I think it’s important to outline the process by which I created the microblog. First, I had to go into my iPhone settings to turn on predictive text, something that I needed to google as I have rarely ever used this feature. Second, after typing in the prompt ‘As a society, we are…’ I followed a stream of consciousness style to compose the microblog. I went with this method as I hadn’t really spent too much time thinking of ‘what we are, as a society.’ Third, I had to count (estimate) the characters in the message to not go over the 280 character limit. Fourth, I wasn’t able to take a screen shot of the messaging app as the text box was too short. I had to cut and paste it into a note and then take a screen shot of that instead.
I haven’t seen or read any type of statement like this in any other form of print. It is pretty non-sensical, not something anyone would print or post. In general, I think it lacks any value and does not contribute to society in any way other than maybe a moment of entertainment, if that. This message differs from what I would normally write about, in that the words offered in the predictive texts did not represent anything that I was thinking about. After the first few words, the word choices took a left turn and the message went in a direction that wasn’t relevant to anything I wanted to express. As a result, I just proceeded with what would make some sense, though a few spots in the text didn’t make any sense whatsoever, for example, ‘I wanna do we need some chicken.’ Also, the text did not have any punctuation, which further created confusion when reading. The message that was generated is not how I would normally communicate, I usually try to make sense in a clear and straightforward and use punctuation in my texts. However, having reflected on these points, I understand that the implications of the predictive text in a messaging app is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of how these algorithms can permeate society, sometimes insidiously (I might add), to a greater effect. For example, the data generated by Compstat and other policing computing systems and those algorithms that create moral and value judgements based on data actually reflects human judgements. Thus, the data used to feed back into the algorithm continues to reinforce the parameters by which it was created. Interestingly, when we examine the text that was created, we attribute a large portion of its creation to the device that we used to create it. We have to keep in mind that here was a human that created the device and the algorithm that applies predictive texting. So, an alternate view of my message creation is a blind collaboration between two humans; one that created algorithm, and another that pressed a series of buttons that the algorithm suggested.