Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
@ranjodhdhaliwal.com
Critical Media Theory + Science and Technology Studies + Literature + CS.
Associate Prof. of DH, AI, and Media somewhere.
VP, @litsciarts.org
📚: Computation, Political Economy, Infrastructures, History, Games, Design, SF.
☭.
Not a professional account.
Associate Prof. of DH, AI, and Media somewhere.
VP, @litsciarts.org
📚: Computation, Political Economy, Infrastructures, History, Games, Design, SF.
☭.
Not a professional account.
Pinned
[email protected] and I co-wrote this piece on why you are (probably) doing AI criticism wrong as a humanist and why we, in Critical AI Studies, need to do better methodologically than 'So I asked ChatGPT a question and now I have thoughts...'
Now available on arXiv at doi.org/10.48550/arX...
Now available on arXiv at doi.org/10.48550/arX...
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
This is the case in ways already recognized (see e.g., @laraputnam.bsky.social's www.jstor.org/stable/43955... and @ianmilligan1.bsky.social's uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/items/a27aaa...), and ways yet to be felt.
The technology, combined with full-text search, opens and closes many worlds.
The technology, combined with full-text search, opens and closes many worlds.
The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast on JSTOR
LARA PUTNAM, The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast, The American Historical Review, Vol. 121, No. 2 (APRIL 2016), pp. 377-402
www.jstor.org
November 25, 2025 at 6:18 PM
This is the case in ways already recognized (see e.g., @laraputnam.bsky.social's www.jstor.org/stable/43955... and @ianmilligan1.bsky.social's uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/items/a27aaa...), and ways yet to be felt.
The technology, combined with full-text search, opens and closes many worlds.
The technology, combined with full-text search, opens and closes many worlds.
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
Nearly-perfect printed and handwritten text recognition is the most consequential technical contribution to the study of human culture of the last fifteen years, and it's not even close.
It fundamentally changes our (both lay and expert) relationship with the written past.
It fundamentally changes our (both lay and expert) relationship with the written past.
New issue of my newsletter: "The Writing Is on the Wall for Handwriting Recognition" — One of the hardest problems in digital humanities has finally been solved, and it's a good use of AI newsletter.dancohen.org/archive/the-...
The Writing Is on the Wall for Handwriting Recognition
One of the hardest problems in digital humanities has finally been solved
newsletter.dancohen.org
November 25, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Nearly-perfect printed and handwritten text recognition is the most consequential technical contribution to the study of human culture of the last fifteen years, and it's not even close.
It fundamentally changes our (both lay and expert) relationship with the written past.
It fundamentally changes our (both lay and expert) relationship with the written past.
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
Remember when Aaron Swartz downloaded JSTOR archives that he had full legal rights to download and the FBI hounded him literally to death for it? Anyway,
NEW: Common Crawl, the massive archiver of the web, has gotten cozy with AI companies and is providing paywalled articles for training data. They’re also lying to publishers who have asked for material to be removed. “The robots are people too,” CC’s exec director told us when we asked about this.
The Nonprofit Feeding the Entire Internet to AI Companies
Common Crawl claims to provide a public benefit, but it lies to publishers about its activities.
www.theatlantic.com
November 4, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Remember when Aaron Swartz downloaded JSTOR archives that he had full legal rights to download and the FBI hounded him literally to death for it? Anyway,
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
waymo ceo: we plan for fatal crashes and society will learn to accept them
roblox ceo: kids must be preyed upon and victimized as a necessary consequence of scale
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HEADS ON PIKES
roblox ceo: kids must be preyed upon and victimized as a necessary consequence of scale
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HEADS ON PIKES
November 21, 2025 at 7:42 PM
waymo ceo: we plan for fatal crashes and society will learn to accept them
roblox ceo: kids must be preyed upon and victimized as a necessary consequence of scale
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HEADS ON PIKES
roblox ceo: kids must be preyed upon and victimized as a necessary consequence of scale
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HEADS ON PIKES
Happening today in a few hours!
Amsterdam friends, I am talking about Jameson, pipelining infrastructures, graphical rendering, and supply chain ecologies tomorrow at 1700 at the University of Amsterdam. www.uva.nl/en/shared-co...
Notes on the Infrastructural Unconscious: Computers, Pipelines, and Material Metaphors
Why does our media infrastructure today run on pipelines, both real (oil and gas) and symbolic (instruction, data, rendering)? This guest lecture by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal focuses on the emergence, pr...
www.uva.nl
November 20, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Happening today in a few hours!
Amsterdam friends, I am talking about Jameson, pipelining infrastructures, graphical rendering, and supply chain ecologies tomorrow at 1700 at the University of Amsterdam. www.uva.nl/en/shared-co...
Notes on the Infrastructural Unconscious: Computers, Pipelines, and Material Metaphors
Why does our media infrastructure today run on pipelines, both real (oil and gas) and symbolic (instruction, data, rendering)? This guest lecture by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal focuses on the emergence, pr...
www.uva.nl
November 19, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Amsterdam friends, I am talking about Jameson, pipelining infrastructures, graphical rendering, and supply chain ecologies tomorrow at 1700 at the University of Amsterdam. www.uva.nl/en/shared-co...
Just Published: For the latest @jcmsjournal.bsky.social issue, Mal Ahern and I co-edited an In Focus dossier on 'Images and (Infra)structures,' which originally emerged from a lively @scmstudies.bsky.social roundtable in 2022. What, we ask, do images and infrastructure have to say to each other?
November 18, 2025 at 8:22 AM
Just Published: For the latest @jcmsjournal.bsky.social issue, Mal Ahern and I co-edited an In Focus dossier on 'Images and (Infra)structures,' which originally emerged from a lively @scmstudies.bsky.social roundtable in 2022. What, we ask, do images and infrastructure have to say to each other?
With John Behrens and Alexi Orchard, I co-wrote, for the latest issue of the IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, this short reflection on teaching Generative AI through a multidisciplinary framework while technological systems change continuously. doi.org/10.1109/MTS....
November 13, 2025 at 11:37 AM
With John Behrens and Alexi Orchard, I co-wrote, for the latest issue of the IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, this short reflection on teaching Generative AI through a multidisciplinary framework while technological systems change continuously. doi.org/10.1109/MTS....
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
@desmog.com reviewed US tax records which show Bill Gates’ charity has donated more than $3.5 million to a think tank run by Danish academic and climate crisis denier Bjørn Lomborg www.desmog.com/2025/11/05/b...
Bill Gates Gave $3.5M to Think Tank Run by Climate Crisis Denier Bjorn Lomborg
Tax records reveal that the billionaire’s foundation has donated for years to Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center.
www.desmog.com
November 6, 2025 at 4:08 AM
@desmog.com reviewed US tax records which show Bill Gates’ charity has donated more than $3.5 million to a think tank run by Danish academic and climate crisis denier Bjørn Lomborg www.desmog.com/2025/11/05/b...
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
Freue mich auf diesen Workshop in Paris mit Estelle Blaschke und Claus Pias! www.dfk-paris.org/de/event/bil...
Bildlosigkeit: Das digitale Bild gibt es nicht | DFK Paris
www.dfk-paris.org
November 5, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Freue mich auf diesen Workshop in Paris mit Estelle Blaschke und Claus Pias! www.dfk-paris.org/de/event/bil...
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
Travel data has historically been a correlative proxy. Early 2000s data mining used one way flights (*purchased third party) in terror algorithms. These apparent “errors” by HMRC illuminate machine learning logics: 1/ combine gov cloud data
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
HMRC cuts child benefit for 35,000 families based on incomplete travel data
UK tax agency apologises after flagging people as having emigrated, often when they return via different routes
www.theguardian.com
October 28, 2025 at 10:05 AM
Travel data has historically been a correlative proxy. Early 2000s data mining used one way flights (*purchased third party) in terror algorithms. These apparent “errors” by HMRC illuminate machine learning logics: 1/ combine gov cloud data
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
I should say that this is the result of an invitation by @ritaraley.bsky.social and Fabian Offert, but also a reaction to this paper by Fabian and @ranjodhdhaliwal.com that I found very "generative." arxiv.org/abs/2411.18833
The Method of Critical AI Studies, A Propaedeutic
We outline some common methodological issues in the field of critical AI studies, including a tendency to overestimate the explanatory power of individual samples (the benchmark casuistry), a dependen...
arxiv.org
October 28, 2025 at 4:26 AM
I should say that this is the result of an invitation by @ritaraley.bsky.social and Fabian Offert, but also a reaction to this paper by Fabian and @ranjodhdhaliwal.com that I found very "generative." arxiv.org/abs/2411.18833
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
Read my new preprint "Surface Reading LLMs: Synthetic Text and its Styles." I argue that we should not only look at the depth behind LLMs, but also take the surfaces seriously with which they present us: as the principal plane on which we encounter them in the life-world.
Surface Reading LLMs: Synthetic Text and its Styles
Despite a potential plateau in ML advancement, the societal impact of large language models lies not in approaching superintelligence but in generating text surfaces indistinguishable from human writi...
arxiv.org
October 28, 2025 at 3:14 AM
Read my new preprint "Surface Reading LLMs: Synthetic Text and its Styles." I argue that we should not only look at the depth behind LLMs, but also take the surfaces seriously with which they present us: as the principal plane on which we encounter them in the life-world.
October 10, 2025 at 7:11 AM
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
I am still processing the many impressions, insights and ideas that emerged from our conference. Many heartfelt thanks to all the speakers for their inspiring contributions and the intensive discussion—it was great to welcome you all to Zurich, and I hope we'll be able to continue the conversation!
From 02–04 October 2025, our conference «React & Respond. Image Cultures under Platform Capitalism» will take place in Zurich.
Across three locations and with contributions by scholars and artists, the conference will analyze today's economies of networked image cultures.
Program & Registration:
Across three locations and with contributions by scholars and artists, the conference will analyze today's economies of networked image cultures.
Program & Registration:
International Conference: «React & Respond. Image Cultures under Platform Capitalism»
Bringing together scholars and artists from a range of fields and backgrounds, the international conference «React & Respond» aims to map and analyze these contemporary economies of networked image cu...
digitalculturesandarts.ch
October 6, 2025 at 11:41 AM
I am still processing the many impressions, insights and ideas that emerged from our conference. Many heartfelt thanks to all the speakers for their inspiring contributions and the intensive discussion—it was great to welcome you all to Zurich, and I hope we'll be able to continue the conversation!
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
📣 #OpenCall: SNSF Starting Grants 2026
For researchers wanting to lead their own independent project and research team in Switzerland.
🗓️ Submission deadline: 5 May 2026
➡️ https://sohub.io/rptw
For researchers wanting to lead their own independent project and research team in Switzerland.
🗓️ Submission deadline: 5 May 2026
➡️ https://sohub.io/rptw
October 6, 2025 at 8:01 AM
📣 #OpenCall: SNSF Starting Grants 2026
For researchers wanting to lead their own independent project and research team in Switzerland.
🗓️ Submission deadline: 5 May 2026
➡️ https://sohub.io/rptw
For researchers wanting to lead their own independent project and research team in Switzerland.
🗓️ Submission deadline: 5 May 2026
➡️ https://sohub.io/rptw
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
Man, the “institutional neutrality” gambit really worked like a charm….
Gavin Newsom announces that any California university that caves to Trump and signs his “loyalty pledge” will be immediately defunded.
“CALIFORNIA WILL NOT BANKROLL SCHOOLS THAT SELL OUT THEIR STUDENTS.”
“CALIFORNIA WILL NOT BANKROLL SCHOOLS THAT SELL OUT THEIR STUDENTS.”
October 3, 2025 at 6:02 AM
Man, the “institutional neutrality” gambit really worked like a charm….
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
Fascinating to see how the very historical ideologies - stuffy east coast bureaucracies - that Silicon Valley rebelled against are now being used to criticize it... www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/t...
October 2, 2025 at 11:16 AM
Fascinating to see how the very historical ideologies - stuffy east coast bureaucracies - that Silicon Valley rebelled against are now being used to criticize it... www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/t...
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
can she take on assemblages
September 23, 2025 at 7:58 AM
can she take on assemblages
youtube algorithms got those nerd dollars on lock.
September 12, 2025 at 6:32 AM
youtube algorithms got those nerd dollars on lock.
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
From 02–04 October 2025, our conference «React & Respond. Image Cultures under Platform Capitalism» will take place in Zurich.
Across three locations and with contributions by scholars and artists, the conference will analyze today's economies of networked image cultures.
Program & Registration:
Across three locations and with contributions by scholars and artists, the conference will analyze today's economies of networked image cultures.
Program & Registration:
International Conference: «React & Respond. Image Cultures under Platform Capitalism»
Bringing together scholars and artists from a range of fields and backgrounds, the international conference «React & Respond» aims to map and analyze these contemporary economies of networked image cu...
digitalculturesandarts.ch
September 9, 2025 at 3:08 PM
From 02–04 October 2025, our conference «React & Respond. Image Cultures under Platform Capitalism» will take place in Zurich.
Across three locations and with contributions by scholars and artists, the conference will analyze today's economies of networked image cultures.
Program & Registration:
Across three locations and with contributions by scholars and artists, the conference will analyze today's economies of networked image cultures.
Program & Registration:
@4sweb.bsky.social friends, we are starting in ~10 mins!! Come see my midnight zoom face. #4S2025
September 4, 2025 at 8:21 PM
@4sweb.bsky.social friends, we are starting in ~10 mins!! Come see my midnight zoom face. #4S2025
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
Please submit! Conference CFP
CRIES AND WHISPERS: PODCASTING AND THE PROMISE OF DISRUPTION (Feb 20-21, 2026 at Florida Atlantic University)
Keynote: Jeremy Morris (UW-Madison)
Conference website and submission portal: criesandwhispers2026.wordpress.com
CRIES AND WHISPERS: PODCASTING AND THE PROMISE OF DISRUPTION (Feb 20-21, 2026 at Florida Atlantic University)
Keynote: Jeremy Morris (UW-Madison)
Conference website and submission portal: criesandwhispers2026.wordpress.com
August 30, 2025 at 7:08 AM
Please submit! Conference CFP
CRIES AND WHISPERS: PODCASTING AND THE PROMISE OF DISRUPTION (Feb 20-21, 2026 at Florida Atlantic University)
Keynote: Jeremy Morris (UW-Madison)
Conference website and submission portal: criesandwhispers2026.wordpress.com
CRIES AND WHISPERS: PODCASTING AND THE PROMISE OF DISRUPTION (Feb 20-21, 2026 at Florida Atlantic University)
Keynote: Jeremy Morris (UW-Madison)
Conference website and submission portal: criesandwhispers2026.wordpress.com
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
vibe check on the american polity
September 3, 2025 at 8:00 PM
vibe check on the american polity
Reposted by Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
#CfP: Special Issue “Celebrating 60 Years of ELIZA? Critical Pasts and Futures of AI” of the Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society (WJDS), co-edited by @strippel.bsky.social & Magnus Rust. Submission deadline: November 17, 2025.
More: www.weizenbaum-institut.de/news/detail/...
More: www.weizenbaum-institut.de/news/detail/...
Special Issue “Celebrating 60 Years of ELIZA? Critical Pasts and Futures of AI”
The Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society calls for papers for a special issue marking the 60th anniversary of ELIZA, one of the first chatbots developed by Joseph Weizenbaum.
www.weizenbaum-institut.de
August 25, 2025 at 1:13 PM
#CfP: Special Issue “Celebrating 60 Years of ELIZA? Critical Pasts and Futures of AI” of the Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society (WJDS), co-edited by @strippel.bsky.social & Magnus Rust. Submission deadline: November 17, 2025.
More: www.weizenbaum-institut.de/news/detail/...
More: www.weizenbaum-institut.de/news/detail/...