Stefano Costa

Blog

  • For Aaron Swartz

    For Aaron Swartz

    I didn’t know Aaron Swartz. And yet his tragic end touched me a lot. I saw some friends and colleagues react strongly in the weeks following his death, as strong as you can be in front of a tragedy at least.

    Aaron was only a few years younger than me. He had achieved so much, in so little time. He was an hero. He is an hero.

    I was deeply touched and I am still sad especially because I do the kind of things that Aaron did, although on a much smaller scale. I am not an hero, of course.

    In 2008 I started collecting air pollution data from a local government office. Everyday, one PDF. Later I started writing web scrapers for this dataset and others. I never really got to the point where the data could be of any use. Most of this was done out of frustration.

    In 2009 I got a PhD scholarship from my university and with that came a VPN account that I could use from anywhere to access digital resources for which the university had a subscription (including part of JSTOR). I gave those credentials to several friends who had not the same privilege I had, and I didn’t worry, even though those were the same credentials used for my mailbox. You cannot even try to move your first steps into an academic career without access to this kind of resources.

    I regularly share digital copies of prints, especially the incredibly awful copies made by photographing a book. Every single person I have been working with in the last three years does this regularly: scans, photographs, “pirate” PDFs or even pre-prints, because everything will do when you need a piece of “global” knowledge for your work. I have to break the rules so regularly that it feels normal. And yet, I don’t feel guilty for any of that, except for the fact that I didn’t take the next step with access to knowledge, giving to everyone and not just to a small circle of people.

    Sometimes between 2008 and 2009 I helped making a copy of the entire archive of BIBAR (Biblioteca di Archeologia, mostly about medieval archaeology), hosted at my university. That’s more than 2 GB of academic papers, the same kind of content that Aaron took from JSTOR. Years later, that copy lives as a Torrent download, out of any restriction. It’s a small #pdftribute for Aaron.

  • An Early Christian basilica in Turin (Torino)

    La Repubblica.it reports that recent excavations in Turin (Torino) have brought to light an Early Christian basilica. That is the third Early Christian complex found in late Roman Augusta Taurinorum. Most interestingly, it is much further away from the city walls (in the upper part of the map shown here), as Egle Micheletto points out in the interview. While the size of the Early Christian city is not comparable to e.g. Mediolanum, it is still impressive!

    Map of Turin showing the 3 known Early Christian basilicas (landmarks) and the walled Roman city (blue polygon). The new basilica is in the upper right.

    The archaeological remains will be visible to the public only when the construction project is finished in 2016, according to the article.

    ♦

    Is this a satisfactory account of archaeology in the public interest?

  • Introducing the Nobel Prize in Literature Index

    I have been thinking about my own ignorance in culture recently, questioning my self-perception as an intellectual.

    A good example of this is how many Nobel laureates in Literature I have never bothered to read at all. In some cases books were only assignments in highschool, but I think that counts as education after all.

    You can share my feeling of inadequate ignorance, too. Open the list of Nobel laureates in literature. Count how many authors you have read, only complete works or substantial parts are valid. The resulting number is your NoPLi index.

    Mine is a shameful 8.

  • Blogging archaeology: the good, the bad and the ugly

    This is round #2 of the blogging archaeology carnival run by Doug Rocks-Macqueen. My previous post is here.

    The good

    The good is that blogging makes me a better archaeologist. Blogging is a collective endeavour and being part of it has meant for all these years to get in touch with other people, discover research paths that were otherwise invisible. Getting more visibility is only one side of this, and I don’t think my blog is necessarily making me a popular archaeologist, but there have been some fortunate cases, like when I decided to write a story about 20th century mass-produced pottery (apparently very popular!), or the idea of discussing “Archaeology (and Web) 2.0“. Blogging is a skill, that is featured in my CV.

    The bad

    I cannot always write what I want on my blog. This is partly because I have a natural tendency to write rants, but also because since I started blogging I have always been within some institution (e.g. university) and straight criticism of colleagues or managers is almost always not well received. Now that I work for a public institution, things are even worse in this respect, because I could write a lot about interesting topics, but not without dealing with stories that are potentially disagreeable. I prefer to keep these things for myself, but I’m not happy with that.

    Is this really bad? Yes. Writing and blogging comes out of creativity, freedom of expression and speech, and limiting myself to academic topics and general politics is increasingly frustrating.

    The ugly

    It would be hard for me to find something really ugly about blogging archaeology.  So I’ll just leave you with the final scene of “Rock’n’roll highschool”:

    Ugly, ugly, ugly people.

    (bonus points if you know why the Ramones must be quoted when dealing with “The good, the bad, the ugly”).

  • Libri 2013

    Libri 2013

    Anche quest’anno una recensione sommaria dei libri che ho letto. Sempre troppo pochi. Libri vecchi e libri nuovi. Impressioni incoerenti. Questa non è una classifica.

    Wu Ming 1, Roberto Santachiara. Point Lenana

    Il mio libro del 2013. Perché?

    Primo, perché è un libro che racconta una storia che mi appartiene un po’, avendola ereditata, di gente che va in cima alle montagne. Capire chi e cosa è quel Club Alpino Italiano di cui ho una tessera socio con una mia foto da bambino sopra. Quel Felice Benuzzi ha qualcosa di familiare sotto tanti angoli, non ultimo una vita trascorsa nella diplomazia internazionale.

    Secondo, perché grazie a questo libro dopo tanti, troppi anni ho ripreso a camminare in montagna (1 vetta, altre 3 escursioni, 1 notte in rifugio). Ed eravamo in due a camminare!

    Point Lenana è il mio libro del 2013 perché ha messo in moto un meccanismo che non si è ancora fermato.

    Felice Benuzzi. Fuga sul Kenya

    Lettura obbligata, eppure così diversa da Point Lenana. Solo apparentemente il racconto semplice di una vicenda straordinaria, perché in effetti la scrittura ha molto a che vedere con quella scalata.

    E come ho avuto modo di commentare su Giap, la presa di consapevolezza che Felice ebbe al suo rientro nel campo di Nanyuki, il riconoscimento della “azione concentrata” come debolezza non è solo uno dei tanti momenti di antifascismo interiore (di cui si parla in Point Lenana) ma è secondo me anche uno specchio della lunga autocritica che Wu Ming ha fatto dopo Q e dopo il G8 di Genova.

    Giovanni Balletto. Kilimanjaro. Montagna dello splendore

    Lettura non scontata, questa. Come abbiamo scoperto dai libri precedenti, un medico alpinista genovese nell’Africa Orientale Italiana viene fatto prigioniero nel 1941, scala una montagna, torna libero e continua (cocciutamente?) a voler stare in Africa a fare il medico, vicino alla «Montagna delle Carovane». Balletto è diretto, semplice come salire in cima a un monte o morire di peste.

    Questo libro era in casa dal 1974. In casa di un medico alpinista genovese.

    Wu Ming 2, Antar Mohamed. Timira

    Il romanzo meticcio, cugino di primo grado di Point Lenana, è stato un lunghissimo sospiro di sollievo mentre ascoltavo Isabella, il primo personaggio femminile in un romanzo di Wu Ming che mi ha trasmesso qualcosa di umano. Non è che nelle opere precedenti i personaggi femminili non ci fossero, ma ho sempre avuto l’impressione che fossero in secondo piano, vagamente stereotipate. Serviva l’incontro con un personaggio in carne ed ossa per cambiare, per essere travolti dalla femminilità?

    Isabella è stata davvero un personaggio inimmaginabile ‒ il suo racconto è un antidoto molto potente contro quel “piccolo colonialista [che] occupa in pianta stabile i crani occidentali”.

    SIC. In territorio nemico

    La storia di In territorio nemico è potente e ripugnante, fa torcere le viscere. È scritta in un modo molto strano (la Scrittura Industriale Collettiva, SIC) da 115 persone. Il risultato è molto cinematografico e può sembrare poco “letteratura” perché è molto asciutto, diretto, ma io credo che abbia una carica epica invidiabile.

    Paolo Cognetti. Sofia si veste sempre di nero

    Ok, ammetto di aver comprato questo libro “solo” perché attirato dalla incessante macchina dell’entusiasmo dei lettori Minimum Fax (che ci prendono praticamente sempre). Sono dei racconti che si non si agganciano uno dietro l’altro ma complessivamente tengono eccome. Tutto intorno a Sofia, uscita direttamente da un fumetto, complicata, capricciosa. Cosa aspettano a comprare i diritti TV?

    Lo sfondo è interessante ‒ piccola borghesia, gioventù ribelle e alternativa, gli anni ’70 che bussano sempre alla porta ‒ ma non mi ha convinto del tutto (a parte il gasometro).

    Jeffrey Eugenides. La trama del matrimonio

    L’ultimo libro di Jeffrey Eugenides ovviamente è fatto di molti livelli diversi. Un po’ di appunti sparsi …

    A volte uno ha l’impressione che Eugenides in realtà sia una donna. Perché non mi viene in mente nessuno che abbia scritto al femminile così tanto e così bene. Ma sono stereotipi, cazzate.

    Grecia, a sprazzi. Ma intensamente presente come d’obbligo.

    Providence, cazzo. Quella Providence, quella di Lovecraft. Un effetto stranissimo vederla trasformata in una città universitaria. Sede di eventi di per sé banali, insignificanti. Eppure la storia letteraria ha il suo peso e nei momenti giusti si vede.

    Sesso. Eugenides continua a saperlo usare come un elemento vitale, con un realismo difficile da trovare (per eccessi nell’uno o nell’altro senso).

    Tempo. Il titolo del libro include la parola plot e con il plot Eugenides fa degli strani giochi, saltando avanti e indietro nel tempo, mescolando il ricordo con l’anticipazione.

    Murakami Haruki. L’arte di correre

    Questo libro è un regalo, che ho ricevuto perché nel 2013 mi sono messo a correre. Gli appunti su questo libro me li ero persi e arriveranno.

    J. R. R. Tolkien. Il cacciatore di draghi

    Nella bellissima edizione Einaudi con copertina rigida del 1975, un regalo inaspettato. Illustrazioni meravigliose. Una storia divertentissima e una satira tagliente. Che bello se potesse essere un racconto per bambini.

    Machine of Death

    Raccolta collettiva di racconti + fumetti, legati da un unico, assurdo tema: l’esistenza di una macchina che è in grado di predire la causa della vostra morte da un campione del vostro sangue. La macchina ha un pessimo senso dell’umorismo. Nonostante prevalga l’humour nero, non è una lettura leggera e ci sono alcune storie che vorrete rileggere.

    L’unico libro in inglese che ho letto. What a slack.

    James Ellroy. American Tabloid

    Questo l’ho voluto leggere perché quei mangiapreti dei Wu Ming hanno sempre detto che era stato l’ispirazione per Q. E accidenti se è stato di ispirazione. Leggetelo e lascerete Veltroni da solo a pensare che JFK sia stato un mito.

    Mauro Vanetti (curatore). Tifiamo Asteroide

    Una folle raccolta di 100 racconti in cui alla fine c’è un buco per terra al posto del Presidente del Consiglio Enrico Letta, con la musica in sottofondo. Il modo in cui si arriva a questo finale è lasciato agli autori dei racconti. Sì, ci sono anche io. E leggetevelo, che si scarica.

     ⁂

    Per il reparto saggistica, una cosa interessante e una cosa noiosa.

    Alessandro “jumpinshark” Gazoia. Il web e l’arte della manutenzione della notizia

    Ebook di lettura semplice, molto chiaro nell’esposizione anche se forse un po’ troppo schematico e ripetitivo.  Lettura fortemente consigliata per chi ha a cuore l’informazione, e costa meno di un cornettoecappuccino.

    Tomaso Montanari. Le pietre e il popolo

    Non si capisce per chi sia scritto questo libro.  Non lo capisco io, diciamo. Se è scritto per il popolo, allora è sicuro che il popolo non lo leggerà. Se è scritto per gli specialisti, allora è inutile visto che ripete cose abbastanza note. Il messaggio è lo stesso che va ripetendo da anni Salvatore Settis, con scarsi risultati. Forse i professori universitari non sono le persone più indicate per cambiare le cose?

  • La prossima volta,

    La prossima volta,

    La prossima volta che sentite parlare di nuove tecnologie per i beni culturali.

    La prossima volta che vedete la favolosa scansione 3D di un monumento.

    La prossima volta che vi raccontano che il web e il museo e il futuro e il duepuntozero e la comunicazione e la valorizzazione e la fruizione.

    La prossima volta che sentite parlare di innovazione nei musei e nelle biblioteche.

    La prossima volta che sfogliate [rivista/sito web che propaganda le magnifiche sorti e progressive delle tecnologie innovative per i beni culturali].

    La prossima volta che c’è un convegno per parlare dei vantaggi delle cose elencate sopra…

    Ecco, la prossima volta, tenete conto che la British Library ha appena messo su un milione di immagini nel pubblico dominio, che tutti possiamo consultare, usare per fare qualunque cosa. Tipo curiosare, imparare, stamparle sui jeans e proiettarle sulla facciata del Cremlino.

    Ne sentirete sicuramente parlare al prossimo convegno in cui si parla di innovazione e di duepuntozero e il futuro… nel frattempo la British Library avrà rilasciato altri dieci milioni di immagini.

  • Bello il discorso di George Saunders agli studenti

    Bello il discorso di George Saunders agli studenti. L’unica cosa che non ho capito è perché abbiano tagliato la parte in cui dice “Stay hungry, stay foolish”.

    Perché da qualche parte là fuori c’è ancora qualche minchione convinto che quell’altro fosse un gran discorso.

  • Archaeology and Django: mind your jargon

    I have been writing small Django apps for archaeology since 2009 ‒ Django 1.0 had been released a few months earlier. I love Django as a programming framework: my initial choice was based on the ORM, at that time the only geo-enabled ORM that could be used out of the box, and years later GeoDjango still rocks. I almost immediately found out that the admin interface was a huge game-changer: instead of wasting weeks writing boilerplate CRUD, I could just focus on adding actual content and developing the frontend. Having your data model as source code (under version control) is the right thing for me and I cannot go back to using “database” programs like Access, FileMaker or LibreOffice.

    Previous work with Django in archaeology

    There is some prior art on using Django in the magic field of archaeology, this is what I got from published literature in the field of computer applications in archaeology:

    I have been discussing this interaction with Diego Gnesi Bartolani for some time now and he is developing another Django app. Python programming skills are becoming more common among archaeologists and it is not surprising that databases big and small are moving away from desktop-based solutions to web-based

    The ceramicist’s jargon

    There is one big problem with Django as a tool for archaeological data management: language. Here are some words that are either Python reserved keywords or very important in Django:

    • class (Python keyword)
    • type (Python keyword)
    • object (Python keyword)
    • form (HTML element, Django module)
    • site (Django contrib app)

    Unfortunately, these words are not only generic enough to be used in everyday speak, but they are very common in the archaeologist’s jargon, especially for ceramicists.

    Class is often used to describe a generic and wide group of objects, e.g. “amphorae”, “fine ware”, “lamps”, ”cooking ware” are classes of ceramic products ‒ i.e. categories. Sometimes class is also used for narrower categories such as “terra sigillata italica”, but the most accepted term in that case is ware. The definition of ware is ambiguous, and it can be based on several different criteria: chemical/geological analysis of source material; visible characteristics such as paint, decoration, manufacturing; typology. The upside is that ware has no meaning in either Python or Django.

    Form and type are both used within typologies. There are contrasting uses of these two terms:

    •  a form defines a broad category, tightly linked to function (e.g. dish, drinking cup, hydria, cythera) and a type defines a very specific instance of that form (e.g. Dragendorff 29); sub-types are allowed and this is in my experience the most widespread terminology;
    • a form is a specific instance of a broader function-based category ‒ this terminology is used by John W. Hayes in his Late Roman Pottery.

    These terminology problems, regardless of their cause, are complicated by translation from one language to another, and regional/local traditions. Wikipedia has a short but useful description of the general issues of ceramic typology at the Type (archaeology) page.

    Site is perhaps the best understood source of confusion, and the less problematic. First of all everyone knows that the word site can have a lots of meanings and lots of archaeologists survive using both the website and the archaeological site meaning everyday. Secondly, even though the sites app is included by default in Django, it is not so ubiquitous ‒ I always used it only when deploying, una tantum.

    Object is a generic word. Shame on every programming language designer who ever thought it was a good idea to use such a generic word in a programming language, eventually polluting natural language in this digital age. No matter how strongly you think object is a good term to designate archaeological finds, items, artifacts, features, layers, deposits and so on, thou shalt not use object when creating database fields, programming functions, visualisation interfaces or anything else, really.

    The horror is when you end up writing code like this:

    class Class(models.Model)
    '''A class. Both a Python class and a classification category.'''

    pass

class Type(models.Model)
    '''A type. Actually, a Python class.

    >>> t = Type()
    >>> type(t)
    <class '__main__.Type'>
    '''

    Not nice.

    Is there a solution to this mess? Yes. As any serious Pythonista knows…

    Explicit is better than implicit.
    […]
    Namespaces are one honking great idea — let’s do more of those!

    The Zen of Python

    Since changing the Python syntax is not a great idea, the best solution is to prefix anything potentially ambiguous to make it explicit (as suggested by the honking idea of namespaces ‒ a prefix is a poor man’s namespace). If you follow this, or a likewise approach, you won’t be left wondering if that form is an HTML form or a category of ceramic items.

    # pseudo-models.py

class CeramicClass(models.Model):
    '''A wide category of ceramic items, comprising many forms.'''

    name = models.CharField()

class CeramicForm(models.Model):
    '''A ceramic form. Totally different from CeramicType.'''

    name = models.CharField()

class CeramicType(models.Model):
    '''A ceramic type. Whatever that means.'''

    name = models.CharField()
    ceramic_class = models.ForeignKey(CeramicClass)
    ceramic_form = models.ForeignKey(CeramicForm)
    source_ref = models.URLField()

class ArcheoSite(models.Model):
    '''A friendly, muddy, rotting archaeological site.'''

    name = models.CharField()

class CeramicFind(models.Model):
    '''The real thing you can touch and look at.'''

    ceramic_type = models.ForeignKey(CeramicType)
    archeo_site = models.ForeignKey(ArcheoSite)
    ... # billions of other fields

  • Blogging archaeology: late to the party

    Doug Rocks-Macqueen started a blogging carnival at his blog. I am only 11 days late to the party, so here you have the November steko-blogging-samba.

    Why did you start a blog?

    Honest: I was not aware I was starting a blog. I just created a website (that is, iosa.it) and after a while trying Mambo CMS, I settled on Drupal (version 4.something). The first year or so was all about creating a structured website, with a directory-like structure. Then came blogging about new free/open source software releases and their usage in archaeology. This blog was covered, to my surprise, in a survey about archaeological blogs conducted by Tijl Vereenooghe and presented at the “Cultural Heritage and New Technologies” Wien workshop in 2006. That same year, I had a separate personal blog created, on a multiblog platform hosted by the Italian Linux Society: that blog was mostly about short rants, politics and the occasional tech-savvy post (including my first steps with developing Total Open Station in 2008). A few years later I merged all my blogs into one, this one. Blogging became the least-cost path to sharing my thoughts and interesting things with other people, often colleagues but also casual readers (and almost always it wasn’t really working as a two-way communication channel).

    Why are you still blogging?

    With Twitter, and Facebook, and millions of other ways to efficiently have real-time communication with colleagues, researchers and the world, this is actually a question about the inner workings of our minds. My blog is still almost irrelevant ‒ in other words I didn’t succeed in creating a successful blog, mostly out of laziness and to some extent lack of coherence in the topics I am able to write about. Less than 2000 page views per month, 80 comments in several years: a nice definition of irrelevant IMHO. Even more frustrating is that, even though I write a lot in English, the vast majority of visitors come from Italy (ciao!). The truth is then that I’m blogging for myself in first place.

    Last month I was very lucky and I took part in a panel about archaeological blogging and bloggers in Paestum. It was a first time in Italy ‒ that perhaps explains how antiquate Italian archaeology is ‒ and most of the discussion we had was about improving how bloggers are perceived as communication mediators by domain experts in archaeology and cultural heritage. It turns out that institutional, personal, academic and “promotional” blogging are quite different beasts and being proficient in one of those will lead you nowhere with the others. My attitude is definitely not appropriate for promotional 2.0 social [insert buzzword here] blogging ‒ I’m not saying it is worthless, just that I don’t feel able to do that, even though outreach efforts towards the public are extremely important: educating, engaging, entertaining are not an optional if our shared cultural heritage is to survive for future generations.

    My blogging has always been mostly personal and academic (about research issues and smaller ideas that are not worth a paper ‒ more on this misconception I have below ‒ but also the occasional reporting from a conference I attended), and the two can be quite similar except in the quality of writing and sourcing of information. I struggle with perfectionism and most of the times even the most simple post will take me days, because I can only push that PUBLISH button in the WordPress editor when it’s more than acceptable, not too short, with some decent images, and as many external links as are needed for someone who will want to follow up on every single point.

    But the trend for me is really towards consuming ridiculous amounts of written bits, on other blogs and on social networks, and producing a tiny fraction of what I consume. I can’t say I read everything that passes under my eyes any more. I skim a lot and concentrating on text on a screen has become difficult lately: a large screen, lots of zooming and going full-screen help to some extent. As a blogger, the issue with this difficulty is that it equally applies to text I am writing. And, although I have never finished writing the follow up to Archaeology as text and archaeology as image, I know how critical it is to master written archaeology ‒ blogging is a sort of spell to break into the magic world of writing archaeology without the barriers of academic writing. Being a PhD student in archaeology was a very good premise to do some serious blogging, and I utterly failed at that, always procrastinating the significant parts of my research for the “serious writing” that happens only rarely: you will find very little about my recent research on this blog and this is a mistake I hugely regret, especially because I know how much I rely on others’ blogs (Bill Caraher, Colleen Morgan, Kostis Kourelis, Sean Gillies, Giuliano De Felice, just to name a few), not much for the raw informational content but for inspiration.

    So the truth about why I’m still blogging is that:

    1. writing is an insane necessity, not a rational choice
    2. rationally, blogging is mostly about visibility and networking, that I look for, without much success
    3. there’s always a new WordPress version every few months
    4. I’m so lazy I couldn’t come up with a fourth reason, but I never liked Hegel
  • Upgraded to Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY 4.0) license

    Upgraded to Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY 4.0) license

    Creative Commons 4.0 is hereYou may have heard already about the new version of the Creative Commons family of licenses, released as 4.0. It contains a lot of improvements and there has been a tremendous effort towards standardisation. There will be translations but the license is the same for everyone and it is international (instead of many licenses for specific countries as with the previous 3.0 version).

    What changed? Previously obscure areas (such as sui generis database rights) have been cleared and explicitly included in the licensing conditions. This is a major step towards reconciliation between licenses that have been developed specifically to address those sui generis rights (e.g. ODbL, now adopted by OpenStreetMap) and Creative Commons licenses with the corresponding “rights reserved” (e.g. CC-BY-SA matches the ODbL in their share-alike nature). Requirements for attribution have been adapted to the widespread usage of links in place of verbose lists. There are more changes of course, explained in various places on the Creative Commons website and wiki, but I found this page comparing license versions to be the best summary.

    Perhaps little known is that if you are using Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (used by Wikipedia among others) you can immediately upgrade your existing content to the newer version of the license, because the “or any later version” clause (very familiar for adopters of the GNU GPL) is natively part of Creative Commons licenses since version 2.0.

    I have upgraded the license of this blog and website to the new version and updated the sidebar widget to reflect the new license. As always, don’t try to write your own hand-crafted copyright statement, use the Creative Commons license chooser! Happy sharing.