@jacobward@hcommons.social
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jacobward

@jacobward@hcommons.social

Historian of science, technology, and neoliberalism. Mainly British history but Eurocurious. Assistant Professor at Maastricht University.

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jacobward, to history
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Here's a podcast on New Books Network where I talk about (surprise surprise) my new book, 'Visions of a Digital Nation', and why Margaret Thatcher's 1984 of British Telecom was a pivotal moment for both and .

Podcast: https://newbooksnetwork.com/visions-of-a-digital-nation

Book download: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14210.001.0001

@histodons @sts

jacobward, to academicchatter
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Save the humanities and social sciences at the University of Kent: https://chng.it/gK667PCwqp @academicchatter @academicsunite @histodons

jacobward, to history
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My first sole-authored book just came out! Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications is about the privatisation and digitalisation of the UK's telecom infrastructure, and why that was such a pivotal moment for the rise of neoliberalism.

It's published open-access with MIT Press, and you can read more (and soon, download) here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546294/visions-of-a-digital-nation/

@histodons

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jacobward,
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@dancarkner @histodons thanks, Abby FineReader came up on my radar after posting but yes, looks like a corporate solution for an individual problem (or that's probably how my university library would see it...)

jacobward,
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@polarbear @histodons it might only be marginal, but the scanner app introduces a couple extra points of friction in the archive. First is the time for image processing and second is the time for file management (e.g. creating a new file for each document you scan). The folders I'm looking at might have dozens of individual documents inside. If I can do these parts later, then I have more time for photographing documents while in the archive.

But yeah, this might be splitting hairs over very marginal gains! And there might also be very obvious solutions to the above friction points that I just haven't realised.

jacobward,
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@benjamingeer @histodons good to know, thanks! I'm especially interested in software that can do the automatic image processing that smartphone scanner apps do (centering, sharpening, brightening, etc.) but Acrobat is a candidate if I can't find something to do that.

jacobward,
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@zed @histodons alas I'm on windows but have boosted in case it helps any fellow archival photographers who are Mac users, and thanks so much for whipping this up - very kind of you

jacobward,
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@dta_cthomas @polarbear @histodons this looks really interesting, thank you, and I can imagine some colleagues in my faculty who'd also be very interested in Transkribus. Unfortunately I think the UK National Archives would probably block the Tent but I love it!!

jacobward,
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@tillgrallert @dancarkner @histodons good to know, thanks. Unfortunately on Windows but had a few Mac-specific recommendations that are making me want to flip-flop back to Mac after switching away about 10 years ago!

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jacobward,
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@brian_gettler @histodons I recently read and very much enjoyed Sewell's Logics of History. I think the introduction does a good job of explaining how historians deal with social time, but that means it does focus less on the specifics of source analysis, collection, etc. and more on questions like "what is an historical event?"

For more practical purposes, I really the last three chapters on historical methods (especially the last chapter, ‘Analyzing and Interpreting Historical Sources: A Basic
Methodology') in Bucheli and Wadhwani's edited collection Organizations in Time. While ostensibly focussed on organizational history, I think the chapter's actually incredibly versatile and transferable, and articulates very succinctly the historical process of triangulating and reading sources and context against each other.

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jacobward,
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@loshmi You're the first to mention miniflux, thanks for the recommendation. If I ever find the time to start learning how to self-host things (fedi instances, Pi-hole, etc.) then I'll also look into this!

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Amazingly, I made this several years ago

jacobward,
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@joelitobarski a timely find, given your recent musings on Twitter c. 2010 to present

jacobward, to random
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I've finally decided to experiment with Mastodon, so here's an

I'm a historian of science, technology, and neoliberalism. My first book (coming out Spring 2024) investigates the digitalisation and privatisation of Britain's telecom infrastructure, and I've recently started a new project on the history of futurology in British government.

I grew up and went to university in London, and now I work at Maastricht University, in the History department and STS research programme.

I had a Twitter account but was shocking at actually using it. Twitter always felt a bit too "broadcast" and exposing for me, which I think I reacted to by only posting declarations and announcements (when I posted at all). I'd like to be more active here and I hope there's more space for dialogue and interaction. Thanks for reading!

jacobward,
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@Christo thanks, both re. my research and feditips - subscribed!

jacobward,
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@moira thanks, super helpful!

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