#reflectiveblog

My mind map of the week 2 reading material Gillespie, Tarleton. "Algorithm [draft][# digitalkeyword]." Culture Digitally (2014)

What is Algorithm? Tarleton shown us the definitions of Algorithm in four different aspects:

Algorithm as a technical solution to a technical problem - a logical series of steps for organising data to achieve a desired outcome quickly.

Algorithm as synecdoche - in a more sociological angle, it’s a kind of socio-technical ensemble, part of a family of authoritative systems for knowledge production or decision-making.

Algorithm as talisman - it’s like a trick for information industries, to persuade the audience that the product, or saying the designer/corporate owner makes objective, legitimate decisions.

Algorithmic as committed to a procedure - In general, everything that is driven by and committed to algorithmic systems is algorithm.

To be honest, this reading made me feel like everything in our society could be algorithmic: products we use daily like Facebook, Spotify, Tinder, Instagram etc. Everything related to statistical data is algorithmic. And we can’t really run away from those “number facts”, even when we made decisions by ourselves, we consider the social norm that generated ethnographically, as well as the one generated by algorithm.

When something is algorithmic, it’s a formalization of social facts: make them into “measurable data”, and make the social phenomena “clarifiable”. So there would be always problem and solution. Like certain conditions leads to certain result, like the "if/then" logic in the technically defined algorithm.

But is everything measurable? Does every problem have its corresponding solution? When we think about something organic, something emotional. Algorithm seems a bit stark and inhuman. Like nowadays some people would like to see their body (organ) data to estimate their health situation. When we say ‘you’re out of shape because your body fat percentage is too high’, it still sounds reasonable. But when we say ’you’re angry because your epinephrine/heart rate number is raising too fast’, it sounds not communicating anything at all. (‘You’re angry because your friend didn’t answer your phone’ sounds a bit more communicable.) So seems generally, algorithm is not very useful for something organic and emotional.

(However, if via algorithm, we applied those organ data to generate visual/audio/something people can sense with, it’d actually function well in these emotional communications.)

To prevent people from falling into a confusion that everything is algorithmic, Tarleton also talked about what is not algorithmic:

something done subjectively,

something done by hand,

something can only be accomplished with persistent human oversight,

something is limited by context, etc.

So I started to think about the examples. The first few things I came up with is photography, painting, telling stories. Traditionally, these are very subjective and creative behavior. They are more about personal experience, personal aesthetic, intuition, and perception, rather than logic and statistical numbers.

However, another extremely contradictory example crossed my mind: Botnik, a community of writers, artists and developers using machines to create things, fed the seven Harry Potter novels through their predictive text keyboard, then it came up with a chapter from a new Harry Potter story: Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash

Then following this clue, I found another AI writing example: Director Oscar Sharp and AI researcher Ross Goodwin used a recurrent neural network called long short-term memory, or LSTM for short to write a film script, and made the film Sunspring, for Sci-Fi London, an annual film festival that includes the 48-Hour Film Challenge. The process was quite similar with Botnik’s Harry Potter. They fed the LSTM thousands of sci-fi film scripts, some random seeds from a sci-fi filmmaking contest including a title (sunspring), a piece of dialogue, a prop and an action, and an optional science idea, then the AI started writing the play.

Although such ‘AI writing’ are just reflecting on and simulating the human-written texts we’ve fed them, there’s actually nothing ‘creative’. But I have to admit that I found some of those contents are unpredictable interesting, or even ineffably poetic to me. So I guess the random composition created by the algorithmic could be organic, emotional as well (depends on different people’s different interpretations).

In summary, as Tarleton said in his Algorithm [draft], the advantage of algorithm is its democracy, systemisation, and we also concern that it might be an extension of Taylorism, it might be too stark and inhuman. But from some computational art works/ practices, I saw the ineffable human side of algorithm, and I think that’s what we are working for, breaking the boundaries, collaborating with the machine, and showing better humanity.

Reading materials:

Algorithm [draft] [#digitalkeywords] by Tarleton Gillespie

Harry Potter: Written by Artificial Intelligence

Movie written by algorithm turns out to be hilarious and intense by Annalee Newitz

What’s the relationship between us, the user, and software? Is a software just a tool that we create, and we control it to solve certain problem? How deep do we and the software interlace together? How does software choreographs our life? Do we use software to think?

In ‘A Fish Can’t Judge the Water’, Femke claims that when we use software, we practice it until we in-corporate its choreography. We make it disappear in the background. It becomes a seamless experience. We become one with our extensions.

I couldn’t agree more with her points. We are one with the software. Of course I’m not saying like the half-artificial human creature in cyberpunk films like Ghost in the Shell. But sometimes, it’s hard to tell which parts of our thoughts are spontaneous, and which parts are influenced by the information from the software’s calculation.  

For example, everyone types on smartphone, or types on computer, must have used IME (Input Method Editor). No matter it’s in English or Chinese, or other languages, when you type through the keyboard, the IME will automatically predict and recommend some related words for you to use next. But where are these words from? - One on hand, the software analyses your texting history, and finds out what words combinations you mostly used. Like it ‘remembers’ your habits and preference. On the other hands, the software also analyses the other general users data, and finds out what words are used very frequently by the majority. Then it would push some buzzwords for you when you typing.

That is, in the process of considering how to express your thoughts, the software is unconsciously affecting you. It’s quite ambiguous that the reason you chose this word it’s you really thought so, or it’s you just told by the software. And when you used a buzzword, you increased this word’s ‘popularity’ in the software data. Then this word will be more likely to be recommended to an other similar user next time. This also explains the other point in ‘A Fish Can’t Judge the Water’: Software produces culture at the same time as it is produced by culture.

Instagram (IG) Story is an other perfect example related to these points. When you posted a IG Story, everyone can see it in 24 hours, and you can see who have watched your story. And in story, you could add in any time, location, hash tag information, and even set questions in it. Your audience could fill in the answer in your story, then you could respond to them in your next story, an so on. So is the same when you watched the others stories.

I think these functions in the software are designed because of the culture of open and equal communication/expression. And obviously, people are getting more open and equal to express when they use these software functions. So software produced by culture, and it produces culture at the same time.

And I think this extremely two-way communication/expression really blur the boarder between performer and audience, or like Femke saying, typist and reader. We have fun with things like IG Story is because we are interested in the tension between those two position. (Can’t really explain why people enjoy this kind of tension here. Hopefully I can find some theory about it later.)

To summarise, I really like what Femke says in the end of ‘A Fish Can’t Judge the Water’: We like to cross boundaries, but we don’t want to erase them. We traverse different worlds, we do not make them the same. In fact, we are interested in everything that shows up in the cracks.

In this week’s blog post I will be discussing the week 1 driving question, about whether or not I believe I could live without Digital and Communication Technologies. Throughout the lecture and tutorial for week 1, we mainly had an introduction to the course, learnt about what the assignments will be, and what is expected of us as students in completing the course. However, in the tutorial we were asked the question “could you live without digital and communication technologies?”

Before I start saying more on the topic, I feel like it would be useful to specify what “digital and communication technologies” really means. My tutorial class defined it as multiple things, the ones that stood out being; a way to communicate with people from all around the world, an online community, and pieces of technology that are used in our day to day lives.

As a whole, my tutorial class were certain that we would be able to live without digital and communication technologies, however as we discussed this more, we realised that most of us barely remember a time where we have not been surrounded by some kind of technology allowing us to communicate with the wider world. I know personally, that although I have always done lots of sport and had younger sisters to play with for most of my life, my family has always had a TV, phone and even one of those huge box-like computers that my sisters and I could never quite figure out. We would nowadays be described as “Digital Natives” (Prensky, 2001), and it is true. Although I’d like to believe that I could live without digital and communication technologies, unless I was forced, I don’t believe that experience would go down very well.

Until next time,

Looking back through the process of recording this blog I have found it an extremely effective way to tangibly articulate my thought processes and analyse my progress. Commenting on activities and practices has enabled me to gauge their validity and plan my future approaches more productively. Assessing my strengths and weaknesses as recorded in the blog has successfully led me to be a much more reflective learner. Whilst posting I was acutely aware of the need to go beyond mere description but ask myself questions such as “Why?, Is this successful? and What next?”.

Within the blog I strived to create a balance between documenting academic research and work from leading practitioners at the forefront of my specialism. I was extremely mindful not just to document this but add informed opinion of the work.

The blog has also been a useful way to document resources and organise my research and I have often found myself revisiting it to access sources I have referred to.  

In approaching the blog I was aware that I should only add carefully constructed, relevant posts and favoured quality over quantity. I researched numerous academic blogs and found that many employing the approach to blog much and often were seldom that successful in evidencing their process effectively. In completing two modules simultaneously time management was critical, therefore I had to restrict the time I spent on each activity in order to not only complete all unit work, but to do so at a level I felt was demonstrative that my practice is of Master’s level. I did feel I wanted to devote more time to the blog as I was enjoying the process and the results it was yielding but had to prioritise my time efficiently.

Varying the content of my blog was highly important to me and I posted a mixture of examples of my work and that of others, video content and academic models. I also found documenting my development work a constructive task that aided my development in the Practice 1: Art and Design module.  

One area I struggled to grasp initially was how to make sure this was an academic blog with correct Harvard referencing. Many of my sources were web based and the referencing convention for this was unknown to me. After some careful research I resolved the issue and feel more confident with the structure.

In reflecting further on my methodologies, I have found the use of case studies extremely useful in the Research and Practice module, I was hoping to add further methodologies to this such as surveys but as time was limited I opted to use it to dedicate to the coursework in hand. It is certainly a task to be explored in future modules.

In summary I have found the whole process to be extremely valuable in informing my practice, improving my reflective writing skills and leading me to investigate alternative sources. If I was to redo the activity I would perhaps set myself more rigid time slots to blog in, but feel my approach of creating posts at what I found were relevant junctures to reflect upon an extremely effective approach.

          As I expected from the career portfolio, these first learning log activities would enable me to develop my professional skills and attitude towards applying for a job and/or placement. 

          The first task, the BrandMe poster, was originally perceived to be difficult, as I had never encountered such a poster before, nor knew how to write a BrandMe (personal) statement. However, after researching how to write an effective statement, I could then create my own.           The content allowed me to explore my own strengths and weaknesses, which I might not have done otherwise. It was important for me to carry out a SWOT analysis in order to accurately create my own personal brand. -- Employers want to know that applicants are authentic, genuine people; self-awareness is an essential skill to develop.            Presenting to a class is easy for me when I am in a group, however this task required individual presentations, which made me feel uncomfortable and nervous. I had written notes down on paper, but forgot to use them. -- An obvious mistake. In retrospect, I can ensure that this doesn’t happen again and should practice the presentation beforehand, as this would help to build my confidence when presenting alone.

          The second task was to write a CV and covering letter for a company of my choice; I chose to apply for Bosch’s Corporate Communications Assistant.  Although I had written a CV before, it had been years since I had done so. I felt worried at first, in case I didn’t have enough experiences to write about, but used the example CV and checklist from Purple Door to extract all relevant skills from my volunteering experience, as well as extra-curricular activities.            The covering letter was far more challenging. I felt very concerned about this final part of the career portfolio; I had no idea where to start. I looked online, searching for sources to aid me in such an unfamiliar area. In the end, I tried my best, as I knew I would be getting feedback before the final submission.

          The feedback, as mentioned above, was from a review meeting at Purple Door with Jacqui Adams and my ‘study buddy’ from my seminar group. This was by far the most useful part of the career portfolio, as it allowed me to get feedback and reflect on what I had done right and wrong, prior to this blog post. It was also interesting to see another person’s CV, and I was also able to take advice given to them, such as optimising the use of space and layout of each section.           Jacqui suggested to use more interesting ways to make our CVs stand out from other candidates by using different colours and formats; to demonstrate our skills of graphic design. This is definitely something that I wish to implement in the future, now that my CV is fully updated.