One cannot make sense of the massive amounts of data being generated without algorithms in today’s world. For example, I attempted to read Code-Dependent: Pros and Cons of the Algorithm (Raine & Lee, 2017) like a “Spider Program” by opening and reading each hyperlink on the page. Three hundred sixty-eight words of the document led to examining the 21,000 words produced from the hyperlinks. In the same manner, the task of manually combing, ordering, combining, extending, transforming, and cleansing each row and column of the tabular data files from the curation of the Voyageur’s Golden Record would be daunting for an individual. Instead, mathematical algorithms retrieve, rank, analyze, and visualize metadata in a fraction of the time it would take a human.
Algorithms rule the modern world, silent workhorses aligning datasets and systematizing the world. They’re everywhere, in everything, and you wouldn’t know unless you looked.
Navneet Alang
The language of numbers is replacing the language of words in our encoded lifeworlds. Haas (1996) argued that “technology is always inextricably tied both to a particular moment in human history and to the practical action of the human life in which it is embedded” (xii). The world has moved towards greater interconnectivity via the internet. Images, music, and words that we send and receive travel through the internet network as pulses of light waves (The internet: How search works, 2017). The waves pulse following the coded binary numbers of (0,1). Therefore, one should not be surprised that the language of numbers has regained prominence as in Mesopotamia to communicate concrete, discrete information (Schmandt-Besserat, 2009).
As Boroditsky (2017) argued, language shapes thinking and how the user attends to and establishes relationships with the world; then a paradigm shift to mathematical thought: abstraction, logic, precision, and unambiguousness should be expected.
We have already turned our world over to machine learning and algorithms. The question now is, how to better understand and manage what we have done?
Barry Chudakow
The following two sections explore a few arguments about algorithms’ detriments or benefits to humanity.
Algorithms, the new phrenology
Many of those experts surveyed by the Pew Research Center, 2017 felt that the central issue of algorithms is the lack of transparency. Another issue is that not every algorithm is tested, debugged, or validated before implementation. As well, they are not neutral nor automatically munificent. Moreover, self-learning and self-programming algorithms’ operations are not transparent; thus, not easy to verify outcomes. “In the future, many algorithms will be trained, not designed; that means that the operations of many algorithms will be opaque and difficult to predict in border cases, and responsibility for their harms will be diffuse and difficult to assign” (Tuff, 2016).
When I consider the sloppy and self-serving way the companies use data, I’m reminded of phrenology, a pseudoscience that was briefly popular in the 19th century. Phrenologist would run their fingers over the patient’s skill, probing for bumps and indentations. Each one, they thought, was linked to personality traits … the skull probe would usually find bumps and dips that correlated with that observation – which, in turn, bolstered faith in the science of phrenology.
Phrenology was a model that relied on pseudoscientific nonsense to make authoritative pronouncements, and for decades it went untested. Big data can fall into the same trap. Models … continue to lock people out, even when the”science” inside them is little more than a bundle of untested assumptions”
Cathy O’Neil, 2016
Algorithms enhance exploration of metadata
On the other hand, other experts acknowledge the challenges of algorithms yet still believe that humanity can benefit from them, as shown by the Stanford Humanities department. Their creation of Palladio as a digital tool was used to map scholarly intellectual networks in 1500-the 1800s. They found that the analytical tool’s visualization revealed hidden patterns and repetitions that had been difficult to discern in the compiled metadata. “Palladio provides an opportunity to create a natural graph in which you have the possibility to use two different kinds of nodes” (Humanities + digital tools: Palladio, 2015). That project has since been turned into a lab accessible to other inquiries like ETEC 540 64C’s Task 9.
All the following visualizations, diagrams, tables have been created through this digital tool. Table 1 indicates which curators have chosen the tracks and clustered the curators into a community. However, it does not indicate which members belong in each community.
Table 1: Track, Community, Curators
Spaghetti Data
The table above has been converted to an undirectional graph. It contains two different nodes: curators and musical tracks. The edges pair a curator with all their chosen musical track. At first glance, it would appear that there is a high degree of connectivity between the different curators.
Lancichinetti et al. (2011) called the Simple Data Models, spaghetti data. While it looks like the edges intersect, in reality, they lay on top of each other like spaghetti on a plate. The overlaps and adjacency are not stored; therefore, there is redundancy in the data as it is stored several times. This causes limitations. As there is no easy way to check for overlap and slivers it is prone to errors which in turn causes analytical errors.
Community structure is one of the main structural features of networks, revealing both their internal organization and the similarities of their elementary units.
Lancichinetti et al., 2011
Metadata merged into five clusters
Palladio merged the metadata into five clusters that represent the community networks. The concise, compact visualizations reduce the need to deal with a maze of abundant edges and nodes resulting from the curated tracks.
Visualization Graph 2 community, the sum of community, size nodes, number of edges
Visualization Graph 3 society, the sum of community, size nodes, number of edges
Graph 2 overlaping indicates logical relations between the communities; yet upon scrolling out, Graph 3 and 4 illustrates that intersections are not stored and the clusters are isolated. Graph 5 indicates community membership.
Visualization Graph 4: community, the sum of community, size nodes, number of edges
Visualization Graph 5: community, the sum of community, curators, size nodes, number of edges
The curators and their edges have been colour-coded to facilitate seeing the links. The selections that multi-curators have chosen create a path between the nodes which indicates a set of nodes. These sets of nodes within this community are listed below. Grant has the highest degree of connectivity.
Track 5 = {Emily, Grant, Elizabeth}
Track 6 = { Emily, Elizabeth, Grant}
Track 7 = { Emily, Grant}
Track 12 = {Sheena, Grant}
Track 14 = {Emily, Sheena}
Track 16 = {Sheena, Grant}
Track 18 = {Sheena, Emily, Grant,Elizabeth}
Track 23 = {Sheena, Grant}
Track 24 = { Emily, Sheen, Grant, Elizabeth}
Track 25 = {Grant, Elizabeth}
Visualization Graph 6: community ‘0’, curators, tracks, edges
The information below also from Palladio about Community 0, (members Emily, Sheena, Grant, Elizabeth) does not match the sets of nodes indicated by Graph 6.
Palladio: Selecting for Community 0, curators, and tracks.
Track Choice: Blog Posting vs Palladio graph
As there were discrepancies between my blog post choices and what was being indicated by Palladio’s graph, I checked the other members of the groups. It seems that membership is linked to the number of sets that connect members. Thus, inaccuracies in the data sets would create erroneous results.
Connectivity is superficial. The edges pinball from one node to another, only distinguishing between curator and tracks. It is as if the digital tool was suffering from agnosia and could not fix on the whole data but just the parts.
The selections did not match, nor did the track numbers with the song titles.
How strong is the relationship?
The lack of transparency does not enable an examination of the validity of the groupings. There is no way to tell exactly why the algorithm arrived at the networks it did. It is possible to guess that it simply summated all the links to each node as the graph was undirected. It could also have factored in which nodes were adjacent to or neighbouring each other.
Algorithms will always encounter missing and erroneous data, which disrupts their efficiency and accuracy, but this also holds for humans. Are the data-driven insights better, worse, or as good as human experience and knowledge in making predictions? We do not need to follow Phaedrus’ path: algorithms will cause problems and enhance our lives. Nevertheless, like writing, algorithms are not going away; they are already part of our everyday life.
Rainie, Lee and Janna Anderson, “Code-Dependent: Pros and Cons of the Algorithm Age. Pew Research Center, February 2017. Available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/2017/02/08/code-dependent-pros-and-cons-of-the-algorithm-age
Reducible. (2020, June 14). Introduction to graph theory: A computer science perspective. https://youtu.be/LFKZLXVO-Dg
The label overlay provides the story of agency (composer, singer, and musician), the nation-state of the agent’s birthplace and the method of musical performance (classical, singing, or instrumentation).
“Life is understood as emergent, having no natural directions of growth or boundaries or barriers … Like all rhizonanalyses, this [blog] is intended to be an act of experimentation, to foster unpredictable connections.”
(Leander & Bold, 2012, p. 25)
While performing several repeated listening to the curated music selection, I positioned myself within the process (Leander and Boldt, 2012). Not surprisingly, many memories emerged mainly while listening to the only three tracks featuring females. It led me on a journey that attached my thoughts to Smith Rumsey’s article “What can we afford to lose?” to that of a vintage inkwell and its owner, who had not been forced to lead the same type of life even a hundred years earlier as the Peruvian girl lamenting about being forced to marry too young. A couple of days later, the song about Initiating Pgymy Girls ladened my spirit after recognizing the location by its current name. I have witnessed far too many life stories of former citizens who had been forced into sexual slavery and only started their journey to literacy as mature women.
worth or worthless?
vintage inkwell
depicts a female’s life
integrity of authentication
My twenty-year self stepped into the upstairs bedroom where I found this antique Quimper faience inkwell lying next to the ink, dip pen, a sharpened quill, and paper on a small oak writing table—living in a small French village in a house furnished from the start of the 1900s makes one custodian of endless treasures not yet rediscovered. “This collection [was] intrinsically valuable by virtue of being comprehensive and containing much information that [was] essentially unpublished (Smith Rumsey, 1999), documenting the life of an emancipated woman from the context of the twentieth century.
But, on the other hand, for my husband’s aunt, approaching her centenarian, her home and the content had slipped from significance. Luckily, some of the histories of the lived lives still resided in the memory of another village centenarian. Artifacts tell few tales.
In comparison, the house’s 150 year-history of property titles was still intact and could be quickly retrieved from the governmental archives since the stone house had been built post-Napoleon.
“The respect des fonds – the principle of preserving the organic integrity and original order of collections at the basis of the idea of the archive as a lieu de mémoire”
(Kingston, 2011, p.2).
Years later, on our return to Canada, that house’s content was severely edited to a few shipped boxes: the inkwell, the small oak writing table, and the livre de famille among the artifacts that journeyed to Canada.
… and what does this have to do with Golden Records?
The Voyager’s Golden Record Project, like the French house, archives the life of the ordinary and not the powerful. The difference between the two archives is that the project curated a cultural portrayal of humanity for a future galactic audience during the American feminism movement. On the other hand, perhaps personal archives, individual papers, photographs, and artifacts from the life of an emancipated female in the protofeminism period of France is the start like Carter Woodson did for the African American community, of community-based fair and just representation of an activist population (Smith Rumsey, 1999, 2015) not yet privileged.
The challenge of the Golden Record curation was to create a lossy compression to slim further the 1977 cultural curation to the building blocks of the entire image (Sheheta, 2019) of humanity while still maintaining trust in and integrity of the curation. Contrastingly, the challenge of paring the house archive came down to the cost of shipping and documenting century-old artifacts for permission to remove patrimony from the French territory.
“The whole purpose of memory, of remembering things, is so that the brain can build this model of the world … a cultural model of what is right and wrong in the world.”
(Dr. Smith Ramsey, 2019)
Criterion 1: a major share of the world’s population
Three music selections feature the female voice. The most known, Mozart’s Magic Flute, has a storyline where the Queen of Night, a dark, evil female, rages about Sarastro, the male golden sun god, who has abducted her daughter. Likes the females in the pygmy, and Peruvian songs, the Queen of Night’s daughter, has reached puberty and is waiting to be initiated into womanhood.
“Magic Flute,” Mozart, Austria Eda Moser – Queen of the Night, Germany
“Wedding Song “- Peru
Pygmy Girls Initiation Song – Zaire
Ironically, a little over 100 years separated my daughter from her great French aunt, who was educated, employed, and a homeowner. However, in those 100 years and even with suffrage and the female liberation movement, females were only worth 11% of the music selection in the 1977 Voyager’s Golden Record Project, even though females make up 49.6% (World Atlas, 2021) of the world’s population. Moreover, the message cast them into traditional subservient bondage.
“Scientists are creatures of the culture in which they swim and grow up, and so … also are vulnerable to the siren sung which … call[ed] chauvinism, geocentrism or anthropocentrism.
(Sagan, 2018)
Criterion 2: a significant share of the world’s population
By selecting a 49.6% share of the population as a criterion, it seemed logical to continue choosing tracks that reflected other significant population groupings. Therefore three groups with significant shares were selected: China (18.0%), India (17.5%) (World Atlas, 2020) and youth (16%) (DESA, 2019). Again, the goal was to select pieces that would have potentially spoken to these populations. Finally, the three tracks would also be considered classics in their genre.
“Flowing Streams” -Kuan P’ing-hu, China
“Jaat Kahan Ho”, Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar, India
“Johnny B. Goode,” Chuck Berry, United States of America
Criterion 3: instrumentations
At first glance, it would appear that these tracks have little commonality being from various countries, genres, and periods; however, the collection happens to represent instrumentation. Additionally, these pieces filled in missing elements. For example, the predominately Muslim country of Azerbaijan works as a counterbalance to Bach, who wrote religious works for the Lutheran and Roman Catholic faiths. Another example is that while Morning Star and Devil Birds are excellent examples of instrumentation, they also represent the Australian continent.
Bach, WTK 2, no 1, Germany; Glenn Gould, piano, Canada
Morning Star, didjeridu and Devil Bird, male voice, Australia
Ugam – bagpipes, Azerbaijan
Tchenhoukoumen, percussion, Senegal
Like the rhizome [these criteria] spread out endlessly, filling in available spaces and sending out new shoots that connect to any other point on the rhizome.
(Leander and Boldt, 2012. p. 25)
References
Department of Economics and Social Affairs, Population Division (DESA). (2019). International youth day, August 12, 2019. United Nations. http://www.unpopulation.org/
Kingston, R. (2011). The French Revolution and the materiality of the modern archive. Libraries & the Cultural Record, 46(1), 1–25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23053618
Leander, K., & Boldt, G. (2013). Rereading “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” bodies, texts, and emergence. Journal of Literacy Research, 45(1), 22-46.
Moïse, R. (2014). “Do pygmies have a history? Revisited: The autochthonous tradition in the history of equatorial Africa 1. In Hunger-Gathers of the Congo Basin (1st ed., pp. 85–116). Routledge.
fabriqué à partir d’une des technologies préhistoriques
Let’s find out.
… with tales beyond our dreams
découverons-le.
… vestiges de la technologie avec des histories au-delà de nos experience
Space Chaser (2021)
The bag, a Museum of History of Technology
Le sac, un musée d’histoire de la technologie
Speech-to-Text
Many perspectives can examine the contents of the bag for example we could view it as a museum of the history of technology.
The bag has been created from leather a prehistory technology. As a result, it predates the other technologies within it, such as the textile in the mask, the paper of the voter’s card, and lenses in the glasses. Yet leather has reinvented itself through time from clothing, parchment, leather-bound books, and now it is seen as safe sleeves for the cell phone.
We need archeologists to inform of leathers beginning. Since a space chaser sings “the past swallows up those who could remember.” No oral records exist. The lyrics reflect the gist of getting the skins [Gnanadesikan] argument that the spoken word is fleeting.
However, this would not be the case if we wanted to look at the future of leather instead it could be examined through a digital written copy report like that of the UN’s Industrial Development Organization.
It would be worth following these technologies, from the first inklings, three mediation processes expanded by Boulter, two modern and T. Ancient writings, whether found on stone, tablet, scroll or codex have a signal I was going to ask in states, the potential to speak directly to us, as long as we understand the code. First, however, it is essential to remember Kress’ argument that being quotation access to the power of authorship is strictly governed and quotations; that is the say, written text Represents the elite and their power.
The Oldest Human Craft
Le plus ancien métier humain
Unicode - French
Il existe de nombreuses perspectives dans lesquelles on peut examiner le contenu du sac. Par exemple, nous pourrions le considérer comme un musée de l'histoire de la technologie.
Le sac a été confectionné en cuir, une technologie de la préhistoire. En conséquence, il est antérieur aux autres technologies qu'il contient, telles que le textile dans le masque, le papier de la carte d'électeur et les verres dans les lunettes. Pourtant, le cuir s'est réinventé au fil du temps à partir des vêtements, du parchemin, des livres reliés en cuir, et il est maintenant considéré comme un étui sûr pour le téléphone portable.
Nous avons besoin d'archéologues pour informer du début du cuir. Car comme le chante Space Chasers, "le passé engloutit ceux qui pouvaient se souvenir". Il n'existe aucune trace orale. Leurs paroles reflètent l'essentiel de l'argument de Gnandesikan selon lequel la parole est éphémère.
Cependant, ce ne serait pas le cas si nous voulions regarder l'avenir du cuir. Au lieu de cela, il pourrait être examiné par le biais d'un rapport écrit numérique comme l'Organisation pour le développement industriel des Nations Unies.
Il vaudrait la peine de suivre ces technologies, depuis les premiers soupçons, le processus de remédiation exposé par Bolter, jusqu'à la modernité. Les écrits anciens, qu'ils soient trouvés sur pierre, tablette, parchemin ou codex, ont, comme l'affirme Gnanadesikan, le potentiel de nous parler directement, tant que nous comprenons le code. D'abord, cependant, il est essentiel de se souvenir de l'argument de Kress selon lequel « l'accès au pouvoir d'auteur est strictement réglementé » ; c'est-à-dire que les textes écrits représentent l'élite et son pouvoir.
Demarketizaton of Education
Démarchéisation de l’éducation
Unicode – English
It moves us to another perspective, that of the social context. The bag also represents a diversity of communication channels in the manner advanced by The New London Group. Besides the seen print and digital forms of communication, the bag exemplifies two official languages in the Election Canada’s voter’s card. Unseeable is that phone, and within the wallet bag, there are snippets of two mother tongues, cultures and traditional literacies from France and Canada. Therefore, negotiating differences is part of life. But, the New London Group raised the question of how do we ensure that differences of culture, language, and gender are not barriers to educational success? The first step would be to stop devaluing the education system. Appreciating instructors and public education would provide increased funding instead as Bayne & Ross advanced the education model’s marketization, leaning and gigging. Thus the instructors would receive adequate professional development. As a result, the students would have a better opportunity to receive a quality public education that prepares them as citizens and the future of our society.
Cela nous amène à une autre perspective, celle du contexte social. Le sac représente également une diversité de canaux de communication à la manière avancée par The New London Group. Outre les formes de communication imprimées et numériques, le sac illustre deux langues officielles sur la carte d'électeur d'Élections Canada. Invisible est ce téléphone, et dans le sac portefeuille, il y a des extraits de deux langues maternelles, cultures et littératies traditionnelles de France et du Canada.
Par conséquent, la négociation des différences fait partie de la vie. Mais, le New London Group a soulevé la question de savoir comment s'assurer que les différences de culture, de langue et de genre ne sont pas des obstacles à la réussite scolaire ? La première étape serait d'arrêter de dévaluer le système éducatif. L'appréciation des instructeurs et de l'éducation du public fournirait un financement accru à la place, car Bayne & Ross a fait progresser la commercialisation, l'apprentissage et les concerts du modèle d'éducation. En conséquence, les étudiants auraient une meilleure chance de recevoir une éducation publique de qualité qui les prépare en tant que citoyens et l'avenir de notre société.
References
les références
Bayne, S. & Ross, J. (2007, December). The ‘digital native’ and ‘digital immigrant’: A dangerous opposition. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Society for Research into Higher Education, Brighton, UK. https://www.academia.edu/827541/The_digital_nativeand_digital_immigrant_a_dangerous_opposition
Bolter, J. D. (2001). Chapter 4:The breakout of visuals. In Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011). The First IT Revolution. Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet, 25, 1–10.
The existence of the different entry points affords co-construction of the knowledge between reader and writer. The convention of the traditional page’s one entry point (Kress 2005) channels the reader to the writer’s single pre-packaged interpretation. However, Kress goes on to state that technology had opened the construction and structure of books. For example, SocialBooks (Douglas, 2015) images, interactive stories, and marginalia open the reading process.
However, bringing texts to life requires more than thinking about content. It requires inventive ideas about creating and design and keeping up with the affordance of digital hardware and software.
I started to translate a recently read book and its plot into the emojis code. I choose to attempt this unknown code without assistance, even though https://emojitranslate.com/ exists and ended up with three versions.
version iii
social reading in chat medium
line breaks demarcate utterances (McCulloch, 2019)
second-orality of high tech culture (Ong, 2002)
images display information (Kress, 2005)
heterogeneity in form and content (Bolter, 2001)
The problem of how to punctuate the iconic text brought forth the question: Why am I creating the emojis story with word processor programs and not a messaging app? Thus, the third version examines the task from WhatsApp, a cultural space of memes, gifs, and emojis. Texting works as an expansion of speech. The text utterance combines heterogeneity of form and content (Bolter, 2001). Text, emojis, images, links (video, audio and webs) are cobbled together in a phrase. Therefore, the writer is not thinking in terms of independent and dependent clauses when the thought is complete. The ideas are located in a speech bubble. Finally, the sender hits send, breaking the utterance into thinking streams without the need for punctuation.
Internet speak has freed itself of the idea of the canonical text (Scholes, 1992), where participants can play by layering tone and expressions on the literal words. However, the emojis have a subtle relationship with each other (McGulloch, 2019), so while the third version may have a better look, the emojis manipulation would not be considered authentic by the millennials in this shared space.
version ii
iconic code via static writing program
adding in the affective layer, which was the entire point of the short story
The second version applied my knowledge as a second language instructor. Translations require fluency in both codes. While I have fluency in English, my emojis literacy would be pre-productive. I am not unaware of its existence; yet, my daily written digital verbalization (formally and informally) on a networked screen rarely comprises emojis. The Institute of the Future of Book (n.d.) might attribute this to my working in an academic institute created in the age of print that informs the structure and rhythm of my work. In other words, my preference for words is ‘old school.’
Therefore to reduce the high cognitive demand involved in producing an intelligible text, I resorted to the English labels of each emoji from https://emojikeyboard.io. I also loosened the English syntactic arrangement, not always read left to right with an agent doing an action. I also tried to incorporate emojis to capture the story’s point about a child’s trust and awe in a parent out of step with society, leading to shame. But, unfortunately, I still thought about the static paper medium with the mode of writing. As I still set out the story in sequential order. However, the medium of the screen and the image mode changes semiotic (Kress, 2005). So I stumbled trying to get the icons to narrate the story even though images display information. Kress (2005) claims that “The logic of space works differently: In the message entity (the image), all elements are simultaneously present …and so it is the viewers’ action that orders the simultaneously present elements concerning” the framing of the space (p. 16). So I decided to try a third version.
version i
translation: alphabet to iconic code
translation reduced the storytelling to the basic level of actions (Kress, 2004)
“Writing …is a particularly pre-emptive an imperialist activity that tends to assimilate other things to itself” (Ong, 2002, p. 11). Thus, the first version was grounded in written English. I translated the English Roman alphabetic code into the iconic code. I merely swapped the English words for icons that best represented the label. The syntax remained English. The result of framing was a basic simple agent action object pattern in an independent clause-like structure. I punctuated to indicate the end of the thought and paragraphed for the same reason: one idea per sentence and one thought per paragraph. Making more elaborate structures was difficult as the icons represented content and not function words that hold complex sentence structures together.
The book chosen was the last I read for pleasure. I asked myself the salient events and temporal order (Kress, 2004) and attempted to hold to it. Moreover, by adding to this strategy, the substituting of the code resulted in clumsy, stiff unintelligible thought patterns that had a minuscule likelihood of not being discernible to an audience. Furthermore, it in no way captured the gist of the author’s point for the short story. Thus I thought it would be good to treat emojis like a legitimate written code and reattempt the venture.
concluding thoughts
How will technology impact books? As technology changes, so will the affordance available to the book, as technology has always been implicated in writing (Haas, 1996). As a result, icons, marginalia, and images, part of medieval manuscripts, have resurfaced. In addition, there will be other features that will be incorporated into the future electronic book, such as social reading. However, words and physical book will still have their place in our lives.
references
Bolter, J. D. (2001). Chapter 4:The breakout of visuals. In Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Ong, W. J. (2002). Chapter one: The Orality of language. In Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word (pp. 1–11). Routledge.
Scholes, R. (1992). Canonicity and Textuality. In Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Language and Literatures (2nd ed., pp. 138–158). Modern Languages Association of America.
The Institute for the Future of the Book. http://www.futureofthebook.org/
The multi-modal Speech-to-Text (STT) harnesses three powerful technologies of meaning-making: language, writing, and digital. While computers have had this function for a while, it has gained popularity since being incorporated into mobile devices and from functionality advancements in voice recognition software, Unicode use for text data, big data analysis, and machine learning. Being built into search engines, digital platforms, and other software, digital technology such as STT will alter the established power dynamics between language and literacy.
Orality
The permanence of the essential orality of language (Ong, 2002) arises from the universal motivation and desire of humans to connect and communicate with others. (Vygotsky, 1978). Through this socialization from birth onward, individuals “hearing the voices” (Hadley, 2019), surrounding them, pick up a language. Therefore, the child’s perception of the world is not limited to visual input but is broaden through the interaction with speech (Vygotsky, 1978). Thus, he added that “the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and functional activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge” (p. 24).
Language is the universal motivation and desire of humans to connect and communicate with others. (Vygotsky, 1978) (Public Domain Picture)
For centuries, through this orality, cultures have passed the collective wisdom, worldview, and histories to the next generations. Moreover, this social interaction went beyond conversation and debates to other oral traditions such as stories, tales, songs, poetry or tap dance to relay the information. Orality takes place in real-time with the listener inside the experience. However, this mode of passing on wisdom requires that the listener hears the sounds as they transpire, attach meaning to those heard phonemes, hold it in the memory for some permanence, and possess the skills to pass it forward orally. “Oral tradition has no residue or deposit. When an often-told oral story is not being told, all that exists of it is the potential in certain human beings to tell it” (Ong, 2002, p. 11). As Gnanadesikan (2011) noted, it is lost forever once the traces vanish from the last memory.
Literacy
Clay tablets inscribed with Linear B script, from the Mycenaen place of Pylos. The script is about the distribution of bovines, pigs, and deer hides, shoes and saddle-making. Dated from 1450 BC. (Wikipedia: Creative Commons)
The invention of writing expresses and is secondary to language (Gnanadesikan, 2011); however, the coding of phonemes to graphemes eventually is prized over orality as writing stores and transfers information ( Schmandt-Bessard, 2009) externally. Thus, [the] representation succeeds because [it] enables their users to do more” (Schmandt-Besserat, 2009, p. 22). Nevertheless, throughout human history, only a tiny fraction of the world’s cultures have produced writing. According to Ong (2002), writing goes beyond merely transcribing oral performances as some of these cultures produce strictly organized sequential compositions that stimulate cogitation, inquiry, and critique. Moreover, the introduction of the printing press standardized spelling, punctuation, and grammar created grapholect languages like standard Arabic, English, Spanish and Mandarin over the numerous dialects found within their respective oral traditions. As a result, Scholes (1992) argued that standardized texts built fences for the privileged few and marginalized the rest leading to alienation and social stratification. For example, in the Canadian cultures, the marginalized included women, speakers of regional dialects, Indigenous peoples and racialized subgroups. “Marginalized voices have found expressions in forms too humble for canonization or [have been] already discarded” (Scholes, 1992, p. 152).
The Residue transcribed by the Speech-To-Text
This task reminds me of an activity I had to complete way back but I was studying at McGill in the Tesla department we had to interview an individual for a half an hour transcribe the conversation and then we had to analyze it and the point of the exercise was to note that when people talk there’s a lot of unknowns and ours they backtrack they self correct as well as wander the conversation one day the funny thing is that I used to do that activity when I was in speech I also assessor we would interview individuals for 15 minutes the test was three parts the first part was a question answer about familiar of subjects do you what kind of music do you like or do you like tonight sky of the day sky the second part we would ask us give the student a question and the students would need to speak for two minutes and it soliloquy or monologue and the third part was open Open conversation where I would ask a question and the the test he would respond and I could push the conversation as I needed to go to see how far they went they could go without falling apart basically in the interesting thing was we assessed him on how linear their conversation was did they have logic how much logic was in the conversation did they have transitions was the subject well developed for vocabulary we looked at how extensive and complete was the cowboy was it concise with an exact for grammar we looked at the density of grandma did an interview did it interfere with with the understanding did they have a simple grammatical structures like a past tense in articles and do they have complex grammatical structures and finally for the for the pronunciation we were looking at how easy was it first understanding individual plus the ability to move the voice up-and-down to give meaning through nuances of the voice note in doing this activity five minutes is a long time I know what the students two minutes when I practice with my students two minutes is huge even for me to speak it speak for two minutes is a long chunk because usually we we have feedback from other people so it’s hard to keep talking five minutes if you see a play angles premise that writing affects how we we use language that in reality we are checking the individuals on how well do they speak like writing I’ve had the pleasure and the experience to learn from individuals who have not spent a lot of time in school who are not literate in their own language and as refugees some of them had not much experience with printed words a few of these students come to mind there was one one younger younger students who he already could speak probably 10 languages from Africa and he was he was functioning in Canada he had gained employment he stayed at the job for four I think five years his boss would text him the information that he needed for the day first day assignments he would take this he would take his text and send it to his cousin who is in in Saskatoon and his cousin would phone them back and relay the message to him and then the student would dictate a message to his boss and I’m not so sure that the boss didn’t realize that he didn’t read it all now we think that just because they don’t read that they cannot function in with technology but he was quite good with a cell phone for this for them the cell phone was a speaking tool the phone allowed him to connect to other people or Lee and he was he was good at picking out the visuals on the phone he would memorize the symbols or the the icons that the curves nothing to know what buttons he needed to to hit we think that because they are illiterate that they are not functioning but some of them function quite well do you have a greater awareness of the environment around them they can reach faces is always a open book they can they they are not in a linear thought pattern so then they’re not stuck to one one part they can see they see a wider range and he wasn’t the only one I saw who managed to cope in Canada without having having language from his homeland I had another gentleman who had lived in the jungles in Burma Schools are not part of their life because he was spending the time surviving and watching for the army because were in the army cut them off guard and they would they would kill whoever that they caught so he finally got out of Burma was it a refugee camp in Thailand just across from the Bernie’s border his family was still back in Vermont so he would have to go back in the country on a regular basis taking his medicine and rice for the people who are still hiding in the jungle from the army and he said the army would sit on the on the the river banks waiting as a support to pick up anyone who was crossing over now working with him in Canada was quite interesting he had only been I think he’s been in school for one year and in his Burmese life and he didn’t really get the understanding of what the value of paper and Reagan was he used to drive on the link teaches crazy because he was in his own space his own world and on his own time and talked about how illiterate people do not have a sense of before before as a concept of writing and I’m not so sure of that because many students who didn’t have a close relation to to literacy because he spent a whole house trying to survive it is hard to read if you’re running for your life books are not the things that they carry they get rid of everything that’s not required yet the student still knew about the past they were trying to forget their past but they knew it existed they understood that people have been killed and they had gone to her is what they were trying was not remember the Horse what they seem to be lacking was a belief in the future they didn’t have dreams and they didn’t have goals they just lived in the present and I would imagine it is important to live in the present if you trying to stay alive I Contessa with the students I have today who are literate highly educated both in English and they’re in their first language yet these students have an inability to speak which is really interesting because speaking is the primary mode of communication for humans yet they speak by reading and they listen by reading and it makes me have to figure out how to give them an activity where they listen when they cannot look it up cc or transcribe transcriptions because you can never listen if you never listen and you can never speak if you’re always reading script in reality this to the two groups remind me of each other there’s a flipside of each other and it maybe it comes down to believing that you’re capable of doing it the story becomes more interesting when we are in the other technologies of school or education and digital technology mobile technology to name a few how to “that’s funny that’s all folks
What I meant to Say …
This task reminds me of an activity I had to complete way back while studying at McGill in the TESL Department. We had to interview an individual for half an hour, transcribe the conversation, and then we had to analyze it. The point of the exercise was to note that when people talk, there’s a lot of uhs and uhms; they backtrack, self-correct and wander in the conversation.
The funny thing is that I used to do that same activity when I was an IELTs speaking examiner. I would interview individuals for 15 minutes. The test was in three parts: the first part was questions and answers about familiar subjects such as what kind of music do you like or do you like the night sky or the day sky. In the second part, we would give the examinee a prompt. After that, they would need to speak about it for two minutes, a soliloquy or monologue. The third part was an open-ended conversation where I would ask a question. Then the testee would respond; I pushed the conversation as needed to see how far they could go without falling apart. The interesting thing was I assessed them on how linear their discussion was. Did they have logic in the conversation? Did they have transitions? Was the subject well developed? For vocabulary, I looked at how extensive and complete it was. Was it concise and exact? For grammar, I looked at the density of grammar errors. Did it interfere with the understanding? Did they have a simple grammatical structure like past tense and articles or complex grammatical structures? Finally, for the pronunciation, I was looking at how easy it was to understand the individual plus their ability to move the voice up-and-down to give meaning through nuances of the voice.
A note about doing this activity is that five minutes is a long time. I know that the time is enormous when the testees talk for two minutes or students practice for two minutes. But, even for me, speaking two minutes is a lengthy chunk because usually, we have feedback from other people, so it’s much harder to keep talking for five minutes…
Orality through Digital Technology
The Speech-To-Text (STT) augments language. The software converts phonemes not into graphemes like writing but numeric values. The numerical values correspond to characters created for the Unicode standard. According to Wikipedia (2021), 144,697 encoded symbols allow for digital representation of the software’s interpretation of the phoneme to 159 modern or historical scripts. For example, once decoded, Deluca’s (2014) Shetlandic recitation can be recorded symbolically using any combination of the 159 languages while happening in real-time of the leaving behind the transcript as the residue. Good examples of STT functions are texting or obtaining the auto-generated transcript where writing conventions are not necessary.
However, as STT provides a verbatim transcription of the phonemes, the document lacks English writing conventions such as capitalization, punctuation, correct spelling, sentence use, and paragraphing.
Furthermore, as written communication, for the most part, is asynchronous, the author is not as available for clarification. Consequently, the writer deals with the envisioned potential misunderstandings and questions of the audience before publishing. Hence, there is the expectation of adherence to the prescriptive spelling, grammar and format; anything less is considered substandard; therefore, less worthy.
Accordingly, the written format introduces the concept adds the controlling perspective, which the writer develops linearly, sequentially, and logically (Ong. 2002; Escobar, 1994). Each clause, like each sentence, and paragraph contains one thought unless connected with conjunctions or prepositions. Next, the writer adds signage through words and phrases that facilitate the reader transitioning through the argument. Examples, explanations, and background information gives greater context to improve comprehension and retention. Finally, the writer recapitulates the concept, thought development, and conclusion to aid the reader in recalling the journey’s main points.
A Scroll of Unpunctuated Stream of Thought
My transcript was an unpunctuated stream of thought like Kafka or Gao Xingjian’s stream-of-consciousness writing technique in a scroll-like document.
Speech, after all, is a primary psychological tool used for reciprocal social interaction (Vygotsky, 1978). Thus oral English traditions can organically meander as the participants mediate and co-construct meaning during the synchronous encounter.
In addition, the speakers use a range of pronunciation features such as pauses, speed, tone to add the affective component into the mix. The word choice is also different. Speakers use more straightforward language overall with fewer syllables. A speaker usually interacts in real-time; thus, the speaker creates and corrects while simultaneously delivering the ideas. Therefore, it is not unusual to have false starts, backtracking, self-corrections, fillers and a higher density of errors resulting in a lack of accuracy in the STT transcripts —a clean recording requires that the speaker speaks slower in a more monotone or automated fashion.
STT does not consistently pick up accented speech or variance from the dialect that the programmers have allocated as the standard. However, my phone promises that I can train the system to recognize my voice. Moreover, it is also unable to pick up the suprasegmental features used to impart meaning. For example, the speaker must instruct the software program to use standardized writing conventions, such as punctuation, where a speaker only needs to add a long pause. Thus capitalization and punctuation are lacking unless explicitly suggested. Another difficulty is the inability to pick up unstressed syllables such as suffixes or function words like auxiliaries and prepositions that speakers tend to reduce or minimize in their speech patterns.
Scripted or Memorized Orality
In the circumstances of a speaker delivering a written text orally (e.g., news, lectures, stories) or a memorized prescripted speech like McDonald’s (2016) TEDx Talk, the oral communication would resemble a written text with relatively low error density, organized structure, transition, and more precise terms. Also, with practice, the person delivering a presentation, story, recitation could create the illusion that it is not prescripted by modulating the voice and including the appropriate body language. The well-rehearsed known text will resemble a written text and have greater exactness in the content. Ironically, when many English as a Second Language (ESL) students are asked to create a speaking sample, they submit a read written text, unaware that a read and a spoken text do not resemble each other.
Afford Access
Turning the voice-into-text and text-to-voice increases accessibility for many marginalized individuals who lack literate skills to function through print. In my discourse with my phone’s STT system, I give an example of one of my students. He is illiterate and does not understand the purpose of the alphabet. Nevertheless, he was also a polyglot, knowing many sub-Saharan African languages and a few around South Africa. He was knowledgeable about the mobile phone, which was an extension of orality for him. He used the voice-to-text function to reply to his employer daily. Now that he knows how to use the text-to-voice function on his phone, he no longer requires a scribe to interpret his boss’ text communicating the work assignments. There are many others within our community where this combination of technologies (digital, writing, and speaking) would allow them greater access to society.
Major African Languages in 2019 (Maps & Gabriel)
Will Speech-to-Text equalize language with literacy? First, it improves access to communication by the unstandardized margins of society. For example, in the “What is in Your Bag” post, I mentioned my privilege. Growing up on the edge of Canada’s bush country and being a reluctant reader, my privilege arose from having literate parents and having access to books in my home. Literacy provided options that were not available to my female peers. While I went on to university, many of them became mothers at the beginning of their teens.
Motherhood brings its rewards; nonetheless, their potential was short-changed by the reduced options available to them. At that moment, which is many years back, it was about having access to books; now, it is about accessing technology and affording the internet. Many female students from developing countries or marginalized communities I have instructed have a similar story of motherhood at a young age like my peers of the past. Their education moves through improved literacy not only of books but also technology, which allows them to gain further education, employment, and access to the larger community. Changing their lives changes the options for their children. Perhaps, it even allows them to dream.
Escobar, A., Hess, D., Isabel, L., Silbey, W., Strathern, M., & Sutz, J. (1994). Welcome to Cyberia: Notes on the anthropology of Cyberculture and comments and reply. Current Anthropology, 35(3), 211–231. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2744194
Scholes, R. (1992). Canonicity and Textuality. Ed. Joseph Gibaldi. An Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Language and Literatures (2nd ed., pp. 138–158). Modern Languages Association of America.
Timpe-Laughlin, V., Sydorenko, T., & Daurio, P. (2020). Using spoken dialogue technology for L2 speaking practice: What do teaches think? Computer Assisted Language Learning. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2020.1774904
unshackled from my screens by the portability of the writing tools …
Set free on a perfect summer day as September draws to a close…
Task requirements: paper, pen and a hard surface
Introspection
Writing is part of my daily work, even though all published work communication is digitalized—as assignments, assessments, emails, corrections, and reports are planned, drafted and revised. Thus, all my manual texts are undistributed.
Typically, most of my manual texts arise from the three hours of virtual face-to-face instruction. Pertinent information such as questions, thoughts, and verbal assessments arising from the encounter is jotted into a bound compartmentalized book in the manner of a repository. The codex format affords the flexibility of jumping around the pages; it is easy to find one’s way back to a spot, especially with the built-in taglike features originating back to the ‘sittybos,’ which the ancient Greek scholars attached to the parchment scrolls (Lamb & McCormick, 2020). However, being fluent in both modalities: writing-by-hand and typing on the Qwerty keyboard, the task could be as easily achieved by either method while still staying engaged with the unfolding class on the screen.
Using pen and paper is not due to lack of equipment, as I could easily record on a tablet synced to the desktop. The drawback to jotting down notes by keyboarding is that the standard of programs such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and Apple Pages are linear, a line-by-line presentation of data, inserting text boxes, smart art objects and charts require fiddling. Adobe is a dream for nonlinear representation, yet it requires effort, attention and formatting. On the other hand, execution by pen and paper provides infinitive configurations to map information, reduces cognitive demand allowing the eyes to move from the script, and affords parallel processing (Alves, Castro & Olive, 2005). Furthermore, the slower motor execution allows thinking about the ideas being recorded; thereby, requiring only a rare visit to retrieve what has been noted within the written script.
So to complete the manual text assignment, my mind went first to the writing instrument. This crucial tool in writing has changed dramatically through advancements in technology since the Egyptian reed dip pens used in the 4th century BC. A modern good quality pen’s ease of control affords crisp lines and improved execution, increasing readability. Thinking about penmanship arose from years of being mindful of the need for easy visualization of the graphic marks used in the English code for the students with limited experience with literacy and the students coming from syllabaries or a right-to-left abrade writing system (Schmandt-Bessard, 2009). Precision was essential; otherwise, it was difficult for these students to distinguish the minute marks differencing the letters. Ironically, by using a substitute pen, I found that I was less attentive to the execution of the written text.
Revolution in technology producing the cap, ink, and nib moves the pen from the 4th century BC Egyptian reed dip pen to 21st AD pen with ease of control, portability, and effortlessness of use.
Decades have passed since I purchased a few handmade sheets of linen paper from the Richard de Bas paper mill in France, in operation since the 15th century. Their paper-making techniques resemble those first used in China 105 CE: putting the fibre into the water until it becomes a pulp, squeezing, pressing, and drying (Cooke, 2012). From start to finish, those cherished unpenned sheets took almost a month to fabricate. As a result, the company only produces 2 tons per year (Great Big Story, 2019).
However, Richard de Bas’s paper mill does use an old form of mass production. It requires more deliberation than modern-day technology that produces 1,000 tons/day (Great Big Story, 2019). Nevertheless, this needed care makes the paper a delight to touch and see (Cooke, 2012).
The advances in post-industrial technology afford universal access to paper, writing, and books; it is hard to dispute that these once cherished paper sheets have become standardized, inexpensive, and devalued.
Even though I am not too fond of the 1,0000 tons/day industrial grade of 20 lb. paper (Great Big Story, 2019), I have far too many reams gifted years back by a now-defunct local newspaper. So now, they are part of my daily routine suitable for scratching out drafts of penned ideas, jotting down thoughts that require further attention, outlining a thought progression, or simply doodling. In addition, its low sheet cost makes it suitable as a temporary storage space for information, which no longer needs care that errors are erased, whited out, or rubbed out but tossed in the recycle bin or a shredder if sensitive.
Instead of using quality paper, two standard sheets of 20 lb. legal paper folded inward like a modern-day version of a diptych (Lamb & McCormick, 2020) were employed for this project.
The pen, the choice of paper, and the expectation that the manual text would be mute since scripted texts require extra mental effort on the reader’s part to decipher. Thus, the manual text felt like a form of private communication. Thereby, the hand flowed slightly too quickly; errors crossed and changes inserted above. However, on the slim chance of it being read, I took more time to produce the script for another as I employed visual symbols that have shared meaning for English speakers being drawn from the Latin alphabet, unlike my typical shorthand that is part graphics and vowelless (Schmandt-Besserat, 2009)
“Communication with writing is impossible if the recipient of a written message does not know the meaning of the written symbols.”
– Schmandt-Besserat
Artifacts
rough draft: page 1
Rough draft: page 2
rough draft: page 3
Artifact: Second Draft
Script is undecipherable for students with limited literacy who struggle with decoding printing.
Concluding Thoughts
This manual text was easy to create, perhaps resulting from the feel that it collected and did not transfer information. Contrarily, writing for publication is a demanding activity for me. It is more than just generating ideas, converting them into language, and translating them into a written text. The actualization requires revising, editing, proofing several times, facilitated through different word processing programs using artificial intelligence.
The evolution from manual to digital text allows communication to move beyond a mere linear representation. The presentation allows the text to come to life through creative configuration and structures. Similarly, as McLuhan (1964) argued, the medium of communication is part of the message. The capabilities found within the digital technology enable other senses to come into play, creating a different engagement and understanding of the content. Like the Bayeaux Tapestry, today’s writers can overlay the text with colour and images to make meaning. Now, motion, music, translators, text-to-word, and avatars are slipping in to help the populace assess the memories and dreams of humanity.
References
Alves, R. A., Castro, S. L., & Olive, T. (2008). Execution and pauses in writing narratives: Processing time, cognitive effort and typing skill. International Journal of Psychology, 43(6), 969–979. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207590701398951
Everyone has a pandemic story. I do not need to go back 15 or 25 years to see a difference in my use of technology or what I dragged around. But, in my case, the pandemic significantly altered the importance of paper, digital and mobile technology at work.
Yet, before mid-March 2020, I wheeled a portable office bag overloaded with printed paper that I had dutifully marked up with a 0.4 tipped Pilot G-Tech-C4 red pen ordered in from Vancouver or Calgary. (The 0.4 tip afforded exact legible penmanship to accommodate the needs of my students.) Those penned-up sheets of paper awaited redistribution to the students who had produced the text electronically and emailed me the copy to print, correct, and return so that they could, in turn, incorporate the corrections back into their electronic drafts and resend back. That circular experience with the whole text (e.g., a sentence and a paragraph) and its parts (letters, words, phrases, or punctuation) renewed the student’s interpretive attention to other potential understandings.
It was the bane of my daily commute and ensuing walk to work, especially during the grips of winter.
It would have been easier to remain within a digital experience. However, the adult students came from strong oral societies with little experience with paper, digital technology, or formal education. Thus, the mixing of mediums allowed these students to work on English’s linear written text conventions and the operational needs of digital technology such as saving, retrieving, sharing, and updating. The visual requirements for discriminations of minute details and patterns while learning these literacies always needed to be kept at the forefront during the explicit instruction. For example, written English is a series of lines, circles, and dots. Stop and think about differentiating between b, d, p, q, g, and 9. Managing the user interface to communicate with the operating system or navigate a program also provides a visual overload for the students. Therefore, I needed to be mindful to offer the students manageable chunks of information.
b d p q g 9
pandemic bag use
My educational institute’s closing due to the onslaught of the first wave caused a switch in my educational institute’s closing due to the onslaught of the first wave caused switching my technology use. The move from in-person face-to-face instruction to virtual resulted in the class’ learning management system (LMS), moving from an add-on to becoming front and centre. The synchronous component, virtual face-to-face, has been interwoven into the asynchronous LMS component.
Thus, everything now flows through the work computers, backed up on the cloud, and accessible from my personal computer. In addition, the LMS and virtual class are also accessible from the mobile after I had to scramble during a power outage to connect back to the virtual course. Finally, the mobile plays an essential role for identity verification to access the work VPN, email and Zoom accounts and the cloud VPS. My work photo identification has sat in a drawer since the institution’s closing.
Mobile technology, which has replaced most of my paper, print, and pen needs, slips easily into a pocket and has become essential when I wish to stay connected.
Housing items from two owners dictated the use and choice of the bag.
Yet that Sunday morning, when I set off to the advance poll, I conveniently slipped the phone into the plain black leather bag.
Leather, an old technology pre-dating flexible woven cloth and paper materials, was once essential in book fabrication but now serves more of an ornamental purpose. The bag also contained red and black leather wallets containing polycarbonate government-issued identifications required for voting, along with chipped bank-issued polyvinyl chloride acetate cards. Another product of the plastic technology included were the two cases for glasses, one to facilitate reading printed text and the other to reduce the strain of reading text on a computer screen.
In addition, there were two voter information cards issued by Election Canada indicating the assigned advanced polling stations and when they were open. While the same information could be found online, the paper card had other advantages.
Its accuracy of personal data enabled easy access to the paper voting ballot with just a signature and proof of identity.
indispensable but not required
Unfortunately, the bag’s dispensable content was the paper records of COVID-19 immunizations issued by Saskatchewan Health and the two textile masks as the provincial government had lifted all COVID-19 restrictions.
Non-essential
non-essential
Non-essential
Combined with the voter’s information card, these two facts explained my use of the bag, the content, and the early outing: the bag afforded a swift in-out to cast the ballot at advanced polls to minimize contact. Though I do not think it would be easily discernible without background knowledge of the province’s ill-preparedness for the fourth wave and the lack of updates.
The content of my bag speaks to my privilege, my multiple literacies and the availability of private transportation. Not only do I have access to evolving information through digital and mobile platforms, but I also know how to stay informed. Adding to this with working virtually insulates me from significant risks that many other members of our society do not possess.
