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Lifestream, Diigo: The need for algorithmic literacy, transparency and oversight grows | Pew Research Center

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I posted a link to the complete Pew Research Report (Code-Dependent: Pros and Cons of the Algorithm Age) a few weeks back (March 11). This week, while thinking about my final assignment for Education and Digital Cultures, I returned to Theme 7: The need grows for algorithmic literacy, transparency and oversight.

While the respondents make a great deal of both interesting and important points about concerns that need to be addressed at a societal level – for example, managing accountability (or the dissolution thereof) and transparency of algorithms, avoiding centralized execution of bureaucratic reason/including checks and balances within the centralization enabled by algorithms – there were also points raised that need to be addressed at an educational level. Specifically, Justin Reich from MIT Teaching Systems Lab suggests that ‘those who design algorithms should be trained in ethics’, and Glen Ricart argues that there is a need for people to understand how algorithms affect them and for people to be able to personalize the algorithms they use. In the longer term, Reich’s point doesn’t seem to be limited to those studying computer science subjects, in that, if, as predicted elsewhere (theme 1) in the same report, algorithms continue to spread, more individuals will presumably be involved in their creation as a routine part of their profession (rather than their creation being reserved for computer scientists/programmers/etc.). Also, as computer science is ‘rolled out’ in primary and secondary schools, it makes sense that the study of (related) ethics ought to be a part of the curriculum at those levels also. Further, Ricart implies, in the first instance, that algorithmic literacy needs to be integrated into more general literacy/digital literacy instruction, and in the second, that all students will need to develop computational thinking and the ability to modify algorithms through code (unless black-boxed tool kits are provided to enable people to do this without coding per se, in the same way the Weebly enables people to build websites without writing code).

 

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Week 11 Summary

In week 11, I’ve consciously tried to wind back or wind down the Lifestream a little. I understand it is still assessed at this point – but by wind down I don’t mean stop. Rather, I mean ‘refocus’. I’ve tried to be selective about the content I’m feeding in, in order to focus on the assignment, and just feed content associated with that. It’s hard though, as in a sense adding to the Lifestream has supplanted my old habits of storing ‘to read’ texts elsewhere, and telling ‘the story of’ digital cultures through the Lifestream (and my own attempts to subvert algorithms that may be at play) has actually become quite addictive.

That said, I’ve been pursuing two themes in relation to the final assignment: the way that ‘imaginaries’ help create (educational) futures, and the notion of ‘algorithmic literacy’ and the potential to develop this. There’s been more of the former in the feed, but in part I think this may be just because it is better represented in media and research – I’m not convinced that the latter is the less worthy route to pursue.

Here are the ways I’ve been thinking about those themes, and some other bits of ‘life’ that have appeared in the stream:

Date/link to post media linked to (topic)
28 March Tweet Poor statistical models used in predictions (‘weapons of math destruction’. Cathy O’Neil)
28 March Comment on blog role of algorithms in destabilising the single-author (Matthew’s blog)
28 March Pocket Ben Williamsons’ blog post on how the imaginaries of ‘education data science’ combined with affective computing and cognitive computing are leading to a new kind of ‘agorithmic governance’
29 March Pocket Ben Williamsons’ analysis of UK media’s editorial line on algorithms
29 March Diigo How the metrics of a site (FB in the study) prescribe what social acts are appropriate. Evidence that society is shaped by tech as well as the reverse.
30 March liked on YouTube Audrey Watters’ talk at University of Edinburgh. Relates to both role of ‘imaginaries’, and also – though less so- to need for algorithmic literacy.
31 March Pinterest Podcast from Culture Digitally featuring Tarleton Gillespie and Ted Striphas. Links to a need for algorithmic awareness and/or literacy.
31 March Tweet Book announcement: Digital counterculture& the struggle for community. Link to our community block, and to cyber cultures.
1 April Diigo Kirby’s 2010 paper on the role of film in promoting technological ‘imaginaries’, and thereby making them possible realities.
2 April Tweet Confirming assignment dates
3 April Diigo Snip from programme I was presenting in– meant as an explanation for lack of focus!

 

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Lifestream, Diigo: eLearnit

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I’ve been a little distracted the last couple of days, as I’m presenting the paper I wrote for my final assignment for Digital Education in Global Contexts (Semester B, 2015-16) at a conference today. To be fair, a lot of the conference seems focused on the promise technology is perceived to hold for education (I’m thinking of Siân Bayne’s 2015 inaugural lecture, The Trouble with Digital Education, 8:20) and I’m not certain that my paper will be of a great deal of interest to the audience, but it is, nonetheless, a little nerve wracking. As a consequence of over thinking it, no doubt I’ll also be summarising week 11’s lifestream and adding metadata later tonight.

Snip from the conference programme
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Lifestream, Diigo: The Future is Now – Sep 30, 2009

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The Future is Now: Diegetic Prototypes and the Role of Popular Films in Generating Real-world Technological Development

David Kirby

Social Studies of Science. Vol 40, Issue 1, 2010

Another exploration in the pursuit of the idea of ‘imaginaries’ and how these fictions play a generative role in the culture of technology – and specifically (my interest rather than that of the article) in education.

ABSTRACT: Scholarship in the history and sociology of technology has convincingly demonstrated that technological development is not inevitable, pre-destined or linear. In this paper I show how the creators of popular films including science consultants construct cinematic representations of technological possibilities as a means by which to overcome these obstacles and stimulate a desire in audiences to see potential technologies become realities. This paper focuses specifically on the production process in order to show how entertainment producers construct cinematic scenarios with an eye towards generating real-world funding opportunities and the ability to construct real-life prototypes. I introduce the term ‘diegetic prototypes’ to account for the ways in which cinematic depictions of future technologies demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need, viability and benevolence. Entertainment producers create diegetic prototypes by influencing dialogue, plot rationalizations, character interactions and narrative structure. These technologies only exist in the fictional world – what film scholars call the diegesis – but they exist as fully functioning objects in that world. The essay builds upon previous work on the notion of prototypes as ‘performative artefacts’. The performative aspects of prototypes are especially evident in diegetic prototypes because a film’s narrative structure contextualizes technologies within the social sphere. Technological objects in cinema are at once both completely artificial – all aspects of their depiction are controlled in production – and normalized within the text as practical objects that function properly and which people actually use as everyday objects.

At this point, I have to be totally honest and admit I haven’t got round to reading this yet. It looks as though it could shed light on the intricacies of how fictions influence reality, of how imaginaries can work as construction tools. I hope to get time to read it more closely this week – but it’s a busy, busy week..

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Lifestream, Pinned to #mscedc on Pinterest

Just Pinned to #mscedc:
Culture Digitally the Podcast Episode 3: Conversations on Algorithms and Cultural Production – Culture Digitally
http://ift.tt/2ogye6r
http://ift.tt/2oowvcI
359654720229215479

I’m a little annoyed with myself that I’ve lost track of my path to finding ‘Culture Digitally’. It first appears in my work computer’s Chrome history on 24 March (but not this link, it was to The Relevance of Algorithms). Nothing was posted to the Lifestream on that day.. and reference to Gillespie’s work on algorithms came at least two weeks earlier. I like being able to picture my trails through the internet – little strings connecting and tying together some wanderings, starting new trails for others – but I’m lost on this one. It seems remarkably remiss in retrospect, as I really enjoyed the podcast and it’s likely that the source I got the link from (though it was probably to a different page in Culture Digitally) has links to other things I might like. This could be becoming an obsession though – and perhaps the volume of information has just exceeded my mental capacity – so I shall let it lie for now.

Right – the podcast. It is the type of transmission that causes several pages of sprawling notes, dotted with food if one happens to be cooking dinner, and multiple moments of vocalised agreement despite no chance the ‘author’ might engage. 2012, though, which means I’m only recently engaging in serious thought about topics Tarleton Gillespie was articulating with great finesse a good 5 years ago. Not to inflate my own insightfulness, how was I not concerned about the influence of algorithms 5 years ago? How is it that concern is not more widely felt today? I’ve digressed: the podcast.

The ‘conversation’ features Ted Striphas and Tarleton Gillespie, interviewed by Hector Postigo. Key things which came out of the discussion for me were:

  1. the role of the algorithm in knowledge generation
  2. the role of the algorithm in the creation of publics
  3. the cultural life of the algorithm
  4. materiality of the algorithm
  5. ethics of the algorithm

In terms of 1, in the recording Gillespie noted how dependent we are on algorithms for ‘knowing general things’, such as those ideas which are trending, and how this informs our understanding of the publics we exist in (2). Yet, this reliance is afforded despite algorithms being ‘malleable’ (4): how it decides what is relevant is based on the operator’s business interests, and can be changed to accommodate these, therefore casting doubt on the supposed legitimacy of the ‘knowledge’ produced. This leads into ‘the culture life of the algorithm’: what we expect it to do, what it does, and what its role is in business (3).

With such obvious conflicts of interest, concern about the ethics of algorithms (5) rise to the fore. Gillespie makes a really interesting comparison with journalism, and the ethics of journalism, which he separates (based on -reference given in recording) the promise of journalistic objectivity and journalistic practices. To the former Gillespie links the view of the algorithm as cold and objective. Of the latter – which he notes are messy in both fields – Gillespie asks, “What are the practices beneath the algorithm?” and “Where is the ombudsman of algorithms?” If we have no central authority, to which the culture of Silicon Valley is resistant, how can there be assurances that the tech companies employing algorithms are committed to their end users? Why would there be? And what are the consequence of the reification of informationalised worlds? What new dispositions are created? What new habits?

Very thought provoking questions. This ought to be more widely thought about now.

 

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Lifestream, Liked on YouTube: Automating Education and Teaching Machines Audrey Watters

via YouTube

I was alerted to this excellent talk by Audrey Watters by peers who were tweeting while watching the live stream (thanks Colin, and others). Of course, it is also part of James Lamb’s ‘Lifestream’, in that he featured on screen 😉

I think as a listened to/watched this talk, my focus still on ‘imaginaries’:

  • the way machine learning is used as a metaphor for human learning (Watters asks, ‘Do humans even learn in this way’?), and the consequences that holding such an understanding will have on education;
  • the giving of agency to robots (‘Robots are coming for our jobs’) when, as Watters says, robots do not have agency, and the decision to replace humans is one of owners opting for automation, choosing profit over people – how does the supposedly ‘technological proclamation’ naturalise the loss of human labour?
  • the ‘Uber’ model, and ‘uberization’: how is the ‘driverless’ story of algorithmic governance sold, so that surveillance, the removal of human decision makers with human values and personalization all become naturalised.. and even seen as goals?

There is so much in this talk which I valued. I won’t go through it all – the basic premise is that we need to resist the imaginaries, the reliance on data, and we need to recognise the motivations driving the imaginaries while valuing the human in education. It links to my idea for the final assignment about unpacking ‘imaginaries’ more, but also to my ideas about making a site based around developing ‘algorithmic literacy’:

“You’ve got to be the driver. You’re not incharge when the algorithm is driving” [38:30]

Really worth the watch.

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Lifestream, Diigo: What Do Metrics Want? How Quantification Prescribes Social Interaction on Facebook : Computational Culture

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Benjamin Grosser, 9th November 2014

Excerpt:

“The Facebook interface is filled with numbers that count users’ friends, comments, and “likes.” By combining theories of agency in artworks and materials with a software studies analysis of quantifications in the Facebook interface, this paper examines how these metrics prescribe sociality within the site’s online social network.”

More on the complexities of interwoven agency, and further ‘proof’ that digital technologies are not separate from social practices.