For my project I will still be doing an interactive visualization of what it takes to eat a burger. I will visually represent the things that go into processing a quarter pound of ground beef. Highlighting the hundreds of liters of water and pounds of feed and waste that go into just a handful of beef for one to enjoy. The exposure of the wastefulness of our meat production processes and ignorance of the common public will be the point of my project.

Frank Pasquale – Black Box Society – chapter 1 (pp 1-11)

This book talked a lot about the secrecy of the government, banks, and software  while relating it all into the same realm. I found it interesting how Frank related the secrecy and volatility of banks years after the recession to the data firms stealing your data as we speak. One of my favorite quotes of this reading that summed up some of these points concisely was “All these are protected by laws of secrecy and technologies of obfuscation.” I think this summed up a lot of what Frank mentioned about confusing the consumer and being very opaque. He briefly discusses the long prospectuses, and disclosure agreements of corporations and how their intent is to just confuse the readers. He brings up how some are tens of thousands of pages, and they often reference to other things, that reference to other things. I think one thing you can take away from this reading is that we as consumers and members of society should really think about our right to have access to our data being collected, and/or the knowledge how it is collected.

Cathy O’Neill – The era of blind faith in big data must end (Ted Talk, 13m)

This was in the final 30 seconds of the Ted Talk but was a very powerful quote.. “Data Scientists should not be arbiters of truth, we should be translators of ethical discussions that happen in larger society.” I thought this summed up this talk very well. There is a big issue with algorithms making decisions in certain fields that are biased, and are not making logical decisions. The fact that teachers are not only gettin scored, but losing their jobs because of a score does not make sense if they are liked by everyone they work with and work for. I thought the Fox news scandal was interesting to bring up. It’s ironic that after the entire scandal, Fox acted like they were going to clean slate and remove all these previous biases and favoritism, yet they make hiring algorithms based on all their previous data. 

Virginia Eubanks – Automating Inequality (talk, 45m)

Eubanks builds a digital poorhouse based on the economic depression in 1820. 

It’s not really fair the the medicaid workers were replaced by algorithms in Indiana and then 1 million cases were denied for so called not completing the online application. This puts somebodies life at stake because of not signing a form online.

Janet Vertesi – My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data…  (Time, short article)

Even though this article is short, and tells me a lot of information that I have already been told, it really did still surprise me and have a powerful theme. I knew it would be difficult if somebody tried to go completely anonymous online and avoid every single form of data tracking, but I didn’t know you would look like a criminal doing this. “But avoiding the big-data dragnet meant that I not only looked like a rude family member or an inconsiderate friend, but I also looked like a bad citizen.” This is crazy how these are the implications of literally trying to buy something without having a data footprint. Now this really is the best way to explain to somebody how publicized our society is now, and how much surveillance capitalism has taken over our world.

Walliams and Lucas – The Computer Says No (comedy skit, 2m)

Hilarious. I love how he asked for the survey at the end. It’s very true that sometimes you’re talking to these receptionists and it’s like they just talk straight out of the computer. Delegitimatizing what you say sometimes because the computer says something else. Super funny skit though, watched it twice. 

Safiya Noble – Algorithms of Oppression (talk, 45m)

This video was very insightful and actually sent me on a mission to try and find out biases of googles search engine. I thought it was very surprising that not only for minorities, but for women there was ridiculously inappropriate websites coming up for certain searches. Since this video is from 2017, I’m sure there was a lot of different changes that google made to their search engine, especially when searching phrases about race or gender. I understand there is a lot of things about google searches that can’t be patched, what you search is what you search. But there is a a lot of instances where there is deliberate racism and oppression in some searches. When looking at criminals, professional hairstyles, and porn websites, it is not a coincidence that these searches are discriminatory. 

Ruha Benjamin – Race After Technology (talk, 20m)

The project in St. Paul Minnesota that tried to prink youth that are at risk ties back to the software we talked about that rates students in college. I feel like this heavily discriminates against certain people, and sometimes can do more harm than help. There shouldn’t be an algorithm, or a company telling you who is “at risk” and who isn’t. 

Lisa Nakamura – Laboring Infrastructures (talk, 30m)

This talk takes a different view on racism and technology. Lisa starts the talk discussing how we wouldn’t have any of our novel technology without asian women making them for little money. I find it interesting that she brings up the company Pathos and there website description is that they disrupt oppression and discrimination. Right before that Lisa shows an excerpt from their founder saying that nobody seems to know anything about where VR is going and there is no rules yet. Kind of ironic.

Nathan Jurgenson – The Social Photo – (book, pp. 1-15)

This article made me think a lot about the rise of photography. This is really the original form of social media. There was a lot of people who thought negatively about photography similarly to how boomers think about social media today. Having smart phones has definitely extended the true meaning of photography and how it is so accessible to billions of people around the world. One quote I liked from this reading was “I treat social photography here less as an evolution in photography or as

the advance of amateur snapshot photos and more as a broader development in self expression memory and sociality.” This is a good point to make because there has definitely been a huge change in photography due to the accessibility of cameras, and the social media revolution, but a majority of these images that are shared isn’t really photography but rather a way for someone to document there life and express themselves. 

Jill Walker Rettberg – “What can’t we measure in a quantified world?” (talk, 20m)

I found it interesting that the main focus here was wearable items outside of your iPhone. Since this is from 2014 where apple watches weren’t as popular, there was lots of other inventions for tracking yourself and digitizing your life. The sex app really stuck out to me for a few reasons. I think it a really poor way to measure sex, and this idea can be explained with other applications too. With step trackers, sleep trackers, heart rate monitors, and many other “wearables,” humans are getting a very skewed view of what they think they’re body is telling them. Not to say technology doesn’t assist us in measuring certain things about it, it’s just that it is a small slice of the big picture. A few thousand extra steps, or few extra minutes of sleep that was recorded on your phone, can give you a wrong idea of how your body is actually improving or not. 

Ben Grosser – What do Metrics Want? How Quantification Prescribes Social Interaction on FB

The most interesting part of this article is when you discussed the metrics of Facebook and what they really mean. Obviously the main purpose behind metrics is tap into ones psychology and make them use the platform for. That is the primary goal of Facebook because they want to keep growing. A great way to describe this addiction is when you explained how people get anxiety from likes and the timeliness of them. When things get older and don’t get enough likes, you have no choice but to crave an escape from this feeling.. so you post more. And since social media is so quick, and so vast, the idea of something getting “old” can be a few days, or even just a few hours for some. 

Wendy Chun – Programmed Visions, (book, pp. 1-2, and optionally pp. 3-10)

– I find it sort of reassuring that even somebody who seems to be an expert in technology and how it works (or at least enough to write a book about it) finds it very difficult to understand. Software really is a hard thing to fully comprehend. The way it encapsulates, technology and allows us to output whatever we use it for will always be too complicated to see through it all. Another thing I found intriguing about this reading was how software is a metaphor and how it can be applied to anything not related to technology. I think we’ve discussed this before in a seminar class. Software can used to describe culture, ideology, economy, and many other aspects of society and how humans function. 

Matthew Fuller – How to be a Geek (book, pp. 12-14, and optionally pp. 63-71)

The vocabulary used in this reading is very impressive. The way that a geek is described is very articulate. I have never really thought of an individual categorized as  a geek to be living with these characteristics. But it really does make sense and there is a reason that they have transformed our world with dominant media conglomerates. 

Translating being a geek into survival instincts, and personality traits was very informing and I thought this was a good read.

Geert Lovink – Sad by Design (podcast w/ Douglas Rushkoff, 60m)

What was birthed in the bay area is that humans are computational and computers can do it better than humans. This was taught at Stanford. What was taught is that the answer to our problems is that algorithms program peoples behavior. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Uber are examples of companies that create machines the replace things that were previously done by humans. We’re not being beaten by machines, but by the billionaires who build them. Geert Lovink mentions that if we don’t connect with our deep wishes and our behaviors in the online world, then it will be hard to differentiate what is real. Technology is so intertwined in our world and we have to be aware of that. My names Jordan and I’m on Team Human.

BFA ideas…..

For my project I am going to make a video exposing certain non profit organizations. I will be focusing on organizations that raise funding for disease, and showing why they aren’t doing anything to find cures. There is certain meal plans, and advertising campaigns that are promoted by cancer, diabetes, and heart disease organizations that are the cause of the disease that they claim to try and cure. I think I will be doing a documentary style video. I haven’t thought too much into the whole process…but I know I will focus on the American Cancer Society, the American Diabetes Association, and the American Heart Association. I will be going over their recommended meal plans, health tips, and who there sponsors are and why they are making sure America stays unhealthy, and sick. I want to have a lot of cool infographics and tie it all into a video.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (video documentary, 50m)

I enjoyed this documentary a lot. It is very current and had lots of ideas that I’m sure we will discuss this semester. One interesting fact that stuck out to me most was how cars my be free someday because the tracking systems will be so profitable that the service of driving a car will be free like some Google services. Another thing I found interesting was about Pokemon Go. First off, didn’t know Google started it. And secondly, I found the comparison of “click through” vs “foot fall” very interesting. Playing Pokemon Go you would never think that this is involved with profits of business’s like McDonalds and Starbucks.

Mapping Interventions – Digital Democracies Conference (talk, 30m)

Technology as it is today would be much different if some of these digital ideas were popular when tech companies started to become so powerful. One of the interesting softwares that was mentioned was Cryptogram. This didn’t allow Facebook to analyze your photos when they were uploaded. This could have prevented facial recognition to be as advanced as it is today. Shoutout Go Rando!

 ’I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’ (Guardian)

This article gave good first person insight on the Cambridge Analytica scandal. I had never actually read anything about somebody telling there experiences first hand. I think Wylie is a very interesting individual, who is smart and really didn’t plan on changing his life forever due to this scandal. My favorite quote was when he said “I just think if I’d taken literally any other job, Cambridge Analytica wouldn’t exist.” It’s crazy to think that just a few ideas from individuals can change the entirety of an election

One Nation, Tracked (NY Times)

Everyone is aware that we are getting tracked. When it comes to shopping, location, and what you search for it is known that with our phones we are giving permission to companies to know every aspect of our life. But the thing is, most people don’t care, or don’t think deeply into it because they’re so content with their smartphones. I think articles like this with graphics that visualize how you are being tracked, help shed light onto this. Looking at this kind of information (and honestly… taking this class) help inform individuals what they are really giving up when they allow other companies to access their information. 

Colleges are turning phones into surveillance machines (Washington Post)

I think there can be many different avenues where location tracking can be beneficial to a student, or for the university. But you have to take it with a grain of salt. When it was mentioned in this article that location tracking can be used to see if somebody is going to the library enough that is where you can say that this technology is going too far. What if you study at home? What if you study in a room at your dorm? There are too many things to take into consideration to make this type of technology credible. 

A clear case for resisting student tracking (Cyborgology)

Student tracking can easily be taken out of hand. There is a spectrum of personality traits, and how students go about there experience at a university. Some of these ideas of intense student tracking with enhance inequality and expose it. “There is a fine line between mechanisms of support and mechanisms of control.” I agree that some of these systems can help prevent issues before they start, but a majority of what these systems will do is each onto how the system thinks we should live and promote that. This can hinder change, and the uniqueness of people on college campuses.