Bias Laundering, Fry Oil, Fandom Archivists oh my!

October 2, 2016 4:19 PM

Deep-fried Data (Collections as Data, Library of Congress) For the generation growing up now, the Internet is their window on the world. They take it for granted. It’s only us, who have seen it take shape, and are aware of all the ways it could have been different, who understand that it's fragile, contingent. The coming years will decide to what extent the Internet be a medium for consumption, to what extent it will lift people up, and to what extent it will become a tool of social control.
posted by CrystalDave (16 comments total)

You can tell from the first lines it's a Maciej Cegłowski talk. (I don't actually know his idlewords domain and so couldn't recognize it from that alone.) As usual, fantastic stuff.
posted by chrominance at 4:59 PM on October 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

I love this guy, mostly from his previous brilliant essay. He's the best sceptical insider I know of in the technology sphere.

One of his comments in the Hacker News thread on this talk:

I'm the guy who gave this talk. To add to the funny, LiveJournal hired me to rewrite their ad engine in 2007. I did a horrible job at it, but turned my ineptitude into a principled and lucrative ideological stance that I have milked ever since.

Don't be afraid to pivot.

posted by fatbird at 5:33 PM on October 2, 2016 [18 favorites]

We need more people like Maciej Ceglowski in tech, and fewer Peter Thiels.
posted by SansPoint at 5:46 PM on October 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

I'm a fan of both Thiel (with qualifications) and Maciej (with slight qualifications, also, we refer to him as "baconmeteor" in my house). I enjoyed this transcript and I would love to hear a recording of the panel.

I almost commented that discussion of specific data processing techniques like ML could have been left out, but I appreciate that they're the hook for the discussion, and that the promise of easy automated learning is what's driving up the value of/demand for data. Nice job tying it all together.
posted by michaelh at 6:09 PM on October 2, 2016

I was just discussing this talk with someone! "Half of you are librarians, but we can pretend that I need to explain to you what fanfic is." is a great line. (Also, it's a good talk.)

I'm a fan of both Thiel (with qualifications)

What's a little "women should never have had the vote" between friends, after all?
posted by kenko at 6:50 PM on October 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

Some colleagues worked really hard to organize that event and I consider it a sign of their success that while Maciej's talk was quite good it had plenty of company in that regard on the agenda. A major theme of respecting the people whose data is being collected recurred throughout the day – if memory serves, Ricardo Punzalan, Bergis Jules, Trevor Muñoz, and Marissa Parham had similar points included along with a wealth of other ideas (I feel like I may have forgotten someone – it was a long day). The crowdsourcing talks also touched on a related theme of engaging communities as active partners who help shape projects rather than simply free labor which I was quite happy to hear, too.
posted by adamsc at 6:53 PM on October 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

Large, unregulated collections of behavioral data are a public hazard.

I'd appreciate elaboration here, or an illustration or two, rather than the intimation it is. Not that I mean to indicate skepticism, but the opposite; I feel it is understated.

It’s awkward because the very thing the Librarian of Congress objected to in the Patriot Act—the intrusive surveillance—is the bread and butter of online services. Much of the valuable information is collected in ways that would never pass ethical standards in academia, and ways that even the NSA would be legally prohibited from collecting.

In practice, what the NSA can legally do is an exercise in contradictions deemed needful by executive officers and congressional committee members past and present. But the author's point, as I read it, is to emphasize how privacy and unregulated Internet commerce have come to entirely new crossroads. And it should always be emphasized privacy is not a right, per say. Largely, its consideration in the Constitution is within a context of property at a time and place where human beings could be classified as property.

What tools Snowden exposed are quaint compared to corporate ambitions. Their exposure is slowly thawing discussion and comprehension of the asymmetries between academe, corporate ambition, and legislative regulation.

*I was tempted to challenge what "qualifications" legitimize Thiel's abuses, but fear it's a derail.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 7:01 PM on October 2, 2016

It always makes me smile when I read these tech talks and see someone else who uses Livejournal as a frame of reference for how the web can be experienced.
posted by subdee at 7:01 PM on October 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

I probably don't know much about Peter Thiel's politics or whatever kenko and lazycomputerkids are talking about. I thought SansPoint was talking about Thiel's view of data use. I don't think that there's necessarily wrong with making really ambitious data analysis software to help public and private orgs, which Palantir ostensibly does, but I'm concerned about abuses, secret illegal use, and like Maciej referenced, general misapplication and inattention that often comes with it. Derail over!
posted by michaelh at 7:19 PM on October 2, 2016

adamsc is absolutely right about the care that went into organizing the event. There is video of everything for those who want to see some awesome talks.
posted by idlewords at 9:52 PM on October 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

I liked how he got a horse detection joke in there. One for the Twitter followers!

I'm also really shocked and also not shocked that LJ really didn't know that usericons were used like that. I would have just assumed they knew and didn't care.
posted by bleep at 10:08 PM on October 2, 2016

A friend who works for a movie effects studios explained to me once how digital effects in CGI movies are preserved. The short answer is, they're not. Modern effects are rendered with Rube Goldberg like toolchains that become obsolete with each film.

What is this?

(certainly some mifites will know, but) just an example of historical technology that will be/is lost due to advancements that make them non-optimal. The history of lost technology is continuous. They found Mayan(?) irrigation tech that would be a challenge to reproduce, the tools were effective but ephemeral. I'm deeply amused at /r/diytubes but hobbyists may preserve some great technology! Tech is like a favorite sock, poof like it was never there.
posted by sammyo at 11:17 PM on October 2, 2016

These techniques are effective, but the fact that the same generic approach works across a wide range of domains should make you suspicious about how much insight it's adding.

Add to that the fact that a lot of the big data stuff is getting kids who haven't yet finished their degrees thrown at it, and yeah, multiply those suspicions by the bright minds of young'uns who don't yet (may as well be an idealist and hold out hope for their futures) have the maturity, experience, or hindsight to see further than what our society has shown them.

Example. I work in IT consulting and recently a major client of ours (think top 5 in the world in their area) held a hackathon for a Big Data project. So some of our bright-eyed young'uns went at it. I'll use shorthand here since otherwise it would be Frenglish IT speak: They got a geographical breakdown database, an incomes database, and a purchasing habits database, put 'em all together, created a graphical interface that shows income + purchasing habits by geo segment, and used it to identify the best locations for new Big Client service/sales centers. I kid you not, they then reassured us all with "no worries though, no one knows who earns which incomes, it's anonymized."

It's like, really? You think the 15K average salary neighborhood where no one buys luxury goods is where you'll find people like your bosses, or the 62K average salary neighborhood where every household has at least one car? And which areas are identified as targets for service and sales centers? Yeah, not the lower-income ones. How do you think this plays into systemic issues? It had not even occurred to them, nor did it occur to anyone in the audience to ask them about it. Well, except me, but as a foreigner I knew full well to keep my mouth shut, very long story, trust me when I say it wouldn't have led to a philosophical awakening for anyone present – I know because I've tried it before and was basically laughed at and told "so you're saying we should sell things to people who can't afford it? LOL." It's like, when your product is something that could improve lives to where they could raise their incomes and more of them could eventually afford it? YES?!? grar.
posted by fraula at 4:58 AM on October 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

It's like, really? You think the 15K average salary neighborhood where no one buys luxury goods is where you'll find people like your bosses, or the 62K average salary neighborhood where every household has at least one car? And which areas are identified as targets for service and sales centers? Yeah, not the lower-income ones. How do you think this plays into systemic issues? It had not even occurred to them, nor did it occur to anyone in the audience to ask them about it. Well, except me, but as a foreigner I knew full well to keep my mouth shut, very long story, trust me when I say it wouldn't have led to a philosophical awakening for anyone present – I know because I've tried it before and was basically laughed at and told "so you're saying we should sell things to people who can't afford it? LOL." It's like, when your product is something that could improve lives to where they could raise their incomes and more of them could eventually afford it? YES?!? grar.

To see this in practice: Amazon Prime's same-day service missed a lot of black neighborhoods in certain cities.
posted by chrominance at 5:21 AM on October 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

...a lot of the big data stuff is getting kids who haven't yet finished their degrees...some of our bright-eyed young'uns...

I kid you not,...

Did you see what you did there?

Yet westerners accept promulgation that Google searches, FaceBook, and Twitter are blocked by China solely for reasons of free speech. Relational databases are not new, but what is new is the smart phone-- a scale and granularity exponentially aligned that, for now, expedites supply and demand. But, like any tool, can serve agenda.

It's an accounting competing markets recognized, allayed, and adapted.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 7:56 AM on October 3, 2016

Large, unregulated collections of behavioral data are a public hazard.

I'd appreciate elaboration here, or an illustration or two, rather than the intimation it is. Not that I mean to indicate skepticism, but the opposite; I feel it is understated.

How about another talk by Maciej on that very topic?
posted by Busy Old Fool at 3:08 AM on October 5, 2016