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Introduction

In the first four weeks of ETEC 540: Text Technologies, we delved into the concepts of the evolution of language and text with its impact on culture and society in the framework of technology.  Text is a technology that has had far reaching impacts on societies since its inception.  In the last eight weeks of the course, we’ve considered how digital technologies have mapped onto literacy and what direction it will point users in and the impacts it will have.  People are generally understanding of framing the digital world as ‘technology’ however most people are less familiar with the idea of historic literacy disruptions as technological change perhaps with the exception of course, of the Gutenberg press.  Technology is not just about machinery, but as Westers defines it “the application of scientific knowledge to the practical aims of human life” (Britannica, 2018). Therefore, I have chosen to focus my final task, Describing Communication Technologies on a historical text technology disruption in the form of a system of writing implemented in 15^th century Korea now called Hangul.  This paper considers the reaction to and impact of a technology that unlocked information and expression formerly unavailable the majority of a population. This brief historical framework is intended to be a reflective aid to consider the future impact of current disruptions in literacy, communication and knowledge access that are happening so quickly today.  As today’s change is unprecedented it helps to have a historical framework, because as they say history does not repeat but it does rhyme.

Historic timeline

In what is modern day both (North and South) Koreas, a system of writing known in Korean as Hanja (Chinese characters) was brought to Korea from China and mapped onto the existing language.  “Hanja became prominent in use by the elite class between the 3rd and 4th centuries”. (Hanja, 2022).  It is worth making mention for the unacquainted reader that in old Asia, China and therefore Chinese writing was at the centre of high culture and higher learning.   Similar to the way Greece and Latin would be to old Europe.  Most surrounding countries have some influence of Chinese characters.  In the case of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, it was imported and mapped on top of their existing and unrelated languages.  “The Han enjoyed a cultural and literary monopoly in Asia for many centuries. When writing began to spread to other Asian peoples, they first wrote in Chinese” (Gnanadesikan 2008, p.77).  It useful to note that “the distributions of language structures that people are exposed to in print are different from those that people encounter in speech”. (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1992), one can imagine the difficulties encountered in having a foreign script mapped onto an existing language.  Unlike a modern developed society, most people did not enjoy the luxury of time to study Chinese characters. Hanja was primarily used by the small elite class in Korea who were literate.

It was the King of Korea, the Great King Sejong in the 15^th century who set out to solve this problem by commissioning scholars to come up with a new text technology that would enable the masses to be empowered through literacy in their own language and home country.  He is quoted in saying, “since we lack this writing system of our own, even if there are people who have things to say, there are many who cannot express it in writing and thereby cannot flourish” (Gottlieb 2021 p.80)

Besides the advantages of having a language designed specific to the language and culture it represents, as text technology, Hangul has been described as the most scientific and successful text with its origins well documented.  “Those who trumpet the wonders of the Greek alphabet are misguided;  it  is  the  Korean  alphabet which  is  the  true  paragon  of  scripts.”  (Gnanadesikan (2008 p.191)

In its original inception king Sejong implemented the Hangul first as an add-on to the Hanja to open up accessibility to the masses of illiterate population.

Fig 1. Both Hanja and Hangul scripts used together. (Hunmin Jeongeum, 2015)

Fig 2. Hangul used exclusively. (Asia Society, 2023)

1. Resistance to change.

When the King Sejong introduced the Hangul, the system of writing that he created, pushback from his closest and highest literati class was immediate.  The guise of the opposition was that it would offend China who claimed suzerainty over Korea.  That China was high culture and “only barbarians used scripts other than Chinese”.  Gnanadesikan (2008) p.203.  Most likely the real opposition was the threat that the literati class would lose control over regulating culture, information, and social order by lowering the barrier to literacy. This is a reoccurring theme throughout history when we see disruptive technological change that redistributes power in the form of knowledge.  I hope the reader will see the relevance here no matter their political bent as to the technological disruption today making knowledge more accessible to more people and societies’ various reactions to it.  It was not long ago that western societies were very clear about the importance of freedom of speech and expression and now we see that being challenged.

2. implications this development had for literacy and education.

The introduction of Hangul did not create an immediate economic, scientific enlightenment, literacy miracle but it laid a technological foundation to open literacy to the masses.  Available to the masses, Hangul was used by the common people, helping to shape a new national identity and pride.

However, during the Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945 Hangul was outlawed and Japanese was the language and text enforced.  Hangul survived underground and upon liberation, all Koreans had a newfound pride in their language.  Gnanadesikan notes that at the end of World War two and subsequently Japanese occupation, the illiteracy rate in Korean was 78 percent.  With the resurgence of Hangul, and great efforts to educate the masses illiteracy was essentially eradicated in North Korea by 1949 and not long after that in South Korea.  Keep in mind that in 1949 both Koreas were by any measure astonishingly poor nations.  “The population of literate people went from 22% to 98%.” (Education in South Korea, 2023). “Korean children can read before they begin their formal education”.  Gnanadesikan (2008) p.203.

South Korea, when the opportune time came was able to draw on a dedicated, hardworking, literate work force to climb the value-added manufacturing chain. It can be argued that Hangul was one of the tools that allowed it to claw its way out of poverty and reign in an economic miracle. The hangul text technology allowed literacy not to be a barrier.

In North Korea, which is a very impoverished society also does have an extremely high literacy rate of supposedly 100%. North Korea is an example of an even more extreme reaction to colonization in which they banned all foreign words and text from their language.  Hangul is also one of the tools North Korea uses to educate their population, while we don’t see this as an example of good education, they are undeniably competent.

Literacy and text go beyond unlocking access to economic wealth. A literate nation has more potential to express their feelings, share music, stories, love, ideas and disperse it immortally in text. A nation having its own form of writing can create a sense of national pride and belonging.  Over time even the text itself can elicit emotion.  In a study of emotional responses to Hangul text “experts extracted 75 emotion adjectives derived from 300 Korean fonts” (Kim & Lim, 2018)

Fig. 3. Psychology derived from Hangul typography based on several blogs of font providers. (Kim & Lim, 2018)

What lessons can be garnered from this historical perspective that can be apply to current technological change?

The two neighbouring Koreas provide for a perfect control group not found anywhere else in the modern world.  Here we have two very literate nations that at the same time adopted this text technology.  For our purpose the control is the shared history of the implementation of the text technology.  The two societies diverged wildly after World War two.  The North is a poor, autocratic communist nation run by a dynastic military cult allowing no freedom outside its circle of power.  While not wealthy per capita, is advanced in arms manufacturing and punches way above its weight in global politics.  It’s system of nationalism through effective propaganda (to a literate population) is second to none.  The South by contrast, a republic, transformed into a hyper capitalist, democracy that through an economic miracle became one of the wealthiest, well-educated, well-travelled, high-tech nations in the world.

One may deduce from this that having a technology that allows the population to become literate is no guarantee of economic wealth or freedom.  That is not to negate the power of literacy it only highlights that it is a means not an end.  Technology amplifies human behavior for better or for worse.  This maps on perfectly to the notion brought forward by Dr. Shannon Vallor in a presentation (Lessons from the AI Mirror Shannon Vallor, 2018) on AI that the trajectory, outcome, or ethos of AI is not mysterious, it is in fact a mirror to human behaviour and moreover acts as an accelerant on that behaviour.

There are several technological revolutions happening now affecting communication, literacy, education, and dispersion of knowledge.  Social media has allowed unprecedented aggregate human connection and immediate flow of information.  The mass consumption of unlimited audio and video with the cost of production and distribution effectively dropping to zero allows for masses of content producers.  These just to name a few, all allowing potentially greater access to knowledge and types of literacy.  Algorithms and AI can be used to steer the direction of these tools. It accelerates the potential to control or the potential to democratize information.

Modern change seems to be happening at a dizzying pace.  However, “our ancestors at times were just as bewildered by rapid upheavals in what we now call “networks”–the physical links that bind any society together” (Wheeler, 2019). In the same way that the literati resisted relinquishing control to the illiterate masses through controlling distribution of information in the past, modern attempts at control of new technologies are taking place.  The consequences of freedom are great as are the consequences of control.  We can observe in real time today societies, some open and free, others censored and controlled using the same types of technological tools.  We don’t know what the outcomes will be.

Conclusion.

Historical milestones in text and communicative technology such as the introduction of Hangul are relevant to the change in technology we are witnessing now.  We are moving through powerful technological change in communication and access to information.  We are witnessing real time both marvelous and mischievous effects.  Technologies may change, but they remain tools.  They will bring communication, literacy, and information, which is power.  As Dr. Vallor points out, (Lessons from the AI Mirror Shannon Vallor, 2018) this power accelerates the mirror image of our nature.  That is to say, we need to understand ourselves in the past, to help us navigate thoughtfully into the future through technological disruption that will change life as we know it, because our nature changes much slower than technology.  Having examples of the historical impacts of text technologies impacting communication in context can serve as a tool to make predictions about the future of new communication technologies on literacies and the spread of culture.  The impact on education is that new literacies of being discerningly cautious while embracing digital change.

References

Asia Society . (2023). Korean Script. https://asiasociety.org/education/korean-language

Britannica. (2018). technology | Definition & Examples. In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/technology/technology

Gottlieb, B. (2021). Hangul as an Edge Case of the Alphabet Effect Or King Sejong’s Proto-Modernist Dilemma. China Media Research, 17(3), 72. 7 Source: 최현배, “외솔 최현배 박사 고희 기념 논문집” (1968), 27-28 쪽 참조.

Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2008a). Chinese: A Love of Paperwork. 56–78. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444304671.ch4

Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2008b). King Sejong’s One‐Man Renaissance. 191–207. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444304671.ch11

Hanja. (2022, November 23). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja#:~:text=Hanja%20became%20prominent%20in%20use

Hunmin jeongeum. (2015). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E8%A8%93%E6%B0%91%E6%AD%A3%E9%9F%B3.jpg

Kim, H.-Y., & Lim, S.-B. (2018). Emotion-based Hangul font recommendation system using crowdsourcing. Cognitive Systems Research, 47, 214–225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2017.10.004

Lessons from the AI Mirror Shannon Vallor. (2018, November 6). Www.youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=40UbpSoYN4k

Stanovich, K. E., & Cunningham, A. E. (1992). Studying the consequences of literacy within a literate society: The cognitive correlates of print exposure. Memory & Cognition, 20(1), 51–68. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03208254

Wheeler, T. (2019). From Gutenberg to Google : The history of our future. The Brookings Institution.

Wikipedia Contributors. (2019, April 10). Education in South Korea. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_South_Korea

The following are some of my comments on colleagues various works in ETEC 540.  I found reading through my classmates submissions was quite inspiring.  Doing an online program can get lonely at times and you wonder if you are on the right track.  Having the opportunity to read through peers reactions, thoughts and productions adds so much to the experience.

1. Thoughts on “ETEC 540 Task 2: Does Language Shape The Way We Think?”  Link to Simon’s post

~ Rich Payne September 30, 2023 at 2:52 pm

Hi Anne,
Great to read your oral story about a written one. I love the fact that you still had this unfinished book series lingering in your mind from childhood, how powerful is that? And that you finally got closure!
You must be well spoken; I found your text to be quite free of errors. In those you described, punctuation, undesired habits of speech etc., I had much the same experience in this exercise. I also came to some of the same conclusions about the differences between organizing thought that is meant to be written and that intended to be spoken. One word you used when describing the difference, ascribed to the latter, was performance. Yes, that is a good way of describing it. The act of oration places a real time onus on the speaker to keep the attention of the audience and offers the opportunity to use vocal expression to pique interest, that makes it somewhat of a performance. Especially as a teacher!

• How do the constraints of the course design manifest in your architectural choices? How have you responded to the pedagogical underpinnings of this course design in your own webspace?
• Here the task is clearly asking us to challenge the way we think about our interaction with literacies, texts vs speech.  Anne and I had many of the same experiences in regard to the accuracy of speech as compared with writing.  What intrigued me about Anne’s comment about the impact of the unfinished book series from her childhood had on her is a powerful testament to the written word on the formative mind.  From a pedagogical view, while we find ourselves in a new technical reality in which more literacies are present, we mustn’t undervalue the written word in the form of books and story.  I am seeing the same impact with one of my daughters who is 8 right now, I’ve been struggling to help her to read at grade level for a few years now.  Finally, we stumbled upon a graphic novel book series at a yard sale.  I thought it wasn’t exactly age appropriate, probably more for a 11–14-year-old audience, but I was excited that she was excited about a book.  She has read the whole series cover to cover about 4 times.  This one powerful story has finally made her fall in love with reading, and I am forever grateful!  Anne’s comment made me think of that in my own life and how important it is for children.

3. Thought on “Task 10: Attention Economy”  Link to Jerry’s post.

4. Thought on Final Project, link to Mike’s publication
Rich on December 5, 2023 at 6:27 pm said:

Hello Mike and Simon,
Great job on the final project. I too believe that the world of podcasting and other forms of long form audio (and video) content that are now so accessible are having a huge impact on education and culture. I feel like it is the greatest time to be alive in terms of access to information and lifelong learning. I appreciate Simon’s comment that podcasts will democratize who can be heard. There certainly are far lower barriers to entry in cost and knowhow to be a creator/producer now. I appreciated reading your thoughts on it as I am working on my final project and trying to sum up some much older text technology and map the lessons learned onto the modern change, we are seeing in communication technology. I agree that these new forms of accessible audio learning are changing things rapidly. What educational role do you see for audio or podcasts in the academic world for an online program like the one we are in?
Thanks.
Rich

5. Thought on Final Project.  Link to Louisa’s site

Dec. 5th . As Louisa created a website, I couldn’t post on the UBC blog, I commented directly to her website

Hi Louisa,

Commenting on your final 540 project, Podcasting as a Language Learning Pedagogy.

Wow, I can really relate to your words as I am sure a lot of people can.  I too have fallen in love with podcasts as a way of absorbing a lot of information while doing other tasks in our very very busy lives!  I think it is a revolutionary technology for people around the world for that very reason.  I’m also surprised that your students had not heard of a podcast!  How old are they?  Are podcasts big in Japan too?  I also used to teach in Japan (long before the days of podcasts) and can imagine that would be such a cool tool to use in your English instruction.  Do you, or do your students utilize the function that allows them to slow down the speech?  Does that make it easier for them?  I know people who listen to books on double speed, I just can’t do it.  If anything, sometimes I need to playthings back if I want to take a minute to think deeply about it.  That’s one of the beauties of it as an educational tool!  I loved your idea to do a group project where student groups create their own podcasts and then post them together on a Padlet.  Brilliant.  I can appreciate culturally it may not have been easy to have some students “put themselves out there” to use your words in how you felt about your first pod cast.  I can relate, that can be daunting. In the end it sounds as though it was extremely successful.  Well done!

Rich

6. Thoughts on Task 12 Speculative Futures.  Link to Garth’s blog

Task 12 Speculative Futures

Dr. Shannon Vallor of Clara University in a 2018 presentation entitled Lessons from the AI Mirror describes AI as both a mirror and gasoline.  That is to say that it is both a reflection of human values and interactions as well as acting as an accelerant.  In 2023 these themes are now much more common knowledge; however, it is still hard to imagine where this will lead us beyond a few years horizon.  In the first chapter of the book Speculative Everything, authors Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby observe that somehow, we seem to have slipped away from dreaming and settled for hope.  The challenge is to reinstate dreaming future realities through speculative design.  One such creative exercise of the imagination can be played out through the game Thing From The Future by Situation Lab.  In this exercise we are given some variables in a future and asked to come up with a scenario that could exist based on these factors.  The world of science fiction has always fascinated me as a place to freely play with known real world factors and throw those into a sandbox where anything is possible in terms of how they could play out in the future.  This is perhaps more important for humanity now than ever before as we see technological change accelerate with both incredible opportunity and risk.  For task 12 we are given a speculative future in the form of a prompt and asked to dream up a vision.

Prompt:

Describe or narrate a scenario about a corporation found two generations into a future in which order is deliberately coordinated or imposed. Your description should address issues related to communication and elicit feelings of dread.

Figure 1. Adobe AI, Payne, 2023, D&D inc, (In 2080 there is a mysterious AI corporation based in Tokyo), https://firefly.adobe.com/

     In 2080 there is a mysterious company referred to by some as DHD&D Inc. or D&D for short.  The full acronym it is rumored stands for Don’t Hope, Dream and Design.  Most people don’t believe the company exists and believe it is a conspiracy to explain sudden incongruent behaviours of powerful people or black swan events that cannot be explained but alter the course of the future.  There was a known company in 2065 named DHD&D Inc. set up as a PR consulting network based in Singapore, Bangalore, Tel Aviv, and London.  The company claimed to be a consulting company and took on clients ranging from ultra rich housewives to powerful politicians.  They claimed to employ powerful AI that could analyze every aspect of a client’s digital life including all those around them whom they sought to influence and produce for that client a blueprint to achieve their desired outcome, which is legal.  In 2050 however the company went dark after a string of unusual scandals which I won’t go into involving the CEO and other execs.  Through media reporting the public widely accepted the villainy of these people, the execs were hunted down by the CIA and brought to the global cyber and morality crimes court and then the story went quiet.  As there is much secrecy around the ‘court’, it is only assumed were sentenced to work on the moon colony titanium mining operations.  There is a great demand for highly technically qualified personnel to operate the autonomous drone mining operations on the moon, so many white-collar criminals end up on the undesirable moon colony.  Now, it 2080 investigative journalist-content creators have uncovered through recently declassified CIA documents that DHD&D was under investigation and the scope of their business went way beyond ‘consulting’.  DHD&D used AI to directly influence individuals or groups through all aspects of their digital life to do any desired action from voting a particular way, to believing in a certain cause, to declaring war, or even to taking their own life.  Around the same time this investigation was going on was when these public scandals came about, and the company went dark and vanished from the public eye.  It is rumored on the dark web that there still exists an operator by the name of D&D which hoovers up information and weaponizes it for the purposes of unknown clients.  Seven out of the eight investigative journalist-content creators investigating this have mysteriously disappeared or had deadly accidents in the last four weeks.  I am the last of these investigators.  As much as it possible in 2080, I have attempted to go off grid and continue my investigation into D&D through sources and will build this case offline until it is ready to be revealed to the world.  If my sources and I are successful in building the case and our suspicions are true, the question is, how do you go up against an AI propaganda machine and who is now controlling it?

References

Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything: Design, fiction, and social dreaming. The MIT Press.

Lab, S. (n.d.). The Thing From The Future. Situation Lab. Retrieved December 14, 2022, from https://situationlab.org/project/the-thing-from-the-future/

Santa Clara University. (2018, November 6). Lessons from the AI Mirror Shannon Vallor [Video]. YouTube.

The perfect ending to a perfectly frustrating excercise, the Carlton dance.

In this module we are looking at the fascinating topic of user interface.  In task 10 this website game cheekily challenges all your assumptions which now come as second (clicking) nature, to make your way through a webform in which everything seems designed against your intuition, aptly named ‘User Inyerface‘.  Full disclosure, I am publishing this late, not because I didn’t start on time, but because I tried so many times initially I gave up.  I knew it was an option not to finish, but that just didn’t sit well with me.  Upon reading one of my classmate’s (thank you Jerry Chen) submissions, I saw the “You Are Awesome” (similar to above) screenshot, and I thought, ok, it can be done!  I took a deep breath and through the power of peer pressure, I accomplished the first time what I had been fighting with many times before.  I had thought it was a race against a clock, in reality what I needed to do was slow down, read carefully and not follow any of my ‘instincts’ that have been developed in my mind over the years of surfing a webspace designed by people.  Regardless of the motivations of these designers, over time, they have now created a set of expectations.  Humans function on heuristics, learned mental short cuts, all the time as the world is far to complex to think about the why of every decision we make.  It dawned on me through doing this excerise that the very same is true for the virtual landscape.  We learn what is normal, we create the mental short cut and default to it.  A number of assumptions becomes our second nature.  With this knowledge UX designers can use that for good or ill user manipulation.   The creator of User Inyerface deriberately designed everything to be difficult to demonstrate the phenomenon, but how and why was it difficult?  Let’s take a look at a couple of user assumptions:

1. The timer!  This perhaps was the simplest and effectively deceptive to me.  “Hurry up!  Time is ticking” it says, giving you a sense that there is a time limit and rushing you so as you do not read carefully, relying on your mental shortcuts.  But the timer is ticking up from zero to potentially 99hrs 99minutes, 99 seconds, but your brain quickly assumes it is a countdown.  In actuality there is essentially no time limit.
2. The default.  When we are presented with a ‘choice’ the default is set to be the affirmative and made easy to choose.  The designer will do this perhaps most frequently when asking you to agree to terms.  It is really not a choice as it is most often waiving a legal liability or disagreement in order to continue.  Should you not agree, you cannot continue.  But we must go through the theatrics for some legal purpose.  Do you agree to this 100 pages of small print to update your privacy settings:  YES & CONTINUE.  no & exit.   

We see this default ‘flipped’ many times in the User Inyourface game.  Here is but the first two examples:

What I loved about this game is that the designer demonstrated to you what you expect by challenging you to move through a webform in which everything is the opposite of what you have come to expect.  This then presumably should challenge the user to question, why are things laid out the way they are, what is the designer’s goal and is that truly in line with the user’s goals?

Our readings go on to delve into the most common goal of designers today and that is attention, your attention!  In an educational setting it is very relevant today to empower young learners with the tools to understand where, why, and how their attention is being directed.

 References

• Bagaar. (2019). User InyerfaceLinks to an external site. [web game].
• Brignull, H. (2011). Dark patterns: Deception vs. honesty in UI design.Links to an external site. A List Apart, 338.

Task 9: Network Assignment Using Golden Record Curation Quiz Data

In task eight our class of 23 students took the Golden Record compilation of 27 of earth’s greatest musical hits selected for Nasa’s Voyager satellite and were tasked with narrowing that selection down to 10.  To do this, one had to employ some bias or methodology, whether that be by personal preference or some set of metrics.  This week in task nine, we got to explore our choices in relationship to others.  With the aggregate meta data of the survey provided by our professor we utilized the Palladio tool developed by Stanford University Humanities department through a grant project.  This tool allows us to see graphical connectivity in a unique way from other tools.

When we upload our data set the default graphical representation is based on the community including both the target (songs) and the sources (students) and the edges or the connective relationship between them.  This is an undirected, weighted graph as the spatial representation is abstract, but the size of the nodes and the number of edges is directly correlated to the intersecting relationships.  From this representation we can start to have a different understanding of our own data that we could not otherwise.

We can manipulate this representation to show different types of relationships in a graphical representation.  For example, if we filter this down into ‘communities’ of targeted music as a function of the quantity of edges connecting the nodes, we can almost see a representation of musical genres take form.

If we want to analyze the relationships between participants and create a community of nodes that represents a common thread of edges, we can do that too.  If we want to filter it down further using the facet function which allows you to filter a subset of the data, we can.  For example, if we want to look at the relationship between the two most popular songs (Track 25: Jaat Kahan Ho and Track 18: Fifth Symphony) first and second respectively, who selected them and the connections between who selected them both it would look like this.

Interestingly I find myself at the adjacent node between two of the least popular selections (Track 27: String Quartet No. 13 In B Flat, Opus 130, Cavatina and Track 17: Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier.

I spent a long time playing with the functionality of this tool and had a hard time disassociating my mind from trying to identify a correlated spatial representation of the data, but at least in the graph tab this data is a representation of relationship.  While it is weighted and counted it is not a directed graph regarding points and places between nodes.  Had we included such data at the geographical location of both the songs and the timeline of the music, we could have used Palladio to Map out the spatial relationship over time and space in a directed graphical representation.

The Palladio tool helps us to identify relationships, but it cannot identify the reasons why those exist, only that they do.  To establish the why, we would need to survey each participant about the method they used (if at all) to make their selections.  Reading some of my colleague’s work, I believe they did use a set of criteria.  Admittedly, I went on pure feeling, however I now realize that my choices were not consistent for task of submitting the survey which I did on a different day than my reflection piece in my blog. In the absence of a strict methodology, like in my case, perhaps an in-depth survey about why the person felt they way they did about the pieces of music along with metadata about their background might shed light on a theory that could be represented using this tool.  Palladio as powerful as it is, can only find, filter and represent relationships using graph and network theory.

I do not believe there is a large enough data set for me to draw any conclusions about the political implications of the music selection groupings.  I find it impressive that of the 23 participants all 27 pieces of music were selected multiple times.  I believe this is a testament that every piece of music selected by the NASA scientists was no doubt a beautiful representation of humanity.  I do wonder however how much they would have access to globally in 1973 as opposed to 2023.  For example, there is a lot of African music I love, but I didn’t select the pieces from the Voyager selection, they just weren’t the best examples to me of some of the incredible representations of African music.  Even with the European classical, as I mentioned in my last blog post, none of those pieces would have been my first choice and it was hearbreaking that some of the best materpieces were left out in my opinion.  I think it is a very subjective matter.  The fact that there is such a wide representation, clearly speaks to the spirit of hope and unity.  Even at the height of the cold war, they included pieces from radio Moscow.  I wouldn’t dare to assume any political implication.  Perhaps if each participant were now asked to select their own 27 pieces, it would be fairer to draw certain inferences.

Resources

Backgrounder on the Voyager Golden Record: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/music/

Palladio Tutorials & FAQs: https://hdlab.stanford.edu/palladio/help/ 

References

Systems Innovation. (2015, April 18). Graph theory overview [Video]. YouTube.

Systems Innovation. (2015, April 19). Network connections [Video]. YouTube.

1977 must have been a time of great hope and wonder to send into the cosmos artifacts of our human culture in hope that it one day may be discovered.  Somehow, I feel that people today may recognize that mathematically it is nearly impossible that extraterrestrial life doesn’t exist, and yet we might be too cynical to undertake such an endeavor today.  NASA was an organization at the time with the audacity or pure curiosity to undertake such a task.  One of those artifacts ‘on board’ was to no surprise music.  How would you go about selecting 27, or even just 10 of the worlds ‘greatest hits’?  What best represents humanity?  Is the sophistication of a piece, the emotions that it stimulates?  NASA scientists knew that whatever beings might find this in some distant place in the future may not even have the ability to hear, and so, they also considered things like the mathematical resonance of a piece.  Perhaps with today’s technology we would not have to limit it to a 27-track piece, and we could overwhelm the aliens with choice much as we are today.  Indeed, we take the anthropocentric view that the aliens would be most intrigued with our human musical expressions, but it is exactly this assumption that is challenged in Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction work Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home.  In it, a sophisticated alien intelligence visits earth that humans cannot communication with.  People realize that the aliens are trying to communicate with the whales, which from discovering voyager they determined to be the most sophisticated life on earth.  Note that the real Voyager did include various sounds of nature and animals.  In that fictional future whales had already been extinct for some time, no doubt at the hands of man, much to the alien’s chagrin.  The starship Enterprise must then travel back in time to save the whales, in order to save humanity.  This is a fanciful story, but one that intrigued the imagination of many at the time to place importance on the welfare of such majestic beings on the earth.  This important narrative of valuing planetary life interestingly was contributed in part to, us putting hope in the cosmos.

Back to the music section of the archives sent into deep space on that hopeful mission, the question posed in this task is, could you narrow 27 pieces down to 10 and can you explain why you would make those choices?  Full disclosure I am no musician although, like most humans, I do have a great appreciation for ‘good’ music.  But what is good?  In all honesty, none of the 27 would have even made my list, and I dare say that list today would be much different.  I mean, Johnny Be Good?  I guess you had to be there to appreciate it fully?  The era of classical music for example is so incredibly powerful, there are pieces that stir me so deeply it is undeniable.  I was saddened to see none of my favorites made NASA’s list.  Going through the list in a painful exercise to narrow down and cut out so many beautiful pieces made me realize how subjective the process was for me.  Even for the great scientific minds at NASA when it comes to selecting musical beauty, surely much must be in the ear of the beholder.  But I digress, I will do my best however to narrow down 27 to the 10 of those that I think would best represent our species!

See if you agree ~ or not!

For my reader’s reference, I will give you the full list, and then I will highlight in green the 10 I chose with a brief note as to why.  For your convenience each piece is linked to the YouTube track.  Enjoy!

Music From Earth

The following music was included on the Voyager record.

1.

• Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40
• Yes, Bach does belong on my list of the greatest musical geniuses of all time. This piece selected is not my favourites, the two pieces of his I appreciate most that sends my mind into another world would be Orchestral Suites No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068  and Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major BWV1007 – Mov. 1-3/6 Due to Bach’s sheer mastery of such a range of instruments and harmony, I would leave in my top 10 this piece by Bach even though I don’t believe it is his best piece.  As a side note, genius he may be and a spot on the list he should have, however, when selecting 27 pieces to represent humanity, I think it is clearly not representative to have Bach featured three times.  Therefore, I have not selected the other two in my top 10.

2.

• Java, court gamelan, “Kinds of Flowers,” recorded by Robert Brown. 4:43
• Yes.  Maybe.  I can’t decide if I love this or not.  There is something deep and almost religious about it.  Having said that, I am not sure how it makes me feel or whether I would ever listen to it of my own volition.  It reminds me of the cultural diversity on earth and how I cannot relate it to anything in my own life.  It is so interesting however, that yes, I would include it.

• Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08
• Zaire, Pygmy girls’ initiation song, recorded by Colin Turnbull. 0:56

3.

• Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird,” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes. 1:26
• Yes.  The Australian Aboriginals are one of the oldest living cultures on earth.  They also have a very interesting relationship with the dream world.  The digeridoo is also one of the hardest instruments on earth to play, requiring circular breathing which I find incredible.  I wish there was more of it on this track.

4.

• Mexico, “El Cascabel,” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14
• Yes.  The complexity that roles out in this piece along with its exciting tone and pace give it a certain pizzazz that perhaps no other track on this list does.  The plethora of instruments along with the beautiful signing displays how we can integrate ourselves with the instruments of our creation.

• “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry. 2:38
• New Guinea, men’s house song, recorded by Robert MacLennan. 1:20

5.

• Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51
• Yes.  Admittedly my biased does come into play here.  Having lived in Japan, hearing the shakuhachi sends me to a meditative Zen feeling.  I think the beauty of this piece, like so much of man’s art, it is an ode to nature.  It is an imitation of the beauty we see in the natural world, which is, in a sense what we would want to convey to an alien species about our love for our planet.
• Bach, “Gavotte en rondeaux” from the Partita No. 3 in E major for Violin, performed by Arthur Grumiaux. 2:55

6.

• Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14. Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor. 2:55
• Yes.  This masterpiece is also a wonderful representation of the vocal capabilities of the human voice.

7.

• Georgian S.S.R., chorus, “Tchakrulo,” collected by Radio Moscow. 2:18
• Yes.  The Georgian choir is almost a religious experience to listen to.   The experience as above with the Zaire Pygmy Girl, is an outstanding example of people singing in unison.  To me the Pygmy Girl didn’t quite make my cut.  It is a shame because I feel there are so many incredible and moving pieces out of Africa, I just didn’t find them on this list of 27.

• Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima. 0:52
• “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05
• Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow. 2:30
• Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance, Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky, conductor. 4:35
• Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano. 4:48

8.

• Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20
• Yes.  To me, this is not solely a happy piece, rather it speaks to the peaks and valleys of the human experience.  Again, it may not have made my personal list, but is it a masterpiece?  Absolutely.

• Bulgaria, “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin,” sung by Valya Balkanska. 4:59
• Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57
• Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, “The Fairie Round,” performed by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London. 1:17
• Solomon Islands, panpipes, collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service. 1:12
• Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen. 0:38

9.

• China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu. 7:37
• Yes.  I believe the instrument used is a The guqin.  Someone please correct me if I am wrong.  It is one of the Chinese stringed instruments.  The sound is so incredible it absolutely tells a story.  The NASA scientist saw fit for it to take up over seven minutes of track and presumably they were constrained by space. There are many fantastic guqin pieces to choose from, but I do agree this is a powerful piece and absolutely belongs in the 27 and certainly in my 10.

10.

• India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30
• Yes.  Without even understanding the lyrics, this is a stirring piece. Indian music was coming into mainstream appreciation in the late 60s and early 1970s influencing bands such as the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, so it is not entirely surprising to hear this genre of traditional music.  Reading what people have commented about the lyrics of this of this song, it is about a girl coming of age and going out into the world.  How fitting for Voyager, itself is a creation of man that has come to a point in technology when it can be sent out into the unknown with great expectations and apprehension.

• “Dark Was the Night,” written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson. 3:15
• Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130, Cavatina, performed by Budapest String Quartet. 6:37

This task, Mode Bending, is a continuation of sorts from Task 1 ~ ‘What’s In Your Bag?’.

Since the mid 1990 s there has been discussion of multiliteracies and multimodal expressions of literary understanding and use.  Education must adapt.  The challenge for Task 7 was to take an existing work (Task 1) and ‘bend’ it into another form of expressing the concept by changing the mode in which it is represented.  Therefore, our challenge was to change from a visual to audio.  I wasn’t quite sure with what medium I might express this.  Through the inspiration of my classmates, I decided that the Genially platform might provide an interesting medium through which I could bend this photo into an oral presentation. One of the questions in Task 1 was to ponder what an archeologist from the future might make of the artifacts carried in your bag.  I chose to use this idea as an angle to create my new audio-visual mode of meaning presented here in Task 7.  In my hypothetical future in which a teacher of a 21^st century history class is presenting the archeological artifact.  I try to use an impersonal (as much as that may be possible) view from ‘30,000 feet’ of what our modes of literacy and technology might look like from a future in which technology has made obsolete the things we carry today.  In conclusion, in the ‘assignment’ for homework to said students (in the future) I try to portray the idea that the medium of interaction, the tools of analysis and the mode of presentation might all be different depending on emergent technologies we see today and how they might be used in the future.

In the image below, click first on the top centre ‘question mark’ icon, then each item and finally at bottom centre, the homework assignment to hear an audio clip.  As a note of disclosure, this commentary from a hypothetical future is meant to be in jest, don’t be offended if you disagree with any commentary or take on this piece of fiction as it is meant to be humourous.  I hope you enjoy and feel free to comment.

I started with a title which I knew to be simple for most people familiar with this story to figure out.  I wanted it to be an easy one for people to get so that they could reflect on it from a place of familiarity.  For this reason, I chose a work that is easily relatable to imagery.  What surprised me in this exercise is how brief it could be, which could be incredibly advantageous.  Furthermore, even without someone knowing this fable people in many cultures might be able to grasp the meaning quickly.  The exception perhaps was for the limited way in which I had to depict the types of houses, for that I leaned on an image relying on the sound of the English word, which is ‘cheating’ a bit in that sense.  For a simple fable such as this, imagery is extremely effective.  Where the ideographic symbols starts to come apart is when we go deeper in expressing nuances, detail, and complex concepts.  As we’ve seen throughout the readings in the development of written languages the ability to be able to break down words into basic building blocks is important to build up complexity into meaning.  Symbols, while efficient for instantly conveying a whole meaning is however inevitably ineffective building out and pointing to specific complexities.  The last book I read for example, in between my two MET courses, was Musashi, an old favourite.  The thought of trying to summarize any given page of that book in emojis surely would be an injustice.

TASK 4: Manual Scripts and Potato Printing

Photo credit:  Richard Payne, taken at the Burnaby Village Museum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine

Part one of this week’s task is to write a diary entry, reflection, short story, or a poem to get you thinking about the process of manual writing, which so many of us now seldom do.  I chose to write a letter to my daughter in the future trying to convince her to buy a house.

I type, a lot, probably averaging 4 to 5 hours every weekday.  The only time I ever write by hand in the last few years is to sign my name.  Although this writing task wasn’t ‘difficult’ it was frustrating to me how rusty my handwriting skills have become and it also reminded me of how different the thought process is.  I did find myself very slow to actually start, but then once I committed pen to paper, I let it flow (for better or for worse).  My handwritten sample was completely unedited.  The times when I started to write something wrong I just ‘wrote over’ it.  I used pen and paper and quite frankly, forgot just how unforgiving of a medium it is.  Sacrificing neatness and accuracy I rushed to write to try to let my thoughts flow.  Had I been wanting to edit this, I would have gone over it with a red pen, made notes and re-written it.

When writing with pen and paper it kind of forces you to keep the thought process going forcing you to get more immersed in it.  The expression through the handwriting feels personal.  In many ways, to me it also feels less professional.  Although I did all my elementary and secondary schooling in handwriting, almost never using a computer, university was the opposite.  And now work as well is all on the computer.  The language model AI built into the software is a constant aid, fixing spelling errors, offering suggestions for more concise language, and even translating.  You can always go back and edit, hyperlink references and copy and paste to your heart’s desire.  While acknowledging this superior medium of putting thought to text, somehow there is still a skillset and almost an artform to handwriting that is a truly worthwhile pursuit in terms of honing your thoughts.  One of my colleagues journals, I think it is a wonderful habit, I need to get over the embarrassment of my own writing and just do it.

Part two of this week’s task was to challenge making your own type setting in a fun and easy way, with potatoes!

Since my letter was about a house, I decided to make my five-letter word ‘HOUSE’.

The S ended up being blue as I wanted to signify the mistake I made in carving out the first one backwards.  Other than that, it went well, it was a very enjoyable process and one that of course would improve with every try.  The most challenging aspect is consistently cutting around curves.  It was not time consuming, save for the fact that I involved my children, so it ended up being a larger painting adventure…

The biggest take away for me from this task, especially right after handwriting a letter was that text as language is a series of components we use as tools to build larger concepts.  The closest feeling, I have ever had to this prior to this exercise perhaps would be doing calligraphy, paying attention to the detail of every letter.  Taking the time to carve out each letter really felt separated from the ideas that they could later represent.  It is like the worker in a factory making a widget component that will be some part of an unknown bigger mechanism.  All you know is your specs, you don’t have to know how the machine will work.  So too is it for us to build our toolbox of text language.  First, we must learn the basic components and build up from there.  Like so many skills, once we become experts, we forget the basic components as the broader skill becomes second nature.  It is always a beneficial reflection to break something back down to the basics, either when trying to hone a skill or to solve a problem.  It is an interesting and worthwhile practice too, to try this with the text of your written language.

Task 3: Voice to Text Task

Platform used: Apple notes.

“For this five minute unscripted speech to text exercise. I’m going to tell a little story about a road trip. This is a road trip that I took with three friends 13 years ago. My best friend from Germany and his friend that was visiting him from Germany. And another friend from Korea, who later became my wife and is now the mother of my children, and we’ve been happily married for the last 12 years we took a road trip from Calgary to Vancouver Island, and for anybody who hasn’t done that. It is a wonderful experience and a highly recommend it. so there’s two instances that are a bit funny but sometimes my wife and I look back and laugh about on this road trip. The first was when my German friend rented the car in Calgary they were trying to set up the Bluetooth through voice activation in the rental car. However the voice recognition software had no idea what these two German guys were saying despite the fact that their English was basically fluent. So these two German guys are cursing this Bluetooth voice recognition thing, and as I was the only native speaker there I had to do it, and it could recognize my speech commands. we all had a good laugh over it. The second thing that happened on the road trip in a somewhat related situation was that we pulled into a Tim Hortons somewhere in a small town very late at night almost midnight. We went in and the only other people in there was, a gaggle of teenagers who were kind of being silly and frustrating. The old lady that was working there. I say old lady in my memory she was like 90, of course she can’t of been 90 but she was probably 70. It seemed like she was too old to be working kind of sad. She probably couldn’t afford to retire, but here she was at maybe 70 years old working the night shift in a Tim Hortons in some little town in the middle of nowhere and dealing with a bunch of teenagers putting in an order. So the four of us went up there and my comment now and my two German friends, whom keep in mind of them are native, English speakers and well I have to say at that time my wife’s English wasn’t that good, and the two German guy had a very strong accent And this old lady was so flustered with them trying to order. I remember her saying to us “are you guys just messing with me? Poor old lady had no idea, probably no exposure to foreigners at that time and just had no idea what they were trying to order. Once again, Mi, as the native English speaker had to step in and put their order in and assure her that no, they weren’t trying to mess with her. It was just really a combination of her being Very old and from a very rural area with little to no exposure to anybody who’s not a native language speaker. And for anybody who’s had that experience you might have noticed that people in the city understand people with accents a lot more than people in the countryside just for the fact that they are exposed to a broader diversity of of accents and maybe just the fact that they’re expecting it, and that they’ve learned from a different data set of Accents and texts and styles of speaking, etc. And I wonder if that same thing happened again now 13 years later if the Bluetooth voice recognition would recognize that German accent, on the very fact that these types of AI learning, language learning models are exposed to such greater data sets. Kind of the way people in a more diverse setting like a city or an urban area are exposed to a more diverse data set that kind of updates their language Model. So that’s kind of a funny story in my relationship with my wife that we look back on. But I thought it kind of related for this purpose and this course in the way speech relates to text in terms of language, Model and the way an accent can give or deny us access. And then in the follow up questions to this story, I’ll be analyzing the difference between text and speech what the difference would be if I wrote this out instead of said it.”

-end of voice to text-

• How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?

What a wonderful exercise it is to have your extended speech laid bare in front of you transcribed verbatim.  Wonderful that is, once you get passed the embarrassment of it.  The interesting difference is there is no editorial process to our speech.  We usually have one real-time filter from mind to mouth.  Once those sounds escape your lips, there is no do-over.  Therefore, oration too is an art, and one that needs to be practiced.  One aspect lost in story when written in text is emphasis, tone, and cadence.  Orating a story like this I would also impersonate the German accents and do the voice of an old lady.  Oral communication itself differs greatly if we are having a conversation and trying to think about a concept together, ‘thinking aloud’, with that of say telling a story, giving a speech, or giving instruction.  The conciseness varies greatly.  Written language too can vary from story, to instruction but usually is less organic and more polished than speech.

• What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”?

There are a few errors that are ‘misheard’ by the voice recognition software as well as incorrect punctuations.  Interestingly, where I took a pause in my speech, the software decided I was just finished my sentence, regardless of whether that made sense or not.  For example:  “and for anybody who hasn’t done that. It is a wonderful experience and a highly recommend it.” I also notice, in that very same sentence there is another error that is all on me as the speaker.  “and a highly recommend it”.  ‘a’ Should clearly read ‘I’.  It is so embarrassing when I read that aloud, I read that as if in a southern US drawl, a highly recommend it.  Quite funny, on one hand the voice recognition makes some mistakes, but on the other hand it reveals things to you about your own speech and pronunciation.  I do not, by the way, have a southern US drawl, but the AI doesn’t lie yawl.

Another mistake of mine, that the voice recognition picked up that I notice in the writing is “of course she can’t of been 90”.  ‘Of been’?  How cringe worthy, of course it should read have been. Again, I can’t blame that on the software, that is lazy speech that I would not have been aware of had I not seen it transcribed. I make different mistakes when I am typing, and again different ones when I am writing in pen.  Most of which I notice and get corrected.  With text however, you don’t often get to see extended transcribed speech like this, it is a very interesting exercise to analyze your own speech.

• What are the most common “mistakes” in the text and why do you consider them “mistakes”?

When I skim over the whole body of text, I see way too many ‘and’ & ‘so’ to join sentences.  These linking words allow a speaker to stall for a moment to compose the next thought, while at the same time letting the listener know that the speaker has not conceded the speaking space yet.  A practiced and confident orator may feel confident rather to leave a pause, which if done skillfully (reading the audience for the appropriate time) can have a powerful effect.  The same considerations, either way, pose significant challenges to convey in written text.  They either look redundant, for example writing ‘and so’ or are hard to express, for example using the limited ‘…’ for pause.

• What if you had “scripted” the story? What difference might that have made?

Had I scripted this story I would have put time into using descriptive flowing phrases, while also being more concise.  I would have taken the time to make sure my story had a defined beginning and end.  Perhaps we take writing more seriously because while people listen to each other all the time, people tend to only read by choice what is quite interesting or well written.  We never write something to fill the silence. In writing, there is a need to ‘make up’ for the inability to express through sound and gesture with expressive and accurate language.  It is a fascinating exercise to go back and forth analyzing between writing and oration.  We often read aloud what we have written to see if it ‘sounds good’.  Seldom however do we give ourselves to opportunity to really examine and improve our speech by seeing it transcribed.  I have to admit, if I scripted the story, I might have more difficulty starting, kind of like writers block.  Somehow it seems easier to start telling something without knowing exactly how it will come together.

• In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling? 

Oral story telling can be contextual to the audience.  The orator can adjust the story on the fly as they read the audience.  The orator also breathes the life into the story with their own expression of character and style.  The exact same story told by two different people may feel quite different indeed.  If you read a stand-up comic’s script, it may not be that funny without the performer breathing context into it. Publishing a story in text however is like giving birth to a new life.  That written story is now independent of the writer, out in the world to be interpreted at will across the ages.  It is up to a reader to choose if and when to consume it, and how they interpret it.  Reading is a more personal journey than listening.  Speaking and writing are two very different art forms and skill sets.  One of the beautiful things about text is that it will almost certainly long out live the storyteller.  It can be said that to love to read is to journey into time and make friends with the dead.

By Richard Payne