration for Digital Humanists (and other competent imposters). The series chronicles the development of AcadiMeet, a sched…
foundhistory.org
October 23, 2025 at 6:52 PM
foundhistory.bsky.social
I built AcadiMeet to handle the specific chaos of university life. It does everything you expect from a scheduling app but it's built to handle fixed teaching schedules, faculty autonomy, and the rhythms of the semester.

If you're tired of Doodle, give it a try: acadimeet.org

#HigherEd #EdTech
AcadiMeet
buff.ly
October 21, 2025 at 1:26 AM
foundhistory.bsky.social
I spent six days working with Claude to build a full-stack web app (check it out at AcadiMeet.org). The process was revelatory.

My conclusion: The old "hack vs. yack" binary in DH has collapsed.

Read my full reflection:

foundhistory.org/2025/10/meet...

#AI #DH #EdTech #HigherEd #Productivity
AcadiMeet
AcadiMeet.org
October 20, 2025 at 5:12 PM