ETEC 540 – Task 8: Golden Record Curation

Hi Joseph,

I enjoyed reading your post and I found it intriguing that you selected tracks based on the mood and the emotion that the music evokes. I was not considering this aspect at all so it was refreshing to see someone using a completely different criteria. When curating the list, I considered the factor of having/not having vocals and how they can represent different culture around the earth. I think that the difference in criteria comes down to how we understand the purpose of the golden record, as you made it very clear that you think this is a gesture of sending peace and joy.

Task 11: Detain/Release or Algorithms of Predictive Text

Hi Sam,

I too did the detain/release simulation and shared some similar experience with you. It almost felt like the use of A.I. system was forcing me to rely on the rick levels without any additional information. The question I had was: Is this fair? Am I making the best decision based on so little information? How will my decision impact the person’s life? Considering the questions asked in the pretrial risk assessment, it is hard to say that the practice is ethical or justified.

Since the change brought by A.I. and algorithms in our life is inevitable, I agree with you that whether the data is telling the whole story is a critical question. Moreover, how human beings intend to use these data, which may just show one aspect of the picture, concerns me the most. Given the fact that algorithms are highly subjective depending on the designers, it makes me wonder how we can ensure the designers have the best interests at heart.

Task 12: Speculative Futures

Hi Jennifer,

I really enjoyed reading your narratives and how you portraited the life story of Dana and Mary in great details. It clearly shows how our future can be shaped by using algorithms to determine people’s major life events, such as career path and right to birth. This is also touched on in my speculative narratives and it seems like we both share a similar perspective on the detrimental impact that algorithms can have on human beings.

What I found really interesting is that people who do not meet the criteria are “assigned with special project abroad” and cut off from their families. I wonder what happens to them? Does it mean they are given up on? In my story, people are “fixed” through bioengineering and given a second chance, which may not be the best practice. I do believe that even the support for student with learning disabilities and special needs is lacking now, it will be resolved in the future with more advanced technology.

I also like the statement you made about the definition of utopia/dystopia is in the eye of the beholder. Therefore, I don’t think that a utopia for all is possible given everyone has their subjective definition. What we might achieve is an environment supplemented by technology that can tolerate and facilitate different possibilities.

Here is the link to my final project: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kP65EWuq7YLegNyrwuEtMs4EMEyS4qFKQsH4kzGHP3g/edit

First Day of School

My name is A.D. Today was the first day of school.

I was a bit nervous at the beginning, but everything went really well. An A.I. robot was assigned to me and it seems like this robot is going to be my teacher the whole time. Everyone received their own A.I. robot. My robot is called AD-01, named after me. Apparently, when we move to higher grades, the robot will be upgraded and the number in their name will be changed. 

My learning schedule is predetermined through a school entrance test. I don’t remember what was asked in the test, but my robot told me it was just about our personal interests and personality traits. Based on the test, the algorithm has selected subjects that fit my interests the best. My timetable includes mathematics, science, agriculture, and music. I didn’t believe at first that I would like them all, but at the end of the day, I can tell that the algorithm did a great job. I enjoyed everything I learned today.

I didn’t get to spend any time with my peers today. The robot said the first two weeks would just be learning some foundational knowledge in each subject. Afterward, we will be grouped according to our interests and personality to work on small projects. The algorithm will take care of everything. So today it was just me and my robot in my private study cell, learning what the robot has planned for me. 

I had to say AD-01 is brilliant and very knowledgeable. It showed me my learning materials through a hologram and answered all my questions. AD-01 said I was a wonderful student and he showed me some data collected by its sensor and tracking system. I was focused 90% of the time and remembered everything was scheduled to be learned that day. It said this is very efficient for human beings and meets the standard. I thought it was funny cause if I am so good at memorizing, how come I don’t remember the test I did earlier? 

Anyway, other than that, the first day of school was wonderful. I am looking forward to going back to school tomorrow.

Last Day of School

My name is A.D. Today was the last day of school. At least for me.

It was supposed to be the first day. Everyone at my age went to school and some A.I. robots gave us a small handheld device to do the school entrance test. We needed to answer some personal questions and learn a sample lesson with the robot based on our personal interests. I like the questions at first cause they asked about what I like, but other questions are confusing, like what is the education level of your parents, what is your household yearly income. How is that related to me coming to school? 

The sample lesson was a nightmare. I felt like I tried my best but the A.I. robot told me I failed. According to the data collected by its sensor and tracking system, I was only focused 50% of the time and apparently suffer from “short-term memory loss” since I couldn’t recall some facts that I just learned. The A. I. also said the algorithm has decided that my performance in the sample class combined with my test was not good enough. I am not an efficient learner so I can’t start school today. I wonder if this is the same reason that we don’t have human teachers anymore, that they are not “efficient”. I felt defeated, but the robot told me not to worry, that they will fix me.

I waited with other children that have been labeled “incapable”. Everyone looked worried and confused. We saw the kids, those who passed the test, were called to a different room. A.I. robots said they are gifted and will be assigned to greater tasks, like being future governors or something. That was just my guess. I had no idea what “greater tasks” are. There were so many thoughts going on in my head. What is going to happen to me? I haven’t learned anything and yet school is already over for me.

The robot came back and told us that everyone here will have surgeries. A surgery that will fix us. A surgery that will make us meet the standard. A surgery that will wipe off some of our memories. Then the robot gave us a scheduled time and asked us to wait. I kept wondering what the surgery is going to do to me. My heart was racing faster and faster. Will it change me? Does it mean that I am a failure? There must be something wrong with me so I need to be fixed. What will I still remember? Am I still me?

“A.D.” Finally my name was called.

This week I chose to use the Detain/Release simulator for my weekly task. Since I am unfamiliar with the law system, I relied on the algorithmic risk assessment for judgment. The major category that I looked at was “commit a crime” and “violence”. If a defendant scores high in these two categories, the chance for them to be detained will be higher. I also found the colour-coded display of information very nerve-racking. When I see the table in red I would almost immediately click the “detain” button. However, I feel uncomfortable solely depending on the algorithm because I do not know how it works. For example, I have no idea what questions were asked to determine the risk level or how the information was collected. Making life-changing decisions for other people based on an assessment that provides nothing more than a risk level makes me feel uneasy.

Even though algorithms and big data are claimed to be “unbiased”, we all know it is not true. “Algorithms are nothing more than opinions embedded in code” and they are subjective, reflecting the measurement that the designer thinks would help to solve a particular problem (Dr. O’Neil, 2016). Therefore, algorithms are biased by the value and beliefs of the people who build them. From the questions in the questionnaire for pretrial risk assessment like LSIR, traditionally marginalized groups are again unfavoured in these algorithms. Due to the limited transparency, a lot of decisions were made without knowing the criteria, further increasing injustice and inequity towards people of colour and people in poverty. 

Another reason why algorithms can be problematic is prioritizing quantitative data. In the podcast Crime Machine: Part Ⅱ, we see the example of police, in order to avoid punishment and demonstrate their work, downgrading crimes to lower the crime rate and arresting people for unnecessary reasons to increase police activities since these data are used to assess their performance. This is a dangerous path that leads to unethical practices. All these examples are detrimental consequences of using algorithms falsely, and the question is how do we change it? How do we ensure algorithms are optimizing our success, not widening the existing gaps? As Dr. O’Neil mentioned (2016), there is no single answer or set of rules. Every algorithm needs to be examined in its own context and intention. Meanwhile, the mathematical thinking behind algorithms need to be transparent, so people know what and how they are being assessed.

Reference

O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of math destruction: How big data increases inequality and threatens democracy (First edition). New York: Crown.

Vogt, P. (n.d.-b). The Crime Machine, Part II. In Reply All.

This week the task required us to play the game User Inyerface to reflect on the patterns that webpage designers use to steer viewers’ attention.  It was not an easy task. I struggled at the beginning to avoid the big green “NO” button. Instead, I tried to click on the “click” with the underscore, but nothing happened. Clicked on the light blue “next page”, again nothing happened. After accidentally clicking on the word“HERE”, it finally took me to the next page for entering my personal information. Then I stressed out over the timer that popped up and questioned if I was doing something wrong. It took me a while to figure out how to turn off the timer but still panicked a bit every time it popped up. The checkboxes are tricky with the colour as well as the “select all” and “unselect all” options blended in the last column. I also hated the “I am not a robot” verification which asked me to check every picture on the screen. Reading every word, every line, and every option is the key to this game. The whole game was not pleasant but intriguing enough to make me think about how our attention and actions are easily manipulated by GUI.

As Bringnull (2011) stated, designers, based on psychological insights, can easily use dark patterns to deceptively manipulate users in business owners’ interests. A pop-up picture, a bold word, or a simple switch in sentence order, can drastically affect people’s decision-making. Yet these twists are so subtle that users hardly notice them. Even if they do notice, the trouble caused by the twists is too little for people to take action. Everyone who tried to cancel a subscription service probably had the experience of finding the tiny hard-to-see link for “yes, continue” on the other side of the “no, I’ll think again” option in the bright colourful box. In the examples given by Dr. Tufekci (2017), GUI can significantly affect people’s political involvement and there is much more that we do not know about, such as what selected information is delivered to certain groups of people to influence their thinking. It is terrifying to think how these subtle, seemingly harmless twists in GUI, data collection, and the use of algorithms are slowly persuading us to shift the way we think and act. 

We might be able to resist the distractors in the game, but resisting influences in a system that we relied on is difficult. We had an urgent call to raise awareness around this issue and include it in the internet safety curriculum.

Reference

Brignull, H. (2011). Dark Patterns: Deception vs. Honesty in UI Design. Interaction Design, Usability, 338.

Tufekci, Z. (2017). We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads?language=en

My first impression of the graph is that this is a telling example of the web structure and how information is connected through their relatedness in the internet. By showing the connections between the nodes(curators and songs) and edges(selections), it provides a visual display of the similarities in song choices among curators, making this data available for further investigation. It is easy to see which songs were selected by more curators or which curators had similar song choices.

However, the graph does not reveal the underlying reasons that affects curators’ selections. Taking the above graph as an example, it illustrates the overlaps among this group of curators, while the rationales behind the song choices remain unknown. Viewers can only assume that these curators were probably using similar criteria without getting any details into which set of criteria was being used. In order to have a better understanding of the reasons behind the choices, viewers will need more information about the music in terms of genre, cultural origin, instrument being used, etc. In other words, another set(s) of data will be needed for a more precise assumption that would reflect the rationale to certain extent. I do not think that this data would fully reflect the reasons behind the choice because the viewers are also using their subjective ideology when interpreting the results.

There is no doubt that technology, such as algorithm, has made collecting and comparing information/data more convenient. When we click on a link, browse web pages, and watch a video, these actions were interpreted into data, which was in turn used to assume what content we are interested in as users. Nevertheless, it takes further analysis to best guess the intention behind the actions and why it matters to the users.

Here is my list of songs:

• Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40
• Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08
• New Guinea, men’s house song, recorded by Robert MacLennan. 1:20
• Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51
• 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
• Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20
• Solomon Islands, panpipes, collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service. 1:12
• China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu. 7:37

I found this task extremely challenging. As I went through the golden record and listened to all these wonderful pieces, I kept thinking who am I here to decide which one is more important than the other, for the all reflect an unique aspect of human creation and humanity. As Smith mentioned in her 2017 speech, it is difficult to determine the value of things and decide what deserve to be preserved for the future. Certainly I am using my own ideology and assumptions to complete this task, but the process makes me question the criteria we are using to preserve information, history for the future, on a broader scale.

My initial thought is that I wanted to choose pieces that are purely generated by musical instruments to avoid the complexity of adding a layer of lyrics to the melody. Since the diversity of human languages and voices has been captured in the “Greetings From Earth” (which I acknowledge is just a very small representation of the nearly 7,000 languages and dialects that exist on earth), it is okay to select music pieces without human voice. I hope in this way, the emotions and messages conveyed in the pure melody could be easier understood by the other spacefarers. Then I tried to be, as Carl Sagan intended from the podcast, “as inclusive as possible”, and include music originated from different cultural group geographically. That is how this list was curated.

References

Brown University. (2017, July 11). Abby Smith Rumsey: “Digital memory: What can we afford to lose?”. YouTube. Retrieved July 9, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBrahqg9ZMc&t=671s

NASA. (n.d.). Voyager – music on the Golden Record. NASA. Retrieved July 9, 2022, from https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/music/

Task 6 – An Emoji Story

Hi Emily,

Thank you for sharing your emoji story. I appreciate the fact that you used the plus sign to show how the characters have different forms. However, I still cannot figure out which movie this is. 🙁

I found my process of creating the emoji story similar to yours. I also started with computer but switched to using my phone very quickly since more emojis are available on the handheld devices. There are more choices, such as skin colour and actions, on the handheld devices compared to computers. It makes me wonder this is a cautions decision made by the developer as a result of emoji being dominantly used for texting/posting on smart phones.

I, too, felt constrained by the limited number of pictures available through pre-made emojis. It felt very difficult to convey my ideas thoroughly. Your statement of balancing the amount of text and graphic is very intriguing. In the example of the emoji story, it is difficult to understand without the support of written words. However, in my opinion, the arrangement of text and graphics is a decision cautiously made through considerations of the purpose and audience of the representation. Sometimes the text is needed for detailed explanation, other times graphic may spark more emotional responses. Therefore, the choice is left to the author/maker to decide what works the best to convey the meaning he/she intends.

TASK 4: Manual Scripts and Potato Printing

Hi Steve,

Thank you for sharing your experience with handwriting. I chose the same task and found it not too bad since I am used to writing my journals on paper. Like you said, it requires lots of practicing to get comfortable with handwriting, which is basically a skill and all skills asks for repetition before mastery. I wonder how this task would feel different if you wrote it in your first language. Will it maker it easier? Or is it still going to be a challenge simply because the media we use is paper and pen?

I agree with your statement that typing, with support of spelling correction and grammar checker, can be an effective tool for English language learners or any language learners. I personally use those tools as well. It makes me wonder what additional support we can provide to young ELL students when they are given a task to handwrite.

Task 7: Mode-Bending

Hi Jennifer,

Thank you for sharing this amazing challenge and I really enjoyed watching it. It demonstrates that almost every aspect of our daily life has been reshaped by technology since we rely on multiple apps for different tasks throughout the day. Imagine the extent to which it has reshaped the way we communicate with each other and share information, and multimodal representation is just one of the significant changes. I wonder how you felt about switching from writing to making a video for this task. Does it make any differences in your approach to the task or in your delivery?

I agree with you that it is so important to provide choices for students and creating a safe environment for them to explore the different modes of meaning making. As the New London Group stated, essentially “all meaning-making is multimodal” (1996, p. 81), finding ways for students to engage with meaningful multimodal representations, whether it is understanding, deconstructing, contextualizing or creating, should become the norm of our pedagogy.

Here is the link to my podcast: https://anchor.fm/trista-ding9/episodes/Task-7-e1kp92d

Transcription:

Hi everyone, welcome to my podcast. For this mode bending assignment, I decided to record myself talking about the items in my bag. Instead of focusing on the text technology that we did in assignment one, this time I will try my best to come up with a story with each item in my bag to share a little more about my personality and my identity.

Here I am looking at the same purse that I showed in assignment 1. I saw my phone and I noticed that my phone is always on mute. For some reason, the ring tone and the vibration always give me anxiety and I do not like to be disturbed with them. Therefore, it is very difficult for my friends to find me and I get a lot of complaints about that. There is my car key. I have been driving for 5 years, and I consider myself an okay driver. Definitely had some small accidents but I think I am a pretty careful driver in general. Then there is my card holder, which contains my back cards and my driver’s license. On my driver’s license there is a lot of information about my identity. From the photo you can see that I am Asian and I am a woman. I also identify as female and use she/her as my preferred pronouns. My signature under my photo is in Chinese, which is my first language and I identify as Chinese Canadian. I lost the lip balm that was in the picture for my first assignment, indicating that I am not a very careful person when it comes to organizing and keeping personal items. 

So, what have I learned from this mode switching? I notice that when I switch the media for meaning-making from writing to speaking, I immediately approach the task in a more personal manner. Perhaps the nature of speaking makes me want to share more about my personal story. You can probably hear from my tone that this podcast is not meant for a serious academic presentation, rather, it is more like talking to people who do not yet know me and giving them a sense of who I am. According to the Design of Meaning by New London Group, From the same Available Design, the same items in my bag, I, in the process of Designing, was able to re-represent the meaning behind each item, and this recorded part of “what’s in my bag” becomes of a Re-design, a product with newly constructed and transformed meaning. How does this mode switching affect my listeners? My audio recording would serve as Available Design for them to draw on personal experience and context for meaning making for themselves.

This seemingly never-ending process of Design of Meaning is happening constantly around us, in our personal life, public life, and work life, taking forms of different modes: visual, audio, linguistic, spatial, gestural, and multimodal that include everything mentioned above. To help our students understand this process and become capable designers that can navigate through the differences, cultural or contextual, the call for multiliteracy pedagogy is necessary.

Reference

The New London Group.  (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.

I found it very challenging to summarize the movie using only emojis. I started with the title, and actually, I chose this movie because I feel that the title is easy to visualize by emojis. Initially, I was considering another TV show but I was not able to find the right emoji to capture the title. I think that the reason why I found visualizing the title hard is that the words used in the title are more abstract, making it difficult to find the appropriate visual representation.

I noticed that I rely on ideas and words in this assignment, and did not pay much attention to syllables. Looking for a suitable emoji to convey ideas is the most difficult, and I spent a lot of time selecting events that the emoji can represent. It almost felt impossible to find a picture for some words that are general and vague. This thought process is even different from creating a picture summary from scratch, where I would at least have the freedom to create my own symbols to represent my ideas. In this assignment, I felt constrained by the limited emojis available on my phone, failing to convey my original thoughts. I also noticed that I described the plot in chronological order, much similar to writing a summary. Is it because I am so well-trained with conventional writing to state everything in time order? 

Kress(2005) states that all communication is always multimodal and further examines how information is being delivered in different modes: “speech and writing tell the word; depiction shows the world” (p.16). It further illustrates how speech and writing are controlled by the author, and the interpretation of pictures largely depends on the viewers. Therefore, text and pictures are processed differently in our heads, and it is arrogant to use rules for writing to understand pictorial meaning simply. Today, pictures and films are dominating current social media platforms and the multimodal representation has become the new norm in communication and delivering meanings. As a result, reading is no longer a simple act of picking up the written words, but a more complicated process of “taking meaning and making meaning from many sources of information, from many different sign-systems” (Kress, 2005, p. 17). As an educator, it makes me question whether my literacy teaching practice is preparing my students for this multimodal representation that they will face in the future. Do we teach them strategies to comprehend this representation of information? Do we give our students enough opportunities to create multimodal content to express their ideas?