Prof. Neville Hacker: honesty, empathy, collegiality and dedication

Neville Fogarty

When we transmit data over a noisy channel (e.g., satellite) to a receiver, we run the risk of our data becoming corrupted. Fixing the channel is not typically an option, so instead we must make our data noise-proof. A naive method of doing this is simply sending the same data multiple times. However, the benefit of the redundancy created may be offset by the cost of sending a lengthy message m...

Collegiality and intellectual love

It is difficult to be taken seriously when writing in the academic press about ‘love’ in relation to academic work. In response to a chapter entitled Intellectual love and the link between teaching and research (Rowland 2005), a reviewer commented ‘Rowland... highlights the role of ‘intellectual love’ (I kid you not) as the motivator for academic inquiry’ (Tight 2006 italics added). Why might a...

Prof. Dr. Prof. Prof.

Collegiality and dermatology.

I believe my good and learned colleague Dr Ackerman raises an interesting issue. Is it inherently unprofessional or unethical for a dermatologist who has performed a skin biopsy as part of his evaluation of a patient to render a pathology diagnosis as an additional part of his care of the patient? From the purest of motives, Dr Ackerman argues against such a practice since these dermatologists ...

Hacker Cartography: Crowdsourced Geography, OpenStreetMap, and the Hacker Political Imaginary

In this paper I trace the origins of “neogeography” (a constellation of new mapping practices and populations on the geospatial web) to its roots in computer hacker culture, notably through early mapping mashups, known originally as “map hacks”. I argue that a return to the figure of the hacker—via the proposed concept of hacker cartography—offers a productive lens for understanding the afforda...