For my 4th linking post, I’ve decided to link to Andrew Shedden’s Task 9, Network Assignment for the Golden Record Curation Data as we both approached this quite differently. 

You can find Andrew’s Task 9 HERE, and my Task 9 HERE.

Summary

Andrew’s post began with a positive note on how he felt towards creating our own dataset for this task using Palladio, whereas I felt emotionally overwhelmed at first look. Andrew immediately began to analyze not the data itself, but rather who the data was coming from in his next three paragraphs, followed by his interpretation of the information, a few questions for the reader, and then a note about how he listened to the music choices. Unlike mine, there were no pictures of the Palladio nodes present in his post or notes about what data was presented to him. 

Reflection

Upon first reading Andrew’s post, I was immediately drawn to the fact that he analyzed where the data was coming from – making some valid points as to the assumptions that were made. He spoke about how we are in a Graduate Program and that this means we have been in school for many years, competing numerous programs and receiving varying designations. He was curious if our educational backgrounds influenced the music that we chose for our records, asking, “If we were to ask a group of people who didn’t graduate high school, how would their answers differ? I think we would receive a number of different responses to this question, and it would all depend on when they didn’t graduate. If I asked my students today to listen to these songs, I believe they would only know a handful…maybe, but if you asked someone my father’s age, he might know many more, if not all of them. I think the timing would be a better question to make assumptions on. 

Andrew then goes on to talk about economic factors wondering if people in poverty would select the same songs as those who were billionaires. This is an interesting thought as one could only assume that those in poverty have not had the opportunity to listen to any of these songs – which gets me thinking; they might be the closest group of people to those with whom this record was originally made for. I wonder what takeaways they would have from listening to these songs that they have never heard of…and depending on what part of the world they are from, they may have no idea about what sound a piano or flute makes…

What I found most interesting in Andrew’s post, was that although he recognizes that “we are an extremely varied group of people,” he doesn’t present any information from Palladio to showcase this. He goes on to talk about needing to look “at potential factors that could skew the data” but we can’t see any of the data that is present. This makes it difficult to understand what data, if any, is skewed. In my Task 9, I brought in 3 screenshots of the groupings that I spoke directly about in order to provide visuals for the readers to be able to interpret what I was talking about. I think that the lack of visuals in Andrew’s post negatively affects how the reader interprets the analysis of the data – because there is no data. 

Furthermore, what was also interesting was that Andrew, near the end of his post, talked about how he had the “luxury of having a properly sound-treated studio” in order to listen to each of the songs, how they should be listened to. I wasn’t sure as to why this was necessary information to this particular task and made me think about how he wondered if our economic status would affect what song choices we made. He notes that regardless of this sound studio, he chose songs based on a pre-existing relationship – which answers his question for him. 

Although Andrew and I took a completely different approach, both aesthetically and theoretically, I appreciated his initial analysis of the people for whom the data represents. I think it’s interesting that within his analysis he didn’t mention gender as something we know already, and I wonder if that’s because we cannot assume the gender of others, or if it wasn’t on his radar. There could be another reason of course, but it’s something to think about. 

Finally, we did connect on one point, which is that we can only assume the reasons why people chose the songs they did and never really know for sure without further qualitative research. Palladio is an excellent visualization tool, depending on the results you’re looking to interpret. 

Quote of the day:

During my journey of exploring Palladio, I had a revelation that it’s dangerous to feed my data into the machine and wait for it to spit out a beautiful-looking graph. It’s like a “black box”. And it is risky to blindly trust a black box. If we don’t understand what algorithm it uses, we won’t be able to correctly interpret the results. Hence in this post, I focused on a seeming no-brainer question-what a node size represents-and from there dig in this question and uncover its underlying algorithm. – Sarah Zhang

Instructions:

Taking the notion of reciprocal relationships between communication needs, invention, and practices as a scaffold, extensively research a particular development in technologies for writing and reading and the implications it had on literacy and education. You may work with a partner if you wish.

You may produce either a video documentary, a podcast, an infographic poster, or a written piece based on your research. Regardless of medium, you must contextualize the technological development historically and culturally, taking into consideration the needs that such a development addressed and the existing practices that shaped it. You will also suggest what implications this development may have had for literacy and education.

The technical requirements for this assignment vary depending on the chosen mode of delivery.

• For podcasts: The audio should be 10 minutes long (+/- 1.5 minutes of leeway) per person, excluding credits. Credits should be given at the end of the audio. The references can be added in a separate document or in a post to your personal webspace. The URL of the reference document should be mentioned in the audio recording.

My Final Project:

You can listen to my podcast: Text & Technology, below or, click the link HERE.

References:

References Podcast

This week we were asked to create two speculative futures on media, education, text, and technology in the next 30 years.

The first future that I’ve created is based on a Virtual Emotions Assistant (VEA, vey-ah) who helps to guide your social-emotional well-being and to allow you to see what consequences your actions or non-actions have. It takes the, “think before you speak” to another level.

Speculative Future #1: What if we could stop bullying but understanding how it feels?

racetrack.ai

Ethan: Ugh. Liam is so annoying. He always wants to join in on our conversations but has nothing important to say. What a pest. I’m definitely going to tell everyone what a loser he is. 

VEA: I wouldn’t do that if I were you Ethan. Think about the consequences, both short and long term, if you go head with that type of bullying…

Ethan: Bullying? VEA you’re joking right? There’s no way a guy like Liam is gonna care if I say anything. Everyone else calls him out all the time. Even in front of the teacher. 

VEA: Not joking. Remember. You don’t know what kind of day, week, or year people are having and how your words could affect them. 

Ethan: Fine. Show me. 

**Ethan is suddenly overwhelmed with a flood of emotions: sadness, anger, hurt, and embarrassment. The thing is, they’re not his emotions. They’re Liams. 

Ethan: That’s what he’ll feel if I do that? I wouldn’t even really mean it. It’d just be a joke. 

VEA: True for you maybe. But that’s not how he’ll feel. Remember, you have the power to make someone happy – so choose that.

Ethan: Thanks VEA. I had no idea. 

The second future that I created is based on another virtual AI assistant, except this one uses your social media habits, thoughts, daily conversations, and experiences to auto-tag your posts in the new TwitterGram in order to connect communities of people with similar stories to tell.

Speculative Future #2: What if the hashtag is the narrative?

values.com.au

Iyla sits on her couch and pulls up TwitterGram to scroll through the feed. She had a long day working with international contacts on the movement #mymindmyfuture as AI continues to use algorithms to screen female student’s future abilities for educational pathways. When she first came up with this idea, she had no idea the narrative that it was going to create. It’s become the biggest social media movement since #metoo and has increased the number of women going into STEM careers after graduation by over 60% in the last 10 years. If it wasn’t for the VHA, the actual hashtag of #mymindmyfuture would never have happened. 

Since the introduction of the Virtual Hashtag Assistant (VHA), this movement has created a shift in power dynamics since the days of 2020. It’s now more common to see females of all races and ethnicities holding top positions and creating new and exciting technologies. The movement of #mymindmyfuture was created by the VHA based on Iyla’s creation of the Screening AI and her ideas surrounding it. 

Take a look below at how the VHA works: 

The VHA and its algorithm track people’s thoughts, habits, daily conversations, etc. Then, when they post on Twittergram it automatically adds the correct hashtag, (sometimes it’s one that has already been created, and sometimes it’s brand new, like in Iyla’s case), thus allowing the hashtag to grow the narrative. The hashtag is no longer seen as a useless extra 10 characters that you do “just cause.” i.e. #fun #eating #tired. Rather, the hashtag is now used as a way to connect groups of people together in order to share experiences and create a history of thoughts and meanings. No more are the days of typing in or thinking about all the hashtags you need to add to your posts, the VHA does it for you.

For this task, we were asked to work out way through User Inyerface – which is described as a, “challenging exploration of user interactions and design patterns” (Baggar). What they haven’t told you though, is how frustrating this game can be, specifically for people who are lucky enough to engage in easy-to-interact with user interfaces on websites. Furthermore, this game reminds us of how innocently ignorant we are to the dark patterns of deception during our plugged-in time.

Right from the beginning screen of the game, you can see that deception and deviousness are at play. Brignull (2011) discusses how human reading behaviour lends itself to deception. “…people tend to start reading at the beginning of a piece of text and as they advance, an increasing percentage of people give up and do not read to the end.” Well, if you take a look at the image below, you’ll see that not only do you need to read to the very end of the page, but you also need to understand what the text is telling you, while throwing out the window when your attention goes, in order to progress to the next page.

The game proceeds by throwing a bunch of curveballs and really making you strain to figure out the correct next step. It doesn’t help that the game had challenged you to complete it as quickly as possible, which for any competitive person was icing on top to finish fast. While “the level of deception is very subtle,” (Brignull, 2011) you can see that Bagaar really did their research with understanding design patterns that humans fall victim to, such as colour, positioning, and icons. We instinctively skim information and this game knows all our secrets and has decided to use it against us.

So what’s the point?

I believe that it’s about making us more aware of the information that is being presented or pushed at us and to understand that many companies out there, including social media advertising, are being deceptive in order to benefit their business. As the user, companies are hiding key information, benefiting from our mistakes, and burying negative feedback (Brignull, 2011). This is not okay. As we move forward it will crucial to continue to call out these companies and look for their reactions and what they will do next – which is to move towards honest interfaces instead of dark patterns.

End Game:

There are 27 pieces of music included on the Voyager Golden Record. For this activity, we were asked to review the record’s musical contents and curate the 27 pieces down to 10.

You can listen to all 27 pieces here: Voyager Golden Record

This task seemed easy at first, but the more that I listened to each song and the more that I read about the reasoning behind them being chosen, it became quite complex and challenging. To add to this was my own personal struggle of understanding why these songs were chosen when the purpose of the Golden Record was “to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.” (Nasa) 

After listening to all the songs numerous times each, I couldn’t help but feel that there was a lack of diversity amongst them. Yes there are songs from across the globe and the list is exceptional in many ways, but there is also an overwhelming number of western songs than those from other countries. 

I couldn’t also help but think about Carl Sagan and the team that was chosen to help create this record. Again, made up of a group of people who all live in the same part of the world. This fact alone made it quite challenging to understand that this record is truly portraying the diversity of life and culture on Earth. Of course, the curators were limited to some of the music they wanted as they needed to obtain a physical recording of each song. This could lead one to say that they chose certain songs based on ease of access rather than true representation – but then again, we can’t be certain as we weren’t there. 

Dr. Abby Smith Rumsey talked about false narratives or false pasts and how we often tell people what they want to hear and what makes sense of the present age. The songs on this list don’t tell the entire history of our Earth, the hurt, pain, wars, and death that occurred, but I think that’s okay. When you meet someone for the first time, you don’t tell them your worst experiences, rather you “make a good first impression,” and I think that’s what the Golden Record was aiming for. When Dr. Smith Rumsey discussed how we need to collect information for the future, she mentioned that it’s incredibly important that we are taking all viewpoints, all experiences, and creating a network of “information archives.” When I look at the team that curated the songs for the Golden Record, I do not see all viewpoints and all experiences, but rather the opinions of a select group of similar people. 

I think if there was to be a Golden Record 2.0, the group of people selected to curate would be vastly different and the songs chosen would represent a better portrayal of life and culture on Earth, along with the evolution of how we obtain and evaluate information and texts today. One of Dr. Smith Rumsey’s quotes really sat with me, “We do not add text to the technology, the texts are the technology.” After reading last week about The New London Group’s multiliteracies and how all texts are multimodal, it makes sense to say that text is the technology because the way we represent information is more than just the surface. Representation of information and the ways in which we collect that information is becoming more diverse. In fact, The New London Group states that such multiliteracies “are actually quite dynamic in the way they interact with cultural contexts” (Dobson & Willinsky, 2009). 

This moves me toward my reasoning for how I chose my curated list of 10 songs. Based upon using multiliteracies, I broke down the layers and made two groups; Non-verbal or Audio Design and Verbal or Linguistic Design. You can click on each song to listen to it. 

Non-verbal or Audio Design:

• Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51
• Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima. 0:52
• “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05
• Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano. 4:48\

I chose the above songs for a few reasons. Firstly, I wanted to showcase a variety of musical instruments; wind, percussion, strings, etc. and how they represent such unique sounds and rhythms from around the world. Secondly, in the podcast, Twenty Thousand Hertz, Tim Ferris discussed the reasoning behind including the songs of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. He said he “was concerned to represent some music that has strong mathematical foundations because we might well be communicating with creatures who don’t have hearing or don’t have hearing in the range or whose timescale is different so that our rhythms might not make sense.” It is for this reason that I included a composition from Bach (Non-verbal) and Mozart (Verbal). 

Verbal or Linguistic Design:

• Zaire, Pygmy girls’ initiation song, recorded by Colin Turnbull. 0:56
• Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14. Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor. 2:55
• Georgian S.S.R., chorus, “Tchakrulo,” collected by Radio Moscow. 2:18
• Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen. 0:38
• Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57
• India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30

I enjoyed almost all of the songs on the record that provided linguistic characteristics. I wanted to ensure I was including strong female voices which were my main reason for choosing the Peru Wedding Song, Pygmy girls’ initiation song, and Mozart’s aria. Each of these songs represents not only beautiful voices but allows the listener to see the range and emotion that a human voice can portray. The other two songs listed here were chosen to represent the opposite; a strong male voice or collective male voices. I think these songs represent power, strength, vulnerability, pain, and joy, and if aliens can understand emotion even at the fraction that we as humans do, I believe these songs will make a lasting, well-received, impression. 

References:

Dobson, T. M., & Willinsky, J. (2009). Digital literacy. (pp. 286-312) Cambridge University Press.

McDonald, L. (2019). Twenty Thousand Hertz, #65 Voyager Golden Record. Retrieved from https://www.20k.org/episodes/voyagergoldenrecord

Nasa. (n.d) Voyager-The Golden Record. https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/