Readers – Page 5 – Data Culture

Digital Humanities and a New Definition of Knowing

Klein proposes the viewpoint that digital humanities requires one to sit back and analyze the extent to which we are knowledgeable about certain information. A deeper analysis of Jefferson’s slave James Emmings whose true identity is no fully known leads her to issue a call to action for digital humanity practitioners to go out into the world and uncover the information that has yet to be found. She believes that no longer can we be satisfied with knowing, but now we must also ponder how we know things to be true, their origins.

While Klein does bring up a very good point, I believe that one must question the completeness of her claims. Why is now the time for digital humanities to theorize their claims? Yes we have more technology that can aid in deeper research of how we know information, but if this practice was as necessary as she deems it to be, would it not have begun earlier? We are able to find out trivial things, such as Hemmings being educated, but this does not do much to help mankind as a whole in the future.

I would agree to the statement that digital humanities will reveal much information, but I cannot help but wonder how that information will be put to use. If we as of now do not fully “know” certain subjects well, when will we get to that point as a collective society? Is it worth it to swim in unclear waters in search of how we know information if we do not know what fully “knowing” consists of? It seems somewhat pointless that Klein would state our inability to fully have understanding of a certain subject, without defining full understanding. Eventually a limit on how much we know will be set, but until that time, the concrete purpose and usefulness of digital humanities will remain incomplete.

Klein, Laura.”The Image of Absence: Archival Silence, Data Visualization, and James Hemings.” Duke University Press, 2013.Print

Beginning to See

James Hemings was lost for the past 200 years. James represents the many who were easily left out of textbooks. As a slave and cook to Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, James had been forgotten. Even in “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson” database which has over 25,000 entries, one could perform a search for James Heming and find no results. What allowed us to find James is advanced computational linguistics and data visualization. Through these techniques we can begin to peel back the mystery of James Heming and to discover him through the writings of Thomas Jefferson. These techniques allows historians to build profiles on indiviuals who left little to no evidence of their existence. Like dark matter we now know these individuals existed, but all we really have is a ghost of their existence.

What I find most interesting about these techniques is the fact that you can build a profile about an individual based on someone else’s paper trail. I find this intriguing because our profiles are created by our paper trails, but per say what if one never used the internet or left a paper trail. could we use say our parents, our siblings, our best bestfriends data and paper trails to create profiles about these modern day ghosts? Lauren Klein’s piece truly shows the power of data technology and how transparent our identities are in this modern world.

Organic Eyes, Electronic Glasses

In his analysis of surveillance, The Electronic Eye, David Lyon begins by noting that computer scientists back in the 1970’s were already beginning to imagine how plausible Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four might be. An equal amount of time has passed since Lyon’s analysis, and time would seem to further confirm his suspicion that increasing computing capability is birthing an entirely new surveillance paradigm.

Lyon eludes to his thesis that a panoptic framework, derived practically from Foucault but originally from Bentham, goes further in articulating the modern multivalence of surveillance than an Orweillian one by noting that, “the old dichotomy between decentralization and centralization is itself now questionable”. On face, such an observation might soothe an Orwell, who feared the emergence of a massive state surveillance apparatus, but pulling the string of decentralization further unravels an arguably more terrifying ball of yarn.

Rather than being dominated by a carefully controlled and maintained surveillance state, society today is impelled “forward” (if we grant teleology to technology) by a hairy amalgam of economically coordinated actors that realize gains through strategic information gleaned from the firehose of data that humanity is pumping out. Google, FaceBook, and many others large and small thrive off of a business model that positions users as products for advertisers to consume. Indeed the state is more capable of surveilling, but so are its citizens. One shudders to think how well Orwell described the Microsoft Kinect, which in its second iteration is now capable of determining a user’s heart rate and mood by looking at their skin alone.

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.

Most tellingly of the prescience of the panopticon, the state doesn’t have to force citizens to have one of these boxes in their homes. Rather, in 2015, people willingly go out and spend $500 to set up surveillance boxes themselves.

Continue reading Organic Eyes, Electronic Glasses

The United States’ Surveillance

Constantly, we are monitored and observed by the United States government. The government has a complex surveillance system that controls the flow of information and data through the usage of flagging people and intercepting communication messages through the internet or postal service. In Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, one can see a government have total control over a society through surveillance. The government utilizes electronic media to manipulate the citizens through the censoring of information. The censorship of information involved destroying knowledge that existed and creating new information to control the population. They eliminated any information that would disagree with the way the government rules, since it could fuel or potentially start a revolution. Also, the government “kept those watched subordinate by means of uncertainty” (Lyon 60). In other words, the citizens always had a possibility that someone was watching them or reading their minds. They had a certain pressure to be always be in line with the government because they never knew when Big Brother was watching.

Furthermore, the surveillance utilized in Orwell’s book is similar to how our government controls the flow of information today. The United States government utilizes the identification of code or key words that alerts the government of potential threats. Also, the government can listen in on phone calls and intercept text messages to get rid of potential threats. In addition, the government has a detailed account of every single citizen through the categorization of search engines. Clearly, the government in Orwell’s book is very similar to our government today.

David Lyon, “From Big Brother to the Electronic Panopticon” from The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society (1994)

Formidable Dataveillance

Dataveillance has been an ordinary technology that is mostly used to trace personal trading records or economic crimes. Lyon compares dataveillance with the ubiquitous surveillance in Nineteen Eighty-Four and I see a lot of aspects they have in common. Let’s assume a person uses credit card frequently in daily life. He pays the check in a restaurant, buys flowers for his date or refills his car on a vacation elsewhere. Anything he does can be retrieved from the data of time and location in the records. Although the surveillance system provides protection for the customers, “Big Brother” is indeed watching you. After all, the Panopticon is not so different from the ‘Dystopia’ of Nineteen Eighty-Four. They both involve“the theme of exploiting uncertainty as a means of controlling subordinates.” (62) My uncle works in the Department of Internet in China. He told me that within one minute, he could pull out all records of a person in one year, including phone call, bank deal, utility bill, and browsing history. It echoes Lyon’s perspective that ubiquitous electronic surveillance has become true and has profound impact in our daily life.

Beside what we often consider as surveillance like dataveillance which comes down upon us from high-level inspection organizations, media, entertainment industry and social media provides opportunity for everybody to be one of the inspectors, just like the Panopticon. Two weeks ago, a Chinese young actor who has become famous few years ago had an affair. One week after the news, he published a letter of apology on his personal Weibo account in which he said he almost collapsed mentally. The formidable pressure is from the fans and media. People have become the Big Brother who constantly monitor others through the eyes of internet.

The electronic surveillance is not only ubiquitous but also omniscient. While we were exploring Google’s Ngram Viewer, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Google advertisement. The Cloud Data technology enables Google to put on the commercials that most interest me. They make decision based on all activities bound to my Google account. Recently, the most popular Chinese mobile social networking app WeChat, operated by Tencent, decided to run commercials to its eleven hundred million users with Cloud Data technology.

1421889697_501 — 3 Years since published; 1.12 thousand million users; 4.4 hundred million monthly active users; 20 languages; NO.1 social media.

WeChat: to know more, click here.

Lyon, David. “From Big Brother to the Electronic Panopticon.” The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1994. 57-79. Print.

The Opportunity Cost of Surveilance

In “From Big Brother to the Electric Panopticon,” David Lyon analyzes two perceptions of surveillance and prompts the question of how such theories relate to the present day. Lyon’s defines George Orwell’s “Dystopia” as the idea of a defined yet veiled form of observation, one where “those under surveillance were unsure whether there was any time they could relax” (60). The “Panopticon,” on the other hand, also involves observation but centers around inspection. Individuals under surveillance become aware of external viewing to the point that they begin to inspect themselves they are “bearers of their own surveillance” (66). Through modern processes of data collection—from license plates to Internet searches—Lyons suggests that we have become increasingly aware of surveillance in our everyday habits. The developed world has reached the point where “Dystopia” and the “Panopticon” have become realities.

Few, if any, people can prevent surveillance in the twenty-first century; I argue that we accept our residence in an observation-dominant world in exchange for connectivity. The same technologies that blur “distinctions between private and public life” (71) simultaneously bring individual public and private lives together. Facebook, for example, offers “friends” (no matter how close) the opportunity to share photographs and articles, play games, and message. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented on the networks his platform creates in his January 1, 2015 update, declaring, “may all our efforts make the world a smaller, warmer, happier, and more connected place this year.” As one interacts to a higher degree with Facebook (and makes his or her world “smaller”), the social media platform’s surveillance increases. Instagram’s ability to offer “suggested” account to follow based on one’s current follow list (in addition to friends I follow National Parks, outdoors photographers, and Boston sports teams—and receive very relevant suggestions) highlights its ability to cater to personal preference, but also its power of surveillance. It’s inevitable that we experience the surveillance theories outlined in Lyon’s article. We now must determine what we’re willing to receive in exchange.

Mark Zuckerberg's first post in 2015 highlighted his desire to increase connectivity — Mark Zuckerberg’s first post in 2015 highlighted his desire to increase connectivity

Instagram has the ability to suggest pages very similar to my interests

Lyon, David. “From Big Brother to the Electronic Panopticon.” The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1994. 57-79. Print.

Dataveillance, a step past Orwell

Much like Winston Smith, we are all very aware that we are being surveyed in one way or another. Every time we use the internet or a credit card, data pertinent to our lives is automatically entered into massive databases under control of both government and private agencies. I even know several people who keep tape over the webcam on their computers, making the comparisons to Nineteen Eighty-Four and its two-way television even more clear and relevant. However, Nineteen Eighty-Four‘s model of “Big Brother” falls short of modeling the current surveillance of American society. One such weaknesses of Orwell’s model is its lack of covertness. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, citizens were made well aware of their own surveillance. And while today we are very well aware that the government and other agencies are keeping watch, the day to day ways in which we are surveyed are often not even realized. A subtle Google search may seem insignificant enough, but every search can easily be cataloged into massive databases accessible by the powerful few. It wasn’t even until Edward Snowden’s leaks that this type of surveillance has become common household knowledge or discussion. Therefore, we could be classified as much more naive than the citizens of Oceania with regards to surveillance.

Dataveillance is a word which captures the spirit of today’s massive surveillance efforts. The term suggests not only a visual surveillance such as Orwell envisioned, but a surveillance of data in general. The thought that massive databases which collect wide varieties of different data types are now being used to characterize and model our lives is quite sobering, and a reality which we’ve already witnessed in this class.

Malleability of Data

In two weeks of Data Culture, we’ve wrestled with the meaning of “data,” debating whether data are merely fodder for larger arguments or potent enough to make a definitive argument on their own. David Lyon, in his 1994 book The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society, posits that electronic data are too malleable to simply be taken at face value.

Lyon employs the term “dataveillance” to describe the modern methods of surveillance, which take the form of big data and supercomputers, rendering the Big Brother-style video surveillance of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four unnecessary in the modern world. With extensive information on file about the demographics, histories, and consumer preferences of a population, governments and corporations both appear to have the details of the populace at their fingertips—a frightening thought, for sure. But Lyon counters that data’s malleability makes “confidence in the reliability of the record somewhat naïve” (59). For one, data stored by computers can easily be erased without being conspicuous in their absence. As a result, the “electronic trail” of data doesn’t necessarily tell its entire story. With audio and video surveillance, however, broken links are impossible to ignore—consider the missing eighteen minutes of the Watergate tapes. Additionally, Lyon brings up the issue of identity theft; I may not be able to impersonate my grandmother well enough to fool surveillance video, but I could certainly impersonate her while shopping online if given the right data.

The lesson, it seems, is that data can’t be fully trusted: not seeing means not (necessarily) believing. Therefore, it follows that “dataveillance” fails to embody Bentham’s original Panopticon structure, since the central authority has an unclear view of what its “inmates” (i.e. citizens or clientele) are truly up to. Those who fear that big data has ushered Big Brother into our daily lives ought to relax, because numbers only tell part of the story.

Lyon, David. “From Big Brother to the Electronic Panopticon.” The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1994. 57-79. Print.