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The Invaders — Pat Shipman | Harvard University Press
▻http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674975415

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/images/jackets/9780674975415-lg.jpg

With their large brains, sturdy physique, sophisticated tools, and hunting skills, Neanderthals are the closest known relatives to humans. Approximately 200,000 years ago, as modern humans began to radiate out from their evolutionary birthplace in Africa, Neanderthals were already thriving in Europe—descendants of a much earlier migration of the African genus Homo. But when modern humans eventually made their way to Europe 45,000 years ago, Neanderthals suddenly vanished. Ever since the first Neanderthal bones were identified in 1856, scientists have been vexed by the question, why did modern humans survive while their evolutionary cousins went extinct?

The Invaders musters compelling evidence to show that the major factor in the Neanderthals’ demise was direct competition with newly arriving humans. Drawing on insights from the field of invasion biology, which predicts that the species ecologically closest to the invasive predator will face the greatest competition, Pat Shipman traces the devastating impact of a growing human population: reduction of Neanderthals’ geographic range, isolation into small groups, and loss of genetic diversity.

But modern humans were not the only invaders who competed with Neanderthals for big game. Shipman reveals fascinating confirmation of humans’ partnership with the first domesticated wolf-dogs soon after Neanderthals first began to disappear. This alliance between two predator species, she hypothesizes, made possible an unprecedented degree of success in hunting large Ice Age mammals—a distinct and ultimately decisive advantage for humans over Neanderthals at a time when climate change made both groups vulnerable.

#livre cité par Scott dans Homo domesticus #chasse #chien #loup #domestication_du_loup (qui remonterait à 36 000 ans) #préhistoire #homo_sapiens

Graphesis — Johanna Drucker | Harvard University Press

▻http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674724938

C’est notre amie Sandra Rengen qui nous signale sur Twitter cet opus que je ne connaissais pas

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/images/jackets/9780674724938-lg.jpg http://thehumanitiesnow.blogs.bucknell.edu/files/2014/11/Bf03z002__Meredyk_PaxtonMap.jpg

In our current screen-saturated culture, we take in more information through visual means than at any point in history. The computers and smart phones that constantly flood us with images do more than simply convey information. They structure our relationship to information through graphical formats. Learning to interpret how visual forms not only present but produce knowledge, says Johanna Drucker, has become an essential contemporary skill.

Graphesis provides a descriptive critical language for the analysis of graphical knowledge. In an interdisciplinary study fusing digital humanities with media studies and graphic design history, Drucker outlines the principles by which visual formats organize meaningful content. Among the most significant of these formats is the graphical user interface (GUI)—the dominant feature of the screens of nearly all consumer electronic devices. Because so much of our personal and professional lives is mediated through visual interfaces, it is important to start thinking critically about how they shape knowledge, our behavior, and even our identity.

Information graphics bear tell-tale signs of the disciplines in which they originated: statistics, business, and the empirical sciences. Drucker makes the case for studying visuality from a humanistic perspective, exploring how graphic languages can serve fields where qualitative judgments take priority over quantitative statements of fact. Graphesis offers a new epistemology of the ways we process information, embracing the full potential of visual forms and formats of knowledge production.

#cartographie #visualisation #cartoexperiment

Projet cartographie expérimentale
Tags généraux : #cartoexperiment #biblioxperiment
Tags particulier : #visualisation #complexité_visuelle

#Book: The Black Box Society
The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information
–- Frank Pasquale

▻http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674368279

Frank Pasquale exposes how powerful interests abuse secrecy for profit and explains ways to rein them in. Demanding transparency is only the first step. An intelligible society would assure that key decisions of its most important firms are fair, nondiscriminatory, and open to criticism. Silicon Valley and Wall Street need to accept as much accountability as they impose on others.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/images/jackets/9780674368279-lg.jpg

Articles:

– Seenthis:
@hubertguillaud

▻http://seenthis.net/messages/342545

– Slate:

▻http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/01/black_box_society_by_frank_pasquale_a_chilling_vision_of_how_big_data_has.htm

As a lawyer, Pasquale looks at the problem from the outside in, considering the civil structure in which data-collection algorithms are embedded and how we could potentially regulate abusive and harmful uses of the data while still enabling beneficial “big data” studies.

– Times Higher Education:

▻https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/the-black-box-society-the-secret-algorithms-that-control-money-and-information-by-frank-pasquale/2018918.article

This book’s subtitle could easily have been taken further: it is not just money and information that is at stake. The algorithmic control that law scholar Frank Pasquale eloquently and intelligently details and analyses goes beyond money and information and into almost every aspect of our lives. For this reason, although it might appear merely to be a book about technology and finance, The Black Box Society, ultimately, is a radical and political work that deserves wide attention.

– New Republic:

▻http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120987/pasquales-black-box-challenges-digital-sphere-run-algorithms

The Black Box Society is a tour of how computational intelligence has come to dominate three important parts of American life: reputation, search, and finance. Pasquale is invoking a couple different concepts with the title. Like a black box on an airplane, these algorithms take information from the noise around them; like a black box in computer science, they are hidden systems, only observable from the outside in terms of their inputs and outputs. But more like black holes, the algorithms are visible in their effects on their surroundings. Our economy—and the many vital life processes it manages—twists and turns based on the say-so of inscrutable mathematical processes.

– A very good interview in which Frank Pasquale talks about how his book came to be (it took 10 years to write it):

▻http://balkin.blogspot.be/2014/09/interview-on-black-box-society_19.html

As Google grew in the early 2000s, the primary policy question seemed to be: “how do we get law out of the way of this company so it can keep organizing the internet?”

#book #livre
#big_data

#Frank_Pasquale

▻https://www.law.umaryland.edu/faculty/profiles/faculty.html?facultynum=984

N’aidez pas vos enfants à faire leur devoir - The Atlantic
▻http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/and-dont-help-your-kids-with-their-homework/358636

L’implication des parents dans les études de leur enfant n’a pas d’incidence sur leur réussite, au contraire, révèle une méta-étude américaine menée par les professeurs de sociologie Keith Robinson et Angel Harris et qu’ils ont publié dans un livre, « La boussole cassée » : ▻http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674725102 . La plupart des formes mesurables de la participation des parents (aider les enfants à faire leur devoir, parler avec eux, faire du bénévolat à l’école...) ne semble pas apporter les résultats escomptés. Pire, à partir du collège, l’aide apporter aux enfants semble tirer les résultats scolaires des enfants vers le bas, et ce quel que soit la classe sociale, l’origine ethnique ou le niveau d’éducation des parents. Les ingérences des parents ont surtout pour résultat de rendre les (...)

#éducation #jeunes

The Collaboration — Ben Urwand | Harvard University Press
▻http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674724747

▻http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_UJrSc4PXVM

To continue doing business in Germany after Hitler’s ascent to power, Hollywood studios agreed not to make films that attacked the Nazis or condemned Germany’s persecution of Jews. Ben Urwand reveals this bargain for the first time—a “collaboration” (Zusammenarbeit) that drew in a cast of characters ranging from notorious German political leaders such as Goebbels to Hollywood icons such as Louis B. Mayer.

At the center of Urwand’s story is Hitler himself, who was obsessed with movies and recognized their power to shape public opinion. In December 1930, his Party rioted against the Berlin screening of All Quiet on the Western Front, which led to a chain of unfortunate events and decisions. Fearful of losing access to the German market, all of the Hollywood studios started making concessions to the German government, and when Hitler came to power in January 1933, the studios—many of which were headed by Jews—began dealing with his representatives directly.

Urwand shows that the arrangement remained in place through the 1930s, as Hollywood studios met regularly with the German consul in Los Angeles and changed or canceled movies according to his wishes. Paramount and Fox invested profits made from the German market in German newsreels, while MGM financed the production of German armaments. Painstakingly marshaling previously unexamined archival evidence, The Collaboration raises the curtain on a hidden episode in Hollywood—and American—history.