Creating Data: The Invention of Information in the 19th-Century American State

FAIN: FA-252546-17

Benjamin Schmidt
Northeastern University (Boston, MA 02115-5005)

The digital study, with accompanying data visualization, of the origins of modern computational culture in the American government's data collection practices of the 19th century.

Creating Data is a history that uses data collected by the US government in the late 19th century to explore how the American state laid the foundation for modern practices of processing and displaying digital information. The project pioneers new methods for using machine learning and data visualization to engage in critical humanistic reading of three massive datasets produced by government bureaucracies: shipping logs collected by the US Naval Observatory after 1830, population records and maps at the Census Office after 1870, and book cataloging at the Library of Congress after 1890. By integrating narrative historical scholarship and archival research with richly interactive data visualizations, it shows how putatively objective data, still in active use decades later, still promotes the agendas and interests of the state actors who created it.

Associated Products

Creating Data (Web Resource)
Title: Creating Data
Author: Benjamin Schmidt
Abstract: Creating Data is an in-progress digital monograph about the way that the 19th century American State created, organized, and visualized data.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: http://creatingdata.us
Primary URL Description: Project Web Page.

Deepscatter (Computer Program)
Title: Deepscatter
Author: Benjamin Schmidt
Abstract: A library for the visualization and exploration of high-dimensional datasets in two dimensional space.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://github.com/CreatingData/deepscatter
Primary URL Description: Code repository
Access Model: MIT license
Programming Language/Platform: Javascript/WebGL.
Source Available?: Yes

Historical City Populations Dataset (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: Historical City Populations Dataset
Author: Benjamin Schmidt/Jacob Alperin-Sheriff
Abstract: A dataset of historical city populations from the US census four times larger than any previously available for scholarly research, with supporting code organized collated from existing projects at Stanford's CESTA and but supplemented with an extraordinary volume of Wikipedia edits.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://github.com/CreatingData/Historical-Populations
Primary URL Description: Code and data repository
Access Model: open access

American Expansion (Exhibition)
Title: American Expansion
Curator: Ronald Grim
Abstract: A digital display of maps created for this project were included in the 2019 Boston Public Library exhibition "American Transformed"
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://creatingdata.benschmidt.org/BPL
Primary URL Description: Website built to be displayed in context at BPL.
Secondary URL: https://www.leventhalmap.org/store/america-transformed-catalog/
Secondary URL Description: Exhibition catalog (not part of this NEH grant.)

---