Narrative 1: SUB SPECS (click to enlarge)

Narrative 2: How one universal translator technology deepened the divide, a TED Talk Transcript Snippet

Transcript
14 languages

[Begin snippet]

00:05
Chances are, you are watching this TED Talk with your glasses and understanding about 60% of what I’m saying unless you speak fluent Korean. But no, you correct me, they are called SUB SPECS and I actually understand 95% of everything. (Pause) I said what I said, you’re getting about 60% of what I’m saying. Hear me out…and not just with your eyes.

00:58
(Laughter)

1:03
Thirty years ago, we eradicated nearsightedness like it was chicken pox. I can see some of you in the audience going, what’s chicken pox? Lasik eye surgery was as common and accepted as vaccines (Pause) Well, we still have our skeptics who were convinced we were injecting a 6G chip to track them…as if our phones didn’t already do that. I digress. No one wore glasses, no one needed them. There was not single nerd in a classroom wearing glasses. And yet, suddenly we’re clamouring to put these uncomfortable, chunky frames back on our faces.

2:10
Language teachers have been concerned with the reliance students have on their SUB SPECS. Studies have shown that students are less and less likely to retain knowledge of a new language. Ophthalmologists report an alarming rate of vision problems from the overwhelming amount of subtitles that pop-up on the lens. Both children and adults report headaches and doctors are now recommending not to wear SUB SPECS for more than two hours at a time.

2:45
My problem with SUB SPECS isn’t on comfort, but on accessibility and their liberal estimate of how accurate their language translations are. SUB SPECS is not accessible for all yet it is marketed as such. Students can use them! Bring them when you travel! Your elderly can watch any show now! First of all, you’re paying a sum close to the cost of two brand new cellphones which means there’s going to be a chunk of the population who won’t be able to afford these.

3:25
But the haves/have nots divide has always been there. SUB SPECS are not equitable especially if you speak one of the thousands of languages that are not included in their programming. It is unsurprising that only languages that benefit certain cultures receive more funding, more research, and more updates than ones that are from countries that are not as well off.

4:10
Burmese, the Sino-Tibetan language of Myanmar with a population of 54 million, is not even mentioned on SUB SPEC’s coming soon page. Thousands of languages in Africa are unaccounted for. Not using Latin script? Good luck. For a better indicator of whether your SUB SPECS are 95% accurate, look at whether there is a consumer market in your country. Money has always and continues to move faster. SUB SPECS’ languages that use a different alphabet than Latin are always two years behind.

6:00
Are the subtitles popping up fast enough or should I slow down? (Laughter) That is what I meant by 60% accuracy, and this is with my government investing millions of dollars into this technology. We’re trying to keep up but let’s face it. Spoken!Korean-to-Subtitled!English will never be on par with Spoken!French-to-Subtitled!English. The only non Latin script language that comes close to the alleged 95% accuracy is Chinese. I’ll give you three guesses why and the first two don’t count. Again: money.

7:30
Language requires body language and context, something SUB SPECS claims to address with their team of researchers. However, language is also fluid. Have you ever had challenges communicating with someone two generations younger than you? What about one generation? Language translators, including SUB SPECS, simply cannot constantly account for these, not without the help of a powerful AI.

8:55
Hypothetically, there is such an AI that can sweep English nuances by collecting data every single day and synthesizing the information into something useful that the SUB SPECS technology can use. Who’s designing an AI for all the other languages?

9:13
The reality is, you have your rich students with their new cellphones and their stylish SUB SPECS, travelling during their gap year, understanding what the locals are saying. Might I add, that auntie you’re haggling with at the market who you told to stop speaking broken English because you “actually understand her language?” Probably has zero idea of what you’re saying because she can’t afford SUB SPECS, but she’ll power through so that you can have your picture-perfect social media-worthy shaved ice dessert.

9:45
And then you have first generation immigrant parents working shift jobs, these are people who would actually benefit from SUB SPECS but are too busy earning money to feed their family let alone put aside extra funds to save up for a pair.

10:01
A universal translator belongs in fairytales or ancient texts like Star Trek, because realistically, there is no perfect way to translate, not with the seemingly endless combinations of languages this technology would need to perfect in order to be considered ‘universal.’

[End of snippet]

Reflection

The inspiration behind SUB SPECS comes from my own personal experience growing up watching subtitled Korean dramas and anime. I’ve noticed works that did not have their own team of fan-subbers were usually less popular than those that did. Even as I am doing this project, I am waiting for one interview to be finished subbing by a fan. What a dream it would be to just put on glasses and be able to understand anything! In Chapter 5 of Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming, Dunne & Raby (2013) links utopia with a means to keep idealism alive and use it “as somewhere to aim for rather than build” (p. 73). When creating the first speculative narrative, I aimed to create an ideal product that not only would benefit myself, but would bring positive change to society (such as bringing people closer together by removing language barriers, or levelling the playing field for ‘foreign’ works).

I tried to challenge myself by creating the second speculative narrative on my product, trying to tease out the world SUB SPECS lives in. Dunne & Raby (2013) emphasizes that “it is the backdrop that interests us…the values of the society the story takes place in” (p. 75). This most certainly is true as some of my favourite Black Mirror episodes aren’t just the ones with cool futuristic technology but the grim (e.g., Nosedive) or bittersweet (e.g., Be Right Back) stories that support it. It was a mental exercise imagining the people in my hypothetical world who may be using SUB SPECS and the social, cultural, ethical, and political problems that arise out of it.

Speculative fiction is meant to “unsettle the present” (Dunne & Raby, 2013, p. 88). Similar to how internet has made our world “smaller” and brought us closer to people living geographically further away, I felt like SUB SPECS taps into that space as well. Ideally, language becomes more accessible. I intentionally didn’t make the Universal Translator translate spoken language into another spoken language like in Star Trek, so that in this world, the original language can still be heard. I didn’t want to erase the orality of language. However, similar to the unequal distribution of internet access in the least developed and developing parts of the world (and the associated lack of education and lack of job opportunities associated with that), SUB SPECS and language becomes another commodity that only certain people benefit from.

References
BANGTANTV. (2020, October 8). [BANGTAN BOMB] BTS donut time – BTS (방탄소년단) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBVk19XJsfs

Dunne, A. & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Mieke, S. (Photographer). (2019). Black-framed eyeglasses on grey surface [Digital Image], Retrieved from https://unsplash.com/photos/QUCNHOQoXXc

Morales, J. (Photographer). (2021). Silver framed eyeglasses on white table [Digital Image], Retrieved from https://unsplash.com/photos/Mv7kokwzIMw

This week’s material was a little more familiar to me and the task was fun to complete. It reminded me of the game Advert Attack I played when I was in elementary school, a game where you had to close different ads and pop-ups in order to steer your rocket ship to the finish line. This game was on Neopets, a virtual pet website that had been criticized for exposing children to subtle advertisements (later on, the company revised their website interface to ensure ads were clearly labelled as such). User Inyerface was more frustrating than challenging. As a person who has grown up using the internet and am still on it a lot, it was easy for me to see through the little tricks (though I’m sure that knowing I was going to be tricked contributed to my success).

Here were some things I noticed while completing the game:

I’d imagine my parents would need a lot more time to go through this. First of all, English is their second language so reading through all the text would be time-consuming. If they were hasty, they may click on what looks obvious like a button (when in fact, you had to click a text link) which may lead them to agree to certain things or download programs they didn’t mean to. Speaking from experience of having to help them un-download unwanted apps, these “dark patterns” are definitely effective, especially against those who do not or cannot understand everything. The dark patterns work hand-in-hand with attention economy: there are limited blocks of attention and websites take advantage of our desire to move quickly, so that we can consume the next thing. Hence, tactics like ensuring the default options benefit the business at users’ expense but without them knowing, are often employed, as short-term quantitative measurement is much faster and easier to attain than building up credibility and brand image (Brignull).

Tristan Harris (2017) in his TED Talk, “How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day,” describes attention economy as this race “to the bottom of the brain stem” of our lizard brain (3:01). In particular, his example of the senseless ‘snap streaks’ illustrates how as consumers, we can be easily tricked into keeping up with something that doesn’t really matter. But teenagers aren’t exclusively victims of this tactic: mobile app games encourage us to log on every day for a free ‘prize’ and if we logon ten days in a row, we get a ‘super prize’ to use in the game.

In our discussion of algorithms last week, UI works with artificial intelligences on these websites to learn my viewing patterns and curate a feed that will keep me scrolling. The UI of Instagram makes it really easy to keep viewing ‘the next post’ (e.g., once I click on a certain post, it automatically scrolls down to the next post that is of a similar topic as the first one). A while ago, Instagram changed their UI completely and replaced the “likes and notification” button with a shopping tab! Users who were used to clicking that area were now forcefully brought to the shopping page.

It’s certainly unsettling to recognize that I am a target of engineers who “knew exactly how [my] psychology worked and orchestrated [me] into a double bind” with my social media (4:20). Yet at the same time, I couldn’t get on board with Harris’ idea of replacing timelines with what we want to ‘actually’ do in our lives. While I understand that the amount of screen time should decrease for most of us, there seems to be this bias of favouring face to face contact as more genuine and real. Speaking for myself, I do enjoy my screen time and endlessly reading articles. I’m fully aware that my internet has been ‘tailored’ to me to keep my attention. I know full well that not everyone’s feeds are filled with squishmallows, BTS, and news about anti-Asian hate crimes. Are companies benefiting from my attention and my data when my purchasing habits have not changed much, and my relationships with others have not been negatively effected?

However, Harris’ ending message does resonate with me and that is the need to figure out “what our boundaries would be” and to have those “honoured and respected” through the help of technology (14:02). Throughout this whole post, I’ve only reflected on myself but I do wonder and worry for my students who are already saturated in this world since they were little, and whether that would make them more savvy or more complacent. I agree with Harris that the first thing we must do is to be aware of how persuadable we are, and that this is especially important to teach students. My students are fairly defensive about their social media use and they already know the stigma and negative effects that come from it. I think teaching dark patterns and showing them why and how these companies trick all of us, is a good way to present this information to them so that they can make better, more informed choices.

References
Bagaar. (n.d.). User Inyerface. https://userinyerface.com/

Brignull, H. (2011, November 1). Dark Patterns: Deception vs. Honesty in UI Design. A List Apart. https://humanparts.medium.com/laziness-does-not-exist-3af27e312d01

Harris, T. (2017, April). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day [Video]. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_how_a_handful_of_tech_companies_control_billions_of_minds_every_day

This is my first time using Palladio, so much of this was very new to me. I was grouped with Katrina W. and Ian L. with having 5 songs in common (Brandenburg Concerto [First Movement], Wedding song, Melancholy Blues, Jaat Kahan Ho, and The Fairie Round). I looked at their posts for last week’s task and I could see that diversity was something we all had on our minds when selecting tracks. Ian took it one step further to carefully curate tracks that demonstrated a range and variety of human voices to echo the message of a “repeated call-and-reply to represent our desire for communication” (Lee). Katrina wonderfully summarizes what I found to be of importance during our curation process, and that was that we put together ten songs that showed “what we value as being human” (Wong).

However, I don’t think the three of us were the only students in this course that wanted diversity in their curated record. I’ve perused quite a few blogs, and many did mention that they wanted songs that were representative of the many cultures on Earth. Palladio grouped us based on the strength of our choices, but it doesn’t do a good job predicting our intentions. Even though Ian and Katrina and I have these songs in common, it also doesn’t mean that our criteria were entirely the same, nor does it mean that I didn’t have similar criteria to another classmate that I wasn’t grouped with. Furthermore, I felt like I was “left out” of a lot of possible groups because of songs I didn’t pick (e.g., Johnny B. Goode, where there was a high number of connections). Would one track drastically change my web of connections? Is that all it would take?

When thinking about algorithms, I remember the simple definition I learned from a coding workshops I took: a set of specific instructions to get from one point to another. When it comes to searching on the internet, in the video “The Internet: How Search Works,” John of Google and Akshaya of Bing explain how ranking algorithms (such as page rank) are used to determine what results are retrieved from the search index (Code.org). In a broader sense, the term algorithm is tossed around a lot on Instagram. I follow a variety of users, from small businesses, foodie blogs, and artists, all who wish to beat the “Instagram algorithm.” There are specific ways to get more exposure for their posts; ways to appear on the top of the “explore” page, and be one of the first results found when certain terms or tags are searched.  On Instagram, bookmarking into saved folders and sharing via direct messages help push posts more effectively than leaving a comment or simply liking. Rachel Reichenbach goes into detail on other ways to boost your Instagram engagement such as regularly using features like reels and stories (Rainylune). In short, more nodes and edges are rewarded to users who follow a specific set of rules.

There is a reason for going on this Instagram tangent. What is interesting to me is the way social media exploits algorithms to try and show you what you want (and makes assumptions about what matters to you). My Instagram explore is so sensitive to what I talk about in my DMs, that the moment my friend shares a post about slugs (ugh) as a joke, right away there will be a few slug posts in my explore. The algorithm doesn’t recognize personal feelings but it does identify posts shared and keywords as nodes for my account to make connections to. When looking at the Palladio graph, these visualizations of our quiz data seem to be very simple compared to how Google search was explained in that video. If we were to do a group project in the class related to the Golden Record, I’m not sure using these quiz results groupings would have a bigger impact than just choosing our own groups instead.

References
Code.org. (2017, June 13). The Internet: How Search Works. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVV_93mBfSU&t=1s

Lee, I. (2021, March 7). Task 8: Golden Record Curation. ETEC540 – Ian Lee. https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540ianlee/2021/03/07/task-8-golden-record-curation/

Reichenbach, R. (2020, December 20). Why your Instagram Engagement Kinda Sucks Right Now. Rainylune. https://rainylune.com/blogs/blog/why-your-instagram-engagement-kinda-sucks-right-now

Wong, K. (n.d.). Task 8: Golden Record Curation. Kat Wong. https://blogs.ubc.ca/katrinawong/task-8-golden-record-curation/

1. Bagpipes (Azerbaijan)
2. Fairie Round
3. Wedding song
4. Jaat Kahan Ho
5. Brandenburg Concerto (First Movement)
6. Morning Star & Devil Bird
7. Men’s House Song
8. Gavotte en rondeaux
9. The Magic Flute (Queen of the Night aria)
10. Melancholy Blues

When curating ten tracks from the Golden Record, I intentionally wanted to select tracks that were inclusive of the different parts of the world. While I know that should alien life-form come across this record, they wouldn’t really understand the different languages and cultures selected, the record itself is supposed to reflect us, on Earth. How can we put aside culture and lyrics when this project is intended to define our humanity, as per Timothy Ferris on the podcast, Twenty Thousand Hertz (Episode 65, 2019). The original record had some parameters that I also thought was useful during my own selection process. Sagan wanted tracks that conveyed a variety of emotions, and thus I chose ones that moved me like Melancholy Blues. Tracks such as ones from Bach and Beethoven contained mathematically principles that could be analyzed. While I could’ve included both, I only had space for one (In the face of limited space, indeed the question remained to be: What can I afford to keep?). I think what was said about keeping to the record format despite being able to digitize a lot more songs nowadays is important: what we choose to keep, this selection process itself, says something about who we are. As addressed many times in the podcast, we know there is a likely possibility that alien life form do not hear the way we do, or that they may hear certain frequencies and not others (which would change the overall song), or even misinterpret songs as a threat (though Ferris thinks the latter was highly unlikely). Since we can’t guarantee our music will be heard the way we intend, then the focus should be on creating a record that is representative of humans on Earth, and thus to me, the most important parameter was to be inclusive of various cultures and places.

References
Taylor, D. (Host). (2019). Voyager Golden Record (No. 65) [Audio podcast episode]. In Twenty Thousand Hertz. https://www.20k.org/episodes/voyagergoldenrecord

Original task: https://blogs.ubc.ca/metjennifer/2021/01/18/task-1-whats-in-my-bag/

For this redesigned task, I kept true to the nature of the “What’s in my Bag?” task we did in our first week, but re-represented in video game form! I used my character from Animal Crossing: New Horizons, to show what I kept in my teacher bag. The spirit of the activity is to introduce ourselves through the little stories (texts) that each item held. As mentioned in my first week, I’m the kind of person who puts a lot of value in the meanings and stories behind each personal belonging. There were some limitations to using Animal Crossing, as my backpack items aren’t readily found in the game, and thus I had to use some “item replacements” and hope the idea behind it is enough to convey meaning (similar to Task 6’s emoji story).

If I were to do this in my classroom, I would use my video as an example and encourage students to show me what’s in THEIR video game bag. It doesn’t necessarily have to correspond with their real life backpack (like mine), but rather they can show me what is in their ‘inventory’ in their video games. Over the past few years, especially this year, a large percentage of my class plays video games. The types of games they play make up their identity (e.g., strong divide over League of Legends gamers and Rogue Lineage). By asking students to talk about their video game selves, it opens up opportunities for them to talk about themselves! Another remix of this activity could be to “Show Me What’s on your Phone Screen.” For my students, most of their school backpacks will look the same and may not show much of their identity. However, their device is personal to them; the apps they are on, the wallpaper they’ve chosen…these are all texts about them, selected by them.

“The increasing saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity and the multiplicity of communications channels and media” require us to redefine what literacy means to us now (Group, 1996, p.63). Literacy then, is not just language but a social practice that encapsulates multimodal meaning-making. This can include involving the visual, audio, spatial, and behavioural. For students, creating videos or producing small pieces of media to represent understanding falls under this new definition of literacy. It makes sense. The way students have taken ownership over their media consumption and production necessitates that we as educators address this. Rather than asking students to just tell me about themselves in a letter, activities such as these also help with teaching students what literacy means and open up avenues for them to show understanding in future assignments.

References
Group, N. L. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), pp. 60-92.