My weekly reading list
UniMelb publishes ‘truth-telling’ tome, Internet Archive is the latest cultural heritage organisation hit by denial-of-serviceDisruption of the operation of a website making it unavailable to its intended users by flooding it with illegitimate traffic. Learn more → attack and Spunk Records closes, marking another loss for Australian music.
Read
What I’ve been reading the week:
New book is truthful about University of Melbourne’s problematic past for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
A shocking new book published by Melbourne University Press seeks to “tell a greater truth about the [University of Melbourne] and its dealings with Aboriginal people.” The first of two truth-telling volumes, Dhoombak Goobgoowana (translated as ‘truth-telling’ in the Woi Wurrung language) reveals a string of University staff, alumni and conspirators who were Nazi apologists, eugenicists, grave robbers and who participated in massacres of Aboriginal people and others who withheld information about Aboriginal peoples’ remains held by the University.
Lorena Allam – Tuesday 28 May 2024
The Guardian
Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine under DDoS cyber-attack
Denial-of-serviceDisruption of the operation of a website making it unavailable to its intended users by flooding it with illegitimate traffic. Learn more → attacks against cultural heritage organisations seem to be on the rise.
Internet Archive is the latest cultural heritage to be hit by a DDoSDisruption of the operation of a website making it unavailable to its intended users by flooding it with illegitimate traffic. Learn more → attack, While the cyberattack has intermittently impacted access to Internet Archive services it is unclear what the motivation is. It is another instance of GLAMA common term used to describe galleries, libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage organisations. Learn more → organisations hit by similar attacks.
Chris Freeland – Tuesday 28 May 2024
Internet Archive Blog, Internet Archive
Spunk Records goes out on a high: ‘Like a mixtape from your coolest friend’
Spunk Records closes; founder says “It’s literally impossible now for a record label to exist.”
The Australian music scene has taken another hit with indie label Spunk Records calling it after 25 years. The label was farewelled with a performance at the Sydney Opera House as part of Vivid. The article feels a little like you are reading a love letter that’s not addressed to you, but the most telling thing in it for me is label founder Aaron Curnow’s comment that “It’s literally impossible now for a record label to exist.” Music festivals are cancelling and closing all over the country and venues are struggling amidst a post-COVID cost of living crisis, while streaming pulls in more listeners, and by extension replaces tastemakers like niche labels with algorithmic recommendations.
Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen – Wednesday 29 May 2024
The Guardian
Journalists “deeply troubled” by OpenAI’s content deals with Vox, The Atlantic
More media groups ink training data deals with OpenAI exposing the irony of copyright in journalist employee–employer relationships.
OpenAI continues to ink deals with holders of significant quantities of content, this time entering into agreements with The Atlantic and Vox (who publish The Verge, New York magazine and POPSUGAR and other mastheads). The deals reportedly allow OpenAI to utilise those publishers’ archival and recent reportage in exchange for an undisclosed payment and the use of OpenAI’s technology “to power new journalism products.” Unsurprisingly the unions for each publishing group have expressed alarm and concern about the deal, citing a lack of transparency and the potential for the displacement of their jobs. There’s a certain horrible irony in the fact that the way copyright in employee–employer relationships works means that the news content created by employees of media organisations may be used as training data for AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more → systems that media organisations may use to replace (or at least reduce the numbers of) journalists.
Benj Edwards and Ashley Belanger – Saturday 1 May 2024
Ars Technica
Smartphone manufacturers seem to be shifting to a seven year software update commitment.
Smartphone manufacturers seem to be shifting to a seven year software update commitment.
Maybe the right to repair movement is coming into its own as more smartphone manufacturers shift to commitments to provide smartphone products with longer periods of software updates. Google recently committed to seven years of software updates for the Pixel 8A. This follows Samsung making a similar commitment for the Galaxy S24 and Google making a seven years of updates commitment last year when the Pixel 8 was released. This article also provides a range of other tips for how to make a smartphone last seven years.
Brian X. Chen – Wednesday 15 May 2024
The New York Times
More to read
Of course, there’s lots of other stuff I have been reading that doesn’t make it into the weekly round up. If the long list is too much, I also group links into collections:
If you have a Google Account you can even share links with me.
Was this free blog post helpful?
If so, I encourage you to please show your support through a small contribution – it all helps me keep creating free arts marketing content.
Disclosure
AI use
This blog post was drafted using Google Docs. No part of the text of this blog post was generated using AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more →. The original text was not modified or improved using AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more →. No text suggested by AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more → was incorporated. If spelling or grammar corrections were suggested by AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more → they were accepted or rejected based on my discretion (however, sometimes spelling, grammar and corrections of typos may have occurred automatically in Google Docs).
The banner image (i.e. the first image at the top of the blog post) was generated by AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more → using Text to Vector Graphic (BetaBeta is an early release of software or some other product or service to see how users use it to inform further development of it…. Learn more →) in Adobe Illustrator.
Credits
Image: A pile of books with orange, yellow and purple covers. An adaptation of an image generated by Elliott Bledsoe using Text to Vector Graphic (BetaBeta is an early release of software or some other product or service to see how users use it to inform further development of it…. Learn more →) in Adobe Illustrator. Prompt: ‘pile of books uneven hand-drawn’.
Image: A pile of books with orange, yellow and purple covers. An adaptation of an image generated by Elliott Bledsoe using Text to Vector Graphic (BetaBeta is an early release of software or some other product or service to see how users use it to inform further development of it…. Learn more →) in Adobe Illustrator. Prompt: ‘pile of books uneven hand-drawn’.
Provenance
This blog post was produced by Elliott Bledsoe from Agentry, an arts marketing micro-consultancy. It was first published on 2 Jun 2024. It has not been updated. This is version 1.0. Questions, comments and corrections are welcome – get in touch any time.
Reuse
Good ideas shouldn’t be kept to yourself. I believe in the power of open access to information and creativity and a thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture. That’s why this blog post is licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons licence.
Unless otherwise stated or indicated, this blog post – (Un)read in the ledger: Monday 27 May–Sunday 2 June 2024 – is licensed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Please attribute Elliott Bledsoe as the original creator. View the full copyright licensing information for clarification.
Under the licence, you are free to copy, share and adapt this blog post, or any modified version you create from it, even commercially, as long as you give credit to Elliott Bledsoe as the original creator of it. So please make use of this blog post as you see fit.
Please note: Whether AI-generated outputs are protected by copyright remains contested. To the extent that copyright exists, if at all, in the banner image I generated using AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more → for this blog post (i.e. the first image at the top of the blog post), I also license it for reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons licence (CC BY 4.0).
Any thoughts? ⌇ Leave a reply