Daniel C S Wilson
Biographic Data
| ID | 1468164 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel C S Wilson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel C S |
| FAMILY NAME | Wilson |
| SIGNATURE | WILSON D C S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6886-775X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Show Me the Data
This comment examines the rapidly evolving ecosystem of historical research data in the United Kingdom, where cultural heritage collections are increasingly digitised, commercialised and fragmented. Historians face growing challenges in discovering, accessing and reusing data as resources move behind paywalls, and repositories remain scattered, without a national infrastructure to ensure long-term preservation or discoverability. Drawing on examp…
Reading Maps at a Distance
The Living Machine
This article examines a long-standing question in the history of technology concerning the trope of the living machine. The authors do this by using a cutting-edge computational method, which they apply to large collections of digitized texts. In particular, they demonstrate the affordances of a neural language model for historical research. In a deliberate maneuver, the authors use a type of model, often portrayed as sentient today, to detect fi…
Maps of a Nation? The Digitized Ordnance Survey for New Historical Research
Although the Ordnance Survey has itself been the subject of historical research, scholars have not systematically used its maps as primary sources of information. This is partly for disciplinary reasons and partly for the technical reason that high-quality maps have not until recently been available digitally, geo-referenced, and in color. A final, and crucial, addition has been the creation of item-level metadata which allows map collections to …
Babbage among the insurers
This article examines life assurance and the politics of ‘big data’ in mid-19th-century Britain. The datasets generated by life assurance companies were vast archives of information about human longevity. Actuaries distilled these archives into mortality tables – immensely valuable tools for predicting mortality and so pricing risk. The status of the mortality table was ambiguous, being both a public and a private object: often computed from comp…
J. A. Hobson and the Machinery Question
The effects of industrialization on British life were the subject of a broad and intelligible set of debates during the early nineteenth century, often described as the “machinery question.” This question, concerning what today is called “technology,” was framed to include its effects on the whole of human life—an approach rarely seen by the late nineteenth century, a period marked instead by disciplinary specialization. An exception to this tren…
Arnold Toynbee and the Industrial Revolution
Arnold Toynbee’s lectures on the Industrial Revolution (published in 1884) were the first—and the most influential—attempt to historicize Britain’s radical transition to a machine-based economy. This article locates the lectures in the context of the increasing disciplinary specialization of late-nineteenth-century Britain. Toynbee’s intellectual character and political commitments shaped an approach to the machinery question which was holist and…
The Birth of Now
Journal Article The Birth of Now Get access David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History Since 1900, Profile, London, 2006; 270pp, £18.99; ISBN: 1861972962. Bernhard Rieger, Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany, 1890–1945, Cambridge University Press, 2005; 319pp, £55; ISBN: 0521845289. Daniel C. S. Wilson Daniel C. S. Wilson Daniel Wilson is working on a PhD in the History of Science and Technology …
Truth or Consequences
Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being after Fifty Years
Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being after Fifty Years
J. A. Hobson and the Machinery Question
The effects of industrialization on British life were the subject of a broad and intelligible set of debates during the early nineteenth century, often described as the “machinery question.” This question, concerning what today is called “technology,” was framed to include its effects on the whole of human life—an approach rarely seen by the late nineteenth century, a period marked instead by disciplinary specialization. An exception to this tren…
Babbage among the insurers
This article examines life assurance and the politics of ‘big data’ in mid-19th-century Britain. The datasets generated by life assurance companies were vast archives of information about human longevity. Actuaries distilled these archives into mortality tables – immensely valuable tools for predicting mortality and so pricing risk. The status of the mortality table was ambiguous, being both a public and a private object: often computed from comp…
Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being after Fifty Years
Truth or Consequences
The Birth of Now
Journal Article The Birth of Now Get access David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History Since 1900, Profile, London, 2006; 270pp, £18.99; ISBN: 1861972962. Bernhard Rieger, Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany, 1890–1945, Cambridge University Press, 2005; 319pp, £55; ISBN: 0521845289. Daniel C. S. Wilson Daniel C. S. Wilson Daniel Wilson is working on a PhD in the History of Science and Technology …
Arnold Toynbee and the Industrial Revolution
Arnold Toynbee’s lectures on the Industrial Revolution (published in 1884) were the first—and the most influential—attempt to historicize Britain’s radical transition to a machine-based economy. This article locates the lectures in the context of the increasing disciplinary specialization of late-nineteenth-century Britain. Toynbee’s intellectual character and political commitments shaped an approach to the machinery question which was holist and…
J. A. Hobson and the Machinery Question
The effects of industrialization on British life were the subject of a broad and intelligible set of debates during the early nineteenth century, often described as the “machinery question.” This question, concerning what today is called “technology,” was framed to include its effects on the whole of human life—an approach rarely seen by the late nineteenth century, a period marked instead by disciplinary specialization. An exception to this tren…
Babbage among the insurers
This article examines life assurance and the politics of ‘big data’ in mid-19th-century Britain. The datasets generated by life assurance companies were vast archives of information about human longevity. Actuaries distilled these archives into mortality tables – immensely valuable tools for predicting mortality and so pricing risk. The status of the mortality table was ambiguous, being both a public and a private object: often computed from comp…
Maps of a Nation? The Digitized Ordnance Survey for New Historical Research
Although the Ordnance Survey has itself been the subject of historical research, scholars have not systematically used its maps as primary sources of information. This is partly for disciplinary reasons and partly for the technical reason that high-quality maps have not until recently been available digitally, geo-referenced, and in color. A final, and crucial, addition has been the creation of item-level metadata which allows map collections to …
The Living Machine
This article examines a long-standing question in the history of technology concerning the trope of the living machine. The authors do this by using a cutting-edge computational method, which they apply to large collections of digitized texts. In particular, they demonstrate the affordances of a neural language model for historical research. In a deliberate maneuver, the authors use a type of model, often portrayed as sentient today, to detect fi…
Reading Maps at a Distance
Show Me the Data
This comment examines the rapidly evolving ecosystem of historical research data in the United Kingdom, where cultural heritage collections are increasingly digitised, commercialised and fragmented. Historians face growing challenges in discovering, accessing and reusing data as resources move behind paywalls, and repositories remain scattered, without a national infrastructure to ensure long-term preservation or discoverability. Drawing on examp…
History (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · History (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Discipline (3 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Linguistics (3 works)