Data Driven Societies Digital & Computational Studies Bowdoin College April 21, 2014 Professor Gieseking Lecture Slides "Remix"

1. Data Driven Societies:
On Algorithms & Remix
Professors Gieseking & Gaze

2. Reminder: Matt
Wilson on 4/28
http://about.me/wilsonism

3. Recap: Visualizing
Social Life
• Coleman: Determining respect in
Anonymous via language and
activist intervention hacking efforts
!
• Coleman’s “code as speech” =
ethical, legal, cultural ramifications
of language of code, exceeds code
as law and much broader

4. Recap: Visualizing
Social Life
✦ Katz & Donovan confront anxiety
around children’s and youth’s
use of computers
✦ Hacking - play, curious
exploration, or as a puzzle
solution that helps young people
to better understand and control
their environments
(technological and otherwise)

5. On algorithms and trending.

6. ✦ Who determine Twitter “Trends”?
Feedback determines further feedback
loop but claims to represent the will of
the people
✦ Algorithms are closely guarded
(Amazon, Fb, YouTube, Digg, etc.)
✦ Sales pitch of Twitter is its free and
open qualities
Can the Algorithm be
Wrong?
fullerton.edu

7. ✦ But Twitter is a corporation — one that
supports anti-terrorist efforts but
encrypts against NSA
✦ See also: Weibo
✦ Algorithms are not only socially
constructed, the social construction is
always political
✦ a la filter bubble
✦ Facebook “Friends” networks do
not represent actual social
networks
Can the Algorithm be
Wrong?
umn.edu

8. These algorithms produce not barometric readings
but hieroglyphs. At once so clear and so opaque,
they beg to be read as reliable measures of the
public mind, as signs of “us.” But the shape of the
“us” on offer is by no means transparent.
-Gillespie

9. All is not lost. Ever.

10. npr.com

11. Then there is remix.

12. ✦ R/O (Read/Only) Culture: a
culture of consumption
rather than amateur
performance
✦ R/W (Read/Write) Culture:
mixing, matching, merging
traditions, ideas, and
media to create new or
derivative work, whether
as satire, sample, etc.
✦ Remix - “critical expression
of creative freedom”
Lessig’s
Remix Culture
idieyoudie.com

13. ✦ Napster created P2P (peer-to-
peer) music and other file
sharing - note: not yet
bandwidth for movies
✦ Steve Job’s intervention in
piracy: Digital Rights
Management (DRM), i.e.
encoding music files to not be
shared
Napster v.
iTunes
Napster, Apple

14. ✦ What changed was affordability
not interest (ex. record —> tape
—> CD —> Mp3)
✦ see Sterne’s Mp3
✦ Amateur creativity and copyright
equally important
✦ “YouTube is a picture of unmet
demands.” (46)
✦ Free access pays more in data
than advertiser fees
Remix
Culture
Beyonce Knowles

15. As these businesses grow, they not only
change business. They also change us.
They change how we think about
access to culture. They change what we
take for granted.
-Lessig (43)

16. ✦ Benkler’s “writable web” of
blogging —> comments
—> tags and ranking
systems —> other forms
of “creating” exceed
writing because we make
more use of them
✦ RW internet as
“ecosystem” vs.
Donovan’s “proprietary
ecologies”
Remixed
Ecosystems
hostgator.com

17. ✦ Two good remix creates for now:
✦ community
✦ education
✦ Note: remix is not new
Lessig on the
Good of Remix
dugcampbell.com

18. Next Class: Apr. 23
✦ Today: algorithms & remix
!
✦ Readings: Hagy & Anderson
!
✦ Lab: 4/23 ggplot2, part trois
!
✦ Last blog assignment due 5/1
!
✦ Hackathon 4/23(!)
!
✦ DCSI lectures: David Stork on 4/21 (tonight),
Matt Wilson on 4/28 (req’d)