Block 2: Text/Data processing

# Block 2: Text/Data processing ###### Group 5 (Kathrine, Laura, Nina and Amalie) ###### http://au-ddc2021-vm20.westeurope.cloudapp.azure.com/pico/ ___ # Block 1: Critical Data Studies/Practice ###### Group 5 (Kathrine, Laura, Nina and Amalie) ###### ### Research Problem ### Everyday people of the developed world interact with some sort of digital device, either in communicating with another person, transferring money or going shopping.This is the new normal and most people do not even think about how this is possible.The world is becoming increasingly more digital and it is no longer “just” corporations and businesses which profit from digitalization, everyday actions like calling, banking and paying have become faster and easier thanks to the digital transformation of these former analogue actions. These are actions that we can now do through a short interaction with a smartphone. As this has become easier and the technologies which allow these actions are constantly being improved, most people have no clue how this is indeed possible, as they do not understand the infrastructures which have been built to support the reality of today. People interact through some sort of interface and the data input helps service a wished outcome, however, no one really knows what is going on behind the screen.This is what we wish to unfold in this paper. There is a lack of transparency in today’s digital systems, people are served by the devices they interact with, as well as traced through their digital behavior. The infrastructure of the digital is difficult to understand since it is neither accessible or visible to the common user. Therefore, our research question is: > ### *How can we create a better understanding of the data infrastructures in digital systems?* We explore this question and discuss why infrastructure is important and relevant to comprehend. Through the use of physical computing, we will address the issue at hand. It serves as a hands-on experience of how digital systems and data infrastructures come to be. This will be put into relation with the podcast episode Data & Infrastructure by Natalie Kerby (2021) which discusses how infrastructures interact with the surroundings, as well as the paper Data Criticality by Mareile Kaufmann et al. (2020) which unfolds the complexity of data. ### Artefact: NOT gate ### In order to explore our research problem of infrastructures further, we decided to add a tangible experiment by using physical computing. When working hands-on with technology it becomes possible to view a digital concept from a different perspective. Instead of interacting with the designed user interfaces of digital artifacts, we go a level deeper and look at the electronic structures that lay beneath. We decided to build a NOT-gate which is a digital logic that exists in digital electronics. It is a small basic part of the infrastructures in technology and it implements a “logical negation” to the system. This means it works by reading the input signal and inverting it to the opposite. Therefore it has a truth table which looks as following: | Input| Output| | --------| --------| | **A**|**B**| |0|1| |1|0| In our experiment we built the NOT-gate with a button and an LED to visualize the output. When the button is not pressed (0), the LED is on. And the opposite happens once the button is pressed (1), and the LED is off. * https://imgur.com/nsYobD6 * https://imgur.com/IXTPsGR * https://imgur.com/6CPq9tN * https://imgur.com/TrzseQq As seen in the photos above, in order for this NOT-gate circuit to exist, it depends on several elements; a breadboard, an LED, a button, chords, a transistor, resistors and a battery. These components work together and contribute to an electronic infrastructure. This infrastructure is visible when built as in our experiment, but less transparent in the smaller versions that exist inside of computers. A NOT-gate circuit is therefore a comprehensible way of visualizing a digital infrastructure and simplifies the way electronic components connect. ### Relational readings - Infrastructure ### **Natalie Kerby, Ranjit Singh and Laura Forlano** In the podcast ‘Episode 4: Data & Infrastructure’, Natalie Kerby has a conversation with Ranjit Singh, postdoctoral scholar at Data & Society, and Laura Forlano, associate professor at the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology, about the different infrastructures data interacts with and flows through, how infrastructure is relational and how data infrastructures can complicate what it means to be human. They discuss the way infrastructure can be invisible in our everyday life and the great impact it has on social relations, citizenship (Singh’s example on Aadhaar project) and health (Forlano’s example on insulin pumps). When it comes to specifically health technology and implemented systems, such as insulin pumps, we are always interacting with data and part of our lives are designed around the idea that we are constantly in interaction with data all the time (Kerby 2021). We share our data with applications that figure out what we like or dislike based on our digital behavior. Simultaneously, we respond to what we like and dislike depending on how we live our lives, especially in the context of healthcare devices (Kerby 2021). We constantly produce data, this cyborg entity, about us based on what we do - what we listen to, search for and also what we wear - Singh referring to his smartphone and smart watch on his wrist. Forlano refers to thinking about how the rituals and cultures surrounding these technologies are being used and how to think about them. When we built the NOT Gate at the university in Schön we used material from the DD Lab on campus and sketches made by Nikolaj (assistant teacher) to build the technology. It confirms the thinking of infrastructure in our very own practice. There's a culture and special practice which revolves around physical computing. Nikolaj made the sketches by looking at what Taeyoon Choi (2021) had created and copied his work (open access) - which is OK according to the culture. According to Singh, our intuitive understanding of infrastructure could be roads or the internet and it is a way of pointing to the things around us (Kerby 2021). The meaning of infrastructure changes based on how people experience it and they talk about the example of how “[....] a cook considers the water system a piece of working infrastructure integral to making dinner, but for a city planner, it becomes a variable intercomplex situation” (Kerby 2021). Infrastructure is about the relationship between things. By doing physical computing and building the NOT Gate, we can see and experience the relationship between the tangible and intangible parts of technology - seeing what an infrastructure does and understanding how it is basically put together because systems such as NOT Gates are everywhere. Singh says “Infrastructure is a set of processes, an organizing principle. It is something that is almost invisible to the naked eye in this context, but it is connecting disparate parts” (Kerby 2021). **Mareile Kaufmann et al.** When looking more closely at data infrastructure it is important to understand the different components that gather within the infrastructure. To understand the complexity and the different components of the infrastructure, one can turn to Mareile Kaufmann et al.’s text about Data criticality. In this text Kaufmann et al. break down the different components of data – looking at how to generate, store, select, process and reuse data. Taking a closer look at the processes and how the elements are combined one achieves a better understanding of data infrastructure. The first part of the data infrastructure starts with generating data. Kaufman et al. argue that generating data comes from programs, humans, and our situations (Kaufmann et al., 2020), but that data cannot be data without the ability to be stored. This data can then be categorized and selected for analysis or other purposes. This means that data is processed, which often happens through data-processing software that is trained to identify patterns in the given data (Kaufmann et al, 2020). This processed data can be reused again which expands the infrastructure of data. This demonstrates the complexity of data infrastructure and with this Kaufmann et al. describe how data has its own infrastructure with different elements that all must work together to reproduce a common goal. This data infrastructure is part of a larger infrastructure that joins different units together. Just as our experiment illustrates there are infrastructures all the way down to the wiring of the computer that must store the data. This small infrastructure is part of a larger infrastructure that is the digitalization of our world. Just as exemplified in the text from Nanna Thylstrup(Thylstrup, 2018). Thylstrup writes about Google Books and how this is an example of digitalization and how this has an impact on our world regarding allowing people access to information. With this example one can see how a smaller data infrastructure takes place in the larger digitalization of our lives and how this affects the world and the society. To achieve a comprehensive understanding of data infrastructure one must start with the smallest infrastructure, which is the wiring of data – which is illustrated in the NOT-gate experiment. Only by understanding the smallest infrastructure, as described by Kaufmann et al. one can learn to understand data infrastructure on a larger scale. **Conclusion** By exploring infrastructures with the use of physical computing we gained a new perspective on the tangible elements of technology. Building the NOT gate allowed us to understand a small part of what exists inside of a computer and thereby create more transparency between the user and the digital system. It has given us insight into the amount of tiny digital components every digital artifact consists of and how they interact with each other in complex infrastructures. This paper has challenged us to think about the complexity in digital systems and how they affect our everyday lives. We created a better understanding of the underlying infrastructures that we are surrounded by - physically and digitally. :::spoiler Bibliography Choi, Taeyoon. (n.d.). Handmade computer workshop. Taeyoon Choi. Retrieved September 20, 2021, from http://taeyoonchoi.com/poetic-computation/handmade-computers/handmade-computer/. Kaufmann, Mareile, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, J. Peter Burgess, and Ann Rudinow Sætnan. “Data criticality.” STS Encounters-DASTS working paper series 11, no. 1 (2020): 227-254 Kerby, Natalie. ‘Episode 4: Data & Infrastructure (with Laura Forlano & Ranjit Singh)’. Public Books (blog), 7 June 2021. https://www.publicbooks.org/episode-4-data-infrastructure/ Thylstrup, Nanna Bonde. The politics of mass digitization. MIT Press, 2018. The Trials, Tribulations, and Transformations of Google Books pp. 37-55 ::: ___ # MiniX006 08-Oct-2021 [Organizing web data - workshop 3] What’s the difference of reading a website digitally and a book physically? What’s the difference in terms of infrastructure (such as the concepts of page, hyperlinks, file arrangement, reading, writing and organizational tools, etc)? What new questions you want to ask after reading the assigned readings? - consume data - web seems infinite compared to books, where you can see the end - physicality (touch) - edit :::spoiler literature ☛ Helmond, Anna. (2013). The algorithmization of the hyperlink. Computational Culture, (3). ☛ A short one - Robertson, Craig. (2021). “File.” Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for Big Data. Thylstrup, N. B., Agostinho, D., Ring, A., D’Ignazio, C., & Veel, K. (Eds.). MIT Press, pp. 241-247 (on AU e-library) ☛ A short one (more for casual/practical reading with the focus on markdown) - Tenen, Dennis, and Grant Wythoff. ‘Sustainable Authorship in Plain Text Using Pandoc and Markdown’. Edited by Fred Gibbs. The Programming Historian, no. 3 (19 March 2014). https://doi.org/10.46430/phen0041. & Why You Should and Should Not use Markdown by Peter Conrad Suggested readings: ☛ Robertson, Craig. “Learning to File: Reconfiguring Information and Information Work in the Early Twentieth Century.” Technology and Culture, vol. 58 no. 4, 2017, p. 955-981. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/tech.2017.0110. ☛ Sollfrank, Cornelia & Soon, Winnie. Fix my Code. EECLECTIC, 2021. (the short chapter/conversation on Service Not Available, free download here) ::: ___ # MiniX005 01-Oct-2021 [Web Choreographies - workshop 2] Can you imagine what is web choreographies? Research a little bit about Joana Chicau and her works, and how would you describe her artistic practice and research methods? :::spoiler literature ☛ short video watching on Joana’s work: Tango for us Two/ Too. & < all_nerves_on_the_universe.html > ☛ Zehle, Soenke. (2015) “Scaling our senses: Type in motion between sentient semiospheres and a semiotics of intensities” in The act of reading. Nathan Jones & Sam Skinner (eds). Liverpool/London: Torque Editions, pp. 239-264 [have this in mind, think of the web and network as a space and the focus is algorithmic culture. Also this may be relevant to see what it means by type in motion in practice] ☛ Forsythe, William. Choreographic Objects. Web. n.d. ::: ___ # MiniX004 24-Sep-2021 [Data and Code] What’s the relation between code, big data and platforms? Do you consider Joana’s Moll has used some of the approaches and perspectives of critical code studies (see Marino’s text)? If you have to discuss the methodology of critical code studies with methods like coding and making, code reading, and code interpretation, think about how would you understand/analyze the artwork “The Hidden Life of an Amazon User” differently (when compare with three others short blurbs by Jussi Parikka, Jara Rocha and Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Bro Pold)? What are the opportunities and potentials of code-related methods? :::spoiler literature ☛ Marino, Mark. Critical Code Studies. MIT Press, 2020. (pp.1-35 - introduction) ☛ Explore the artwork “The Hidden life of an Amazon User” by Joana Moll (2019) [explore also means to understand the author and her background, interest and perspectives] ☛ Read the three short texts associated with the artwork: 1. Working for Systems that Do Not Do the Work by Jussi Parikka 2. The Courier Bag Praxis of Friction by Jara Rocha 3. a.username? – Plotted by Amazon.com by Christian Ulrik Andersen & Søren Bro Pold Sugested Reading: ☛ Soon, Winnie & Cox, Geoff. Aesthetic Programming: A Handbook of Software Studies. Open Humanities Press, 2020. (Preface) ☛ Ratto, Matt, Sara Ann Wylie, and Kirk Jalbert. “Introduction to the special forum on critical making as research program.” The information society 30, no. 2 (2014): 85-95. ::: ___ # MiniX003 17-Sep-2021 [Datafication and Digitalization] **What interests you in the readings?** When talking about the assigned reading, we found it interesting how digitalization in Denmark has in some aspects been slow. Just looking at the last 1-2 years so many elements have become digitalized, but it took a pandemic for it to happen. Furthermore, we found it interesting that it took a private company to push the government to digitalize things such as our health insurance card and driver’s license. It is possible that this push came from the success of the Corona app. This success showed how society is ready for digitalization and the benefits it comes with. In the Mejias and Couldry’s text, they argue that corporations are the main actors in the datafication process and that in most countries the government are the stakeholders - and thereby benefit from it. In Denmark fx the government hired an external partner to create the official COVID-19 tracking app for the public. The app tracks and systematically collects that data about the whereabouts of the user and alarms the user of potential exposure to the virus. In the media there was a lot of debate and speculation about how the collected data were being used and the looming possibility of the data being misused. **What’s the relations between mass digitalization and datafication?** The Nanna Thylstrup text (The Politics of Mass Digitalization), presents Digitalization and the impact it has on society. She explains the concept of digitization which is the process of transforming information from an analogue to digital format, so computers can store, process, and transmit the information. It is a straightforward process, which has been automated in many cases. The automated process of digitization has led to a more digitalized society, where our social life, culture, and businesses are reconfigured around digital technologies. In Mejias and Couldry’s text Datafication (2019), the authors make clear that datafication is much more than just converting material objects like books, in the Thylstrup text, into a digital format. It is understood as the quantification of human life through digital information - often with an economic value. The datafication that happens in human lives has major social consequences and it is becoming a new accepted way to understand social behavior. Both texts look at data from two different perspectives. Thylstrup discusses a broader societal perspective, the politics of digitalization and the legal challenges of it. Mejias and Couldry focus on datafication, both on how the data is collected, processed, and stored but also the processes of value generation. This includes monetization, state control, cultural production etc. ###### Group 5 (Kathrine, Laura, Nina and Amalie) :::spoiler Literature ☛ Thylstrup, Nanna Bonde. The politics of mass digitization. MIT Press, 2019. (The Trials, Tribulations, and Transformations of Google Books pp.37-55) - available in e-lib ☛ Mejias, Ulises A. and Nick Couldry. “Datafication”. Internet Policy Review 8.4 (2019). Web. 16 Feb. 2021. https://policyreview.info/concepts/datafication ::: ___ # MiniX002 10-Sep-2021 [Data Materiality] **Based on the one-bit data and computer workshop, try relating the hands-on activity (the way you engage with materials) to Dorish’s notion of materiality or Lupton’s notion of becoming-with data (the practice-theory articulation). What is the materialities of data, sensory wiring & physical computing? How’s the materiality of the digital shapes the cultural experience?** I relate this topic to our workshop with Nikolaj: “one-bit computing”, where we had hands-on activity (tangible) and engaged with the materials. I worked with technology hands-on by engaging with the materials. - Reflection with the materials (Schön) We built 1-bit data units which can only store 2 different values: 0 or 1. The Dourish text is about bit packing and representational materialities in digital systems. He shows images that help understand the concept of bits and bytes. **Data can be materialized in two ways - through a physical form or in a digital aspect where they are materialized in a cultural form** - Dourish Personal data is an extension for the body and self (Lupton). It is normative. We are so used to being sorrounded by technology. Personal attachment to technology and personal data - ex. music apps and exercise app. We rely and build our life by looking at our data. Regarding Data activism (Lupton): most people are aware about the fact that they are being tracked and that personal data can be misused or given/sold without consent. Our personal data is **currency** for **free** services (Google and Facebook). :::spoiler Literature ☛ Dourish, Paul. The stuff of bits: An essay on the materialities of information. MIT Press, 2017. (Introduction: Information as Material) ☛ Lupton, Deborah. ‘How Do Data Come to Matter? Living and Becoming with Personal Data’. Big Data & Society 5, no. 2 (July 2018): 205395171878631. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951718786314. ::: ___ # MiniX001 03-Sep-2021 [Data Culture] **How are you interacting with data? Based on the first week assigned readings, reflect on what is new to you (or something you haven’t thought of)? Discuss why do we need to understand data (critically)?** *Clue (app):* I use this app to track and see my monthly cycle. This relates to organizing my life and when it comes to planning/preparing - for example when going on holiday. Interacting with data: * Contract and trade-off * I give it data and the app provides me with data about me * I can modify what I share and has shared in the past Reflection & discussion: * Who has access to my data? * Critical thinking and questioning the use of data. What are the creators doing with the data that I provide? * On the other hand, I chose to provide them with my data wilingly. I give "them" access to my personal information. * But it's a very helpful app. The app helps me to understand my own health - and women's health in general. * Culture impact by women being more educated on women's health including their own *Dublin (experience):* When I lived in Dublin, I had some issues that I did not expect in relation to my ability to exist in a new country. Interacting with data: * To get my paycheck from my job, I had to have a bank account - to have a bank account, I had to have an address - to have an address, I had to be able to pay rent from my paycheck Reflection & discussion: * In relation to the podcast “Episode 4: Data & Infrastructure (with Laura Forlano & Ranjit Singh)”: Laura Forlano mentioned the political action to help the homeless in New York by helping them get the phone numbers that are needed to get help. *Additional thoughts* - Data recycle: * Twitter - old screenshots of tweets that are deleted being used to prove a point or to "cancel" for example a public person for having tweeted something long time ago. If the original tweet (if real) has been deleted - Is the tweet valid, when appearing as a screenshot? * Proces of data :::spoiler Literature ☛ (podcast) Bellonby, Diana. ‘Episode 4: Data & Infrastructure (with Laura Forlano & Ranjit Singh)’. Public Books (blog), 7 June 2021. https://www.publicbooks.org/episode-4-data-infrastructure/. ☛ Kaufmann, Mareile, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, J. Peter Burgess, and Ann Rudinow Sætnan. “Data criticality.” STS Encounters-DASTS working paper series 11, no. 1 (2020): 227-254. ☛ Baack, Stefan. ‘Datafication and Empowerment: How the Open Data Movement Re-Articulates Notions of Democracy, Participation, and Journalism’. Big Data & Society 2, no. 2 (1 December 2015): 205395171559463. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951715594634. :::