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Tom Mullaney Profile picture
Tom Mullaney
@tsmullaney
Stanford Teacher of the Year, Chinese Computing & IT + Where Research Begins, Father of 2, #firstgen, Historian, Guggenheim Fellow, Songwriter, LOC Kluge Chair
Mar 20, 2023 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Symbolic centralization suggests that Beijing Time was a way for the government to symbolically centralize power. /9 Symbolic secession suggests that Beijing Time was a way for the PRC to differentiate itself from the rest of the world, by having its own unique time zone. Each approach leaves a number of questions unanswered. /10
Mar 20, 2023 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
Despite spanning over 60 degrees of latitude, China has only 1 time zone, "Beijing Time" (UTC+8).

The unification of time in the PRC is a fascinating topic that has not been explored nearly enough in the literature. /THREAD (Before beginning: Yes, I know about Urumqi Time in Xinjiang, the one exception, which is two hours behind (more on this shortly) /2
Mar 17, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Ever wonder how Morse code works in Chinese? Telegraphy nerds, you've come to the right place.

THREAD ImageImage The first thing to know is: Morse code as originally conceived has only a small number of code spaces, enough for English but not for Chinese. /2 Image
Mar 14, 2023 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
They "couldn't really tell the difference between whether I was Chinese or Japanese or Korean or if I even spoke English. They would talk very loudly and very slow."

A thread re: #MichelleYeoh & how 1 barometer of Anti-Asianism is the portrayal of Chinese-language technology /1 Before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Yeoh's early U.S. film debut was with the James Bond franchise. Yeoh later revealed how depleting/damaging the experience was for her.

screenrant.com/james-bond-mov… /3
Feb 16, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I just asked ChatGPT for 100 words that end in -stat.

Feast your eyes...

THREAD /1 Acrostat
Agamostat
Agnostat
Airblaststat
Ammoclepsidraulostat
Angiostat
Angiostomatosis
Anostat
Anthostat
Apneumatostat
Asthenostat
Audiostat
Autogiroservoinductostat
Autosynstat
Avionostat
Balancostat
Baryostat
Blastostat
Bulbostat
Calostat
Capsulostat
/2
Feb 16, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Just when I worried if "Where Research Begins" appeals to researchers outside the Humanities, a @UTAustin grad workshop quieted all concerns.

Chris and I just led a hybrid in-person/virtual seminar for 100+ registrants, hailing from... 59 DIFF DISCIPLINES

Here they are! /1 Here are the departments of the students who attended...

Accounting
Aerospace Engineering
Anthropology
Applied Learning and Development
Art Education
Art History
Asian Cultures and Languages
Biology
Biomedical Engineering

/2

cc @mitpress

amazon.com/Where-Research…
Sep 16, 2022 • 12 tweets • 6 min read
Do your students (or you) get trapped in obvious, derivative, cliche research topics?

A thread on how to "Think Outside the (Cereal) Box" /1 First, imagine you're at breakfast, or maybe even in the National Archives, and you find a box of cereal. You're fascinated by. It RIVETS your attention. Why? What is the source of your fascination? /2
Sep 16, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I have a theory about Clickbait 2.0 I'd like to share, briefly. /1 Impressionistically, I would say that early forms of clickbait--the titles we've all encountered for years and years now, let's call it Clickbait 1.0--employed superliminal techniques. Cognitive triggers. Cliffhangers. Overt hooks one could discern. /2
Sep 15, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
How to get undergrads to ask better questions of their sources? I saw a tweet with this question, and wanted to share one exercise that works with me. /1 Image First, a bit of context: Starting researchers of all ages are notorious to "jump to interpretation" and "meaning" far too early. They see a source, and within a second or two, feel pressure to start opining about modernity, capitalism, colonialism, gender... immense concepts /2
Jun 2, 2022 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
How books begin and how they end. What’s research? When does the writing start? When is the writing done? A thread for writers, especially for scholars and other writers of serious non-fiction, disentangled from How Research Begins and On Revision. @UChicagoPress @WmGermano 1/10 Image Research begins *before* you know your question--even before you realize that you’re "searching" for anything. Research questions emerge in dinnertime conversations (& disputes) w/ family, in bus-ride daydreams, in the ache of reading headlines. 2/10
Feb 7, 2022 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
There’s a deeper history to “Chinese Alphabets” like this. Much of it orientalist, exoticizing, racist. But some is ad admixture of eccentrism + brilliance, spear-headed by Chinese inventors—esp. ones interested in Telegraphy, Computing, and Chinese I.T. more broadly. THREAD/1 The exoticizing/racializing story is a bit better known, but essential to spotlight again. One need go no further than the infamous “Chinese Restaurant Font” (not its real name, but how it came to be known). A wonderful write-up in @qz by @annequito /2 cnn.com/style/article/…
Jan 28, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Global History through Graphic Novels

Cannot wait to teach the course derailed by Covid so long ago… I may also teach this via @StanfordCSP if they’re interested. This would open it up to… well… the whole world!
Jul 21, 2021 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
In China, suburban garages don't factor in the lore of computing history the way they do in the U.S. But prisons do – at least, one particular prison in which a Chinese engineer was sentenced to solitary confinement for thought crimes against Mao /1

psyche.co/ideas/how-a-so… His name was Zhi Bingyi and, during long and anxiety-ridden days, months and years of solitude, he made a breakthrough that helped launch China’s personal computing revolution: he helped make it possible to type Chinese with a QWERTY keyboard. /2

psyche.co/ideas/how-a-so… Image
May 6, 2021 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Making the 1st digital fonts for Chinese in the 70s & 80s was

extremely

hard

work.

Each character was 256 bits

Or really: 256 choices re: where to put a pixel, or not, inside a tiny grid.

1000s of characters, 100s of 1000s of choices.

HELP! Where can I pitch this article? (I was so moved and inspired by everyone’s help yesterday, that I thought it best to ask the wisdom of the crowd again!)
Mar 16, 2021 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
Everyone in my feed seems to agree with this article, here and on FB, so I should probably keep quiet. Instead, and at risk of a pile-on, here's a thread on why I disagree. 🧵

timeshighereducation.com/opinion/academ… via @timeshighered 1) it's definitely true that we profs are terrible videographers and editors when compared to professionals. But, for the most part, we are also terrible lecturers and lesson designers. Having room to grow is not a reason not to do something. It's a reason to try harder.
Jan 27, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
My parents once attended one of my lectures at Stanford, sitting in the front row. Both of them fell asleep That lecture was on World War II and I received some of the best course evaluations of my career. This is all to say: Don’t take it personally. Students have a lot going on in their lives.
Nov 18, 2020 • 5 tweets • 7 min read
It is an absolute thrill to share the cover of our forthcoming book, Your Computer is on Fire, set to come out in March 2021 w/ @mitpress | Co-edited with @bjpeters @histoftech and @techno_kavi More info here (+ TOC in the thread below!): mitpress.mit.edu/books/your-com… @tsmullaney Your Computer is On Fire
@histoftech When Did the Fire Start?
@NEnsmenger The Cloud is a Factory
@ubiquity75 Your AI is a Human
@bjpeters A Network is Not a Network
@techno_kavi The Internet Will Be Decolonized
@mitalithakor Capture is Pleasure
/2
Nov 17, 2020 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
.@StanfordDaily asked for a comment, and here is what I said re: this official response from @Stanford to @ScottWAtlas /1 “What Atlas wrote was unequivocally wrong, and yet Stanford's official statement was insipid and spineless. Gmail's AI auto-responder could have done better job.” /2
Jul 18, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Secret Way to Find Archival Materials in the U.S.

Go to Google
Enter this in your search bar, exactly: “XYZ” AND “Finding Aid”
Replace XYZ with your phrase, name, term
Enjoy!
90% of results will be from Archives, Special Collections, etc. Pro Tip: run multiple searches, using different spellings/variations of your term
Pro Pro Trip: you can also use multiple terms. Just run the search as “XYZ” AND “ABC” AND “Finding Aid”
Jul 6, 2020 • 25 tweets • 8 min read
6 years ago, Congressional Republicans & @GOP tried to drag my research, and my name, through the mud. I've never told this story, but now it's time. I also made a video about it, which you can check out here: THREAD /1 A bit of background: I wrote a book called the Chinese Typewriter, which came out @mitpress a few years back. A history of Chinese information technology from the 1930s to the 1950s. A sequel to the book, all about Chinese computing, is coming @mitpress as well. /2
Dec 6, 2019 • 4 tweets • 5 min read
It's Official! *Your Computer is on Fire* is now "Forthcoming 2020" @mitpress
Here's a little preview of what you expect... /1 @tsmullaney Your Computer is On Fire
@histoftech When Did the Fire Start?
@NEnsmenger The Cloud is a Factory
@ubiquity75 Your AI is a Human
@bjpeters A Network is Not a Network
@techno_kavi The Internet Will Be Decolonized
@mitalithakor Capture is Pleasure
/2