wsubreezeposts-blog - Tumblr blog

wsubreezeposts-blog · 6 years ago

Text

DTC 476: Multimodal Analysis 1

Our data is king, which has the power to influence the future of our culture. In other words, descriptive meta data is the foundation of our digital self, that consists the characteristics that define who we are. However, this gives data gatherers hegemony towards our destiny. Smart technology such as Amazon’s product Alexa and other tech devices have access and the ability to influence our social patterns. Data coding creates a record of decisions that are associated with analyzing an individual's use of words, visuals, audio, video, and links online, that can result to being “socially contaminated”.

This form of reflective practice associated with data coding, searches for patterns in large amounts of data. “Knowledge about who we are is constructed according to what ethicist Luciano Floridi refers to as the “small patterns” in data, or what political theorist Stephen Collier would call “patterns of correlation,” that extend the limits of conventional knowledge” (Xbox,43). One example, I noticed of data surveillance affecting my life is looking through the account setting of my Facebook Profile and seeing the information that Facebook has gathered from my usage. Sexuality, political belief and location were a few things that alarmed me the most. Data coding reveals and conceals information to create a complete picture of the important characteristics of culture and human behavior. “If texts are indeterminate, then any inference stemming from them is merely the product of interpretation; the results of data coding tells us more about the person doing the coding than about the texts being coded”. (Blythe, 221).

In Katherine Hayles article, she introduces the three forms of literacy ‘close, hyper, machine’. However, based off my findings from the readings assigned. I believe the “middle ground” group of literacy between human culture and computational technology is ‘hyper reading ‘. The process of gathering data in a variety of languages breaks down the balance of myth and reason in which controls what we think and know.

“Today our languages sprawl across registers: procedural computer languages, critical languages of film and new media, creoles, fictional languages, news and emoji” (Finn,1).

Each asset generates a cultural power based on the inherent tension, in which can be described as a form of metadata. Another example is the computational theocracy that is the idea of religion being replaced with an algorithm (Finn,7). The algorithm code of structure relies on an architecture code relies on a structure of belief as well as a logical organization of bits.

Big data is consisted of observations based on our data being recorded, analyzed and stored into a data bank. Maciej Ceglowski, a software developer made it clear that “our daily activities are mediated with software that can easily be configured to record and report everything it sees upstream”. I also agree and have noticed seeing items in my shopping cart from a various online retailer sites as ads on my social media feed. “The production of Big Data, or rather raw data, is a work of cancelling out all meaning, so that these raw data can be calculable and function as signs in relation to what they represent; they substitute themselves to the meaningful reality” ( Rouvroy, 3) As Big data continues to grow and further analyzed, individuals will lose forms of identity while being added to a knowledge system. Our society has infused technology to the way we learn, consume, create and communicate information. “A definition of Big Data that unravels the triumphalist character of the very expression ‘big data’ can be formulated this way: Big Data is simply the excess of velocity, rapidity, quantity of data and complexity that we can no longer understand with our modern rationality, that is with the rationality that consisted in understanding phenomena by relating them to their causes”(Rouvroy,5)

Today, hyper reading is one of the most common forms of literacy when communicating in both a print and digital format. ”CALO/Siri is a powerful example of the contemporary culture machine: conceived as an interlocking set of computational systems, the intelligent agent is an ambitious effort to make vast new swaths of culture “effectively computable.”(Finn, 58) Siri is an example of a methodology of being described as the process of becoming, with technical functions and cultural premise of outputting the perspective between computation and culture. “The original Siri also had a sharper edge to its dialog, occasionally deploying four-letter words and plenty of attitude, which was part of its appeal for jobs (though Apple quickly dialed down the software affect in-house).” ( Finn,59) The majority of Apple’s consumers haven’t realized Siri’s intelligence and how powerful her algorithm is. In addition, even I have not realized the amount of data I provide when using Siri, as well, as recognizing her intelligence. In this decade, smart phones usage is now part of our daily routine that even includes the way we as a society behave. One example is the transformation of socialization throughout the 2010s to Today. Social media has grown throughout the years and to some is their primary way with communicating with others. “Personal identity is itself the effect of a certain temporal unification of past and future with one’s present... If we are unable to unify the past, present, and the future of our own biographical experience or psychic life”. (Jameson 27). Since social media makes it relatively easier to stay ‘connected’ with others around the world. Last year, my mother and I took a trip overseas to London for a week. Throughout the planning process of this trip, I used social media for booking appointments and reservations in which was the best option compared to spending extra for long distance by doing everything through the phone. “Interacting with the complex systems of modern life requires a simplified interface between the system and us, and that interface usually relies on metadata” (Pomerantz, 15). The voice recognition feature “Siri” can be perceived as a product of cybernetics because of her capabilities. In fact, cybernetics is an intellectual argument regarding the place of algorithms in material culture in which argues that the politics of implementing mathematical ideas/claiming embodied versions in physical as well, as biological systems.

The police utilize their database and private records to revolutionize their placement in society. “Government agencies want data that they can’t legally or constitutionally collect for themselves; data brokers have it and want to sell it” (Pasquale,49). The separation and parallel “realities” are constructed and documented for spotting out targets. Collateral consequences are an issue in the criminal justice system because of the stigma surrounded by being “pleaded guilty”, that precludes opportunities -a job, housing, public assistance, as soon as they pay their debt to society. “Marketers crave that information, and the vacuum left by bureaus has been filled by a behind-the-scenes cohort of unregulated data gatherers, brokers, sensor networks, and analysts who collect and scrutinize every bit of spoor, digital and otherwise, that we leave behind” (Pasquale,25).

Credit card debt has a similar stigma to being incarcerated because of the negative reputation aligned with it. “Far from liberating individuals to be judged on their character rather than color, credit scores in scenarios like these launders past practices of discrimination into a black-boxed score, immune from scrutiny” (Pasquale,41). Literacy allows data gatherers within information structures can make instantaneous connections that allow us to see everything at once.

Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5qhoXAsh48

0 notes

wsubreezeposts-blog · 6 years ago

Text

DTC 356: Multimodal Analysis 1

Our world is based off of ubiquitous networked communication of technologies that are establishing the internet into our daily lives. These daily activities are mediated with software in which, is part of the culture of total surveillance also known as a “Black Box Society”. In fact, Frank Pasquale describes this society to be based off the determination off algorithms that contours our life. Predictive analytics can control the representation of a person’s character based off that individual’s data.

Antoinette Rouvroy defines the structure of this example of a ‘black box society’ as “algorithimic governmentally”, “a logic that simply ignores the embodied individuals it affects and has as its sole ‘subject’ a ‘statistical’. In other words, the personal attributes of our motivations, intentions do not matter. Algorithmic knowledge focuses on predictive aspects that don’t have the purpose of challenging people or content in which is the root of “knowledge without truth”. In other words, knowledge production is being controlled, or at least accessed. “This explosion of data, but also of forms and persons, it is a hyperdexation of absolutely everything, including the personal form” (Rouvroy). In addition, hyperlinks, key words and other relational infrastructures determine quality that, also affect individuals in the way they compose themselves autobiographically, biographically in the way they self-reflect. "The concept of truth is increasingly wrapped up at the expense of pure reality or actuality to the extent that eventually things seem to be speaking for themselves( Rouvry, 2).

Smart phone usage is also large aspect of this because of the data that is being recorded based off our digital foot print. One example of surveilling data going into a complete spiral is the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive”. In this episode, Classism is used as a metaphor to address the social constructed limitations of individualism and free will through a social media app. Society is shaped into a caste system based off an individual’s personal score that can affect their reputation and access to resources. Members of this society are involved with eye contact lenses allowing users to access an individual’s personal life. “This raises the issue of how social media is affecting society, or large parts of it, and leads to the view that we are entering into a new paradigm that is changing behavior and society1”.(Public Interest and Private Rights in Social Media, edited by Cornelis Reiman, Elsevier Science, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/wsu/detail.action?docID=15750).Although the social structure of race doesn’t exist, the integrity of an individual’s reputation is based off a 5-star rating scale. This rating not only impacts a person’s life, but also enables a discriminatory accent in society through the establishment of hierarchy. “The issue, then, is what binds people to become part of a collective, and what keeps them together, such as to advance a common ideal, or share in a broader experience that, in itself, is the social media community, (Public Interest and Private Rights in Social Media.).

Individuals with a score below 3.0 average are perceived as an “untouchable” because of their low rating and the consequence of disobeying the system leads towards a jail like setting of solidarity.

In addition, an individual’s social media profile depends on the validation and humanity’s interaction between each other. “Nosedive” addresses social media as the deciding factor of an individual’s quality of life, that’s based off an individual’s profile rating. Enforced positive interactions creates an illusion of removing emotional and physical pain.

Social network analyzes the connections among people, instead of connections among computers. “Indeed, as more and more entities and relationships accumulate, there’s really nowhere to stop, short of mapping out the network of relationships between everything in the entire universe” (Pomerantz,450). One example, I noticed of data surveillance affecting my life is looking through the account setting of my Facebook Profile and seeing the information that Facebook has gathered from my usage. Sexuality, political belief and location were a few things that alarmed me the most.

Data is the dominating factor of our society that can manifest the order of our daily lives. In fact, pattern recognition is a method of connecting the dots of past behavior in which can affect health, race relations medicine and other records. Pasquale wrote “marketers crave that information, and the vacuum left by bureaus has been filled by a behind-the-scenes cohort of unregulated data gatherers, brokers, sensor networks, and analysts who collect and scrutinize every bit of spoor, digital and otherwise, that we leave behind” (Pasquale,25).

The measurable types of “we are data” are made up of technical constructions and logics of classification that depict online behavior. “Knowledge about who we are is constructed according to what ethicist Luciano Floridi refers to as the “small patterns” in data, or what political theorist Stephen Collier would call “patterns of correlation,” that extend the limits of conventional knowledge” (Xbox,43). Every decision we make, is calculated into a pattern, that is transcribed as a meta data reading. This is both problematic and beneficial for society because of the accountability of this type of data. However, if our personal data is put into the wrong hands, then the possibility for new social order. James Cole compares the action of analyzing personal data to a popular metaphor: the needle in the haystack and argues “if you’re looking for the needle in the haystack, you have to have the entire haystack to look through”. His argument resonates with Google’s mission statement, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.

Furthermore, “your data is a source of huge profit to other people, but often at your data”. Thousands of eyes associated with the NSA and other data collection agencies have access to analyze our data. Reporting agencies can monitor our utility bills, rent payments and medical debts, that can cause risk of changing the order of our lives based on false hood. “Bad inferences are a larger problem than bad data because companies can represent them as “opinion” rather than fact” (Pasquale,32). In fact, these types of companies gain advantage of hiding behind opinion than being based off facts because of the First Amendment. “Brokers combine, swap, and recombine the data they acquire into new profiles, which they can then sell back to original collectors or to other firms” (Pasquale,30). Discrimination in our society is not only prominent but also in the cyber world of data. Data discriminatory behavior perpetuates negative stereotypes that usually are associated with race, ethnic background, gender and sexual orientation in real life situations. For example, having bad credit can make your data representation appear as unreliable and “lazy”. Big Data is a black and white situation with very little grey to balance opinion and fact.

Our data is the economy of Today. For example, investors from Cornell University did an experiment on online behavior on Facebook in 2012 and found “emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness” (Young,2). “In this study, researchers took a large sample of Facebook users (about seven hundred thousand people) and learned that when ‘positive’ expressions were removed from a population’s News Feed (no longer would you see people write things like “I really”), users posted more ‘positive’ and less ‘negative’ updates”(Lippold, 48).

Link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epI5r0_T_lE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAB3xtZQank

1 note · View note