Posted on

Digital public: looking at what algorithms actually do

‘Ever have that feeling where you’re not sure if you’re awake or dreaming? (Neo – The Matrix).

It is equally interesting and terrifying what algorithms can gather from the inadvertent browser or user of social media who spends a second more hovering over an image or as soon as the ‘Like ‘ button is pressed.

What would it mean to developers and advertisers to make their algorithms more accessible? How can the informed user be more aware of what data is being collected from him/her and to what purpose? Are the hidden machinations behind most of today’s platforms kept hidden because of competitors or is there a darker reason? Groups like Algorithm Watch advocate transparency when it comes to the use of algorithms while studying the effect of algorithms.

Since ‘algorithms will play an ever-increasing role in the exercise of power’ (Kitchin, 2017), it is vital that a code of ethics is in place both to protect the user but also to allow researchers access to some of the workings behind complex algorithms in an effort to study the ramifications and effects they have on the public, thereby ascertaining how  ‘carefully crafted fictions’ they are (Gillespie, cited in Kitchin, 2017) and avoid the spread of fake news mentioned below:

from Diigo https://ift.tt/2E4tg5u
via IFTTT

References:

Kitchin. R., (2017) Thinking critically about and researching algorithms,
Information, Communication & Society, 20:1, 14-29, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2016.1154087

Posted on

Liked on YouTube: What is Real Time – Analog Time vs Digital Time

What is Real Time – Analog Time vs Digital Time
https://ift.tt/2S2MtJ9 An excerpt of an interview with Mark E Goodman and Sharon Aby recorded on February 9, 2010. In this segment, Sharon talks about the difference between Analog Time and Real Time. She suggests that for business today, the only time that they have is now. Businesses are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can watch the entire interview at https://ift.tt/2RCtNRC
via YouTube https://youtu.be/YiRhVhZ5FGk

Although this short video is intended to illustrate the way ‘classic’ businesses operate in contrast to online shopping, I believe that the concept of analog (sequential) time in contrast to digital/real-time (in which there is only now) can also be applied to education. The idea of following sessions from start to finish as the teacher presents information and work sequentially may soon become a paradigm of the past when confronted with the possibilities of multitasking offered by modern technology.

 

Posted on

Week 2- From philosophical ideals to practicality.

The above is an image which I had included in one of my posts during IDEL and which seems to depict one of the risks of mass-produced educational programs through technology as it tends towards the ‘universalism’ described by Knox (2015) which can also give rise to the idea that the goal of education is the creation of rational thinking.

This week has brought me closer to the philosophies behind the use of technology. The hopeful views promoted by posthumanism and the ideals supporting transhumanist trends are thrilling, to say the least. On another note, there are still those, like Bayne(2015) who advocate towards the importance of the social aspect in the integration of technology within education.

Bayne’s(2015) view that ‘Reducing a field of such complexity and importance to the terminology and limitations of TEL’ while ‘positioning the ‘material’ and technological aspect as separate from and subordinate to social practice’, thereby negating the entirety of the human, is somehow vaguely reminiscent of some of Rosi Braidotti’s perspectives on technology in a posthuman world. The call for technology as a solution to various things (amongst them education) or as an upgrade for those who can afford it, often stops short from addressing other human maladies that could be caused by technologies such as poverty, the environmental damage caused by the same materials used for manufacturing technologies that are short-lived and ‘the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture’ (Harraway, 2007) while a general sense of alienation seems to permeate throughout.

While technology has, and still will, give much to the world, nothing can be gained by demolishing one world to build another. Although we do live in a world calibrated by digital time, in which the past seems long gone and the future always at hand it is only by bringing the fruits of the labour of those before us and merge them with the modern that a holistic ideal can be truly achieved.

Bayne, S., (2015). What’s the matter with ‘technology-enhanced learning’? Learning, Media and Technology, 40(1), pp. 5-20, https://doi.org.ezproxy. is.ed.uk/10.1080/17439884.2014.915851

Harraway, D. (2007). A Cyborg Manifesto. Bell, David; Kennedy, Barbara M (eds), The cybercultures reader pp.34-65, London: Routledge.

Knox, J., (2015). Critical Education and Digital Cultures. Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer, pp. 1-6. Available at: https://doi.org/10.0.1007/978-981-287-532-7_124-1.