Reading 4 - Franki Abraham

Alright, TMI time: I own a lace-up corset. Granted!--I purchased it for a risqué nun's costume this past Halloween but still... I own it and it lends itself to this post. 

Now, unfortunately (or fortunately) Greencastle does not have a costume and/or lingerie shop established within it's tiny self-respecting town and I wanted, no, needed a corset to make my costume the most legitimate Sexy Nun costume ever. So, to the internet! I found a corset, purchased it, and it arrived to my sorority step about four days later.

But little did I know that my simple "sexy black corset" engine search would be the catalyst of a long and embarrassing relationship between my internet and I. You see, I did not know that by searching for such a specific item, that my "wants" would be logged away deep into the loins of Google and used against me. Suddenly, every advertisement, banner and pop-up after that search was promoting 50% off garter sales, "LAST CHANCE" $20 honeymoon slips and the promiscuous like. Any day of the week, the sides of my Facebook would be detailed in carefully positioned models displaying the skimpiest of lingerie.

My life was lacy trimmed hell for a good four months. That is until I searched for Adventure Time BMO Flask. But I digress.

The point of this story is that this was my first saucy encounter with algorithmic cyber-capitalism that is now the internet. I could not understand how or why my internet was so insistent in showing me the ghost of purchases past but now I see that it was because I created my own specific internet environment with the click of a link and now Google has no idea what I truly want. But this is how the Internet is involving itself in our daily lives, Sandra Alvaro says in her article: "The Power of Algorithms: How software formats the culture".

"Algorithms also process data generated by our online actions to suggest what books we should buy on Amazon, what videos we should watch on YouTube, and to determine the advertisements we will be shown on all these platforms."

&

"The examples mentioned here illustrate how information on the Internet is accessed and indexed automatically, based on data drawn from our online behavior. Our actions generate a flow of messages that modify the inextricable mass of interconnected data, subtly changing our shared memory." 

So it is my fault and mine alone that I am still receiving requests as to what shade of red I want my waist to be cinched into. However, I find it incredibly fascinating that this is not the only way algorithms are being used currently. I have also been exposed to the annoying yet addicting online "game" that is...

Cleverbot.

Which isn't always all that clever. But it does have it's moments and is a prime example of the artificial intelligence being consistently created through these processing algorithms. 

Reading 4 - Truc Le

(source)

In the article “THE POWER OF ALGORITHMS: HOW SOFTWARE FORMATS THE CULTURE”, (2014), Sandra Alvaro reviewed the roles and impacts of algorithms on today’s Information Age. Alvaro analyzed the positive outcomes of popular websites’ algorithms such as Facebook’s, Twitter’s, and Amazon’s etc. However, according to Alvaro, although algorithms help organizing mass data and fetching the right information to the right people, they can hinder people from discovering new sites that are not related to their internet history. Therefore, internet users stand a risk of being unconsciously limited to seeing only familiar topics rather than being able to discover the internet’s diversity.

I agree with Alvaro on the information-distributing power of algorithms. If looking at algorithms in an artistic perspective, I think that an algorithm is a kind of art too. A good artwork is likely to have followed many artistic laws in order to be able to create specific emotions on its audience. Algorithms, too, have to follow a strict set of logical orders in order to achieve specific outputs that will satisfy its users. These outputs can be suggestions of information that might interest the users (like Facebook’s friend suggestions and Youtube’s video suggestions). They can also be digital art pieces which utilize algorithms to create stunning data visualization programs. However, although I agree that algorithms can prevent people from discovering new things, I think that there are ways to cease this prevention. For example, Youtube programmers can rewrite the site’s algorithms so that a couple of new clips from unfamiliar categories will appear in the “What to watch” suggestion box each time the user log in. Programmers can put some randomness in the suggestion contents so that users will be exposed to a variety of topics that are not related to those they saw before.

Alvaro concluded her article emphasizing that the public should be acknowledged about algorithms in order to recognize and break out of algorithms’ mundanity. I agree with her, but I think that programmers have to be the first ones to be acknowledged about this mundanity in order to get rid of it as it will take a long time for the teachings of algorithms to reach the mass public.

Reading 4 - Lauren Arnold

While I was reading “The Power of Algorithms: How Software Formats the Culture,” I began to really re-question my own identities I display for myself on my social networking. First, I realize that I did not really understand that the only way the Internet can process all of the information that we as users put out there is through the “process of algorithms.” Algorithms are defined as what make a “key role in decision-making.” Essentially these are what control our media. In my “Communications Culture and Identity” class, we are looking at how “Muted GroupTheory” is a discussion that describes how those with popular opinions tend to shut out the group with the less popular opinion and the opinion that goes along with it. In the same way, I feel like those on the Internet who do not post the opinion that is the most popular (or posted the most) is not caught by the Internet’s algorithms the most and; therefore, these kinds of people have their opinions muted as well. This led me to question a lot of ethics behind the Internet usage and those in power behind the Internet’s intentions. Just as the article suggested, a “humanist perspective is necessary to understand how it all works.”

The part of the article that caught my attention the most was the statement, “our actions generate a flow of messages that modify the inextricable mass of interconnected data, subtly changing our shared memory.” This message was incredibly scary to me. I realized that every single piece of information I share on the Internet was potentially not actually mine to claim. Which can become a contradictory statement in itself, because we all like to view our social networking sites as forms of creating our own identities. To think that we are not the sole manipulators of what we expose of ourselves is terrifying, and honestly makes me feel like I am a vessel of the capitalist society. As I share one idea, it becomes exploited into some other form of a “meme,” and then these memes make up huge cultural depictions of popular interests. I do not think that this is fair and is also not a very accurate way to depict ourselves through cultures. I think it becomes exploitive of those in culture who are already surviving within survival of the fittest, and again muting out others through dynamics similar to the “Muted Group Theory,” I discussed earlier.

I wish that there were a more honest alternative way to gather data and not make it so manipulative towards customers in these social networking sites. I think that we could receive many more honest pieces of work from others, not so much pieces that are copied.
Here is an image I found on the internet describing how algorithms work in today's society. I disagree with parts of the image as it states "experiment," I do not thing that the algorithms on the Internet ever experiment the outcomes. They may experiment the coding behind it, but I doubt the affects as much as needed.

Reading 4 - Lauren Owensby

Since algorithms dictate most of
our online activity, it becomes difficult
to branch beyond our cone-like scope
of expressed interests. (Image Source)

"But when algorithms manage information, they also reconstruct relationships and connections, they encourage preferences and produce encounters, and end up shaping our contexts and our identities. Online platforms thus become automated socio-technical environments." - The Power of Algorithms: How software formats the culture

"[W]hen algorithms analyse the data compiled from our earlier actions they are strongly dependent on the past, and this may tend to maintain existing structures and limit social mobility, hindering connections outside of existing clusters of interests and contacts." - The Power of Algorithms: How software formats the culture

Do algorithms harm diversity? The nature of algorithms in social media and search engines causes 1) less diversity in proposed connections while 2) motivating the user to continue connecting further than they might if those algorithms were not in place. For example:

Person 1: Joins a dog-lovers group. Randomly messages other dog-lovers for 3 weeks. Leaves group after 3 weeks.
Person 2: Joins a dog-lovers feed (tumblr, rss blog, etc). Stays online much longer, is exposed to more dog-lover-centric posts, becomes more aware of the needs of blind people, finds the local animal shelter, decides to volunteer there, becomes aware of anti-animal fighting efforts...

While the first scenario may produce more randomized contacts and interaction, but the motivating factor of "following the crowd" or "following the dot" of a person's interest probably exposes them to a greater diversity of information in the long run. If students still had to do research by finding books in the library, would nearly as much research be done? That is the motivational difference between the two environments. While the exploration through algorithm-generated suggestions is not random, I believe it has a longer life and exposes the user to a diverse range of content and contacts in the long run.

Reading 4 - Panpan Deng

While I was reading the article: the Power of Algorithms: How software formats the culture, there was one line saying that "In a global market where enormous amounts of data are recorded and a rapid response rate gives you an edge over the competition, algorithms play a key role in analysis and decision-making."(Alvaro) made me think of the recent missing jet incident. The false report of the plane form the Malaysia Airline not only waste tons of the money but also risked all those passengers lives. 

When the author was talking about the definition of Algorithms, he or she said that "An algorithm is a finite set of instructions applied to an input, in a finite number of steps, in order to obtain an output – a means by which to perform calculations and process data automatically."(Alvaro) When I first encountered the HTML editing, I had no idea that those beautiful webs were all nothing but lines of data. However, if I just simply copy DePauw's website's original code and paste it on a Word document, it would not mean anything. Where magical things happen were the softwares. If data are like the paint, I would like to say the softwares are the paper. Different kinds of paint are paired with different kinds of papers. 

I do not know when do "numbers" mean so much to us now. Nowadays, especially in teenagers, "zero like" on ones' newest post can trouble he or she for days. Since when did those numbers reflect one's popularity, I really don't know.  Nevertheless, before Facebook, before Twitter, there was no way of "measuring" one's popularity. One could not say that "I'm the most popular people because I get the highest score." or "I'm the most popular people because everybody says hi to me everyday." Now, with several looks at someone's posts from friends or the number of likes per post, we can easily tell who has higher popularity. So could we say it was those social network which formated this unique culture? 

Project 3-Lauren Arnold

Here is the edit of my project (It needs to be opened in Chrome)
I added more obvious edits of footage from the Selena Gomez celebrity clip as well as at the end I added more wedding clips from the Bachelor and Full House.

Exercise 3 Revision - Lauren Owensby

I added several more clips and changed the location of others, as well as added a few songs.