Jacob Thebault-Spiekerhttp://jtsmn.github.io/2020-07-09T00:00:00-04:00How I Generate my CV from BibTeX and Markdown2020-07-09T00:00:00-04:002020-07-09T00:00:00-04:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2020-07-09:/ephemera/2020/07/09/how-i-generate-my-cv-from-bibtex-and-markdown/<p>Recently, <a
href="https://twitter.com/natematias/status/1281035493317267456?s=20">Nate
Matias mentioned looking to automate the creation of his CV</a>, which I
already do. Since he asked, I figured I’d pull together a simple guide
for how I manage this, and go from there.</p>
<h2 id="why-do-this">Why Do This?</h2>
<p>Before jumping into how, I thought it maybe made sense …</p><p>Recently, <a
href="https://twitter.com/natematias/status/1281035493317267456?s=20">Nate
Matias mentioned looking to automate the creation of his CV</a>, which I
already do. Since he asked, I figured I’d pull together a simple guide
for how I manage this, and go from there.</p>
<h2 id="why-do-this">Why Do This?</h2>
<p>Before jumping into how, I thought it maybe made sense to talk about
why. For me, it’s about reduction of effort. My website already has a
Publications Page, and at one point I was hosting my blog on my own and
had aspirations to cite papers within blog posts too. So I spent the
time to figure out how to hook <code>BibTeX</code> into the static-site
generator (<a href="http://blog.getpelican.com">Pelican</a>) I use to
build the rest of my website, so that I’m able to put
<code>BibTeX</code> entries in one <code>.bib</code> file, and then
reference the citation key as needed elsewhere on my website.</p>
<h2 id="tldr-the-general-process-and-reference-files">TL;DR: The General
Process, and Reference Files</h2>
<p>Here I’ll just provide the steps I use to do this. Links here are to
the various specific files/etc. that you could use as templates to
replicate my setup. I provide more details below. 1. Use
<code>Pelican</code> as a static-site generator 2. Use
<code>Pandoc</code> as the markdown-to-HTML renderer (via the
<code>pandoc-reader</code> <a
href="https://github.com/liob/pandoc_reader">plugin</a>), and to read my
<code>BibTeX</code> file with my various papers and publications 3.
Write my CV in <a
href="https://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/files/cv.txt">markdown</a>,
which gets generated to HTML (with <a
href="https://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/theme/css/mine.css">specific
CSS</a>), and ‘printed’ (using <code>WeasyPrint</code> hooked into
<code>Pelican</code> <a
href="https://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/files/pelican_weasyprint.zip">like
this</a>) to take that and make a PDF.</p>
<h2 id="how-did-i-make-this-happen">How did I make this happen</h2>
<p>There are a number of steps and hacky configurations I’m using to
currently do this, but I’m gonna try to enumerate it here.</p>
<h3 id="pelican">Pelican</h3>
<p>I use Pelican as my static-site generator. I’m not sure it’s the best
tool, but it’s the one I have right now. Partially this is because
Pelican supports a number of plugins that I use for this purpose.</p>
<h3 id="pandoc-reader"><code>pandoc-reader</code></h3>
<p>Pelican has a concept of ‘readers’, which is what it uses to
translate between the input format (markdown in my case), and the output
format (often HTML, but can be others, I believe). I’m using the
<code>pandoc-reader</code> <a
href="https://github.com/liob/pandoc_reader">plugin</a>, which passes
the input markdown to the <code>pandoc</code> tool.</p>
<p>In order to ensur that <code>pandoc</code> behaves the way that I
want, I pass a number of arguments to the tool. These arguments would
normally just be command-line flags, but Pelican will pass them using
the following code in my <code>pelicanconf.py</code> file:</p>
<pre><code>PANDOC_ARGS = [
'--csl=/path/to/acm-sigchi-proceedings.csl',
'--bibliography=/path/to/publications.bib'
]
PANDOC_EXTENSIONS = [
'+mmd_link_attributes',
'+definition_lists',
'+smart',
'+citations'
]</code></pre>
<p>In essence, the above arguments are telling pandoc which
<code>csl</code> file to use in formatting a citation, and where to find
the <code>.bib</code> file I use. Further, I use a number of extension
flags for <code>pandoc</code> (which are often available by default when
you install <code>pandoc</code>). I use a <a
href="https://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/files/acm-sigchi-proceedings.csl">slightly
modified</a> <code>csl file</code>, to generate the full citation. The
salient part for this purpose is <code>+citations</code>, which enables
the <code>pandoc</code> <a
href="https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#citations"><code>citations</code>
extension</a>. Because of my modified CSL file, I think this breaks the
inline citation functionality, and I should fix that at some point.
However, when I refer to the <code>BibTeX</code> key in my markdown
(e.g. <code>@TOCHI_SharingEconomy</code>), it will expand to the full
citation, like so (though this is block-quoted for emphasis):</p>
<blockquote>
<p><span class="citation" data-cites="TOCHI_SharingEconomy">Jacob
Thebault-Spieker, Loren Terveen, and Brent Hecht 2017. Toward a
Geographic Understanding of the Sharing Economy: Systemic Biases in
UberX and TaskRabbit. <em>ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact.</em> 24, 3:
21:1–21:40. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3058499"
role="doc-biblioref">https://doi.org/10.1145/3058499</a></span></p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="generating-a-pdf-cv">Generating a PDF CV</h3>
<p>The functionality that <code>pandoc-reader</code> provides enables my
<a href="https://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/papers.html">Publications
page</a> as well as my <a
href="https://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/curriculum-vitae.html">HTML
CV</a>, both of which have very similar input markdown, but get rendered
differently. For my HTML CV, I use <a
href="https://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/theme/css/mine.css">this
CSS</a>, for the HTML that gets rendered from markdown like <a
href="https://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/files/cv.txt">this</a> (current
as of 07/09/2020).</p>
<p>The next step, then is to transition my HTML CV page to a PDF. For
this, I use a modified version of the Pelican PDF generator.
<code>Generators</code> in Pelican are similar to <code>readers</code>,
and can generate different outputs. For now, I’m going to zip up my
version of this and share it <a
href="https://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/files/pelican_weasyprint.zip">here</a>,
but eventually I need to get this on github. Basically, I’ve set up <a
href="https://weasyprint.org">WeasyPrint</a> to generate a <a
href="https://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/thebaultspieker_cv.pdf">PDF
version of my CV</a> from my <a
href="https://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/curriculum-vitae.html">HTML
CV</a>.</p>
Iron Blogging - Jello Research2016-05-10T00:00:00-04:002016-05-10T00:00:00-04:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2016-05-10:/ephemera/2016/05/10/iron-blogging-jello-research/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In <a
href="http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kluver/jello-research-challenge.html">his
post</a> earlier this week, <a
href="https://twitter.com/OrigamiTeacher/">Daniel Kluver</a> outlined
the “Jello Research Challenge”, based on a conversation we had.</p>
<p>The rules as outlined are:</p>
<blockquote>
<ol type="1">
<li>You must re-tell the basic narrative arc (the …</li></ol></blockquote><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In <a
href="http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kluver/jello-research-challenge.html">his
post</a> earlier this week, <a
href="https://twitter.com/OrigamiTeacher/">Daniel Kluver</a> outlined
the “Jello Research Challenge”, based on a conversation we had.</p>
<p>The rules as outlined are:</p>
<blockquote>
<ol type="1">
<li>You must re-tell the basic narrative arc (the “story”) of one piece
of work but make it all about jello.</li>
<li>You cannot use any of the major keywords of your work or buzzwords
of your field.</li>
<li>You do not have to actually explain your work.</li>
<li>You do not have to actually identify what work you are
explaining.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>I’d kind of forgotten this until I was <a
href="https://mobile.twitter.com/OrigamiTeacher/status/730103571530702848">ambiently
peer-pressured</a> into it.</p>
<h3 id="so-here-goes">So, here goes:</h3>
<p>There are these computer systems that involve people helping you make
jello, or bringing you jello. It turns out, people who make their jello
skills available live in different places than some of the people who
might benefit most from jello. The people who share their jello skills
don’t like to travel too far to do so, and there aren’t people who share
their jello skills in poorer areas (even though poor people probably
want jello also).</p>
Thoughts On Facebook News Curation Story2016-05-09T00:00:00-04:002016-05-09T00:00:00-04:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2016-05-09:/ephemera/2016/05/09/thoughts-on-facebook-news-curation-story/<p>There’s an <a
href="http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006">article
going around today</a> reporting that the news curation team at Facebook
(the team that chooses what shows as Trending) would either “inject”
stories into the platform, or de-value/blacklist stories (in some cases
with a conservative bent).</p>
<p>The article states</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In other words, Facebook’s news …</p></blockquote><p>There’s an <a
href="http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006">article
going around today</a> reporting that the news curation team at Facebook
(the team that chooses what shows as Trending) would either “inject”
stories into the platform, or de-value/blacklist stories (in some cases
with a conservative bent).</p>
<p>The article states</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In other words, Facebook’s news section operates like a traditional
newsroom, reflecting the biases of its workers and the institutional
imperatives of the corporation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>which seems likely true. This case reads, to me, as another example
of tech companies, and the people they hire, not having a wide-enough
view of the world they act in (with large amounts of platform-based
power). I’m uncomfortable about that, as I expect many are. This story
doesn’t strike me as surprising in that context, but it does serve as
another reminder.</p>
<p>The interesting part to me, as someone in the field, comes from two
directions.</p>
<h3 id="algorithmsoftware-as-fact">Algorithm/Software as Fact</h3>
<p>It seems like the underlying tone of the article is summed up by the
quote above: this system still acts like previous systems, with people
making decisions. The tone of the article is surprise and injustice, and
I’m sympathetic to that view, but the core point is this: <em>we
expected the trending news to be computationally driven, and when people
stick things into it, it breaks what I came to understand about trending
news</em>.</p>
<p>Software, and the stories we tell around software (or fail to tell)
shape how people think about interacting with the software. I expected
the trending news to be, you know, <em>trending</em> (which most of it
sounds like it is, though the article doesn’t say how much injection or
silencing was occurring). I didn’t expect the trending news section to
be curated or under editorial control (as a newspaper would be).</p>
<p>This expectation comes with a set of assumptions that were broken,
and, at least for me, is why the “Facebook is being insidious”
conclusion jumps to the forefront.</p>
<h3 id="transparency">Transparency</h3>
<p><a href="http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/">Aaron Halfaker</a> has
talked about the role of transparency in “algorithms in social spaces”
(he’s thinking specifically about <a
href="https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Revision_scoring_as_a_service">ORES</a>,
and I believe informed by <a href="https://twitter.com/zeynep">Zeynep
Tufekci</a>), and how for us to be able to understand the role of this
technology, it’s almost an obligation that the providers of the
technology provide mechanisms for understanding how they work.</p>
<p>In a world where so much of what humans understand is mediated
through technology, Aaron’s point seems to extend further: understanding
which parts are explicitly human (and thus given the benefit of the
doubt, or granted to be operating in good-faith, e.g. newspapers), and
which parts are highly automated (though today, this automation is still
informed by human judgement) feels important. In the ORES case
(automated revision scoring), algorithms are deciding if an edit to
Wikipedia is harmful, and above a certain threshold, automatically
reverting this edit. These algorithms are informed by human judgements,
but have learned to statistically model how humans make those
judgements, and can act on that model. Below that threshold though,
humans get brought into the loop explicitly, and make a decision about
harm of the edit prior to reverting (or not).</p>
<p>I can tell you, broadly, how the revision-revert process works in
Wikipedia, because it is documented, and because the ORES work is being
done in public. Aaron is putting this information in public, and talking
about the models he’s using. Facebook’s “now trending” section of the
site (and the people behind it), are not. So here’s my question:
<strong>would the Gizmodo article be as shocked, surprised, and
concerned about insidiousness if we fully understood that there were/are
humans making curatorial and editorial decisions about what gets called
‘trending’</strong>?</p>
Iron Blogging - In Defense of 'Hybrid'2016-04-23T00:00:00-04:002016-04-23T00:00:00-04:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2016-04-23:/ephemera/2016/04/23/iron-blogging-in-defense-of-hybrid/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/mdekstrand">Michael Ekstrand</a>
recently <a href="https://md.ekstrandom.net/blog/2016/04/using-r/">wrote
up</a> his reasons for sticking to using R for data analysis, which
included computational efficiency, <code>ggplot2</code>, and comfort
with the workflow.</p>
<p>I don’t have any problem with …</p><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/mdekstrand">Michael Ekstrand</a>
recently <a href="https://md.ekstrandom.net/blog/2016/04/using-r/">wrote
up</a> his reasons for sticking to using R for data analysis, which
included computational efficiency, <code>ggplot2</code>, and comfort
with the workflow.</p>
<p>I don’t have any problem with his argument, mostly, people should use
what they want to use. You may recall, I <a
href="http://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/ephemera/2016/01/26/iron-blogging-simplifying-workflows/">recently</a>
discovered Python/Pandas/GeoPandas/Jupyter, and the benefits that it has
for geographic analysis. Michael too has discovered the power of
Jupyter, saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even though we’ll keep using R, there’s one huge benefit that we get
from the Python data ecosystem: I’ve mostly switched from RStudio to
using Jupyter notebooks with IRKernel. It is <em>fantastic.</em> We’ve
also been using Anaconda to install R and it’s worked pretty well.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the thing that I think is interesting: he’s decided to stay
in R-land, while taking advantage of Jupyter. Don’t get me wrong, more
power to him, if that’s what works, it’s what he should use.</p>
<p>Personally, I’ve been doing something a little bit different, mostly
(although not entirely) as a crutch so I don’t have to jump in the
Python deep end and re-learn the things I know how to do in R; I’m using
the Rpy2 <code>magic</code> in Jupyter, which lets me switch
environments whenever I want.</p>
<p>For instance, I can connect to a Postgres+PostGIS database with
GeoPandas, and load up a GeoPandas DataFrame. I can then use the
<code>%Rpush</code>magic to push this DataFrame into R, plot it with
<code>ggplot2</code>, and go back to Python for geographic operations or
analysis. I have a notebook now that does all the data manipulation in
Python, but I knew the <code>Wilcox.test</code> command in R, so I just
ran that test with the R cell magic.</p>
<p>Stepping back a bit, it seems that a significant amount of the power,
at least for me, that comes from Jupyter Notebook, and it’s ability use
things like IRKernel (and Rpy2), is flexibility. I’m using the tools
that are best (or easiest, which <em>is</em> best when you’re
time-constrained) for the job. Michael should do what he needs to do,
sounds like R is the best tool for him.</p>
<p>I just also think that it needn’t be either-or.</p>
Iron Blogging - Big Week? Huuuuuge Week2016-04-15T00:00:00-04:002016-04-15T00:00:00-04:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2016-04-15:/ephemera/2016/04/15/iron-blogging-big-week-huuuuuge-week/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a
href="http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/11/11406944/emoji-meaning-difference-ios-android">Big</a>
<a
href="http://nymag.com/following/2016/04/people-often-disagree-about-what-emoji-mean.html">Week</a>?
<a
href="http://gizmodo.com/that-emoji-does-not-mean-what-you-think-it-means-1770296372">Big</a>
<a
href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/3053967/consumer-electronics/whats-that-emoji-mean-it-all-depends-on-the-device-youre-using.html">Week</a>.</p>
<p><a
href="http://www.slashgear.com/inconsistent-emoji-designs-muddle-conversations-11435782/">It’s</a>
<a
href="http://www.dailydot.com/technology/emoji-miscommunicate/">been</a>
<a
href="http://boingboing.net/2016/04/11/if-you-send-a-grimace-emoji-on.html">a</a>
<a
href="http://www.techinsider.io/science-reveals-the-most-confusing-emoji-2016-4">pretty</a>
<a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/04/12/why-that-emoji-grin-you-sent-might-show-up-as-a-grimace/">crazy</a>,
<a
href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/nicolenguyen/one-emoji-font-to-rule-them-all#.te1K14DzY">very</a>
<a
href="http://metro.co.uk/2016/04/12/what-does-this-emoji-actually-mean-5812057/">exciting</a>
<a
href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/12/473965971/lost-in-translation-study-finds-interpretation-of-emojis-can-vary-widely">week</a>
<a
href="http://www.startribune.com/university-of-minnesota-study-finds-emojis-are-just-another-way-to-miscommunicate/375558201/">here</a>
<a
href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/13/11422886/emoji-interpretation-different">at</a>
<a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUMl6S_KNj4&feature=youtu.be">GroupLens</a>.</p>
<p><a
href="http://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/that-emoji-youre-sending-is-open-to-interpretation/">Best</a>
<a
href="http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/news/a56705/emoji-miscommunications-emojis-look-different/">part</a>?
<a href="https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/720390755794034690">EZRA
KLEIN TWEETED ABOUT IT</a>.</p>
GropuLens Blog - Investigating the Potential for Miscommunication Using Emoji2016-04-05T00:00:00-04:002016-04-05T00:00:00-04:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2016-04-05:/ephemera/2016/04/05/gropulens-blog-investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/<p>There’s a <a
href="http://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/">new
blog post</a> for an ICWSM 2016 study (that I contributed to!) on Emoji
and miscommunication, over on the GroupLens blog.</p>
<p>It’s worth a <a
href="http://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/">read</a>.</p>
<p>In case you haven’t gotten it yet, you can <a
href="http://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/">find
the blog post</a> at <a
href="http://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/">http://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/</a>.</p>
Iron Blogging - Ridiculously Complicated Degrees2016-03-18T00:00:00-04:002016-03-18T00:00:00-04:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2016-03-18:/ephemera/2016/03/18/iron-blogging-ridiculously-complicated-degrees/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Klein">Ezra Klein</a>
(formerly of Wonkblog, now Editor-in-Chief at Vox) has a relatively new
podcast, The Ezra Klein Show, wherein he interviews interesting people,
from across the political and policy spectrum. One of …</p><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Klein">Ezra Klein</a>
(formerly of Wonkblog, now Editor-in-Chief at Vox) has a relatively new
podcast, The Ezra Klein Show, wherein he interviews interesting people,
from across the political and policy spectrum. One of his most recent <a
href="https://overcast.fm/+F_9FTZadk">interviews</a>(link to the
episode) was with <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Yong_Kim">Jim Yong Kim</a>. In
their conversation about how Jim Yong Kim got to be President of the
World Bank, he was telling the story about a colleague of his during
their MD/PhD years (both Jim Yong Kim, and his friend, got MDs and PhDs
in Anthropology). Jim Yong Kim, with a particular focus on social
justice, framed some of their conversations this way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Given the nature of our ridiculously complicated degrees, what is the
nature of our obligation to the world?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a very interesting framing to me: as one is successful, what
obligations to society come along with that success?</p>
<p>I’m not an MD/PhD student, nor am I the President of the World Bank,
but this question is something I think about a lot, and I’m intrigued by
the concept of obligatory contribution to the betterment of the world,
as one gains more eduction or professional capacity. However, it is also
not clear that the incentives of computer science academic career (and
probably many other fields) align with the obligation that Jim Yong Kim
says has driven his career. I really believe that contribution to social
change is an important thing, and Jim Yong Kim’s “obligation” is an idea
that really resonates with me.</p>
<p>I don’t know that there is an answer to <em>how</em> one pursues
identifying their obligation to the world, but this is something I think
is critically important as an academic, and it’s something I want to be
a fundamental aspect of any career direction I take.</p>
<p>I’d love to have conversations about this with people, so if you have
thoughts, please reach out!</p>
CSCW Recap2016-03-07T00:00:00-05:002016-03-07T00:00:00-05:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2016-03-07:/ephemera/2016/03/07/cscw-recap/<p>I recently attended the <a
href="http://cscw.acm.org/2016/index.php">Computer-Supported Cooperative
Work and Social Computing</a> conference, in San Francisco. There were a
number of very interesting pieces of work, that I wanted to list and
point to. I think it’s useful to think about take-aways after the
incredibly dense information overload that is a …</p><p>I recently attended the <a
href="http://cscw.acm.org/2016/index.php">Computer-Supported Cooperative
Work and Social Computing</a> conference, in San Francisco. There were a
number of very interesting pieces of work, that I wanted to list and
point to. I think it’s useful to think about take-aways after the
incredibly dense information overload that is a conference, so I figured
I would do that here.</p>
<h3
id="standing-out-from-the-crowd-emotional-labor-body-labor-and-temporal-labor-in-ridesharing-by-noopur-raval"><strong>1.
Standing Out from the Crowd: Emotional Labor, Body Labor, and Temporal
Labor in Ridesharing</strong> by <em>Noopur Raval</em></h3>
<p>This work was incredibly ethnographic, and explored the different
<em>kinds</em> of labor conducted by Uber drivers. They talk about, and
argue for, the idea that Uber drivers (and presumably other gig-workers
as well) conduct many forms of labor, beyond those they’re being paid
for. This could include anything from seeking to portray themselves in a
particular light, to the specific kinds of labor conducted in crisis
times. For instance, one person they talk to went above and beyond the
actual job of Uber to provide transportation, and check in on safety of
their riders, during the Baltimore protests.</p>
<h3 id="the-crowd-is-a-collaborative-network-by-mary-gray"><strong>2.
The Crowd is a Collaborative Network</strong> by <em>Mary
Gray</em>:</h3>
<p>I found this work really compelling. It describes and provides strong
evidence for the idea that humans find a way to be social, even when the
technology doesn’t support it. This is similar to something I’ve heard
<a href="http://twitter.com/halfak">Aaron</a> talk about in the context
of Wikipedia in the past, but it really resonated. Mary Gray and her
coauthor have longitudinal data, across 4 different online gig platforms
(including Mechanical Turk), and argue that workers are communicating,
period. The overall conclusion of their argument is simple:
<em>facilitate communication among workers, but don’t seek to engineer
particular mechanisms because workers route around them anyway</em>.</p>
<h3
id="does-the-sharing-economy-do-any-good-panel-with-tawanna-dillahunt-airi-lampinen-jacki-oneil-and-loren-terveen"><strong>3.
Does the Sharing Economy Do Any Good?</strong> panel with <em>Tawanna
Dillahunt</em>, <em>Airi Lampinen</em>, <em>Jacki O’Neil</em>, and
<em>Loren Terveen</em>:</h3>
<p>This particular panel hits pretty close to home for me, since a
non-trivial component of it consisted of the work I did with <a
href="http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~terveen/">Loren</a> and <a
href="http://brenthecht.com">Brent</a>. The high-level question is right
in the title: is the sharing economy able to do good? Jacki O’Neil
contributed a lot to this panel, because her she is working with
auto-rickshaws in India, and has a natural observational structure that
allows her to <em>compare</em> auto-rickshaws using an Uber-esque app,
and ones that are not. A big takeaweay from her work is that, at least
in the context of her study, gig economy platforms (or peer-to-peer
platforms) do not actually provide the certainty of work that one might
hope for. She argues that we need to <em>acknowledge that we’re
re-designing work</em> as we build these platforms, and that has a lot
of power (and potential for failure). Finally, <a
href="http://airilampinen.fi">Airi</a> poses an interesting way to think
about the impact of gig economy platforms: <em>how common is it for
workers to also be consumers of the peer economy they work in?</em></p>
<h3
id="parting-crowds-characterizing-divergent-interpretations-in-crowdsourced-annotation-tasks-by-sanjay-kairam"><strong>4.
Parting Crowds: Characterizing Divergent Interpretations in Crowdsourced
Annotation Tasks</strong> by <em>Sanjay Kairam</em>:</h3>
<p>This was an interesting technical contribution, that I think has a
lot of potential when thinking about crowd work. The framing for this
work comes from crowdsourcing text annotations, for the purposes of
labeling a linguistic dataset. What Kairam argues is that one can
cluster the individual responses given by crowd workers, and that these
clusters represent <em>systematic areas of disagreement</em> between
crowd workers, and may mean there are <em>multiple, equally valid</em>
responses to the question being asked (e.g. some crowd workers labelled
the <em>type of organization</em> represented by a Twitter account,
whereas others did not label the Twitter account name at all). I think
there are a lot of interesting implications for geographic crowd tasks,
particularly for data collection and spatial annotation.</p>
Welcome To Pelican2016-03-07T00:00:00-05:002016-03-07T00:00:00-05:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2016-03-07:/ephemera/2016/03/07/welcome-to-pelican/<hr />
<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>You know, I’ve really started to come around on python.</p>
<p>What this actually means, in this case, is that I’ve completely moved
away from <a href="http://nanoc.ws">nanoc</a>, and now my site is …</p><hr />
<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>You know, I’ve really started to come around on python.</p>
<p>What this actually means, in this case, is that I’ve completely moved
away from <a href="http://nanoc.ws">nanoc</a>, and now my site is
generated by <a href="http://blog.getpelican.com">Pelican</a>.</p>
<p>The transition was relatively straightforward, although there may
still be some bugs here and there.</p>
<p>One major change, at this point, is that my URLs have completely
changed, which is probably not ideal? I don’t really know that it
matters, but I’ll be looking to see if I can to rewrites on URLs with
<code>nginx</code>.</p>
<p>The biggest benefit, to me, is auto-generation of a publication page.
Specifically <code>pelican-bibtex</code>. This lets me put a BibTeX file
in a directory, generate a specific page to post these papers on, and
<code>pelican-bibtex</code> does the rest. I ended up <a
href="https://github.com/jtsmn/pelican-bibtex">forking</a> it a bit, so
that I can do some hacky things (like call “unpublished” bibtex entries
‘Posters and Extended Abstracts’, and ‘inproceedings’ bibtex entries
‘Papers’), as well as allowing for ACM Author-izer links in the BibTeX
file. Overall though, this means I can put my publications in one spot,
and my site generator adds it to my <a
href="http://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/papers.html">publications
page</a>.</p>
Iron Blogging - CSCW Stop Gap2016-03-06T00:00:00-05:002016-03-06T00:00:00-05:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2016-03-06:/ephemera/2016/03/06/iron-blogging-cscw-stop-gap/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m cheating a little bit, and committing to two things, but not
writing either of them now.</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>I will write-up a summary of my favorite papers at the recent CSCSW
2016 …</li></ol><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m cheating a little bit, and committing to two things, but not
writing either of them now.</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>I will write-up a summary of my favorite papers at the recent CSCSW
2016 conference I attended. There’s a lot of cool work coming out of the
community, and I want to write-up the pieces that I tank are worth
paying attention to.</li>
<li>I’m in the middle of transitioning this website to <a
href="http://blog.getpelican.com">Pelican</a>, from <a
href="http://nanoc.ws">nanoc</a>.I want to explain why that is, but it
definitely relates to my <a
href="http://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/ephemera/2016-01-26-iron-blogging:-simplifying-workflows/">continued
infatuation with Python</a></li>
</ol>
<p>So, that’s that. I’m not writing either of these for now, but I’m
writing about writing them.</p>
Iron Blogging - Nerd Alert – Rumored OS X 10.12 Siri and the Role of Introversion2016-02-24T00:00:00-05:002016-02-24T00:00:00-05:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2016-02-24:/ephemera/2016/02/24/iron-blogging-nerd-alert-rumored-os-x-1012-siri-and-the-role-of-introversion/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://9to5mac.com/2016/02/24/apple-siri-osx-10-12-2016/">OS
X 10.12 is rumored to have Siri integrated in</a>. That’s exciting to
me.</p>
<p>The natural language piece of Siri is phenomenal, and it’s something
I’ve been wanting …</p><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://9to5mac.com/2016/02/24/apple-siri-osx-10-12-2016/">OS
X 10.12 is rumored to have Siri integrated in</a>. That’s exciting to
me.</p>
<p>The natural language piece of Siri is phenomenal, and it’s something
I’ve been wanting on my mac for a long time. On my phone I use it for
reminders, I use it for lists, I use it to turn on music, and I use it
for timers while cooking. I want this for my computer. I want to be able
to instruct me computer to ‘remind me about this at 4pm’.</p>
<p>Except, I work in an office, at a desk, with a lot of other people.
Maybe that’s uncommon, but probably not (what with the Cool Open Office
Spaces that exist in many companies). What I <em>don’t</em> want is to
have the only way to interact with this language-understanding assistant
is through voice.</p>
<p>As HCI and social computing pushes into machine-learning backed
assistants, and these assistants begin to permeate our lives, it feels
important to figure out how they fit in to our normal social
interactions. More concretely, it feels important to make sure these
assistants aren’t <em>breaking</em> social norms like “talk to people
and not objects”.</p>
<p>Consider this a call for introverted AI assistants, who really would
prefer you not call attention to them, unless the social situation
allows for it.</p>
Iron Blogging - Simplifying Workflows2016-01-26T00:00:00-05:002016-01-26T00:00:00-05:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2016-01-26:/ephemera/2016/01/26/iron-blogging-simplifying-workflows/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I do a fair amount of spatial data analysis, particularly in the
space of trying to understand geographic disparity, and its effects on
systems.</p>
<p>This workflow used to go something like:</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>Setup …</li></ol><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I do a fair amount of spatial data analysis, particularly in the
space of trying to understand geographic disparity, and its effects on
systems.</p>
<p>This workflow used to go something like:</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>Setup a <a href="http://www.postgresql.org">Postgresql</a>/<a
href="http://postgis.net">PostGIS</a> database</li>
<li>import all the data (including points or polygons that reflect
geographic regions)
<ul>
<li>this often involves replicating geometries because there are
individual data points that apply to the same geometry</li>
</ul></li>
<li>do any aggregation or summary statistics <em>per geometry</em> that
I needed to do, and apply these values to each Postgres record</li>
<li>use <code>pgsql2shp</code> command, to dump a database table (or a
subset of the table, by query) to get a <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapefile">shapefile</a>
<ul>
<li>this often involves at least one <code>GROUP BY</code> clause</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Open this shapefile in <a href="http://qgis.org/en/site/">QGIS</a>,
to do some exploratory mapping, and save the data as a CSV file for
later</li>
<li>Open this shapefile in <a
href="https://geodacenter.asu.edu/software/downloads">GeoDa</a>, to do
some simple exploratory analysis</li>
<li>Import the aforementiond CSV file into R, and then write R code to
do any data transformation needed</li>
<li>Use R for any analysis (normally spatial regressions, with
<code>spdep</code>)</li>
</ol>
<p>You’ll notice here, that around step 7, we lose any concept of the
geometry of this geographic data. Unfortunately, this means that if I
any of the things below, that I need to start again at Step 3:</p>
<ul>
<li>a different geographic subset of the data for analysis, or</li>
<li>a different geographic function (say, population density), or</li>
<li>anything at the R stage that isn’t already there</li>
</ul>
<p>There is a better world.</p>
<p>For a different project, I recently started using <a
href="http://Jupyter.org">Jupyter</a>, for easier collaboration.</p>
<p>At first, it was nice, because I could just import CSVs into Jupyter,
and use <em>Python</em> (specifically pandas, which is incredibly nice)
for the data transformation. This is better for me than R. However, I
quickly started wondering if there is a way insert Jupyter and python
earlier into my workflow.</p>
<p>As it turns out, a lot of the geographic analysis software (QGIS,
GeoDa, steps 5 and 6 respectively) is built on top of existing python
libraries. That’s a good sign, but it made me worry I’d have to drop
down a level and code more, which would be a time sink. Enter: <a
href="http://geopandas.org">GeoPandas</a>.</p>
<p>GeoPandas, or geographic extension to <a
href="http://pandas.pydata.org">Pandas</a>, is a whole new game.
GeoPandas lets me load a GeoDataFrame (you know, a DataFrame, with
<em>geography</em>) either from a shapefile (we’re now at step 4), or
even better <em>directly from PostGIS</em>.</p>
<p>Because Pandas (and subsequently GeoPandas) has such nice
<code>groupby()</code> and <code>agg()</code> functionality, I don’t
need to write these things in SQL. Because GeoPandas also has a concept
of geometric operations (point in polygon, intersection, etc.) and
<em>spatial joins</em> (merging datasets based on geographic overlap) I
can insert the Python/Jupyter workflow <em>after Step 2</em>.</p>
<p>I mentioned before that a lot of the geographic analysis software was
built on python libraries. As it turns out, GeoDa is built on top of a
library called <a href="https://geodacenter.asu.edu/pysal">pysal</a>.
This means that I can do any analysis supported by GeoDa (including
spatial regressions) directly from python.</p>
<p>My workflow now looks like:</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>Setup a Postgresql/PostGIS database</li>
<li>import all the data (including points or polygons that reflect
geographic regions)
<ul>
<li>this often involves replicating geometries because there are
individual data points that apply to the same geometry</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Load this table into Jupyter (with GeoPandas), and perform any
aggregation, summary statistics, or data transformation I need, which
either become a new column, or perhaps a transformed GeoDataFrame
(remember <code>groupby()</code>?)</li>
<li>Do any exploratory mapping, exploratory analysis, or more involved
spatial analysis <em>directly within Jupyter</em>.</li>
</ol>
<p>So, I’ve now cut the number of different steps in half, and dropped
the number of different ways I work with this data (including different
languages used) from 5 to 1 (or maybe 2, if you count the single line of
SQL I’m writing to dump data out of my database).</p>
<p>I’ve long resisted Python, because I know Java or Javascript, and it
wasn’t clear what Python got me.</p>
<p>I was so wrong.</p>
Iron Blogging - Non-Writing Recidivism2016-01-17T00:00:00-05:002016-01-17T00:00:00-05:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2016-01-17:/ephemera/2016/01/17/iron-blogging-non-writing-recidivism/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Well, I’ve continued to not write. That’s a failing. I’ve been trying
to do other things, because there is never enough time in the day.</p>
<p>That’s not justification …</p><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Well, I’ve continued to not write. That’s a failing. I’ve been trying
to do other things, because there is never enough time in the day.</p>
<p>That’s not justification. However, I am finishing up a piece of
analysis that I want to show off about at some point, on the <a
href="http://jacob.thebault-spieker.com/ephemera/2015-11-13-iron-blogging:-inequality-indices-for-platform-accountability/">Spatial
Decomposition of the Theil Index</a>. I’m hoping to get that out next
week.</p>
<p>That’s all for now folks. Good night, and good luck.</p>
Iron Blogging - 'Protected Classes' in Online Systems2015-12-06T00:00:00-05:002015-12-06T00:00:00-05:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2015-12-06:/ephemera/2015/12/06/iron-blogging-protected-classes-in-online-systems/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a
href="http://socio-technologist.blogspot.com/2015/12/disparate-impact-of-damage-detection-on.html">Aaron
Halfaker</a> just (like, you know, <em>today</em>) posted some of his
thoughts and early work based on a conversation we had about disparate
impact in Wikipedia, both in terms of actual effect …</p><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a
href="http://socio-technologist.blogspot.com/2015/12/disparate-impact-of-damage-detection-on.html">Aaron
Halfaker</a> just (like, you know, <em>today</em>) posted some of his
thoughts and early work based on a conversation we had about disparate
impact in Wikipedia, both in terms of actual effect on individuals, and
as a metaphor or framing for how to think about issues of bias and
systemic disparity. Go read his thing, he does a good job of introducing
the topic, and that’s not my point here.</p>
<p>He says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Protected Class</strong>. In US law, it seems that this term
is generally reserved for race, gender, and ability. In the case of
Wikipedia, we don’t know these demographics. They could be involved and
I think they likely are, but I think that anonymous editors and
newcomers should also be considered a protected class in Wikipedia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There’s some interesting stuff here that I want to try to unpack.</p>
<p>Aaron is right, <strong>protected class</strong> has a legal
definition <a href="#fn1" class="footnote-ref" id="fnref1"
role="doc-noteref"><sup>1</sup></a>. Laws are the societally defined set
of ways we delineate what is acceptable. Societally, we have decided
that there are (and ought to be) legal ramifications if there is
discrimination (or disparately impactful discriminatory processes), in
the United States.</p>
<p>He also argues for <em>expanding</em> the definition of
<strong>protected class</strong>, because the sociotechnical systems
that Wikipedia has built (like ORES) put barriers in place for newcomers
and anonymous editors to be successful. Wikipedia (or really, people who
work on Wikipedia) has a community-defined set of ways to delineate what
is acceptable.</p>
<p>In general society, the groups of people we consider members of a
protected class are defined in law, based on history and value
judgements made at the time (Voting Rights Act, etc.). If, at some point
in time, society sought to change these categories, there would be an
expectation of accountability to this process, and one would be expected
to show strong evidence that any groups being removed wouldn’t be
harmed, and that groups being added have received a certain degree of
societal harm (i.e. it would be difficult to argue that white men who
make $1,000,000 or more ought to be a protected class).</p>
<p>In Wikipedia, the algorithms and statistics that back them decides
who gets treated as a protected class, this is the point Aaron is
seeking to address. But what does accountability of this process look
like? What is the <em>computationally actionable</em> threshold for
adding or removing groups from the models being used? <em>Who</em>
decides which groups hit this threshold? <em>How</em> do groups who do
feel they’re being disparately impacted voice this concern and build
their case? Can this be dynamically, sociotechnically available?</p>
<p>I don’t raise these questions to suggest mistrust towards Aaron nor
Wikimedia (the shepherds of ORES right now), quite the opposite. I’m
very excited by the work he and they are doing, I think ORES has a
strong ability to even out some of the disparities that likely exist.
However, I also believe this is <em>only true</em> when ORES is able to
dynamically mitigate disparate impact for groups that are being
disadvantaged.</p>
<p>I’m super interested in these ideas, and Aaron and I will keep
talking about them, but I’d be interested in other’s thoughts as
well.</p>
<aside id="footnotes" class="footnotes footnotes-end-of-document"
role="doc-endnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1"><p>via <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class#cite_note-Finduslaw-1">Wikipedia</a>,
which cites law<a href="#fnref1" class="footnote-back"
role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p></li>
</ol>
</aside>
Iron Blogging - Consistent Clarity of Thought2015-12-02T00:00:00-05:002015-12-02T00:00:00-05:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2015-12-02:/ephemera/2015/12/02/iron-blogging-consistent-clarity-of-thought/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of the things that seems to be necessary (if not sufficient) for
success in academia is how consistent and efficient people can be with
their <em>clarity</em> of thought, rather than the …</p><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of the things that seems to be necessary (if not sufficient) for
success in academia is how consistent and efficient people can be with
their <em>clarity</em> of thought, rather than the capacity for good
thought.</p>
<p>This is something I find myself struggling with a lot. I often have
vague notions of something that seems interesting, but I’m not always
very good at articulating or clearly defining the thought that I’m
having.</p>
<p>The other odd part about this is that it seems entirely opaque to me
<em>what helps build</em> this clarity of thinking, and how you achieves
the high rate of consistency and efficiency of clear, put together lines
of thought.</p>
<p>I’ve often wondered if there is personal infrastructure I can put in
place that supports habituation of thinking clearly, or if it’s just a
thing one has to be mindful of always. If you’ve got ideas, I’d love to
hear them.</p>
Iron Blogging - Inequality Indices For Platform Accountability2015-11-13T00:00:00-05:002015-11-13T00:00:00-05:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2015-11-13:/ephemera/2015/11/13/iron-blogging-inequality-indices-for-platform-accountability/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve been thinking about systemic accountability recently: <em>how
can we hold systems accountable to a set of expectations?</em></p>
<p>In Ecology, the ecological systems (or, you know,
<em>ecosystems</em>, I guess) they study …</p><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve been thinking about systemic accountability recently: <em>how
can we hold systems accountable to a set of expectations?</em></p>
<p>In Ecology, the ecological systems (or, you know,
<em>ecosystems</em>, I guess) they study exist in a world where they
need to be valued by humans for conservation to occur. One framing for
this value is <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_services">Ecosystem
Services</a>, which, as I understand it, has been pretty significant as
a conservation argument for the preservation of some ecosystems.</p>
<p>Broadly, ecosystem services give ecologists a way to talk about the
specific things that ecosystems do, and actionable metrics on which to
gauge what “value” the ecosystem provides.</p>
<p>When we think about sociotechnical platforms, a different set of
metrics might be important, but it seems useful to think about
<em>what</em> and <em>how</em> the platform or system is producing or
providing.</p>
<p>There are straightforward approaches to some kinds metrics,
specifically for inequality (like the Gini coefficient, or the
lesser-known Theil Index), but in a geographic context, these, like most
other statistical measures, break down because of <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobler%27s_first_law_of_geography">Tobler’s
First Law of Geography</a>, and the spatial auto-correlation that comes
from it.</p>
<p>However, the Theil Index is <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theil_index#Decomposability">decomposable</a>,
which means that it is an average of weighted subgroups, plus the
inequality within these subgroups. Spatially, one could use the spatial
autocorrelation (using something like a standard neighbors-weights
matrix that reflects how related neighbors are to each other) to define
subgroups, and compute spatially distinct subgroups<a href="#fn1"
class="footnote-ref" id="fnref1" role="doc-noteref"><sup>1</sup></a>.
This decomposability means that we can derive the amount of inequality
within each subgroup, and how much each subgroup contributes to overall
inequality.</p>
<p>More broadly though, this seems like it also gives us a
straightforward metric through which we can start understanding <em>how
equal the platform is spatially</em>. Inequality metrics are often used
for things like housing, or income inequality, but what about
sociotechnical platforms that interact in the physical world? How does
this metric enable us to hold platforms accountable to geographic
equality? What does that sort of transparency and accountability look
like?</p>
<p>In a follow-up post, I hope to have an example of a spatial version
of the Theil index, because I think this might be an interesting design
direction.</p>
<aside id="footnotes" class="footnotes footnotes-end-of-document"
role="doc-endnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1"><p>I’m glossing over some details here because I am not
intimately familiar with the math.<a href="#fnref1"
class="footnote-back" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p></li>
</ol>
</aside>
Iron Blogging - Network Effects of Shared (Wrong) Belief2015-09-13T00:00:00-04:002015-09-13T00:00:00-04:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2015-09-13:/ephemera/2015/09/13/iron-blogging-network-effects-of-shared-wrong-belief/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>From <a
href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/13/what-do-you-say-to-a-roanoke-truther.html">Ben
Collins</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Every day now, Chris wakes up to find strangers’ hate on his Facebook
wall that he has to personally delete. Or he’ll Google Alison to find
the people …</p></blockquote><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>From <a
href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/13/what-do-you-say-to-a-roanoke-truther.html">Ben
Collins</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Every day now, Chris wakes up to find strangers’ hate on his Facebook
wall that he has to personally delete. Or he’ll Google Alison to find
the people he has to thank for donating to her scholarships and he’ll
see, instead, another conspiracy theory YouTube video, viewed 800,000
times over, that says Alison was in on it all along, and that she’s been
given a new life and maybe plastic surgery by the government.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The above paragraph describes an increasingly common scenario where
an individual is targeted by large numbers of people, and is on the
receiving end of their anger and vitriol. In this particular case, the
target is the boyfriend of a woman killed on while she was being filmed
is being told repeatedly (and seemingly angrily) that her death, and
sometimes his existence, were a falsified story (“false flag”) being put
forward by a government in order to distract from or justify
totalitarian actions.</p>
<p>There’s a lot of conspiracy-theory weirdness in this particular
story, but that doesn’t detract from the horribleness that Chris (or in
general, the person being targeted) experiences. Nor does it change the
way that this horribleness occurs – over the internet, leveraging the
immense scale and network-effect that the internet and social media
enable.</p>
<p>If you’ve been paying attention, you can likely name a number of
different instances of this sort of thing occurring: to the Dentist (and
his family) that killed Cecil the Lion, to Justine Sacco as she tweeted
something offensive while she was getting on a plane. The list goes
on.</p>
<p>In these two cases, I think, people would generally agree that the
target did something gross: hunting endangered animals and saying racist
things are generally considered bad. Intelligent people can have
conversations about the severity of the lashback for the “crime”, and
many have. I generally believe the scale is disproportionate to the act,
but that’s a conversation for another time. Let’s grant for a moment
what The Dentist and Ms. Sacco did warrant some form of social response
to help delineate what the collective considers acceptable behavior.
Platforms can, should and <a
href="http://readwrite.com/2015/02/27/twitter-harassment-countermeasures-not-enough">are
(sort of)</a> do something about the severity of the response.</p>
<p>There’s a difference though, when the target of this distributed
lashback is being targeted <em>because of conspiracy theory</em>. It
seems that the difference is explicitly about the <em>validity of the
reason</em>. When the <em>validity of the reason</em> for this kind of
response is called into question (setting aside how valid the severity
of the response is), perhaps there’s more platforms ought to be
doing.</p>
<p>This is a tricky problem. In a related space, Kate Starbird believes
that censorship (or “nipping false information in the bud”, to be
charitable) breaks social processes in other ways.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">
Rumoring is natural part of collective sensemaking that takes place
after disasters. Censoring it likely a bad idea
<a href="https://t.co/MIIxxiSdyG">https://t.co/MIIxxiSdyG</a>
</p>
— Kate Starbird (@katestarbird)
<a href="https://twitter.com/katestarbird/status/638472736394743808">August
31, 2015</a>
</blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>Regardless of how tricky of a problem it may be, strategies for
mitigating the harmful outcomes of social network scale anger and
vitriol seem critically important. The power of network-effect scale is
both what makes the internet such an exciting communication platform,
and what lets it turn into a mob. This is a bit of a chicken and egg
problem, ideally we’d have the positives of network-effects, while
minimizing or getting rid of the negatives. I’m not well versed in this
space, but it seems that there’s an interesting, really hard set of
problems at the intersection of “tools to mitigate distributed emotional
attack” and “keeping the things that people use social networks
for”.</p>
Iron Blogging - Iterations on Iterations on Iterations2015-08-27T00:00:00-04:002015-08-27T00:00:00-04:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2015-08-27:/ephemera/2015/08/27/iron-blogging-iterations-on-iterations-on-iterations/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Recently, I’ve been bouncing between a few different projects:</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>Writing</li>
<li>Designing an Experiment</li>
<li>Deep-dive on Spatial Statistics</li>
</ol>
<p>The thing that ties all of these together, from a day-to-day
perspective is that …</p><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Recently, I’ve been bouncing between a few different projects:</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>Writing</li>
<li>Designing an Experiment</li>
<li>Deep-dive on Spatial Statistics</li>
</ol>
<p>The thing that ties all of these together, from a day-to-day
perspective is that they’re all explicitly iterations on projects I’ve
been working on for what feels like a long time.</p>
<p>I don’t always recognize pulling projects towards completion as an
iterative process. Often, I find myself feeling like I’m doing and
re-doing, and re-doing, and getting more frustrated at each stage of
re-doing.</p>
<p>Recognition of procedure as <em>part of the process</em> helps me,
because then it’s “just a part of doing the thing”, and not “I’m not
making any progress at all”.</p>
<p>So, that’s my conclusion for Iron Blogging this week: When I’m aware
of the process I’m undertaking, accepting the iterative/repetitive
nature of the work becomes easier to push through.</p>
<p>Over the next couple weeks, I may be writing about some of the few
different things I’m doing, or various parts of it.</p>
Iron Blogging - Protest and Community Organizing in an On-Demand World2015-08-06T00:00:00-04:002015-08-13T00:00:00-04:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2015-08-06:/ephemera/2015/08/06/iron-blogging-protest-and-community-organizing-in-an-on-demand-world/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Labor movements, over time (at least in the United States), have had
success because of collective action; many voices acting as one unified
front. Often, this starts as an organizational process by …</p><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Labor movements, over time (at least in the United States), have had
success because of collective action; many voices acting as one unified
front. Often, this starts as an organizational process by workers, or
their representatives in a union. When employers and workers cannot come
to an agreement that meets the needs of the workers, this can lead to
picketing or a strike. Sometimes this form of protest works, and the
employer gives the workers what they’re looking for.</p>
<p>There’s historical precedence of employers bringing in “scab”
workers, or temporary workers that keep the business running. In unions,
and with people who are concerned about labor rights, it is and was
considered a breach of solidarity for workers to show up to work and get
paid, or customers that continued to do business with the employer,
during a strike. The idea being, of course, that workers should be
participating in the strike, and customers should be boycotting the
employer, if they care about fair working conditions. There is even a
phrase: “don’t cross the picket line”.</p>
<p>In a world where we continue to automate jobs, and forms of
knowledge-work become more and more algorithmically mediated through
platforms and mobile apps (like the peer/gig/on-demand/sharing economy),
what changes?</p>
<p>There are a number of examples of people and projects developing
technologies <a href="#fn1" class="footnote-ref" id="fnref1"
role="doc-noteref"><sup>1</sup></a><a href="#fn2" class="footnote-ref"
id="fnref2" role="doc-noteref"><sup>2</sup></a>, or doing community
organizing <a href="#fn3" class="footnote-ref" id="fnref3"
role="doc-noteref"><sup>3</sup></a>, to help meet the infrastructural
needs of collective action in the peer/gig/on-demand/sharing economy.
People are thinking about <em>how</em> workers strike, in this new
technologically-mediated economy. So, it seems like a natural extension
to ask the question: what happens when employers and workers
(<em><em>ahem</em></em>: they’re <em>not</em> employees) <em>do</em>
disagree, and unionized or empowered workers strike?</p>
<p>I mentioned solidarity, and that’s a pretty loaded political word,
but in this context, it seems to mean a collaborative agreement, across
the worker-consumer boundary, that the employer isn’t being reasonable.
By picketing, workers delineated a geographic and symbolic border, and
said, essentially: “if you agree with us, don’t enter this area”. What
does a “picket line” look like when workers travel <em>to the
customer</em>, and there is no centralized place where workers and
customers interact? How do peer/gig/on-demand/sharing economy workers
delineate a border, that people who agree with striking workers (other
workers and consumers alike) know not to cross? Software mediates the
interaction between workers and consumers or employers, just as physical
space did before. How do workers delineate a picket line in a
software-mediated world? How do consumers understand this picket line,
and choose to act accordingly, in solidarity?</p>
<aside id="footnotes" class="footnotes footnotes-end-of-document"
role="doc-endnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1"><p><a href="http://www.wearedynamo.org">Dyanmo</a><a
href="#fnref1" class="footnote-back" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p></li>
<li id="fn2"><p><a
href="http://blog.fuselabs.org/post/125185306896/worker-centric-labor-markets">MSR
FUSE Labs</a><a href="#fnref2" class="footnote-back"
role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p></li>
<li id="fn3"><p><a
href="https://twitter.com/lippytak/status/628044902127923200"
class="uri">https://twitter.com/lippytak/status/628044902127923200</a><a
href="#fnref3" class="footnote-back" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p></li>
</ol>
</aside>
Iron Blogging - Introduction2015-08-03T00:00:00-04:002015-08-03T00:00:00-04:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2015-08-03:/ephemera/2015/08/03/iron-blogging-introduction/<blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s been a while since I’ve written here.</p>
<p>Hopefully, at least for a period of time, posting will be a lot more
frequent.</p>
<p>A few of us in GroupLens have …</p><blockquote>
<p><em>This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so
take that for what you will.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s been a while since I’ve written here.</p>
<p>Hopefully, at least for a period of time, posting will be a lot more
frequent.</p>
<p>A few of us in GroupLens have decided to try our hands at Iron
Blogging, which is a process to create accountability for writing every
week, and building writing skill, on topics related to our field.</p>
<p>So, I’ll be using the “Iron Blogging” prefix to posts that are
associated with this effort. It’ll likely be a combination of thoughts
about topics I’m academically interested in, paper reviews, and other
ephemera.</p>
You're not that tricky: Imposter Syndrome as localized conspiracy theory2014-12-13T00:00:00-05:002014-12-15T00:00:00-05:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2014-12-13:/ephemera/2014/12/13/youre-not-that-tricky-imposter-syndrome-as-localized-conspiracy-theory/<p>I, and I think many graduate students, have feelings of inadequacy,
or feel that I’m the wrong person to be doing what I’m doing. It’s not
constant, but it is relatively common, in a <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc"><em>post
hoc ergo propter hoc</em></a> way.</p>
<p>However, I recently received a PhD Review …</p><p>I, and I think many graduate students, have feelings of inadequacy,
or feel that I’m the wrong person to be doing what I’m doing. It’s not
constant, but it is relatively common, in a <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc"><em>post
hoc ergo propter hoc</em></a> way.</p>
<p>However, I recently received a PhD Review email urging me to keep
doing good work, and to begin thinking about a Thesis Proposal. I shared
this with someone, which sparked a conversation that I found oddly
cathartic. For the sake of her privacy, I’ll refer to her as J below.
The conversation went something like (paraphrased):</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> [showing J the email]</p>
<p><strong>J:</strong> See? You’re not a bad grad student</p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> Unless I’ve tricked the department into thinking
otherwise</p>
<p><strong>J:</strong> Yeah, but I know you, you’re not that tricky</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>You’re not that tricky</em>. When she said that to me, it was
sort of illuminating. The implication in “you’re not that tricky” is “Do
you actually believe you’ve orchestrated everything to get to where you
are?”.</p>
<p>Duh. That’s just it, isn’t it? Sometimes I don’t believe I’m good
enough to be a PhD student, but I do believe that I’m capable of
maintaining a multi-year con on a department full of very intelligent
people?</p>
<p>There’s this concept used to question conspiracy theories that goes
something like “Do you believe that the number of people required to
orchestrate this would have been able to keep quiet about it this
long?”, to which the non-conspiracy answer is “no, probably not”.</p>
<p>That is, however, what I seem able to convince myself when I’m
questioning my skills or capacity: that I’ve somehow orchestrated
trickery that began when I was an undergraduate by requesting letters of
recommendation, and has somehow continued into the 4th year of my PhD,
<em>while no one noticed</em>.</p>
<p>This seems like the localized version of “wouldn’t someone have said
something?”: “wouldn’t someone have noticed?”. Of course, the people who
wrote my letters of recommendation, my advisor, mentors at my IBM
internship, and other colleagues are all people I have great respect and
admiration for. They’re all very intelligent, capable people. Not the
kind of people who would easily be duped into the level of local
conspiracy that it would take for me to get to where I am.</p>
<p><em>You’re not that tricky</em>. “Do you believe the number of people
required to be duped haven’t noticed for this long?” No, of course not,
and that’s the point. If that’s not possible, there’s another reason I’m
here, not massive trickery on my part. Their support must be because
they believe something about my actual capacity.</p>
<p><em>I’m not that tricky.</em></p>
builders. systems. society.2014-11-24T00:00:00-05:002014-11-25T00:00:00-05:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2014-11-24:/ephemera/2014/11/24/builders-systems-society/<p><em>I’m starting to write this ~2 hours and 45 minutes after the
decision not to indict Darren Wilson (the police office who killed
18-year-old Mike Brown, a black man) was handed down by the Grand Jury
in this case. As such, my thoughts on this are very defined by …</em></p><p><em>I’m starting to write this ~2 hours and 45 minutes after the
decision not to indict Darren Wilson (the police office who killed
18-year-old Mike Brown, a black man) was handed down by the Grand Jury
in this case. As such, my thoughts on this are very defined by this
context, leading me to write this post. <strong>Please</strong> If you
haven’t, <strong>go read stuff by people who aren’t like me</strong><a
href="#fn1" class="footnote-ref" id="fnref1"
role="doc-noteref"><sup>1</sup></a>. If you have, do some more, then
come back if you want</em>.</p>
<p>As academics, we’re in a unique position. We have (or are developing)
the skills to understand how systems-design affects people. People using
the system, people interacting with people using the system, or even
people living in a society where the system has influence.</p>
<p>As technologists, system builders, we’re also in a unique position.
We are very explicitly (as programming languages are wont to impose)
making design, engineering, and interaction decisions that influence the
effect our systems have. Our decisions impact people<a href="#fn2"
class="footnote-ref" id="fnref2"
role="doc-noteref"><sup>2</sup></a>.</p>
<p>In watching the developements in Ferguson, MO over these last few
months, culminating in tonight, I’m overwhelmed by a feeling that our
broader societal system has broken down. It is naïve to say that this
societal system (the one we call “society”) is broken in all ways, or
that it has broken recently. Even so, parts feel broken. There are a lot
of ways to talk about “broken”, and there are a lot of ways to ascribe
blame or fault. I don’t wish to do either here, but our <a
href="http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/">society
is as polarized as it has been in 2 decades</a>, and that’s not because
we all perceive everything to be fine. I would venture to say that most
people would say society has broken down in some way<a href="#fn3"
class="footnote-ref" id="fnref3" role="doc-noteref"><sup>3</sup></a>
(this could range from infrastructure, to gun laws in either direction,
even to money in politics).</p>
<p>In the context of my reasons for writing this: consider, for a
moment, police forces as a “technology” (and I mean this in a very loose
way, as a societal role that provides certain things), with affordances
society is generally interested in. What are the design, engineering,
and interaction decisions<a href="#fn4" class="footnote-ref" id="fnref4"
role="doc-noteref"><sup>4</sup></a> that create and cause the unwanted,
unintended behavior<a href="#fn5" class="footnote-ref" id="fnref5"
role="doc-noteref"><sup>5</sup></a> (like militarization of our police
forces, or the continued killing of young, black, men and boys)? What
are these anti-patterns?</p>
<p>As technologist, system-building, academics, what can we bring to the
table? I don’t believe we’re the only people who can understand systems,
nor do I believe the techno-utopian suggestion that technology solves
all bad in the world. But, are we asking ourselves this question enough?
Are we thinking enough about our role in the societal system, and the
interactions that our work has with the “parent-system” (society)? Are
the “child-systems” we build reflecting and amplifying the break-downs
of the parent-system we inherit from? Or can we work to counteract these
break-downs? How much is our own concept of “us” (that is, the people we
bring into our field) affecting our capacity to ask or address these
questions?</p>
<p>As technologists, system builders, what happens when a system breaks?
What happens when there is an architectural issue so deep within the
system that it’s causing unwanted, unintended behavior? We patch it, we
fix it, in some cases, we re-build it from the ground up. If we ignore
it, we’re doing a disservice.</p>
<p>As academics, what impact does a broken system have on the people
using it? What impact does a broken system have on people interacting
with people using the system? What impact does a broken system have on
people living in a society where the broken system has influence?</p>
<p>I have a lot of questions, and not a lot of answers. But: this topic
is why I’m a PhD student.</p>
<aside id="footnotes" class="footnotes footnotes-end-of-document"
role="doc-endnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1"><p>I’m a white, middle-class, cisgendered man, and a PhD
student. I’m implicitly privileged.<a href="#fnref1"
class="footnote-back" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p></li>
<li id="fn2"><p>“People using the system, people interacting with people
using the system, or even people living in a society where the system
has influence.”<a href="#fnref2" class="footnote-back"
role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p></li>
<li id="fn3"><p>For me, in this moment, this feeling is coming from our
treatment of black people in this country. At other times it derives
from the societal treatment of women, people living in this country
without the proper documentation, LGBTQ people, and other oppressed
groups.<a href="#fnref3" class="footnote-back"
role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p></li>
<li id="fn4"><p>Or “locally optimal” decisions that lead to emergent
behaviors, but that’s a conversation for another time.<a href="#fnref4"
class="footnote-back" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p></li>
<li id="fn5"><p>Historically, perhaps not always unintended, but again,
conversation for another time.<a href="#fnref5" class="footnote-back"
role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p></li>
</ol>
</aside>
Sociotechnical Systems as Agents of Change2014-08-23T00:00:00-04:002014-08-23T00:00:00-04:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2014-08-23:/ephemera/2014/08/23/sociotechnical-systems-as-agents-of-change/<p><strong>Update:</strong> According to the article danah boyd sent
out, Twitter says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We select each tweet using a variety of signals, including how
popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with
it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As <a href="http://jeffreynichols.com">Jeff Nichols</a> (<a
href="http://twitter.com/jwnichls">@jwnichls</a> on Twitter) pointed
out, this can be a positive thing, and …</p><p><strong>Update:</strong> According to the article danah boyd sent
out, Twitter says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We select each tweet using a variety of signals, including how
popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with
it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As <a href="http://jeffreynichols.com">Jeff Nichols</a> (<a
href="http://twitter.com/jwnichls">@jwnichls</a> on Twitter) pointed
out, this can be a positive thing, and for some is what they use Twitter
for. This strikes me as not anti-homophily, the way danah boyd suggests,
but instead what Recommender Systems people call “serendipity”. It seems
it can’t be anti-homphily if this is partially based on people in your
network’s interactions. I’m not certain this changes the higher-level
point of the original posting, but it does add some context. I’ve
modified the original posting to reflect this context.</p>
<p>–</p>
<p>Twitter has been inserting tweets into other people’s timelines,
based on the favoriting patterns of those tweets and how your own social
network is interacting with these tweets. That is, it’s possible for me
to favorite a tweet, and because I’ve done so, it will appear in others’
timelines.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.danah.org">danah boyd</a> (<a
href="http://twitter.com/zephoria">@zephoria</a> on Twitter) suggests
that this may be an anti-homophily move:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<p>
I'm not surprised that people don't like being exposed to random tweets,
but I see this as an anti-homophily move:
<a href="http://t.co/RDst21PoZ8">http://t.co/RDst21PoZ8</a>
</p>
— danah boyd (@zephoria)
<a href="https://twitter.com/zephoria/statuses/503273388442652673">August
23, 2014</a>
</blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<p>
What would it take for people to actually get excited by being exposed
to perspectives from strangers?
<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/dreaming?src=hash">#dreaming</a>
</p>
— danah boyd (@zephoria)
<a href="https://twitter.com/zephoria/statuses/503273545263480832">August
23, 2014</a>
</blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>I find this argument very intriguing, because I have two orthogonal
reactions to this idea. I am going break these ideas into sections,
because I think they deserve their own treatment.</p>
<h2 id="the-role-of-the-platform-ought-to-be-neutral">The role of the
platform ought to be neutral</h2>
<p>My first reaction to this concept was approximately “<em>why does
Twitter get to decide that I need less homophily in my timeline?</em>”.
I think this fair from an autonomy perspective, don’t people deserve to
choose what they view? There’s a number of ways Twitter could also use
this mechanism that isn’t a “pure” anti-homophily effort, from
advertising to a curated “Twitter” experience designed to keep you
engaged on their site. Under this framing, inserting others’ tweets into
my timeline struck me as invasive, and the opposite of the reason I use
Twitter. I <em>like</em> the process of choosing what shows in my
timeline. <em>I</em> get to choose to be homophilic or not.</p>
<h2
id="the-platform-ought-to-recognize-the-power-that-it-has-and-pursue-social-good.">The
platform ought to recognize the power that it has, and pursue “social
good”.</h2>
<p>However, the recent events in Ferguson are a stark reminder of the
socialized, institutionalized racism that still occurs in the United
States. How does society combat this? There are structural approaches,
like oversight of police forces. However, there are a number of
underlying mechanisms (historical, or legal structures) at play that
lead to this sort of racialized response (let alone the shooting of
Michael Brown that sparked these protests). One of these mechanisms has
been said to be <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Distance_Corollary">social
distance</a>, which leads to <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Othering">othering</a>.</p>
<p>Twitter, as a medium, played a role in dissemination of information
on the ground, discussion of race issues, and a more timely exposure to
these events than other news media. It also served as a platform for
people saying very bigoted, racist things, while supporting the actions
of the police. Homophily allowed people to choose which side of this
issue they were exposed to through Twitter. Anti-homophily
<em>could</em> have served to expose those who were ambivalent, or
supporting the police action, to an alternative view of these events
(there are questions of safety and harassment that would need to be
addressed, certainly).</p>
<p>As the platform owners, Twitter is in a unique position to make these
kinds of decisions. Is being “exposed to perspectives from strangers” a
positive thing? Conceivably, a move by Twitter to counteract homophily
could serve to decrease social distance and reducing the othering
effects.</p>
<h2 id="overall">Overall</h2>
<p>This is an example of what anti-homophily could bring to bear on the
Twitter platform, and danah boyd certainly seems to believe that
non-homophily is a good thing (at least if people are excited by it on
their own).</p>
<p>If she is right, and Twitter is using favorites as a way to
counteract homophily on their platform, what obligations do they have?
What is Twitter’s purpose behind anti-homophily measures? How do
builders of sociotechnical systems choose the attributes that support
“social good” (for whatever that means in a given context)?</p>
<p>If Twitter can make the argument that favorites-as-anti-homophily
does decrease social distance among their users, or perhaps even
supports users choosing to counteract homophily on their own, I find
this argument compelling. It situates platforms as “social change”
shephards, or perhaps in extreme cases, digital community organizers. Is
this a role platform owners identify as one they’re taking on? How does
one separate the algorithmic change imposed on their users, and the
obligation to monitor and curate this change, even if the change is for
business purposes?</p>
Welcome2013-09-11T00:00:00-04:002013-09-11T00:00:00-04:00Jacob Thebault-Spiekertag:jtsmn.github.io,2013-09-11:/ephemera/2013/09/11/welcome/<p>This is the first, welcome post on the blog here. I hope to write
fairly regularly. I'll likely post thoughts on current events related to
CS/HCI broadly, or topics that interest me related to social change
movements and efforts, and the (potential) role that technology plays.
Additionally, I'll summary …</p><p>This is the first, welcome post on the blog here. I hope to write
fairly regularly. I'll likely post thoughts on current events related to
CS/HCI broadly, or topics that interest me related to social change
movements and efforts, and the (potential) role that technology plays.
Additionally, I'll summary posts about papers of mine that have been
accepted, and potentially other topics as I see fit.</p>
<p>So, welcome.</p>