Technology Shifts (Asynchronous Session)
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How to Erode a Digital Plutocracy for Good View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Evren Uras
Society, industry, and technology are inseparable from one another. Technology transforms the material world. Individuals adopt technology for its convenience, which dictates both how and to what extent society embeds technology within its social fabric. Over the years, computers have developed so much so they have defined the 21st century as the digital era. Digital technologies have penetrated many industries, permeating much of social life and capital. In the meanwhile, globally, industry leaders continue to accumulate unprecedented wealth and social influence; short-circuiting demand for convenience per individual, industry has exploited the asymmetrical information landscape it has both established and arguably forced upon society. This has prompted industry to channel more of its resources towards digital surveillance and for-profit behavioral subjugation, laying the groundwork for today’s surveillance economy. Through my research, I examine propositions aiming to address the asymmetric information landscape the Web presently fosters. Comparing inventor of the Web Tim Berners Lee’s Solid, networking engineer Arthur Brock’s Holochain, and Stanford Senior Fellow Francis Fukuyama’s proposed concept of Middleware, my research examines various modes and corresponding visions of combatting shared concerns as to the Web’s foundational structure and societal function. More importantly, through my research, I explore the potential for integrating various approaches to reforming the Web and the institutional and individual means necessary to facilitate any such reform. My research concludes — radical, structural, and therefore both digital, social, and material, reforms remain paramount to preserving the function and longevity of democracy, bolstering national security, and fundamentally negating global inequality.
Artificial Creativity - Status and Future Prospects: Classical Creativity Theory Applied to the Study of Computational Creativity View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Luciano Muriel
Over the last few years, new artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have broken into a context which was supposed to be banned for them: the field of creativity. This very human ability of creating original and valuable things is setting a new challenge for computer engineers. The utopia of artificially generating a new Bach, Rembrandt, Elvis or Banksy has already become a reality. The perspective provided by the Theory of Creativity, which since the middle of the last century has been studying the psychological processes implicit in the creative phenomenon, helps us to understand this new area of technological activity. Being able to analyze what makes an AI capable to generate new and valuable answers not only implies understanding the nature of the problems it have to face. This also proposes that we observe which are the bases of its abstract thinking, the particular nature of its unconscious processes, what are the traces of his personality reflected in its creation. All this is setting a new challenge that opens the way to relevant lines of research that have yet to be determined. To face the possibility that human beings are not the only ones who can generate complex creative processes makes us feel uneasy and uncomfortable. That last redoubt we had to perceive ourselves as indispensable in a future world is already part of the capabilities of the unstoppable AI.
Creative Interventions in Exploring Urban Facial Recognition: The Case of the Face Detector in Detroit View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anthony Vanky, Bryan Boyer
As more cities embed facial recognition and artificial intelligence into their operational and security, addressing questions of privacy, accuracy, and morality becomes increasingly pressing. For residents of Detroit, as an example, advocacy organizations and politicians have debated the use of such technologies in the police departments’ Project Greenlight surveillance system. Additionally, private companies are also incorporating these technologies for business intelligence purposes. Despite debates around the topic, widespread knowledge and public sentiment about these technologies vary in the general population. This paper focuses on creating and implementing the “Face Detector,” an interactive installation that invited participants to explore the computation, hidden assumptions, statistical calculations, and potential biases of artificial intelligence commonly used in facial recognition technologies. It was placed in a public setting in the City of Detroit and used ludic approaches to engage residents and passers-by into engaging with these AI technologies. Using this project as a case study, this paper discusses the design and development of the project; ethical, privacy, and didactic considerations; and the public’s response toward the opportunities, biases, and ethical questions around the public use of artificial intelligence and facial recognition by directly engaging with Detroiters in an open environment.
Utilizing Surveillance, Trust, And Democracy as an Online Pedagogy Amidst Pandemic 2021 View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lorimer Imperio
This study investigates the different problems encountered during the implementation of online classes where the comparison between the available internet services and the actual services used online will be observed to reveal the real problem. Also, the satisfaction of the students about the internet service provider and the gadgets they used during the online class undergoes rating, and, the remedy provided by the professor as an experimental pedagogy is tested as to whether that is able to help the students understand the lesson and possibly give a positive result and be recommended. The data were collected by means of an online survey which was distributed to the 310 students via Google classroom where the total number of respondents is equivalent to 216 or 69.45%. Gap analysis is applied to determine the real problem about the internet connectivity issues and experimental research methodology is applied to find out whether the different pedagogy that utilizes surveillance, trust and democracy provided by the educator in an online class will give a positive result. Outcome in comparing the actual subscribers of the technology is less than the available subscriber which reveals that the problem is not in the provider but in the subscriber itself. Positive result was achieved in the experiment of the different pedagogy which has an equivalent 50%, 42.6% and 74.1% respondents for the open forum, brainstorming, and recorded online conversation respectively.
Soft Power Studies: Contending Communication View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marcus Breen
Soft power, or “a political theory of attractiveness” was defined in the US in 1990 by Americanist political scientist Joseph S. Nye of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Since the 2017 publication of The Routledge Handbook of Soft Power, edited by Naren Chitty, Li Ji, Gary D. Rawnsley and Craig Hayden, the theory has become more sharply defined, making way for international perspectives. This broadening rise in interest reflects the changing global conditions that accord to national power through media and communication, a shift that reinforces the continual growth in importance of media and communication in international contests for national attractiveness. In particular, the emergence of soft power studies reflects the rise of China against the previously prevailing hegemonic role of the US after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. In effect, the rise of soft power studies accompanied the influence of a Chinese public opinion methodology whose scalar dimensions incorporated the refinements of humanities and social science that were foreign and new to the western method. This new soft power methodology is emerging through media and communication, looking less like propaganda and more like a structural shift in communication at global scalar dimensions. This study addresses this shift, considering the recent rise of China and its soft power methodology in the light of the propaganda focus of the established US approach.
