Next month marks the 60th anniversary of the JHU conference where Derrida delivered “Sign, Structure, and Play.” We’re taking the opportunity to revisit (and reopen?) the structuralism question with regard to AI. If you’re in the Triangle, come by!

This event was fantastic. Greatly enjoyed chatting with Nick, David Brooks, and the audience!

Dartmouth Arts and Sciences@dartmouthartsci.bsky.social · 13h ago

At a discussion on the future of AI and its impacts on society, professor @jeddobson.bsky.social and the University of New Hampshire's Nick Smith were skeptical about predictions of AI's destructive potential, attributing them in part to AI firms wanting to look more powerful than they are.

What on earth happened to Ideologiekritik? I'm struck that - even among leftist cultural commentators - there is so little recourse to the language of ideology. Is it just that 'we tried talking like that, and the world didn't change in ways we hoped?'

Going into my present project with this kind of energy.

Granite Staters: I'm speaking on a panel tomorrow evening at Lithermans Limited in Concord, NH at 6pm on AI impacts. Joined by Nicholas Smith, a UNH philosopher. Come for the Beer & Pizza and chat. www.concordmonitor.com/2026/09/10/s...

Science Cafe returns Sept. 15 to discuss AI impacts - Concord Monitor

Science Cafe returns Sept. 15 at Litherman’s Brewery to discuss AI impacts with experts Nicholas Smith and James Dobson. Join the talk.

concordmonitor.com

Undergrad English majors, language majors, theater, folklore, creative writing majors: for conversation with writers of romance novels, advice on job seeking, opportunities to apply for grants up to $5000, and lots more, join the MLA's new undergrad member program! www.mla.org/Membership/A...

Greatly enjoyed this essay on a foggy morning spent moving back and forth between nature and the couch. It’s a sharp review, autobiographical fragment, and much more.

Dan Sinykin@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social · 3w ago

I wrote about being torn between academia and wilderness, scholarship and nature. And hunting deer, and Austyn Wohlers' great novel Hothouse Bloom. William Cronon and Alyssa Batistoni. And the way a river flows to the sea. www.thenation.com/article/envi....

Congratulations to Roopsi, Dartmouth’s new Provost Leadership Fellow for AI Strategy! Looking forward to what comes next.

Roopika Risam@roopikarisam.bsky.social · 3w ago

My next adventure.... Provost Leadership Fellow for AI Strategy for the next three years, supported by an Ivy+ Faculty Advancement Network Praxis Fellowship funded by Mellon. home.dartmouth.edu/news/2026/09...

In this article, I analyze some open-source implementations of "memory" including the one found in OpenClaw and the academic projects that preceded the commercial development of this feature.

James E. Dobson@jeddobson.bsky.social · 3w ago

I've got another newly published essay! This article addresses the automatic assembly of context in chatbots--what is known as "memory" for these applications--and how this manufactures the appearance of continuity and personality, while constructing user profiles for further data extraction.

I've got another newly published essay! This article addresses the automatic assembly of context in chatbots--what is known as "memory" for these applications--and how this manufactures the appearance of continuity and personality, while constructing user profiles for further data extraction.

This is why reading Derrida is so interesting and complicated. His writings--in both content and form--deliberately disrupt the common expectation that what has been written can be read as the expression of what the author of the text actually thinks. This is precisely what his texts deconstruct.

New German Critique has the Digital Theory Lab's Semiotic Machines special issue forthcoming, featuring a collection of essays by people at the cutting edge of AI and interpretation, politics, and culture ngc.arts.cornell.edu/forthcoming....

📚 Book Launch: 'Vector Media' by Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org & Leonardo Impett 🗓️ 22 Sept, 16.30 📍 KCL, Macadam Building MAC 106 Panel w/ @joannazylinska.bsky.social, @dchavezheras.bsky.social, @mrsbunz.bsky.social Hosted by Creative AI Lab 📝 Register: www.tickettailor.com/events/digit...

Select tickets – Creative AI presents: 'Vector Media' Book Launch 📚🌐 – Macadam, Surrey St - King's College London

Creative AI presents: 'Vector Media' Book Launch 📚🌐 – Macadam, Surrey St - King's College London, Tue 22 Sep 2026 - We would like to invite you to attend our book launch celebrating Vector Media with ...

tickettailor.com

#Dartmouth professors Sarah Preum and Tim Burdick co-author a study that finds AI-generated patient messages can help with routine tasks, but models also tended to overdiagnose, overtreat, and miss key follow-up questions.

Dartmouth study finds AI can help doctors sound more empathetic, but overdiagnoses and overtreats

A study from Dartmouth found that AI can help physicians manage patient messaging, but it comes with some caveats.

nhpr.org

Wow. Blown away by this glowing review of Inventing ELIZA in the Wall Street Journal! My favorite line is that we were "talmudically annotating the code." archive.ph/fCcIy @sarahciston.com, @mitpress.bsky.social @wsj.com #critcode #ArtificialIntelligence #computerhistory #SoftwareHistory

There has been little scholarly work on the media history of the GPU. This freshly published OA article is my attempt to show the lines of influence from learning machines in the 1950s through 1980s HPC and MPP systems to the TPUs and GPUs of the present. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I mean, machine god fantasy is the driving force of much of the industry so the abstract seems to hold promise

James E. Dobson@jeddobson.bsky.social · last mo.

There has been little scholarly work on the media history of the GPU. This freshly published OA article is my attempt to show the lines of influence from learning machines in the 1950s through 1980s HPC and MPP systems to the TPUs and GPUs of the present. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Earlier ms version had a reading of this bonkers ode to excess/the phallus but my readers were not having it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf8E...

Inside the World's Largest AI Supercluster xAI Colossus

YouTube video by ServeTheHome

youtube.com

James E. Dobson@jeddobson.bsky.social · last mo.

There has been little scholarly work on the media history of the GPU. This freshly published OA article is my attempt to show the lines of influence from learning machines in the 1950s through 1980s HPC and MPP systems to the TPUs and GPUs of the present. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

This is a nice @seattletimes.com piece about our research paper, led by Imani Finkley! With some origin story lore about the @pudding.cool analysis that inspired it. Plus a goofy picture of me reading a Jimothy-coded kids' book about anthropomorphic raccoons. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

UW researchers say AI-generated kids' books can twist biases in strange ways

AI-generated content has become more common in children's books. What happens to gender diversity when AI writes about animal characters?

seattletimes.com

Now available: John Thelin's magisterial History of American Higher Education, fully updated in its fourth edition. www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/... @hopkinspress.bsky.social @universityofky.bsky.social #HigherEd

There has been little scholarly work on the media history of the GPU. This freshly published OA article is my attempt to show the lines of influence from learning machines in the 1950s through 1980s HPC and MPP systems to the TPUs and GPUs of the present. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I'm interested in the discourse as folks are discovering watermarking and how this might change the naive ways that people talk about generation. Watermarking strategies have now been around for a few years.

The single most important thing I have done in my writing classes since 2023 is teach students how LLMs work--and to create curriculum for this that was adopted across first-year writing at Harvard. Right now we cannot assume students understand this-and it matters. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/u...

I feel this when I see folks circulating lists of work produced by journalists instead of humanists: "The extent to which humanists themselves distrust and despise humanities scholarship is depressing, and it’s paved the way for increasingly hostile calls from both inside and outside the house."

Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong | Defector

For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, ...

defector.com

AI for Peace 2nd edition is back at @neuripsconf.bsky.social, Paris, December. The call for in person presentations is open. Submit, come, and be part of a community that is building up. AI for Peace @ NeurIPS 2026, Paris - One-page, non-archival, talk or poster. - Deadline 14 September 2026

It's the Steam-ification of academic texts. And I don't want to poke, I mean this as a naive question that I am sure there's a complicated answer to, but it was these same libraries that aggressively moved from buying and shelving print books to digital collections, no?

I am absolutely gobsmacked. And trying not to pass out from hyperventilating. Thank you @barackobama.bsky.social — you just made my secret dream for DATA EMPIRE, spoken aloud to NO ONE, come true.

Barack Obama@barackobama.bsky.social · 2mo ago

It’s that time of year again: here are some of the books I’ve enjoyed this summer. If you’ve read any good ones, let me know!

One more week to submit! See you in Santa Barbara in October!

Fabian Offert@zentralwerkstatt.org · 3mo ago

Excited to share that we are now inviting proposals for our upcoming Critical AI Studies? conference at @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social on Oct. 9&10, 2026. Please see the full CfP here: huml.ucsb.edu/conference. Submissions are due July 31, 2026. For questions DM me or @owenleonard.bsky.social.

Oh, 1950s academia... (From Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman (1951).)

"We found that at least 150 institutions of higher ed... are using Flock’s surveillance network.. many campus police departments have facilitated immigration related investigations, even when they are located in sanctuary states and are legally prohibited from doing so" by @torinmonahan.bsky.social

Flock on campus: university police as appendages of a national policing apparatus

Dangerous new forms of networked surveillance are gaining traction with police departments across the United States. One popular example is Flock Safety’s Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR)...

doi.org