"The Data Knows You Better Than You Do" and Other Constructions

Jentery Sayers | University of Victoria | @jenterysayers
Data, Social Justice, and the Humanities
University of Michigan | 3 October 2014

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Source Files

The source files for this slidedeck are at
github.com/uvicmakerlab/michigan/

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Today

Digital Humanities as Digital Culture Studies

The Internet of Things . . .

as a Concept

in Practice

and Social Justice

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Digital Humanities as
Digital Culture Studies

Image care of Tara McPherson and Cinema Journal 48.2 (2009)

The Application of Computation
to the Study of Literature + Culture

A Popular Digital Humanities Approach

Appeals, too, to Interests in Big Data

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What Patterns Are Observable at Scale?

Alan Liu: "Scale is a new horizon of intellectual inquiry."

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See Liu, "The State of the Digital Humanities"

Data Visualization and Geospatial Mapping

Johanna Drucker: "creating graphical expressions
that serve humanistic interpretation"

Image care of Katie Tanigawa | Made using the Mandala Browser
See Drucker, "Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display"

Distant, Algorithmic, or Surface Reading

Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus: "Computers are
weak interpreters but potent describers..."

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See Best and Marcus, "Surface Reading: An Introduction"

Some Implications of this Approach

Complicate Assumptions about the Phenomenology and Epistemology of Reading

Formally Examine Social Relations

Expand What "Data" Implies

Underscore Surprise in Research

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See Moretti, "Conjectures on World Literature"

A Digital Culture Studies Question . . .

(Where Media + Cultural Studies Interpret Computation)

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What Are the Logics of Architectures?

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun: "Computers embody
a certain logic of governing or steering through the
increasingly complex world around us."

Image of "Embankment" (2005) care of Rachel Whiteread and Traverza
See Chun, Programmed Visions

Case in Point: The Internet of Things

Bob Violino: "Big data like you've never seen before"

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See Violino, "The 'Internet of Things' Will Mean Really, Really Big Data"

The Internet of Things as a Concept

Helps Us Understand Popular Perceptions and Depictions

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A Networked Architecture

Bruce Sterling: "When I shop, I shop with
a wand in my hand."

Sterling again: "I need an interface for capitalism itself."

Image of Shaping Things care of Bruce Sterling and MIT Press

An Everted Architecture

Steven E. Jones: "from a world apart to a part of the world"

Jones again: "from a transcendent virtual reality
to mundane experience"

More Jones: "from a mysterious, invisible abstract world
to a still mostly invisible (but real) data-grid"

Image of William Gibson's Agrippa care of Kevin Begos, Jr. and The Agrippa Files at UCSB
See Jones, The Emergence of the Digital Humanities

A Programmable Architecture

Neil Gershenfeld: "bring the programmability of the digital worlds we've invented to the physical worlds we inhabit"

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See Gershenfeld, Fab

A Smart Architecture

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Data Knows You Better Than You Do

Addressable Objects Running in the Background

Forget, or Delegate Memory and Vision to Networks

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The Internet of Things in Practice

Helps Us Understand the Markets for Architectures

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Hobbyists

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Logging Environmental Data

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Home Automation

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Surveillance

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The Internet of Things and Social Justice

Some Pressing Concerns, with Some Responses

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Algocratic Displacement

Response: Scholz, Internet as Playground and Factory

Image care of Trebor Scholz and Routledge
See Aneesh, Virtual Migration: The Programming of Globalization

The Internet of No Bodies

Response: Wyld Collective and Local Autonomy Networks

Image care of Wyld Collective

The Kickstarter Economy

Response: Belojvevic, "Demanufacturing"

Image care of Nina Belojevic and NANO

The STEM Bias

Response: Spaces for Arts, Technology + Social Justice
(e.g., Seattle Attic, Double Union,
Free Geek, and Machine Project)

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Thank You

Special Thanks to Sidonie Smith, Doretha Coval,
Patrick Tonks, the Institute for the Humanities,
and the School of Information

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