Author: sjanetos

http://www.fullscreen360.com/times-square
Primary Source: a 360 degree view of Times Square

In Classics 20, Discovering Romans (taught by Professor Johannson), we often use the Roman Stimulation Model that is mentioned in Favro’s “Meaning in Motion” article. It is an interesting supplement to the lecture. Some of it’s best uses in class were to show the route of the Roman Funeral March and the typical Victory Parade that generals took upon returning to Rome after war. It has also been used to model the course of battles that took place within the city. However, I sometimes wonder weather Prof Johannson is over eager to use the tool- it doesn’t really mean anything when used in conjecture with one of Castillo’s poems, or to show where Roman theater productions “may have” taken place.
While reading the article, I wondered what other classes I have taken may have benefitted from such a visualization tool. I think Dinosaurs and their Relatives (EPS SCI 17) would have been a good one. The class focused on the rise and fall of dinosaurs, theories of evolution, and changing lands during historic times. Rather than a stimulation where you can explore the lands, however, a tool showing the change in one area over the decades would have been good. For example, showing the land before, during, and after a flash flood or fire would have contributed to our understanding of migration and the formation of sedentary rock. This is also a problem we often run into in Classics 20: the time frame for the stimulation is stagnant, and sometimes does not align with our purposes. The professor may show us where a building was, but the stimulation models a time after that building was destroyed. The tool, although interesting and usually effective, would benefit from showing a greater range of time periods.
This also reminds me of a famous New York attraction- a 3D tour of Times Square. You sit in seats and are surrounded on all sides by a view of the landmark. The seats rock in place back and forth, side to side, as the visualization takes you through the city. There is also fake wind that blows at you throughout the tour. It is like being on a roller coaster tour of NYC! The stimulation works so well that some people actually get motion sick on the “ride”. Although this would be a strange thing to implement in a class at UCLA, it is an example of a whole-body experience through a stimulation tool, which uses much of the same technology as the UCLA CVR.

http://tumblr.com

As I was reading through Shneiderman’s “Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design”, I wondered weather these rules were applicable to all websites. One comparative example is Tumblr, which is mostly used by teenagers. One of the things that makes Tumblr valuable is its highly customizable format. Although it is probably not an appropriate platform for a scholarly project, Tumblr is a nice, simple gateway into the cyber world, and the user believes they have complete control over the site. All of Schneider’s points basically hold up except, to same extent, number 1.

Sure, I admit there are icons and word repeated in the official help screen and dashboard literature (the stuff that’s written by the Tumblr staff). We all know the mail icon means message, for example. The quote, photo, and text icons are recognizable as well. It’s in the metadata where Tumblr becomes a veritable mess. Rarely are the hashtags used to classify and make it easy to find a picture. To be honest, it’s only bloggers who are thirsty for followers who use hashtags in the traditional way, for classification and simple retrieval. Most bloggers use the hashtags to comment on a picture they have posted, even talk to themselves about it. For example, no reputable blogger who posts about Harry Styles is going to tag their posts as #HarryStyles #OneDirection #1D. They’re more likely to write “#after all ive done for him #i named your nipples” (http://lust-truth.tumblr.com/post/103429129212/ok-honestly-do-you-see-what-taylor-does-for-all) And you can be sure that the more authoritative the source is, the less trackable their hashtags will be. Metadata gives way to musings, and although these hashtags can be endearing, funny, and overall good material, there is no way you’ll be able to find what you’re really looking for by typing a tag into the Tumblr search bar. In a way, it makes the website more fun and exciting, but I can understand why many people say they don’t “understand” Tumblr in light of these ridiculous tagging practices.

And finally, I’d also like to comment on Shneiderman’s 7th pillar, “Support internal locus of control.” This certainly occurs on Tumblr. Not only are the themes, etc highly customizable, but with Tumblr extensions like x-kit, you can even change the way your dashboard is displayed. You can change certain given labels (for example, you can change every instance of the word “followers” to “chickens” if you so desire (also overwriting the first pillar of consistency). On the site, you are God, and none of the traditional website constraints really apply. This is why Tumblr works so well for some, and is a horror show for others. In this way, most of Schneiderman’s points fall at the feet of the seventh, and there is a hierarchy of what is important as far as usability and site deign. In this example, the internal locus of control comes out on top.

https://www.ivpn.net/internet-censorship/

The above link is a map of internet censorship and restrictions around the world. Every country with data available is depicted in white pink or red (free, partially free, not free) and countries in grey are not clickable as data was not available for these countries.It is an interesting example because while this is a map, it is not used for traditional mapping purposes such as giving directions. It is instead a comment on rights violations that takes the form of a map, like a creative data visualization.

When you click a country a rundown appears of the country’s stats, like population, internet penetration, freedom on the net, obstacles to access and limits on content. These are portrayed with numerical values. Net to these are Yes or No questions which either have a check mark next to them (if this type of violation occurs in the selected country) or an X if the violation does not occur. For example, has a blogger or ICT user been arrested for political or social writings? Is there a law which allows for censorship or punishment? The list goes on. Russia, a semi free internet country, checks yes to these two questions, although it does not block social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube), there is no law to increase surveillance or restrict anonymity, and there has not been a localized or nationwide ICT shutdown. A free country, like the US, has no checkmarks next to these questions, although the sidebar says that 12/40 user rights have been violated and 4/25 obstacles to access. A Not Free country like China has 19/25 obstacles to access and checkmarks next to almost every rights blocking initiative.

Although this is a map, is it a true example of webmapping? According to the anatomy of web map it is not. Although it has a zoom factor, it does not seem like the amount of tiles increase on each level because there are no more details once you zoom in (you can simply see the same countries closer up). There are no vector layers (as these are only applicable in maps that show you how to get form point A to B).Also, it seems that this map has not been updated since 2012 as the Sudan is only one country (South Sudan is not present on this map). It counts as a slippy map, but most of the additional data is housed beneath the map instead of on the map itself. So it is a web map, but perhaps it is more convenient as a data visualization than as a device for planning trips or looking into people’s houses.

For this blog post I originally wanted to find a network showing the relationships of Beat Artists to one another, using the edge “has shared a romantic partner”. Although I had no such luck in this endeavor, I came across Stephanie Posavec’s “Writing Without Words” project, which uses different types of data visualization to “visually represent the rhythm and structure of Kerouac’s literary space, creating works that are not only gorgeous from the point of view of graphic design, but also exhibit scientific rigor and precision in their formulation: meticulous scouring the surface of the text, highlighting and noting sentence length, prosody and themes, Posavec’s approach to the text is not unlike that of a surveyor.”(https://netmap.wordpress.com/tag/jack-kerouac).

The space is Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Part 1. The first branch of the network is chapters, which are broken up into paragraphs, sentences, and words. These are directed edges (sentences can be broken up into words, but words cannot be broken up into sentences). The words are color coded to indicate the theme they correspond to, some of the themes being Social Events & Interaction, Travel, Work & Survival, and Character Sketches.

I interpret this visualization as, broadly, a representation of the themes in Part One of On The Road. It has been broken up further, but it would make the same amount of sense if there was one point in the middle representing this space, with colored lines coming off it representing themes, weighted to show how common each theme is. However, such a network would fail to show the spirit of Kerouac’s work. With the structure Posavec has used, we can also see Kerouac’s writing style and get a sense of the book itself: average paragraph length, chapter length, and sentence structure. Even so, this is a very simple unimodal network.

I was debating weather this project could even be considered a network, as it almost seems too straight forward. But thinking through Weingart’s “Demystifying Networks”, it seems to be applicable. First, the variables are interdependent rather than independent. Second, the relationships can be described with the term of “x is the theme of this paragraph”. The edges are inferred, because other readers could break the themes up in a different ways than Posavec. Not all the nodes are connected, as in not all the words/ sentences relate to the same theme, which makes the network effective.

Prosavec’s network of On the Road Part One is a good example of a digital humanities use for networks because it maps a literary work itself and seeks to capture the spirit of the book without using words.

Primary Source: familywatchdog.us/default.asp

Reading through the Criminal Intent and Old Bailey projects got me interested in the documentation of crime. The nature of the crime, verdict in the trial, or even the behavior of the criminal does not matter, anyone who committed a crime between 1674 and 1913 who was tried at the Old Bailey Courthouse is included in the database. Take the case of Thomas Poddy, who in 1710 was tried for “intent to sodomize” another man. Although the evidence against Poddy was not strong enough for conviction, he is included in the database. However, this cannot really harm Poddy’s life, as he dies many years ago and the availability of this information cannot affect his life in a negative way.

This got me thinking about modern criminal registries. Not only do we have newspaper police logs which are usually available online, we have nationwide criminal registries. In comparison to the Old Bailey, many of these do not include details of the crime committed, which can lead to misconceptions about the criminals one may read about online. I searched for the National Sex Offender registry and was directed to familywatchdog.us/default.asp, a “free service to help you locate sex offenders in your neighborhood”. I plugged in UCLA’s zipcode, 90024. There are two ways you can view the results, on a map which shows the addresses of sex offenders and other types of criminals with boxes which are color coded to indicate the type of crime committed. There are also white boxes, indicating schools and playgrounds, and if you click these you can see offenders who live within 1000 feet of this location and offenders within half a mile. You can also view the results as a list, which gives the name and current address of the offender, with those who are closest to your designated location at the top. There are 8 offenders and 16 non-mappable offenders, which means there is no full address available for the offender, or the map does not recognize the address. Clicking on the list I noticed there are 2 offenders living in 90024, and one who actually has “UCLA” included in his address. H0wever, the type of crime or date of crime is not available for these offenders, anyone who committed a sex crime after 1997 is included in the database, which can lead to unnecessary panic if you see that a sex offender is registered in your area.

In comparison, I searched for my home zip code, 03458, corresponding to my home town in New Hampshire. There are six sex offenders in my neighborhood, and one of them is actually my neighbor! Although of course there are more sex offenders living in Los Angeles, they are simply random names in a sea of thousands of apartment buildings and houses.  Seeing the names of people you know in the sex offender registry is extremely frightening. Although my neighbor’s crime could have occurred long ago and might well not have anything to do with pedophelia or violent assault, it does make me slightly apprehensive about this man. Although I should let his personality speak for itself, seeing him on a sex offender registry changes my opinion about him, and I probably won’t be so keen if my parents want to invite him over for dinner this Thanksgiving.

I had to do a bit of supplementary research on databases this week. I wondered what made databases more important, or even what distinguished them, from archives. Using http://www.archivists.org/archivesmonth/whatisanarchives.pdf, I deduced that an archive contains real sources of information, where a database shows you where you may go to find the information you may require. Of course, data bases are indispensable resources of history. According to http://www.usg.edu/galileo/skills/unit04/primer04_01.phtml a database can be anything from a phone book to US Census Data. They can even be sources of inspiration: in “The World According to Garb” by John Irving, Garp, a writer, gets inspiration for his next book by looking through the White Pages in the phone book. I feel that the Slave Voyages Database might be important in the same way: it is impactful to see the sheer number of names and cases, and even the countries of origin compared to the ports where they disembarked, but the database does not give us the humanizing aspect: the faces behind the names that tell a story. The same goes for the example in the XTF database article, which gives the names of books, authors, publishing cities, but does not necessarily illuminate the reader to what the book may be about.

A database is  the bones of a story, a bare outline that must be fleshed out. The Quantifying Kissinger blog is much more effective in telling the story of Kissinger’s years in government, using audio recordings and “meeting memorabilia” to show not only the dates of the meetings but to tell a tale of a man’s personality in government. On the contrary to the databases mentioned above, this Kissinger database logs real information, instead of simply being a list of titles.

This also makes me think of the US Census Data, which collects information about people like names, race, income, etc. This data is used to “to determine the distribution of Congressional seats to states, to define legislature districts, school district assignment areas and other important functional areas of government, make decisions about what community services to provide” etc ( according to http://www.census.gov/aboutus/). This is another example of a data base being used as a baseline to decide what to do, the actual Census data must be interpreted and expanded upon to achieve the goals of the Census (name and exonomic standing alone will not do much, it is much more meaningful when as many aspects of people’s lives as possible are outlined). Or, going back to my original example, a database can mean more when the reader is able to fill in those cracks for themselves.

This is an image of all the bits and pieces that go into a Macbook computer. It reminds me of the difference between the Plateau People’s Portal and Madrigal’s Netflix exploration. Just as the computer must be built before it can be broken down, a website must be put together before the semantics that make up that website can be revealed.

The difference between creating content and cracking method by which content is created is the difference between building up and breaking down. Thousands of memories and years of history go into creating the background of the Plateau People, just as thousands of directors and actors put together the movies that make up Netflix’s endless categorization. All those moments and all those movies were uploaded meticulously into a data base, then made public for browsing and viewing. Breaking down that content, however, takes just a few people and some really good data recovery software. This can be seen when comparing Madrigal’s “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood” and Washington State University’s “Plateau People’s Web Portal”.

Clicking to the “About” page on the Plateau People’s Web Portal reveals that “tribal administrators, working with their tribal governments, have provided information and their own additional materials to the portal as a means of expanding and extending the archival record.” Memories, artifacts, dates and events were used to create a comprehensive history of the Plateau people. The curators pulled out the most potent pieces of information, deciding what must be shown versus what can be thrown away. All this human effort prevents the website from showing random outliers.

To crack Netflix’s “alt-genre” movie categorization algorithm, Madrigal used a plethora of software and equations. She states the programs took over 20 hours to grab all of Netflix’s possible URLs and patterns, a feat that would have taken years to accomplish in the absence of said programs. Although interpreting and finding patterns in all the data could have only been done by a human, she heavily relied on technology to get the information she decoded.

At the end of the article, Madrigal reveals the Perry Mason effect, where there are an outstanding number of categories for a person most Americans today cannot name, making it clear that the algorithm cannot decide which information is unimportant or an outlier).

Altogether, this shows that although equations and technology are both essential in cataloguing the information we use today, there is no substitute for human effort.

When I was looking through the Digital Harlem website, I was astounded by the maps that showed exactly where a person traveled during that person’s life. In just three red lines, Fuller Long’s entire life is shown. How could such intimate, detailed data be collected? The answer is the case files, especially the Probation Department files, which give a detailed account of every arrested person’s life, right down to their favorite leisurely activities and religious preferences. However, someone attempting to make a similar map of Harlem residents in the 2010’s wouldn’t even have to look that far. Just a quick search of the Facebook archives would achieve the same result without nearly the same amount of effort.

Facebook’s mission is basically to make the world a more open place by uploading any deep, dark details that you may want your peers to know about your life. With all the discussion about online privacy (Facebook’s owning any pictures you post has caused much backlash) it’s interesting to ask weather the residents profiled on the Digital Harlem website would have wanted their entire lives laid out for anyone to see? Just because they are dead does that mean they no longer possess privacy rights? Were their families contacted for permission before the researches put this data into the public forum? Is the changing of a name enough to protect privacy (many of those profiled in Digital Harlem articles have had their names altered)? Unlike Facebook, where users are well aware of the content they are posting (from willingly sharing their location to their daily activities) those profiled had no control over what went in their probation files or who had access to said files.

Digitalharlem.org is literally a directory of whose who in the neighborhood, attempting to give insight into a place that has recently gone through radical change and gentrification. It is interesting to see all the components of a place that has somewhat moved on from a history of debt and turmoil. And although I was initially creeped out by the life maps, is it really any worse than the gory details people are always willingly posted online? We can rest assured that through our social media profiles, people of the future will have a very good idea of who we were, with information provided and edited by the subjects themselves. When we die, our profiles will make for much better obituaries than the traditional newspaper blurbs by friends and family, just as the Digital Harlem site pays homage to those who lived in a world drastically different than the Harlem of today.

Below is a link to Facebook’s mission statement. Aside from what they state, the website itself is a method of polling and data gathering.

https://www.facebook.com/facebook/info