This article explores body–voice entanglements in TikTok through the prism of ventriloquism. It s... more This article explores body–voice entanglements in TikTok through the prism of ventriloquism. It suggests that TikTok is an app of network ventriloquism, that is, an audiovisual technology–based web of dissociations and reconfigurations of users’ bodies and voices. Yiddish serves as a case study for how TikTok’s features build an infrastructure for language, heritage, and cultural activism. We analyze YiddishToks as an instantiation of the ways TikTokers embody actual technolinguistic and ventriloquistic interconnections as well as bond with past generations. YiddishTokers interlace times and spaces and recontextualize Yiddish media history. TikTok’s algorithm participates in this reanimation of Yiddish’s past; it is a transparent, audible director that prompts the network off-stage. TikTok is an algorithmic network ventriloquism app that mediates between human and non-human voices.
<p>Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission.... more <p>Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission. At various points in Jewish history, the primary mode of transmission has changed in response to political, geographical, technological, and cultural shifts. Contemporary textual transmission in Jewish culture has been influenced by secularization, the return to Hebrew and the emergence of modern Yiddish, and the new centers of Jewish life in the United States and in Israel, as well as by advancements in print technology and the invention of the Internet. Volume XXXI of Studies in Contemporary Jewry deals with various aspects of textual transmission in Jewish culture in the last two centuries. Essays in this volume examine old and new kinds of media and their meanings; new modes of transmission in fields such as Jewish music; and the struggle to continue transmitting texts under difficult political circumstances. Two essays analyze textual transmission in the works of giants of modern Jewish literature: S.Y. Agnon, in Hebrew, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, in Yiddish. Other essays discuss paratexts in the East, print cultures in the West, and the organization of knowledge in libraries and encyclopedias.</p>
One of the basic features facilitating communication on the Internet in a variety of languages is... more One of the basic features facilitating communication on the Internet in a variety of languages is Unicode code-layout. It standardizes the representation of most of the world’s writing systems on digital media, thus enabling the process and transmission of information through such technologies. Unicode is a contemporary character code, and this paper traces its evolvement out of previous code-layouts, starting with Morse code in telegraphy. Focusing on the adaptations of character codes to Modern Hebrew, I show how representing languages in technology is intertwined with internal and transnational regional concerns, and argue that from its beginning character code has been a locus of struggle over power and sovereignty: first between colonial regimes and resistance movements, and then between global corporations and local agents.
This essay explores the relation between the use of sound technology and the colonial context in ... more This essay explores the relation between the use of sound technology and the colonial context in which it was employed at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its case study is a sound-documentation project of Jewish traditional recitation of the Pentateuch phonographically recorded by Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, a cantor, composer, and ethnographer who worked in Ottoman Jerusalem. Idelsohn believed that the chanting of Yemenite Jews he recorded preserved an echo of the signing of the Levites in the temple of ancient times. Accordingly, he called for composition of modern Jewish music based on these sounds. The essay discusses the theoretical implications of the encounter between the Western, modern sound-technology and the Jewish traditional cantillation sign system, probing the role of sound-recording media as a means of documenting the real and imagined Orient.
This article applies a media geneaology perspective to examine the operative logic of Google Tran... more This article applies a media geneaology perspective to examine the operative logic of Google Translate. Tracing machine translation from post–World War II (WWII) rule-based methods to contemporary algorithmic statistical methods, we analyze the underlying power structure of algorithmic and human collaboration that Translate encompasses. Focusing on the relationship between technology, language, and speakers, we argue that the operative logic of Translate represents a new model of translation, which we call uniform multilingualism. In this model, the manifest lingual plurality on the user side is mediated by lingual uniformity on the system side in the form of an English language algorithm, which has recently given way to an artificial neural network interlingual algorithm. We conclude by considering the significance of this recent shift in Translate’s algorithm.
<p>Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission.... more <p>Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission. At various points in Jewish history, the primary mode of transmission has changed in response to political, geographical, technological, and cultural shifts. Contemporary textual transmission in Jewish culture has been influenced by secularization, the return to Hebrew and the emergence of modern Yiddish, and the new centers of Jewish life in the United States and in Israel, as well as by advancements in print technology and the invention of the Internet. Volume XXXI of Studies in Contemporary Jewry deals with various aspects of textual transmission in Jewish culture in the last two centuries. Essays in this volume examine old and new kinds of media and their meanings; new modes of transmission in fields such as Jewish music; and the struggle to continue transmitting texts under difficult political circumstances. Two essays analyze textual transmission in the works of giants of modern Jewish literature: S.Y. Agnon, in Hebrew, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, in Yiddish. Other essays discuss paratexts in the East, print cultures in the West, and the organization of knowledge in libraries and encyclopedias.</p>
Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures, 2020
In The Land of Promise, a Zionist propaganda film directed by Yehuda Leman and produced in 1935, ... more In The Land of Promise, a Zionist propaganda film directed by Yehuda Leman and produced in 1935, there is a sequence depicting a prominent cultural phenomenon in the life of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) in the early 20th century—the community sing-along....
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
This paper explores thumb-typing as a cultural technique stemming from the mutual development of ... more This paper explores thumb-typing as a cultural technique stemming from the mutual development of typing interfaces and practices. Focusing on the work of the typing fingers, it examines how the assignment of thumbs to be the primary writing digits is an innovation that correlates—and in some respects causes—textual and social changes that are central to digital culture. It argues that thumb-typing embodies recursive relations between behavioral patterns, technological infrastructure, and textual creation. The analysis shows how the invention of the typewriter keyboard introduced the fingers to typing, and how developments of digital media refined the finger-work in interacting with the device, resulting in thumb-typing. The new functionality of the thumb as an executing rather than supporting finger, promotes a novel equivalency and interchangeability in finger employment to typing. This, I propose, problematizes traditional concepts of textuality, its performance, and authorship.
This article applies a media geneaology perspective to examine the operative logic of Google Tran... more This article applies a media geneaology perspective to examine the operative logic of Google Translate. Tracing machine translation from post–World War II (WWII) rule-based methods to contemporary algorithmic statistical methods, we analyze the underlying power structure of algorithmic and human collaboration that Translate encompasses. Focusing on the relationship between technology, language, and speakers, we argue that the operative logic of Translate represents a new model of translation, which we call uniform multilingualism. In this model, the manifest lingual plurality on the user side is mediated by lingual uniformity on the system side in the form of an English language algorithm, which has recently given way to an artificial neural network interlingual algorithm. We conclude by considering the significance of this recent shift in Translate's algorithm. .
This essay explores the relation between the use of sound technology and the colonial context in ... more This essay explores the relation between the use of sound technology and the colonial context in which it was employed at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its case study is a sound-documentation project of Jewish traditional recitation of the Pentateuch phonographically recorded by Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, a cantor, composer, and ethnographer who worked in Ottoman Jerusalem. Idelsohn believed that the chanting of Yemenite Jews he recorded preserved an echo of the signing of the Levites in the temple of ancient times. Accordingly, he called for composition of modern Jewish music based on these sounds. The essay discusses the theoretical implications of the encounter between the Western, modern sound-technology and the Jewish traditional cantillation sign system, probing the role of sound-recording media as a means of documenting the real and imagined Orient.
One of the basic features facilitating communication on the Internet in a variety of languages is... more One of the basic features facilitating communication on the Internet in a variety of languages is Unicode code-layout. It standardizes the representation of most of the world’s writing systems on digital media, thus enabling the process and transmission of information through such technologies. Unicode is a contemporary character code, and this paper traces its evolvement out of previous code-layouts, starting with Morse code in telegraphy. Focusing on the adaptations of character codes to Modern Hebrew, I show how representing languages in technology is intertwined with internal and transnational regional concerns, and argue that from its beginning character code has been a locus of struggle over power and sovereignty: first between colonial regimes and resistance movements, and then between global corporations and local agents.
This article applies a media geneaology perspective to examine the operative logic of Google Tran... more This article applies a media geneaology perspective to examine the operative logic of Google Translate. Tracing machine translation from post–World War II (WWII) rule-based methods to contemporary algorithmic statistical methods, we analyze the underlying power structure of algorithmic and human collaboration that Translate encompasses. Focusing on the relationship between technology, language, and speakers, we argue that the operative logic of Translate represents a new model of translation, which we call uniform multilingualism. In this model, the manifest lingual plurality on the user side is mediated by lingual uniformity on the system side in the form of an English language algorithm, which has recently given way to an artificial neural network interlingual algorithm. We conclude by considering the significance of this recent shift in Translate’s algorithm.
Front matter of Vol 31
Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means ... more Front matter of Vol 31
Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission. At various points in Jewish history, the primary mode of transmission has changed in response to political, geographical, technological, and cultural shifts. Contemporary textual transmission in Jewish culture has been influenced by secularization, the return to Hebrew and the emergence of modern Yiddish, and the new centers of Jewish life in the United States and in Israel, as well as by advancements in print technology and the invention of the Internet. Volume XXXI of Studies in Contemporary Jewry deals with various aspects of textual transmission in Jewish culture in the last two centuries.
This article explores body–voice entanglements in TikTok through the prism of ventriloquism. It s... more This article explores body–voice entanglements in TikTok through the prism of ventriloquism. It suggests that TikTok is an app of network ventriloquism, that is, an audiovisual technology–based web of dissociations and reconfigurations of users’ bodies and voices. Yiddish serves as a case study for how TikTok’s features build an infrastructure for language, heritage, and cultural activism. We analyze YiddishToks as an instantiation of the ways TikTokers embody actual technolinguistic and ventriloquistic interconnections as well as bond with past generations. YiddishTokers interlace times and spaces and recontextualize Yiddish media history. TikTok’s algorithm participates in this reanimation of Yiddish’s past; it is a transparent, audible director that prompts the network off-stage. TikTok is an algorithmic network ventriloquism app that mediates between human and non-human voices.
<p>Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission.... more <p>Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission. At various points in Jewish history, the primary mode of transmission has changed in response to political, geographical, technological, and cultural shifts. Contemporary textual transmission in Jewish culture has been influenced by secularization, the return to Hebrew and the emergence of modern Yiddish, and the new centers of Jewish life in the United States and in Israel, as well as by advancements in print technology and the invention of the Internet. Volume XXXI of Studies in Contemporary Jewry deals with various aspects of textual transmission in Jewish culture in the last two centuries. Essays in this volume examine old and new kinds of media and their meanings; new modes of transmission in fields such as Jewish music; and the struggle to continue transmitting texts under difficult political circumstances. Two essays analyze textual transmission in the works of giants of modern Jewish literature: S.Y. Agnon, in Hebrew, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, in Yiddish. Other essays discuss paratexts in the East, print cultures in the West, and the organization of knowledge in libraries and encyclopedias.</p>
One of the basic features facilitating communication on the Internet in a variety of languages is... more One of the basic features facilitating communication on the Internet in a variety of languages is Unicode code-layout. It standardizes the representation of most of the world’s writing systems on digital media, thus enabling the process and transmission of information through such technologies. Unicode is a contemporary character code, and this paper traces its evolvement out of previous code-layouts, starting with Morse code in telegraphy. Focusing on the adaptations of character codes to Modern Hebrew, I show how representing languages in technology is intertwined with internal and transnational regional concerns, and argue that from its beginning character code has been a locus of struggle over power and sovereignty: first between colonial regimes and resistance movements, and then between global corporations and local agents.
This essay explores the relation between the use of sound technology and the colonial context in ... more This essay explores the relation between the use of sound technology and the colonial context in which it was employed at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its case study is a sound-documentation project of Jewish traditional recitation of the Pentateuch phonographically recorded by Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, a cantor, composer, and ethnographer who worked in Ottoman Jerusalem. Idelsohn believed that the chanting of Yemenite Jews he recorded preserved an echo of the signing of the Levites in the temple of ancient times. Accordingly, he called for composition of modern Jewish music based on these sounds. The essay discusses the theoretical implications of the encounter between the Western, modern sound-technology and the Jewish traditional cantillation sign system, probing the role of sound-recording media as a means of documenting the real and imagined Orient.
This article applies a media geneaology perspective to examine the operative logic of Google Tran... more This article applies a media geneaology perspective to examine the operative logic of Google Translate. Tracing machine translation from post–World War II (WWII) rule-based methods to contemporary algorithmic statistical methods, we analyze the underlying power structure of algorithmic and human collaboration that Translate encompasses. Focusing on the relationship between technology, language, and speakers, we argue that the operative logic of Translate represents a new model of translation, which we call uniform multilingualism. In this model, the manifest lingual plurality on the user side is mediated by lingual uniformity on the system side in the form of an English language algorithm, which has recently given way to an artificial neural network interlingual algorithm. We conclude by considering the significance of this recent shift in Translate’s algorithm.
<p>Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission.... more <p>Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission. At various points in Jewish history, the primary mode of transmission has changed in response to political, geographical, technological, and cultural shifts. Contemporary textual transmission in Jewish culture has been influenced by secularization, the return to Hebrew and the emergence of modern Yiddish, and the new centers of Jewish life in the United States and in Israel, as well as by advancements in print technology and the invention of the Internet. Volume XXXI of Studies in Contemporary Jewry deals with various aspects of textual transmission in Jewish culture in the last two centuries. Essays in this volume examine old and new kinds of media and their meanings; new modes of transmission in fields such as Jewish music; and the struggle to continue transmitting texts under difficult political circumstances. Two essays analyze textual transmission in the works of giants of modern Jewish literature: S.Y. Agnon, in Hebrew, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, in Yiddish. Other essays discuss paratexts in the East, print cultures in the West, and the organization of knowledge in libraries and encyclopedias.</p>
Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures, 2020
In The Land of Promise, a Zionist propaganda film directed by Yehuda Leman and produced in 1935, ... more In The Land of Promise, a Zionist propaganda film directed by Yehuda Leman and produced in 1935, there is a sequence depicting a prominent cultural phenomenon in the life of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) in the early 20th century—the community sing-along....
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
This paper explores thumb-typing as a cultural technique stemming from the mutual development of ... more This paper explores thumb-typing as a cultural technique stemming from the mutual development of typing interfaces and practices. Focusing on the work of the typing fingers, it examines how the assignment of thumbs to be the primary writing digits is an innovation that correlates—and in some respects causes—textual and social changes that are central to digital culture. It argues that thumb-typing embodies recursive relations between behavioral patterns, technological infrastructure, and textual creation. The analysis shows how the invention of the typewriter keyboard introduced the fingers to typing, and how developments of digital media refined the finger-work in interacting with the device, resulting in thumb-typing. The new functionality of the thumb as an executing rather than supporting finger, promotes a novel equivalency and interchangeability in finger employment to typing. This, I propose, problematizes traditional concepts of textuality, its performance, and authorship.
This article applies a media geneaology perspective to examine the operative logic of Google Tran... more This article applies a media geneaology perspective to examine the operative logic of Google Translate. Tracing machine translation from post–World War II (WWII) rule-based methods to contemporary algorithmic statistical methods, we analyze the underlying power structure of algorithmic and human collaboration that Translate encompasses. Focusing on the relationship between technology, language, and speakers, we argue that the operative logic of Translate represents a new model of translation, which we call uniform multilingualism. In this model, the manifest lingual plurality on the user side is mediated by lingual uniformity on the system side in the form of an English language algorithm, which has recently given way to an artificial neural network interlingual algorithm. We conclude by considering the significance of this recent shift in Translate's algorithm. .
This essay explores the relation between the use of sound technology and the colonial context in ... more This essay explores the relation between the use of sound technology and the colonial context in which it was employed at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its case study is a sound-documentation project of Jewish traditional recitation of the Pentateuch phonographically recorded by Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, a cantor, composer, and ethnographer who worked in Ottoman Jerusalem. Idelsohn believed that the chanting of Yemenite Jews he recorded preserved an echo of the signing of the Levites in the temple of ancient times. Accordingly, he called for composition of modern Jewish music based on these sounds. The essay discusses the theoretical implications of the encounter between the Western, modern sound-technology and the Jewish traditional cantillation sign system, probing the role of sound-recording media as a means of documenting the real and imagined Orient.
One of the basic features facilitating communication on the Internet in a variety of languages is... more One of the basic features facilitating communication on the Internet in a variety of languages is Unicode code-layout. It standardizes the representation of most of the world’s writing systems on digital media, thus enabling the process and transmission of information through such technologies. Unicode is a contemporary character code, and this paper traces its evolvement out of previous code-layouts, starting with Morse code in telegraphy. Focusing on the adaptations of character codes to Modern Hebrew, I show how representing languages in technology is intertwined with internal and transnational regional concerns, and argue that from its beginning character code has been a locus of struggle over power and sovereignty: first between colonial regimes and resistance movements, and then between global corporations and local agents.
This article applies a media geneaology perspective to examine the operative logic of Google Tran... more This article applies a media geneaology perspective to examine the operative logic of Google Translate. Tracing machine translation from post–World War II (WWII) rule-based methods to contemporary algorithmic statistical methods, we analyze the underlying power structure of algorithmic and human collaboration that Translate encompasses. Focusing on the relationship between technology, language, and speakers, we argue that the operative logic of Translate represents a new model of translation, which we call uniform multilingualism. In this model, the manifest lingual plurality on the user side is mediated by lingual uniformity on the system side in the form of an English language algorithm, which has recently given way to an artificial neural network interlingual algorithm. We conclude by considering the significance of this recent shift in Translate’s algorithm.
Front matter of Vol 31
Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means ... more Front matter of Vol 31
Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission. At various points in Jewish history, the primary mode of transmission has changed in response to political, geographical, technological, and cultural shifts. Contemporary textual transmission in Jewish culture has been influenced by secularization, the return to Hebrew and the emergence of modern Yiddish, and the new centers of Jewish life in the United States and in Israel, as well as by advancements in print technology and the invention of the Internet. Volume XXXI of Studies in Contemporary Jewry deals with various aspects of textual transmission in Jewish culture in the last two centuries.
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Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission. At various points in Jewish history, the primary mode of transmission has changed in response to political, geographical, technological, and cultural shifts. Contemporary textual transmission in Jewish culture has been influenced by secularization, the return to Hebrew and the emergence of modern Yiddish, and the new centers of Jewish life in the United States and in Israel, as well as by advancements in print technology and the invention of the Internet. Volume XXXI of Studies in Contemporary Jewry deals with various aspects of textual transmission in Jewish culture in the last two centuries.
Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission. At various points in Jewish history, the primary mode of transmission has changed in response to political, geographical, technological, and cultural shifts. Contemporary textual transmission in Jewish culture has been influenced by secularization, the return to Hebrew and the emergence of modern Yiddish, and the new centers of Jewish life in the United States and in Israel, as well as by advancements in print technology and the invention of the Internet. Volume XXXI of Studies in Contemporary Jewry deals with various aspects of textual transmission in Jewish culture in the last two centuries.