“My idea of technology is …. to be able to work with a great idea. “
And some of the outtakes:
… working to make sure we are heading to the creek?????
… A good idea to grab some lunch????
… a little bit more fun than anything else.
… to be done with this game.
… to come to the end of this year and I will be able to make a few changes.
… a great idea to be able to do the same things like to do the work for you guys….
… to come to the creek.
… to come out with the same thing as I have done so that it’s just going to work out.
… a great idea to do things with a new job.
… a bit too much for me to do.
… to come to a new place for a swim.
… a great job for you to come and play with the boys.
In what textual products have you read statements like the one you generated? In blogs? Academic articles? Magazines? Novels?
I don’t think I have heard statements like the ones I generated anyway, other than maybe those horrible automated telephone scam calls. You know the ones with the mechanical voice that says each word as If. It. Is. Followed. By. A. Period. The sentences often didn’t make any sense and I was hoping a different word would be predicted most times.
How are these generated statements different from how you would normally express yourself and/or your opinions on the matter you wrote about?
A lot of the statements I wrote didn’t make sense in terms of grammar or content. Most of these statements sounded much more serious – the ones that actually make sense – than my statements would be. I am usually funny/cheeky in my texts and posts, so that did come through a few times (having the word beer predicted would have made some of these funny!).
I tried a few different statements from the ones given for the assignment, but I found those made even less sense and sounded further from my expressions.
Did the statement you generated speak in your “voice”—did it sound like you? Why or why not?
Although the statements don’t really sound like me I have recently used many of the words that were predicted in text messages: I have two “boys” (so no gender bias there just pulling from my reality), we recently went for a “swim” at the “lake” and the “creek”, I just bought an industrial “packer” from some random guy online, and I am often texting about “beer” and making “lunch” and “dinner” plans with friends (it is summer you know!). I just got a new phone about a week ago, so I think that my phone hasn’t really learned my voice and ideas yet.
I found most of the statements to be very stale and tend to run on, ending with predicted words that did not make grammatical sense or match the rest of the sentence. This caused me to just delete the sentence and start again (see the outtakes video!).
I do believe that if I had used my old phone, I would have had predicted words that sounded a lot more like me and a bit less automated.
Reflect further on the use of algorithms in public writing spaces and the implications this might have in various arenas (politics, academia, business, education, etc.).
Listening to this week’s podcasts and videos, I kept thinking about the keyword searches that most people use when browsing something online. All a company would need to do is link that keyword into their content to draw users to their site/content. The word may not even need to have anything in common with the content, but used as a ploy to bring people in.
Social media sites that Facebook and Instagram rely on your search history and other information on your phone to know which ads to place in your feed as you scroll through. Because of how linked everything is online, political parties have access to some of that information too. I have a friend who has run in the past two elections for a party that I do not vote for. I am sure that because he is on my social media sites and I have read through some of his posts, during the last election I was only seeing ads for the party that he is a part of! Although it still did not sway my vote, it is interesting to see the deep web of information sharing between all of our online accounts.
Algorithms seem to be set up to make assumptions about people, places and events. I found myself often thinking about the old saying ‘when you assume you make an ASS out of U and ME!’ While often starting with good intentions, like the police tracing algorithm we learned about this week, there are unintended negative results that come from these assumptions.