ARTS2090 Week8

Visualization-

       The word visualization has different aspects in different contexts, such as mental image, creative visualization, motor imagery, flow visualization and etc...(Wikipedia visualization) According to dictionary.com, the definitions of visualization are : 1. to recall or form mental images or pictures. 2. to make visual or visible. 3. to form a mental image of. 4. to make perceptible to the mind or imagination. The second assignment in this course contains all of the definitions. Students have to create a visualization(first and third definition) that makes the invisible visible (second definition). The visualization can reveal something that is hidden or invisible through information representations based on the data base(fourth definition).

       I have came across an interesting "visualization" from another course, (http://www.phototrails.net/lines-users-matrix/ for some reason this cannot be opened right now, maybe this website will be fixed soon). It is a visualization of 289 most popular Instagram users in Tel Aviv, during three months, each time when they published a photo, a green, red and orange dot is recorded which represents the day of the time the photo was taken in morning, afternoon, and night respectively. A line is connected when the photo was published in the same hour. As a result we can analyze and study the pattern created by each individual 289 users. Some of the users do not have any line connected within the dots, it is surprising for me that the user did not publish any photos within the same hour during three months. In comparison, some users do not have any dots, which means the user has a habit of publishing their photos during the same time, for example morning photos and coffee tweets. This visualization allows us to study and compare the usage and pattern of each individual Instagram users. There are billions of visualizations, each of them represents and discovers the relationship between different factors. For the visualization above, it explores time, similarity, and number of photos published vs 289 individual users.           

Week7 Making the invisible visible

Making the invisible visible

         In this week's tutorial, the class will be discussing four contentious debates:

1.Edward Snowden, the NSA and issues around privacy, transparency and security. Was Edward Snowden right to leak the documents he did? Or was the secrecy of the NSA surveillance justified?

2. Whether Facebook should be experimenting with people’s moods without their consent.

3. Whether Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple and Amazon have too much power (or not). 

4. Whether filesharing is only “piracy” or whether it holds the potential to change the world via a new form of sharing.

       I am going to link and share some of my personal experience or opinion with these four topics. For the first debate, it is similar to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has one ideology, to make sure the information is equal to everyone. Let's put NSA secrecy data as information stored in archives, and people who have the access to the archive are those who worked in NSA. Snowden raised a question of Internet censorship in a democracy country, claiming that any government in any country has no right to insert regularization of free press.

(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/13/snowden-doubt-nsa-investigation-security-disclosures)

If the information is really free in this digital era, then why is Edward Snowden and Julian Assange charged with espionage? If the information they leaked is false, will they be charged? However, government's charges proved the information they have leaked to be true. Is the government acting like fascism or communism that has strong control over censorship? I think in some degree the Internet is a symbol of democracy, but it is not that free. People are able to talk about and discuss daily matters, but when it comes to politics, everything tends to be sensitive. If a country is democratic, then its people should be the basis, and therefore they have the power and right to access information from government as well.

       I have no idea or comment on the second debate since this issue is not that serious.      

       The third debate involves around capitalism and it is pretty self-explanatory. Whether Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple and Amazon have too much power. All these companies are big corporations that took a firm role and as a monopoly in certain areas. Facebook and Twitter, different forms of social media. Google as the main search engine. Apple as a media regulator and Amazon as online shopping distributor. I do not think these big corporations currently have too much power, as in a way that it is not influencing my life. Although Google is able to filter information and choose which one to come up first and last, it is still providing information regardless of their orders. Facebook, social media is unnecessary for some people, and the society works perfectly fine in the past without Facebook. You can join, and quite social media anytime you want, the same goes for Twitter. Apple served as a way to regulate media contents, but there are several other ways to access media contents such as online file sharing and pirating regardless of copy right issues. Amazon provided a more convenient way for consumers to buy products online, but it is not the only way for people to shop.

       The fourth debate is interesting in a way that I myself also use file sharing such as torrent and pirating. I do not have to pay for media contents, but does that mean I am committing a crime? File sharing of unauthorized materials is often regarded as copy right infringement, and for example Megaupload is cracked down by FBI due to vast copy right infringement. But is the government able to track down all websites that violate copy right issues? The answer is no, and the trend of file sharing is likely to grow in the future.         

ARTS 2090 Week 6

Week 6

The Commons: Collection and (re)Distribution/Assembling Attention

       In this digital era people are bombarded by information. Information overload is a common phase to describe the Internet. Everything seems to be on the internet, for example such as music, movie, book, work, and friend. The Internet has plenty of resources, but what does it lack? In one of the reading this week it talks about the Internet lacks "attention" and uses "attention" as the hard currency of the Internet. This is pretty much true. Why do people use social media? Why do people keep on looking down at their mobile phones while they are walking? Human for some reason, needed to be connected with others in order to fulfill the meaning of life. The Internet served as a medium for people to connect and share joy with each other. The invention of WWW and social media helped to overcome long-distance problem. Each individuals has his or her own attention in specific areas such as sport, entertainment, and politics. Attention really depends on personal interests, however, attention is also a form of social conformity. For example, social conformity helped to spread the ASL(Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) ice bucket challenge, people did the challenges because their friends and celebrities did it. This chronological disease ASL is probably known by everyone who is on social media platforms. The ice bucket challenge successfully gained attention worldwide. This "attention" grabbing social movement helped the ALS association to reach over US$90 million charity compared to last year when they only received less than US$5 million over the same period of time. This example shows the relationship between social conformity and attention. There were many other social movements that went viral as well (Harlem Shake, Gangnam Style, and Kony 2012) These attention grabbing events all started with either a single action, or a video. Once it ignited a glimmer of fire, it can possibly cause a bush fire. It is not surprising that the power of "attention" is exploited by big corporations and governments.