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28 August 201313 April 2014

Algorithms and the Filter Bubble, Take 2A

As foreshadowed, on Monday I delivered an updated version of my guest lecture at the University of Technology Sydney, “Algorithms and the Filter Bubble”. And here it is.

There’s quite a few changes from the lecture I gave in March, because I wanted to update some key examples.

In fact there’s two versions of the lecture, because I presented it twice — once at 0900 and once at 1300 — and some of the content was improvised around my moderately detailed notes. So I’ll bring you both versions. This is the first, with full audio and the slides.

The repeat of the lecture later in the day was slightly different.

There’s links to all the references over the fold.

As previously, the recording picks up immediately after I was introduced by lecturer, Dr Belinda Middleweek. A transcript may or may not follow at some point in the future.

The audience was primarily first and second year students at the beginning of their media studies degrees. Again, it seems that almost all of this material was brand new to them.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:40 — 32.1MB)

[If a transcript ever becomes available, this is where it will appear.]

This work is made available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. This presentation may be re-used for non-commercial purposes within the terms of the Creative Commons license. The non-commercial and share-alike conditions are required to adhere to the licensing of the imagery used. Please contact me if you require an alternative version. As a minimum, attribution should read: “Source: Stilgherrian.” Online versions must link the word Stilgherrian to the website at stilgherrian.com.

Continue reading “Algorithms and the Filter Bubble, Take 2A”

18 August 201326 August 2013

They’re letting me lecture to students regularly now

Apparently I’m not scary enough for the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). My guest lecture earlier this year, Algorithms and the Filter Bubble, is now a regular fixture.

I was rather chuffed to be told a few weeks ago that the students had voted it the best lecture of the semester, and their course feedback said the material had to remain in the course. So I’ll now be delivering a similar lecture once a semester.

Well, twice this semester, because high student numbers mean that I have to give two performances, at 0900 and 1300 on Monday 26 August.

02 May 2013

Talking Facebook’s decline, maybe, on ABC 774 Melbourne

Is Facebook on the decline? For some reason or other, I ended up talking about that on the radio on Monday afternoon.

The reason was actually this story in The Australian about “Facebook fatigue”. While I’m not sure that Facebook fatigue is a thing, I had a pleasant chat with journalist and presenter Raf Epstein — and here’s the audio.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.0MB)

31 March 2013

Algorithms and the Filter Bubble

Here’s the guest lecture I delivered at the University of Technology Sydney on 25 March 2012, “Algorithms and the Filter Bubble”. Full audio and slides for now, a transcript to follow in the next few days.

You might want to read the background material first. You’ll definitely want to look at the slides while listening to the audio.

The recording picks up immediately after I was introduced by lecturer, Dr Belinda Middleweek, using the opening paragraphs of my about page.

The audience was primarily first and second year students at the beginning of their media studies degrees. It seems that almost all of this material was brand new to them — though I did notice one geeky-looking lad nodding enthusiastically at mention of some of the more pervasive tracking techniques.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:07 — 32.6MB)

[When the transcript becomes available, this is where it will appear.]

23 March 201323 March 2013

Algorithms and the Filter Bubble: UTS guest lecture

On Monday I’m delivering a guest lecture at the University of Technology Sydney. “Algorithms and the Filter Bubble” is the supplied title, and in theory I’ll be looking at Google (and friends), big data and personalised news filtering.

The students — who are, I’m told, “first and second year students who are at the beginning of their media studies degrees” — have been given some pre-reading: Eli Pariser’s book The filter bubble: what the Internet is hiding from you (specifically the chapter “The User is the Content”, pages 47-76 in the edition I’ve seen; check the Wikipedia summary), and David Beer’s paper “Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious”. I’m about to read them myself.

But I reckon the bleeding-edge action here is in advertising, not news, and especially the comprehensive data mining that allows, for example, Target in the US to figure out that a woman is pregnant just by her shopping list.

After I discussed these topics with the lecturer, I sent her a list of related material I’d written. I believe this has been sent to the students.

The Facebook experiment, ZDNet Australia, 23 March 2012.
Twitter mapping and how we choose our own adventure, Crikey, 23 May 2012. The illustration above shows some of the work I reported here, done by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology in mapping the Australian political Twittersphere.
PS4 socials all the gaming, says Sony; but why?, ZDNet Australia, 21 February 2013.
Influence, vanity metrics and other internet astrology, ZDNet Australia, 14 February 2013.
Users snap over Instagram, but should have seen it coming, Crikey, 19 December 2012.
Aust businesses are losing in the big data era, one ‘Like’ button at a time, ZDNet Australia, 14 December 2012.

I also linked to my presentation at Consilium 2012: Social media is destroying society? Good!

Since then, ProPublica has posted an excellent article, Everything We Know About What Data Brokers Know About You.

I don’t know if non-students are allowed in, but the lecture is on Monday 25 March at 1300 AEDT in Room 56, Level 3, Building 6 (Peter Johnson Building), University of Technology Sydney, 702-730 Harris Street, Ultimo. In any event, I’ll be recording it and will post the audio and transcript here in due course.

For now, though, I suppose I should write the damn thing.

02 November 2012

Talking data mining on ABC Gippsland

Every now and then I end up doing an explainer that starts at the very beginning — like this radio spot about data mining for ABC Gippsland this morning.

Breakfast presenter Gerard Callinan has posted the audio under the title Mapping key strokes. Who’s watching?

For many of us, the idea of going a day without using the internet either at work or at home is almost unimaginable. Have you ever thought what happens to the information that you leave behind when visiting your favourite websites? Every page you visit, every survey you take, every ad you click on builds up a profile which is used by marketing companies and increasingly, political parties to build up a picture about what sort of things you are interested in and how you might be swayed to buy items or even vote in an election.

Here’s a slightly different version of the audio here, with the volume re-normalised — which just means it’s now supposedly at the optimal volume.

I think Mr Callinan got slightly paranoid after he’d read a certain op-ed I wrote earlier this year.

I’m not so sure how well I explained things. This was a live-to-air piece at 0720 AEDT after I’d had just three and a half hours of sleep and a few hours dealing with, um, a very aggressive intestinal problem. So I wasn’t as focused as I’d like to have been.

If I had my time again, I’d have made sure to explain how the advertising embedded in web pages, or the Facebook “Like” buttons, allow those organisations to track you across multiple sites. And I’d have made sure to have a link I could give out for some concise “How to protect your privacy online” guides.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.3MB)