Task: Describe or narrate a scenario about a beverage found a few years into a future in which a profound historical evolution has occurred. Your description should address issues related to health and elicit feelings of awkwardness.

Now that my family is planning our Christmas feast with turkey, pork, potatoes, rice, pastries and copious amounts of chocolate, I cannot help but think about the children in our own communities in British Columbia who will not be able to afford any solid food this year. Not that they will lack all the essential nutrients they need, but they will not have the basic human pleasure of tasting and chewing on different foods. Ironically, this maltreatment of children started as a way to end world hunger.

Ten years ago, a world-changing and unforeseen scientific discovery won a Nobel Prize for chemistry. The discovery was an inexpensive nutritional substance called Esca (Latin for “prepared food”) that contained a robust balance of proteins, fats, carbohydrates and various vitamins and minerals. It could be manufactured at a low cost and distributed as a light powder than could be dissolved in water. This discovery was shared with developing nations where food supplies were scarce and was also used in areas that had been struck by natural disasters or war. People were literally revived with this new Esca-based beverage and children’s lives were saved. In those developing nations, the meager food supply chains became less stressed and food production soared.

A few years ago, however, public health researchers, social workers and government officials began to notice a disturbing trend. Lower income families living below the poverty line began using Esca-based beverages to completely replace food so that their funds could be used for other needs. Sometimes those needs were legitimate, such as money needed for rent, utilities and medicines, but often money saved on food purchases was being redirected to fund addictions to alcohol, street drugs and gambling. Many children in these households were existing for months and even years solely on Esca and either rarely or never were able to enjoy solid foods. This even started having an impact on their physiology — those who did not eat solid foods for extreme periods of time found that their gastric systems could not tolerate solid foods anymore, which further perpetuated their dependance on Esca liquids.

At first the existing food banks in every community were relieved that they were not overwhelmed by the needs of families who had previously been impacted by inflation and unemployment, but they, too began to notice the number of guests at their food banks begin to drop off to almost nothing. Soon most food banks had to turn away new donations of food because their facilities lacked the capacity to keep such a large inventory. Some food banks actually closed. Many new media reports hailed this as a victory for Esca beverages in eliminating hunger. Later, other reports began to emerge about children who had never even tasted many solid foods and had little gastric tolerance for solids, even when they were offered to them. It raised the question: If we eliminate hunger by providing nutrition but not solid foods, have we really eliminated hunger or have we simply made solid foods only available to those with higher incomes? Notably, many children in Indigenous, minority ethnic and immigrant families seem to be suffering the most from this loss of solid food in their diets.

Ironically, someone online went viral recently when they pointed out that the Latin word “Esca” has a different meaning in Italian (Cambridge Dictionary, 2023). The Italian translation of the word is “bait, lure or decoy” —something you could use to catch unfortunate fish who were duped by it.

Our family will reflect on this during our Christmas feast this year. What can we do to change this? What can our world do to stop “baiting” people with liquified food and start being morally obligated to provide solid foods to them?

References:

Cambridge Dictionary. (n.d.) Esca definition. Retrived November 25, 2023 from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/italian-english/esca

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

Eley, T. (November 24, 2023) Greater Victoria housing insecurity helps lead to child abuse: UVic expert. Vancouver Island Free Daily. Retrieved November 25, 2023, from https://www.vancouverislandfreedaily.com/local-news/greater-victoria-housing-insecurity-helps-lead-to-child-abuse-uvic-expert/

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/

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After fully completing the Detain/Release task, I was left with the sense that I had been manipulated by the AI-informed recommendations in each case, yet at the same time I felt I wasn’t being properly or comprehensively informed. The AI recommendations were based on existing data that was not always predictive of what the defendant might do if they were released (allowing, of course, that many or most human actions can be unpredictable). Here is an example:

Figure 1

The data presented a strong rationale for a “release” decision. The prosecution recomemded release, the defendant claimed to be motivated to return to her job, and the three risk assesments — Fail to appear, Commit a crime and Violence — were all rated as “low”. This appeared to present a strong rationale for releasing the defendant, yet this decision resulted in the defendant being charged with a different crime, drug possession, which was not predicted by the AI data (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Reflecting on my own decision-making process during these 24 cases, I found that after each case, I began to be less and less concerned with the defendant’s statement, even disregarding it entirely, and more concerned with the three risk assessments — even though those risk assessments were only graded as low, medium or high and did not provide any additional data about how they were determined. Although I noticed some suggestions of racial differences in the distorted illustrations of each defendant, I paid almost no attention at all to them.

One difficulty I had with the decision and consequences process in this game was connecting my decisions to release defendants (which were based on very limited information) to any of the media reports afterward about the recidivism of the defendant. At first I did not capture screenshots of the defendant’s names and the recommendations that I had based my decisions on; when I saw a media story about some of them a few cases later, I realized I had forgotten them and why I had made a decision to release them. Partway through, I decided to capture screenshots to remind me of the details of each defendant. If there was an easily viewable record of the defendant’s profile corresponding to the news story, it would have been easier to reflect on my past decisions and perhaps learn from I was misled or informed by the AI data.

It seems that a judge who has the authority to detain or release a defendant should probably not base their decisions on algorithms that have the appearance of quantitative data and should instead take time to review deeper, qualitative data about each defendant.  This means the judge must make decisions within a state of complexity but at least they can be fully accountable for each decision rather than subsuming that decision within an AI algorithm.

References:

• O’Neil, C. (2017, July 16). How can we stop algorithms telling lies?Links to an external site. The Observer.
• Porcaro, K. (2019, January 8). Detain/Release: simulating algorithmic risk assessments at pretrial.Links to an external site. Medium.

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Although I wasn’t able to complete the task posed by the User Inyerface game, I wondered whether it was even possible to complete it, given all the obstacles and obfuscation in the game.

The following are the many interaction design issues in what at first glance appear to be a very simple task in this user interface:

Figure 1: Game main page

• Landing page: The first page (Figure 1) has conflicting instructions to start the game; for example, there is a NO button, an underlined link, the word HERE capitalized, and highlighted “Next page” — all of these create confusion about where a person should click to advance. As it turns out, there is only one text that is linked so you have to try each one by trial and error before you can find it.

Figure 2: Game next page

• Next page (Figure 2): There are far too many prompts, including:
  • A site cookies banner requesting permission to set cookies;
  • A timer that advances second by second, creating psychological pressure;
  • Cycling numbers, 1-4, that don’t serve as navigation or have any functionality at all;
  • An inexplicable request for email and password before the form can advance;
  • A Help box at the bottom right of the screen (with an odd “send to bottom” button that hides the box);
  • A “hurry up” pop-up prompt with lock/unlock toggles that don’t work — to close the popup, you actually have to click on text “@lose 2023” that looks like a copyright symbol, which is not intuitive or logical at all;
  • If I tried try to cancel, the dialog box says “Are you sure you want to cancel?” and provides two buttons “Yes: and “Cancel:”;
  • The terms and Conditions checkbox says “I do not accept terms and conditions”;
  • The email form fields remain grayed out even after you enter an email;
  • Instructions for password requirements vary between the words “requires, “Should have”, “must have”,  “needs” and “can have”;
  • The “Next text is grayed out and does not work, so you can’t advance after you enter your info;
  • The box times out eventually and clears what you entered;
  • If you type in the Help box, the words appearing are not what you type (see Figure 2) — to close the Help box I had to click on the “Send to bottom” button, which did not submit my text.

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In this screenshot of Community 1 (Figure 1), there are five song nodes that had the most edges for this community. Two of the most popular, Track 23: Wedding Song and Track 20: Night Chant, were included in my top 10 list, but Track 9: Crane’s Nest, another popular choice, was not. I found it interesting that I was only related to this community by those two songs and none of the other four choices.

Figure 1: Golden Record Community 1

In the screenshot of Community 2 (Figure 2), there is a close community centred around their most popular song Track 25: Jaat Kahan Ho. Seven people who chose that song, including me, did not also choose the other tracks favored in this community, such as Track 4, Track 8 and Track 19.

Figure 2: Golden Record Community 2

In Figure 3, Community 3 is connected to four songs but only the most popular one, Track 3: Percussion, was in my top 10 list.

Figure 3: Golden Record Community 3

Community 4 (Figure 4) is connected by six songs, with the predominant one (Track 18: Fifth Symphony) being my only top 10 choice. The other five songs were outliers.

Figure 4: Golden Record Community 4

In Figure 5 below, this community was connected to four song nodes but three of the strongest connections were between Track 24: Flowing Streams, Track 14: Melancholy Blues and Track 7: Johnny B. Goode. It is notable that most of this community selected all three of those songs. and of those who selected all three, only three also selected the outlier Track 10: Gavotte en rondeaux.

Figure 5: Golden Record Community 5

The final community (Figure 6), is more unusual because two of the three songs tracks could almost form separate communities if not for the mutual connections of only four people. My only choice of the three was Track 11: The Magic Flute. It may be significant that the three tracks are all by Western European classical composers.

Figure 6: Golden Record Community 6

I would have liked to have the ability in Palladio to display a view of all my own 10 song choices to see what communities I was connected to (if any) for all 10 choices, or at least for a majority of my choices. I was not sure if I could arrange the data by my own song choices, but ti was helpful to see some of my song choices and their degree of connectivity to various ad hoc communities.

As for my null choices, all of which I have listed below, I could not identify any data in the visualizations that might suggest my reasons for not including these songs. Also, I could not make any assumptions about the choices other people have made without knowing more about them and what cultures they might identify with. For example, if there was additional data such as age, level of education, knowledge of music history, ethnicity, career type, political and religious affiliations or other such information, the visualizations may have shown more obvious similarities about the people who chose the songs and even why they did not choose particular songs, too.

• Track 1: Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F
• Track 2: Java, court gamelan, “Kinds of Flowers,”
• Track 4: Zaire, Pygmy girls’ initiation song
• Track 5: Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird”
• Track 6: Mexico, “El Cascabel”
• Track 8: New Guinea, men’s house song
• Track 9: Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest”)
• Track 10: Bach, “Gavotte en rondeaux”
• Track 12: Georgian S.S.R., chorus, “Tchakrulo”
• Track 13: Peru, panpipes and drum
• Track 16: Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance
• Track 17: Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier
• Track 19: Bulgaria, “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin”
• Track 21: Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, “The Fairie Round”
• Track 22: Solomon Islands, panpipes
• Track 26: Blind Willie Johnson, “Dark Was the Night,”
• Track 27: Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130, Cavatina

References:

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

Palladio (n.d.) Golden Record data (uploaded November 1, 2023). Palladio. https://hdlab.stanford.edu/palladio-app/

Systems Innovation. (2015, April 18). Graph theory overviewLinks to an external site. [Video]. YouTube.

Systems Innovation. (2015, April 19). Network connectionsLinks to an external site. [Video]. YouTube.

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In choosing a list of 10 works of music from the Golden Record list of 27, my parameters were to limit the duplication of music from specific regions or cultures, particularly European and American music selections that were predominant. This was to allow for the inclusion of other regions, nations and cultures, even though many regions and nations were not included in the original list (for example, there are no examples from Canada such as Inuit throat singing).

The 10 works Golden Record selections that I chose for the survey were as follows (in order of how they appear on the Golden Record list of 27) along with one of the main reasons I chose each of them:

1. Track 3: Percussion (Senegal) – Example of percussion as a music form
2. Track 7: Johnny B. Goode (USA) – Example of modern music played on electric instruments
3. Track 11: The Magic Flute (Austria) – Example of European operatic music
4. Track 14: Melancholy Blues (USA) – Example of seminal, influential African American blues
5. Track 15: Bagpipes (Azerbaijan S.S.R.) – Example of East European/West Asian music
6. Track 18: Fifth Symphony (Germany) – Example of European symphonic music
7. Track 20: Night Chant (Indigenous-American) – Example of Indigenous vocal music
8. Track 23: Wedding Song (Peru) – Example of South American women’s vocals, rite of passage
9. Track 24: Flowing Streams (China) – Example of classical East Asian music
10. Track 25: Jaat Kahan Ho (India) – Example of classical South Asian music

What was noticeably absent from the list, which also may reflect the biases of those who selected the music, were various forms of dance music, religious or worship music, and music used as part of cultural events or rites of passage, with the exception of the Initiation Song and the Wedding Song. There also seems to be no inclusion of emerging instruments of that era such as electronic sounds and most of the songs pre-date the 20th century.

Although my intention was to reduce the Euro-Western bias by limiting the number of songs that met that criterion, about 40 per cent of my list of 10 is still European or American. Unfortunately, because of that, my list excludes significant nations and even the entire continent of Australia.

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

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Audio: https://recorder.google.com/0b95378e-7a41-423a-812c-1f106938ce2f

Transcript: 

Task seven mode bending. Change the semiotic mode from visual and text to audio. Here. I’m redesigning, the original purpose of the test. Which was to. Show an image of the items in my bag. And talk about what it says about how i engage in language in communication. Um, My culture and background. And the outward image that i project. The challenge of this mode changing is that i don’t have the specificity of the images. And i have to rely on narrative, verbal descriptions of the image. So, i can say that there are 27 items in the image that show. What’s in the briefcase i always carry when i go to work in my office downtown. I can see that most of the items include the laptop computer i use for my work as well as peripheral devices that i use with it. And that i also have personal toiletry and hygiene items as well as eyeglasses and an umbrella for wet weather. The original task showed how i was a digital hybrid worker, who would alternate between working from home and working at the office, which is why i had carried, the brief case with the collection of technology, plus the other items. So, my redesign is a day in the life. By garthful quotes. When i’m preparing to go to work downtown. I first have to. Make sure i have all of the equipment that i require when i travel to my office. So i take my large wheeled briefcase. And i put in it a laptop. A wireless keyboard and wireless mouse. Some other peripheral devices such as A usb connector. And headphones and the charger. And some of the other items, like, The charger for the laptop itself. And because i Have. Some. Issues with my site, with my ability to read, i need a pair of glasses so i always carry an eyeglass case with my glasses in it. As well as cleaning food to be able to clean the glasses. And i find i end up doing that quite often during the day. Because of the strain of my eyes from the lights, in the office and also the strong light on my laptop. And, When i arrive at my office, what i would do is, i would pull most of these Technology related items owed, and put them on a desk, which is for mobile workers in the office. And i’d set up my laptop and my keyboard and mouse and my headphones. And i signed into my work network. And take a look at the work that i have to do for the day ahead. And of course, which i didn’t mention to get into the office building, i’d have to use the The past card, which is on the lanyard. That i keep in my briefcase as well too. And, Then some of the other items i might put on my desktop, include my calculator, because even though i have a calculator built into my laptop, i still like having a separate calculator on my desk. And keep some other items too, some personal items, like pens and a note notepad in case i need to quickly jot down something without having to use a computer. And, And then i also have some personal hygiene items and toiletries. So, every once in a while, if i need to Use some eye drops on my eyes or Use some alcohol wipe to clean my hands. Or anything like that or clean my desk. Uh, these are the items that i would use as well as any sort of pills, like i keep my my sinus pills or Headache pills, handy. Uh, during the daytime because Basically, as an office worker, i’m working under some, a different type of physical stress. Which is. The, the lights and the noise and the atmosphere in the surroundings. Um, which can cause Uh some other physical reactions for me. So i’m always prepared to to deal with those while i’m working so that i don’t get too distracted. So, all of these items, i’d carried to the office and then at the end of the day, Um, after finishing using them, i’d have to pack them up and put them back in my large briefcase again and then carry them again through The street and to my parking lot where i keep my My suv. And, I noticed that. The people in the neighborhood there downtown. Often carry around bags on the street too. And so, if i was realized that sometimes i might be Taken for somebody who is either homeless person carrying their bags around. Or somebody who’s traveling from one destination to another going, to going to the airport or going to Take a C plane or a bus. And so i’m always aware of that that people wouldn’t necessarily know that i may An office worker who is who’s mobile? And who’s coming in occasionally into the office? That. Is a typical day in the life. For me of the way i use my equipment and the supplies of my bag. And, Uh, it also says something i think about my background and my training and what i’m capable of doing as a professional who’s been doing this for the last 25 years? Um, I think that. What i do in my everyday life, doesn’t necessarily reflect. Um, Doesn’t necessarily reflect everything that i’m capable of doing and it doesn’t reflect all of my skills that i’ve acquired of the years. Because in my work, i use a fairly narrow band of skills to conduct my daily work and only occasionally use some of the other skills that i’ve developed over the years. But, The. Type of tools that i keep in my bag, give you some idea of what my Background is. And who i am as a person. So, thank you for listening to the day in the life. Now, just to comment on that in this example. I used audio to redesign the meaning of the image from task one. So, instead of focusing on each item, in the photo, I’m conveying the image in a narrative, which uses a more personal voice? And in addition to what i’m trying to convey with this narrative, the listener is enabled to add their meaning to my audio by interpreting when i’m saying and how i’m saying it. So for example, what language am i speaking? What does my english accent? Say about me? Nationality. Do i sound like someone who is economically privileged or economically struggling? What is the tone of my speech? Uh, what do my vocabulary induction say about my level of education? Do i sound confident and at ease? Can any other conclusions be drawn about my personal and work relationships? Is there enough context that i’ve provided? Uh, in what i i said about my day in life And am i telling the whole truth or not? Disclosing everything. And also does what? I am not saying convey anything significant as well. And does using my name as an author of this day in the life story, lend. Any more credibility than if i had said it anonymously. By redesigning this task is a narrative day in the life story. I’ve changed it into an account of a temporal event in my life. And have given it a more personal individual, distinctive voice. Then it was when it was presented as a photo, Um, captioned with written text. Thank you.

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(answer below)

Did you rely more on syllables, words, ideas, or a combination of all of them?

In the example above, I relied on emojis in a linear sequence to convey character and events of a TV show rather than using them to convey syllables or words, which would be much more challenging and require more than a standard set of emojis. It was challenging to select individual emojis to convey the exact idea for each character or plot point, so I selected emojis as a form of shorthand where each emoji suggested an idea, which then required the readers’ guesswork and intuition to understand the implicit connection between each of the emojis.

Three predicates might help readers interpret my sequence of emojis correctly:

1. If they knew the emojis depicted a fictional TV show;
2. If they were highly familiar with the show I was depicting;
3. If they knew I was depicting the broad plot points of the show rather than abstract ideas.

If readers who had the advantage of the above three predicates were still unable to guess the name of the show I was depicting, I might have to create a much longer sequence of emojis so that the visual symbolism could closely signify what I was trying to convey. The main challenge in this task was the limited number of standard emojis to select;  if there were thousands of variations of emoji images to choose, the emoji sequence might be longer but might also become more literal.

Did you start with the title? Why? Why not?

No. A title is a convention of written text so it would be challenging to find emojis that would not only convey the title words but also convey that it was metatext to indicate that it was a title rather than part of the plot description. As well, I wanted to see if people could recognize the plot without trying to communicate the title, which could obfuscate the meaning of the sequence.

Did you choose the work based on how easy it would be to visualize? 

Yes, I felt that that most of the main plot points could be expressed visually with a series of icons that portrayed  characters and their actions without needing to depict complex interior, psychological or abstract concepts. It is possible to broadly interpret or decode the emoji sequence as a combination of characters and events, but by conveying the TV show with a few simple emojis, there is minimal detail, almost no complexity and a total absence of emotion, personality, environment and drama.

Answer:  Season 1 of Wednesday, a Netflix series. A scary family drives their reluctant and rebellious daughter to a private school where she meets other students, has a fencing match, wins a rowing race, plays music, makes new friends, gets involved in a mystery, investigates murders, gets in trouble and needs help, then makes a close friend and leaves the school.

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