227 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2018
    1. Burns (2015) builds on this to investigate how within digital humanitarianism discourses, big data produce and perform subjects ‘in need’ (individuals or com-munities affected by crises) and a humanitarian ‘saviour’ community that, in turn, seeks answers through big data

      I don't understand what Burns is arguing here. Who is he referring to claims that DHN is a "savior" or "the solution" to crisis response?

      "Big data should therefore be be conceptualized as a framing of what can be known about a humanitarian crisis, and how one is able to grasp that knowledge; in short, it is an epistemology. This epistemology privileges knowledges and knowledge- based practices originating in remote geographies and de- emphasizes the connections between multiple knowledges.... Put another way, this configuration obscures the funding, resource, and skills constraints causing imperfect humanitarian response, instead positing volunteered labor as ‘the solution.’ This subjectivity formation carves a space in which digital humanitarians are necessary for effective humanitarian activities." (Burns 2015: 9–10)

    2. Crises are often not a crisis of information. It is often not a lack of data or capacity to analyse it that prevents ‘us’ from pre-venting disasters or responding effectively. Risk management fails because there is a lack of a relational sense of responsibility. But this does not have to be the case. Technologies that are designed to support collaboration, such as what Jasanoff (2007) terms ‘technologies of humility’, can be better explored to find ways of framing data and correlations that elicit a greater sense of relational responsibility and commitment.

      Is it "a lack of relational sense of responsibility" in crisis response (state vs private sector vs public) or is it the wicked problem of power, class, social hierarchies, etc.?

      "... ways of framing data and correlations that elicit a greater sense of responsibility and commitment."

      That could have a temporal component to it to position urgency, timescape, horizon, etc.

    3. In some ways this constitutes the production of ‘liquid resilience’ – a deflection of risk to the individuals and communities affected which moves us from the idea of an all-powerful and knowing state to that of a ‘plethora of partial projects and initiatives that are seeking to harness ICTs in the service of better knowing and governing individuals and populations’ (Ruppert 2012: 118)

      This critique addresses surveillance state concerns about glue-ing datasets together to form a broader understanding of aggregate social behavior without the necessary constraints/warnings about social contexts and discontinuity between data.

      Skimmed the Ruppert paper, sadly doesn't engage with time and topologies.

    4. Indeed, as Chandler (2015: 9) also argues, crowdsourcing of big data does not equate to a democratisation of risk assessment or risk governance:

      Beyond this quote, Chandler (in engaging crisis/disaster scenarios) argues that Big Data may be more appropriately framed as community reflexive knowledge than causal knowledge. That's an interesting idea.

      *"Thus, It would be more useful to see Big Data as reflexive knowledge rather than as causal knowledge. Big Data cannot help explain global warming but it can enable individuals and household to measure their own energy consumption through the datafication of household objects and complex production and supply chains. Big Data thereby datafies or materialises an individual or community’s being in the world. This reflexive approach works to construct a pluralised and multiple world of self-organising and adaptive processes. The imaginary of Big Data is that the producers and consumers of knowledge and of governance would be indistinguishable; where both knowing and governing exist without external mediation, constituting a perfect harmonious and self-adapting system: often called ‘community resilience’. In this discourse, increasingly articulated by governments and policy-makers, knowledge of causal connections is no longer relevant as communities adapt to the real-time appearances of the world, without necessarily understanding them."

      "Rather than engaging in external understandings of causality in the world, Big Data works on changing social behaviour by enabling greater adaptive reflexivity. If, through Big Data, we could detect and manage our own biorhythms and know the effects of poor eating or a lack of exercise, we could monitor our own health and not need costly medical interventions. Equally, if vulnerable and marginal communities could ‘datafy’ their own modes of being and relationships to their environments they would be able to augment their coping capacities and resilience without disasters or crises occurring. In essence, the imaginary of Big Data resolves the essential problem of modernity and modernist epistemologies, the problem of unintended consequences or side-effects caused by unknown causation, through work on the datafication of the self in its relational-embeddedness.42 This is why disasters in current forms of resilience thinking are understood to be ‘transformative’: revealing the unintended consequences of social planning which prevented proper awareness and responsiveness. Disasters themselves become a form of ‘datafication’, revealing the existence of poor modes of self-governance."*

      Downloaded Chandler paper. Cites Meier quite a bit.

    5. ut Burns finds that humanitarian staff often describe the local communities and ‘crowds’ as the ‘eyes, ears and sensors’ of UN staff, which does not index a genuine collaborative relationship. He states: ‘In all these cases, the discourse talks of putting local people “in the driving seat” when in reality the direction of the journey has already been decided’ (Burns 2015: 48). Burns (2015: 42) also notes that this leads to a transformation of social responsibility into individual responsibility.Neoliberalism’s promotion of free market norms is therefore much more than the simple ideology of free market economics. It is a specific form of social rule that institutionalises a rationality of competition, enterprise indi-vidualised responsibility. Although the state ‘steps back’ and encourages the free conduct of individuals, this is achieved through active intervention into civil society and the opening up of new areas to the logic of private enter-prise and individual initiative. This is the logic behind the rise of resilience

      Burns criticism of humanitarian response as not truly collaborative and an abdication of the state's responsibility for social welfare to the private sector.

  2. Jun 2018
  3. May 2018
    1. The MVPs are evaluated in terms of the current ways in which they are being used; they are not being evaluated as (prospective) designs. Certainly these platforms are not finished products; there is a clear sense that they remain in-process; ever-frequent updates and even complete pivots will be made. In this sense, prototyping is no longer a stage within design, but the only outcome of design. Without forethought, prior evaluation, whether against a strong vision, or of consequential risk, is this still design? Is designing as foreseeing disappearing beneath permanent iteration?
  4. Mar 2018
    1. Prepare some inviting questions.

      This is perhaps the most important step in the process. DO NOT simply request "Thoughts?" or "Please check out my site and let me know what I can do to make it better." These types of messages offer the reviewer nothing to work with.

      The examples listed in this section are relevant to career evaluation/feedback, but here are some potential questions for requesting constructive critique of your ePortfolio:

      • *My goal is to emphasize my leadership skills and experience. Does this ePortfolio communicate that?
      • Does the order/organization of this site make sense? Are things located where you think they should be? For example, do you think my Collaboratory experience should be moved to the technology page?
      • Did you feel any of the reflections were insufficient in terms of detail and development? Were there any that you had questions about after reading?*
  5. Jan 2018
    1. Plus qu’une vérification des informations, la multiplication des fakes appelle un travail d’éditorialisation, qui recontextualise les contenus partagés en explicitant les logiques transactionnelles[+] NoteVoir les travaux de Manuel ZACKLAD, notamment Transactions communicationnelles symboliques et communauté d'action : réflexions préliminaires , colloque de Cerisy "Connaissance Activité Organisation », 2003 ou « La théorie des transactions intellectuelles : une approche gestionnaire et cognitive pour le traitement du COS », Intellectica, Paris, ARCo,2000/1, 30, pp. 195-222. [9] qui les motivent. Cela suppose non seulement de reconnaître la multiplicité des points de vue, mais aussi leur mobilité dans l’espace et le temps en tant que productions sociales situées, le vrai n’étant que le frottement continu des informations et des contre-informatio

      On a effectivement intérêt à s'outiller pour être en mesure de qualifier les "logiques transactionnelles" à l'oeuvre en sous-texte de nos discussions (comme des dispositifs tels que hypothèse.is nous aident à le faire). Cependant, je me demande quelle conscience commune nous pourrons cultiver de l'impact de notre manière de vivre l'allure (esthétique) de nos délibérations. Car, cela me semble un horizon à viser en plus (outre la maîtrise des moyens techniques de la construction de connaissances partageables) si nous espérons que notre collaboration (et co-éditorialisation) permette de dégager des conclusions relativement stables - provisoires ou non. Si nous voulons cultiver un milieu propice à élaborer une véritable sphère intersubjective (un espace formé de valeurs et structuré autour de certains repères), la dynamique même de nos échanges doit aussi faire l'objet d'une éducation à la fois théorique et technique et, de ce point de vue, il importe de transformer la crise de la vérité (bien réelle) qui affecte notre société en une opportunité concrète de nous rappeler l'utilité d'une formation critique. Mais, cette occasion de bâtir de manière concertée des bases pour une nouvelle co-appartenance ne portera tous ses fruits que si nous articulons à l'enjeu de la formation à une littératie numérique (où la fonction de l'éditorialisation dans la constitution de l'environnement demeure à définir), le souci pour la sensibilisation du public en général (et du monde de l'éducation en particulier) à la question du rôle du développement d'un sens esthétique dans l'effort collectif pour constituer du sens en communs.

  6. Oct 2017
    1. p.74 Summarises the place of the university/multiversity

      (1) The multiversity is a place where great thought and great research are often possible.

      (2) The multiversity is a place from which great contributions can often be made to society.

      (3) The multiversity is a place in which the claims of institutional continuity and efficiency come to head-on collision with its educational aims; the latter are normally wiped off the map.

      (4) The multiversity is a place in which the education of the vast majority ranges from the mediocre to the pernicious. This fact creates new educational norms, which become positive deterrents to the education of any who wish to go beyond the majority. It is for these students -- the bright ones, the original or independent ones, the ones who care deeply --that the university is such bad news. It is in the crazy position of obstructing their education.

      (5) Education at the multiversity is post-secondary, encouraging the transfer of discrete units of information and theory, rather than liberal, encouraging the contemplation of energizing form in what a student comes to know. And the system of lectures, essays and exams, and the root assumptions of thousands of the university's members, canonize the post-secondary version of education. It is possible to go beyond it, but only by radically dissenting from the university. For the twenty-year-old who does not know what he is dissenting in favour of, this is either very isolating or very undermining.

  7. Sep 2017
    1. been to emphasize Austen’s overlooked expansive subtexts and allu-sions, her wide, even global appeal and relevance.

      Transition into feminist readings of Austen from giving examples of older critiques (of secondary sources) of Austen's work. This aids her argument and supports her challenging of previous readings of the work.

  8. Mar 2017
    1. Not all cards are created equal, even if you can get one – and not everyone can.

      Insightful, the company with the most market share would be the most readily available...

  9. Dec 2016
    1. One challenge is whether – or how – this conversation becomes generative of traditional scholarship, such as a more linear, peer-reviewed article.

      There is, truly, so much potential in these tools and approaches toward asynchronous, distributed reading and writing. One question I have, already, is how such distributed forms of production-consumption further dissolve notions of textuality and authorship so entrenched within traditional notions and practices of scholarship and empirical research. The flattened hierarchies, especially, threaten the institutionalized power structures which have tightly controlled the design, review, and dissemination of scholarship and research.

  10. Apr 2016
    1. But I have emphasized many times that ”modernism” carries with it another idea, that of emancipation from some stagnant, archaic and stifling past, so that ”modern” is always a way to orient action according to an arrow of time that distinguishes the past from the future. An essential component of the concept of modernity is the idea of a future toward which we travel after a radical rupture with the past.

      The crucial formulation of Latour's argument—in tandem with the corollary, below, that "we have never been modern in the very simple sense that while we emancipated ourselves, each day we also more tightly entangled ourselves in the fabric of nature."

  11. Jan 2016
    1. P(B|E) = P(B) X P(E|B) / P(E), with P standing for probability, B for belief and E for evidence. P(B) is the probability that B is true, and P(E) is the probability that E is true. P(B|E) means the probability of B if E is true, and P(E|B) is the probability of E if B is true.
    2. The probability that a belief is true given new evidence equals the probability that the belief is true regardless of that evidence times the probability that the evidence is true given that the belief is true divided by the probability that the evidence is true regardless of whether the belief is true. Got that?
    3. Initial belief plus new evidence = new and improved belief.
    1. In these settings, learning is a side effect of creative production, collaboration, and community organizing, not the explicit purpose of the activity.

      Learning is never a side effect. It is a parallel event, occuring all the time. If we consider learning as a consequent event and an object of some other doing, then we are in danger of committing the same sin as the 'banking' model--x causes y. Dangerous and predictably problematic.

    1. Here’s what the Finns, who don’t begin formal reading instruction until around age 7, have to say about preparing preschoolers to read: “The basis for the beginnings of literacy is that children have heard and listened … They have spoken and been spoken to, people have discussed [things] with them … They have asked questions and received answers.”
  12. Oct 2015
  13. May 2015
    1. Critical thinking disavows its own inventiveness as much as possible.

      This passage reminds me of Eve Sedgwick's essay on reparative reading.

  14. Jan 2014
    1. The Data Life Cycle: An Overview The data life cycle has eight components: Plan : description of the data that will be compiled, and how the data will be managed and made accessible throughout its lifetime Collect : observations are made either by hand or with sensors or other instruments and the data are placed a into digital form Assure : the quality of the data are assured through checks and inspections Describe : data are accurately and thoroughly described using the appropriate metadata standards Preserve : data are submitted to an appropriate long-term archive (i.e. data center ) Discover : potentially useful data are located and obtained, along with the relevant information about the data ( metadata ) Integrate : data from disparate sources are combined to form one homogeneous set of data that can be readily analyzed Analyze : data are analyzed

      The lifecycle according to who? This 8-component description is from the point of view of only the people who obsessively think about this "problem".

      Ask a researcher and I think you'll hear that lifecycle means something like:

      collect -> analyze -> publish
      

      or a more complex data management plan might be:

      ask someone -> receive data in email -> analyze -> cite -> publish -> tenure
      

      To most people lifecycle means "while I am using the data" and archiving means "my storage guy makes backups occasionally".

      Asking people to be aware of the whole cycle outlined here is a non-starter, but I think there is another approach to achieve what we want... dramatic pause [to be continued]

      What parts of this cycle should the individual be responsible for vs which parts are places where help is needed from the institution?

    2. An effective data management program would enable a user 20 years or longer in the future to discover , access , understand, and use particular data [ 3 ]. This primer summarizes the elements of a data management program that would satisfy this 20-year rule and are necessary to prevent data entropy .

      Who cares most about the 20-year rule? This is an ideal that appeals to some, but in practice even the most zealous adherents can't picture what this looks like in some concrete way-- except in the most traditional ways: physical paper journals in libraries are tangible examples of the 20-year rule.

      Until we have a digital equivalent for data I don't blame people looking for tenure or jobs for not caring about this ideal if we can't provide a clear picture of how to achieve this widely at an institutional level. For digital materials I think the picture people have in their minds is of tape backup. Maybe this is generational? New generations not exposed widely to cassette tapes, DVDs, and other physical media that "old people" remember, only then will it be possible to have a new ideal that people can see in their minds-eye.

    3. data entropy Normal degradation in information content associated with data and metadata over time (paraphrased from [ 2 ]).

      I'm not sure what this really means and I don't think data entropy is a helpful term. Poor practices certainly lead to disorganized collections of data, but I think this notion comes from a time when people were very concerned about degradation of physical media on which data is stored. That is, of course, still a concern, but I think the term data entropy really lends itself as an excuse for people who don't use good practices to manage data and is a cover for the real problem which is a kind of data illiteracy in much the same way we also face computational illiteracy widely in the sciences. Managing data really is hard, but let's not mask it with fanciful notions like data entropy.

  15. Nov 2013
    1. A major problem is that this possibility of exploring a network is often lost when it is published. The rich experience of interacting with the network within Gephi is converted to a pdf or png format,

      Is it not the task of simplifying, that the research denies herself, when dreaming of showing the full complexity of a phenomenon to it audience?

  16. Oct 2013
    1. Nor is it without advantage, indeed, that inelegant and faulty speeches, yet such as many, from depravity of taste, would admire, should be read before boys and that it should be shown how many expressions in them are inappropriate, obscure, tumid, low, mean, affected, or effeminate

      We often learn the most through bad examples

  17. Sep 2013
    1. Indeed no one may rely on the honesty of his life as a guarantee that he will be able to live securely in Athens; for the men who have chosen to neglect what is their own and to plot against what belongs to others do not keep their hands off citizens who live soberly and bring before you only those who do evil; on the contrary, they advertise their powers in their attacks upon men who are entirely innocent, and so get more money from those who are clearly guilty.

      I know this is going somewhere, Boyle. So please don't take this as a comment like hating repetition. Okay, we good? Good. So far this entire reading is nothing but Tu Quoque. I am sure Isocrates is going to eventually explain himself, but this is all the logical fallacy of using critique to critique. Don't yell at me!