Dear Pierre,
yes, you are right, but we can have infrastructure only if we ask for it. This is why I think that the problem is institutional: when I ask my institution to take into account this kind of problem, they answer that they bought many Microsoft and Apple licenses...
I agree with you: we cannot put the blame on individuals (not only, I would say). We should all engage (as you do) to make our institutions change. But this engagement can (and should) also be individual: in my lab, I forbid proprietary technologies. If a student of mine send to me a docx file, I do not read it. I teach in all my courses how to use alternative technologies and I ask my student to use them for their exams.
I am not angry with my colleagues because they use proprietary technologies: we all do, because we lack real alternatives. I am angry with them when I say that there is a problem and they tell me that it is not true, that they are happy with the wonderful technologies they have (look at this beautiful Mac!) and that they do not want to be a geek like me.
The problem is deeper: we have to struggle against the culture according to which tools - and everything material - are not important for our higher intellectual life. Stuff for secretaries... Things for little hands (les petites mains des sécretaires). We, intelligent scholars, do not care about this stupid stuff. This is what my colleagues answer to me when I tell them that we should do something... One of them wrote: "this one (me) is another one who lose his time playing with LaTeX instead of working". Or an author proposing a paper for Sens public and answering to my request of submitting a well structured file: "I do not care about the format of my text. What is important is the content. Don't you have a secretary (feminine in French) to take care of that?". (Wonderful works about the work of women in informatics show us how sexism is linked with the idea that material things like tools are not important for thinking, this is why they are for women).
This is the problem in my opinion. First of all we should struggle to change this mentality. And then we will be able to ask for infrastructures.
best
marcello vitali-rosati
On 2019-11-25 09:18 AM, Pierre Mounier wrote:
Dear all,
the word you are looking for is : "infrastructure". If we are driven to use the GAFAM services as scholars, it is just because we have no open, efficient, sustainable, user-friendly, trustable alternative infrastructure. The problem comes from higher : there is a notorious lack of public investment at this level of the infrastructure supporting scholarly work. There is investment beneath it (hard infrastructures like network backbones, hosting facilities, computing power, semi-soft infrastructures such as AAI), there is investment above (data management infrastructures), but very few in the middle. How could we name this intermediate level ? When we use Google and Facebook to write, discuss with colleagues, share documents, collaborate, find and disseminate information, this is communication in a scholarly context AKA "scholarly communication". A lot of wonderful initiatives exist across the world that aim at giving to the scholars the knowledge production tools they need, starting with Stylo https://blog.sens-public.org/marcellovitalirosati/stylo/%C2%A0,%C2%A0but they lack sustainable funding.
That's why I agree with you when you say scholars should avoid using GAFAM tools, but I disagree when it comes to lecturing them and making them feel guilty for not shifting to something else. As an individual, I rely heavily on Apple and Google infrastructure and I am not ashamed of it. I am just waiting for a best alternative, meaning an open infrastructure that offers the same level of service. Collectively, I am engaged into collective efforts to make funders understand they have to invest in open scholarly communication infrastructures, for the SSH, with OPERAS : https://operas.hypotheses.org/%C2%A0, for all disciplines with Invest in Open : https://investinopen.org/%C2%A0And I can tell you it is not an easy task. But we need collective efforts - policies - as much as individual choices. And it starts by understanding and making the policy makers understand that communication tools and services for research are not commodities that can be outsourced, but are strategic assets they should invest in, because those tools and services literally shape the way research is done and knowledge produced.
All the best,
-- Pierre Mounier OPERAS Coordinator (Community) - http://operas-eu.org http://operas-eu.org/ OpenEdition Associate Director - http://openedition.org http://openedition.org/ DOAB Co-Director - http://doabooks.org http://doabooks.org/ orcid.org/0000-0003-0691-6063 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0691-6063
EHESS 54, boulevard Raspail 75006 Paris Bureau/Office A-43-4 Mob. +33 (0)6 61 98 31 86 Skype : piotrr19701 Schedule a meeting with me : https://doodle.com/pierremounier
On Sun, Nov 24, 2019 at 11:45 PM Bordalejo, Barbara <bab995@mail.usask.ca mailto:bab995@mail.usask.ca> wrote:
Dear all, After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, I considered quitting some social media (starting with Facebook). I was torn between my need to communicate with family and friends living in far away countries (and some intensely active work groups I belong to), and the sheer immorality of the way in which these companies were using personal information to create profit or manipulate people. I weighed the pros and cons, and decided the price for leaving was too high at the time. As you know, there are other initiatives intending to replace Facebook (Minds, MeWe, WT social), each of them with its own problems, and none of them is popular enough, good enough, whatever enough. There is a serious argument in the Amnesty International post Domenico shared, which focuses mostly on the indiscriminate access to private data and how this can be prevented. Somehow, this doesn’t seem to be a determining factor for me (although I understand why it is for others). What I consider much more serious is the refusal from Facebook (and other social media giants) to deal with the spreading of misinformation and the rise of radical hate groups. Marcello also points out that we are being forced to use certain companies by our institutions and this shows how deeply the giants of Silicon Valley have taken root in all parts of our society (including those which should be independent and free). On top of that, these are services institutions have to pay for. When we use the “free” alternatives, we are using the exact same companies. Of course, “free” is never really free. I often tell my students that if they don’t have to pay for a service and they don’t see what they are being sold, they are the product. I agree that we should be writing about how to disengage from certain social media (I have various articles saved on how to quit those, but they were all written by well-intentioned journalists, not academics), what alternatives we might be using, or whether they are even necessary. Perhaps someone here might consider leading this work. BB P.S.: As I was writing this, I logged into Facebook to check on the name of one of the alternative social media platforms and I found a post from a colleague about the 160 anniversary of /The Origin of Species/. As a side note, he reminded me that it is now the tenth anniversary of my online variorum edition. Not all is evil about social media, and so I remain part of it for another day...On Nov 23, 2019, at 9:22 PM, O'Donnell, Dan <daniel.odonnell@uleth.ca <mailto:daniel.odonnell@uleth.ca>> wrote: I agree that we should be talking about this. I am increasingly seeing our community, which was the original "early adopters" now becoming the "early unadopters." But a) that's easier in the North and out you're wealthy than in the south or poor (what a surprise) and b) it requires some expertise and understanding of how, why, and what's involved. And indeed, university leadership doesn't seem to be treating this as seriously as they should. I'm increasingly thinking that this is the major challenge for us--i.e. Digitally knowledgeable humanists--to take up. I also don't think we are addressing it as seriously as it requires. We should be writing guides about how to disengage as seriously as we wrote them about engaging. We need to start talking about the societal costs we are seeing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* globaloutlookdh-l <globaloutlookdh-l-bounces@uleth.ca <mailto:globaloutlookdh-l-bounces@uleth.ca>> on behalf of Marcello Vitali-Rosati <marcello@chiavedisvolta.org <mailto:marcello@chiavedisvolta.org>> *Sent:* Sunday, November 24, 2019 6:41:40 AM *To:* globaloutlookdh-l, MailList <globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca <mailto:globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca>> *Subject:* Re: [globaloutlookDH-l] A Faustian bargain Dear Domenico, I completely agree with you. I particularly liked your paper "Geopolitica della conoscenza digitale. Dal web aperto all’impero di GAFAM." I think the stakes are huge. I have myself many ongoing project on what knowledge will be in few years if we do not do something (and what we could do). A would like to underline here a simple fact (I think a discussion about it here could be useful): I think our institutions are completely deaf about this problem. At UdeM, we are obliged to use Microsoft mail for our institutional email address (for some other universities it is Gmail), it is impossible to write without using Word (I always have problem when I refuse to give a docx file and I send instead an HTML). There are many things I cannot do with my Linux on the digital infrastructure of the university (for example: to review student applications for admission, we can **only** use Internet Explorer; our VPN does not work with Linux, there is only documentation for Windows and Mac, etc.). Our colleagues find normal to use Facebook or Google Hangout to stream their conferences... And when I say something about that everybody answers: "but it is easier, I do not have time to lose with your geek things". I am as sconsolato as you best m On 2019-11-23 12:20 PM, Domenico Fiormonte wrote: > Dear all, > > as a DHer I was particularly struck by this report by Amnesty on surveillance giants: > > https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol30/1404/2019/en/ > > > "But despite the real value of the services they provide, Google and Facebook’s platforms come at a systemic cost. The companies’ surveillance-based business model forces people to make a Faustian bargain, whereby they are only able to enjoy their human rights online by submitting to a system predicated on human rights abuse." > > As some of you already know, I've been criticizing the political and social role of these platforms since long ago. And I'm increasingly wondering how the DH community - and especially our global community - can remain silent in the face of documented violations of human rights. Beacause this is exactly what's going on. It's not just about data. > > Would make any sense to start a discussion here on how to respond as digital scholars to these (not anymore just epistemological or cultural) abuses? > > Or should we just go on, using Google and Facebook as those and other documented abuses did not exist? > > Sconsolatamente Vostro, > > Domenico > > _______________________________________________ > globaloutlookdh-l mailing list > globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca <mailto:globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca> > http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/globaloutlookdh-l > > You are currently subscribed to this list in NON-digest mode. This means you receive every message as it is posted. > > If this represents too much traffic, you can also subscribe in DIGEST mode. This sends out a single email once a day containing the entire day's postings. To change your settings go to http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/options/globaloutlookdh-l You can request a password reminder from this page if you have forgotten yours. _______________________________________________ globaloutlookdh-l mailing list globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca <mailto:globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca> http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/globaloutlookdh-l You are currently subscribed to this list in NON-digest mode. This means you receive every message as it is posted. If this represents too much traffic, you can also subscribe in DIGEST mode. This sends out a single email once a day containing the entire day's postings. To change your settings go to http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/options/globaloutlookdh-l You can request a password reminder from this page if you have forgotten yours. _______________________________________________ globaloutlookdh-l mailing list globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca <mailto:globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca> http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/globaloutlookdh-l You are currently subscribed to this list in NON-digest mode. This means you receive every message as it is posted. If this represents too much traffic, you can also subscribe in DIGEST mode. This sends out a single email once a day containing the entire day's postings. To change your settings go to http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/options/globaloutlookdh-l You can request a password reminder from this page if you have forgotten yours._______________________________________________ globaloutlookdh-l mailing list globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca <mailto:globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca> http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/globaloutlookdh-l You are currently subscribed to this list in NON-digest mode. This means you receive every message as it is posted. If this represents too much traffic, you can also subscribe in DIGEST mode. This sends out a single email once a day containing the entire day's postings. To change your settings go to http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/options/globaloutlookdh-l You can request a password reminder from this page if you have forgotten yours.
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