Looking At Data Consumption

Hello.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Before I pulled up the slides, I played Stravinsky’s arrangement of the US National Anthem,
the Star-Spangled Banner. There’s a choral version on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=yxBVLceBT6Q

- Stravinsky; Russian, moved to LA, He performed his realization of the Star-Spangled Banner
in Boston in 1944, to an apparently “startled” audience. The next day, authorities came to the
venue, removed the scores off the music stands, and cited a Massachusetts law banning the
performance of an “embellished” national anthem.

"The authorities must have regarded Stravinsky's work as a setting of the familiar tune, but one that did not preserve the
original content the way it should have. Therefore, they must have regarded the content as not just the melody but also the
usual harmonies. Apparently Stravinsky did not share this view of what was essential." Musician as Interpreter, Paul Thom,
2007 page 50

I like this subtle, lovely shift away from the traditional a new arrangement. This might sound
a bit weird, but I’ve played Stravinsky’s version of the anthem over and over, and sung along
quite loudly, and I’m not even American.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’m George Oates, Project Lead of the Open Library
project, from the Internet Archive in San Francisco.

Some rights reserved by mattdork


I work at the Internet Archive, leading The Open Library project. We recently moved in to this
church in The Richmond in San Francisco. We’re turning it into a library.


We’re based in San Francisco, California, where I happen to have been living for about 5
years.


It’s a great town, and if you ever come, let me know and I’ll take you out for a drink!

Universal Access to
All Knowledge


Since 1996, the non-proﬁt Internet Archive has been building a digital library of Internet sites
and other things in digital form. archive.org has a ton of texts, video, software, live music...
all sorts of things.

Our mission is Universal Access to all Knowledge. Not a bad reason to get out of bed each
day...


I was asked to talk to you today about “looking at data consumption.” That’s a very broad
topic, and it’s blurry these days. We are all consumers on the web, but many of us are also
producers and interpreters, sometimes implicitly.

This talk is designed to be somewhat ephemeral. And it’s great if you disagree with me,
because that will make the discussion afterwards that much more interesting.

This is the ﬁrst time I’ve played this song in front of an audience, so please, remember to
clap at the end.
Some rights reserved by daveknapik


Let me introduce a couple of ideas I’d like to use as scaffolding for the presentation... the
ﬁrst is that the cycle of production to consumption is virtually immediate now, and often
what we see on the Web is that consumption of an idea or object actually leads to a great
deal of re-production, of re-presentation by the consumer, whether that consumer is a
human or a computer.

http://www.archive.org/stream/collectiondesanc01bert#page/159/mode/1up

production
consumption
organization
interpretation


I’ve structured the presentation loosely around these themes, and I’m hoping to demonstrate
the idea that each of these actions can often also be understood as the other. There’s also
the question of agency. In each of these steps in the flow, the actor can either be a human, or
a computer. There are more and more examples of projects that not longer use simulations
to gain understanding, but real, flowing data. Some of the more interesting projects, in my
mind at least, are those where this flow is a blend of human and computer actors. And that’s
probably the main trend I’d like you to come away with today.

"Once you have a collection of
over say 2,000 items, a human
being can no longer remember
every item and needs a system to
help find things."
Dr. Barbara B. Tillett
Change Cataloging, but Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bath Water!
2004


It is this act of remembering, of creating a system - in the context of the web - that’s blurring
the boundaries between production & consumption, through organization and interpretation
as creative acts.

Everyone’s use of the web is different. Certainly there may be some flocks of use, each of our
views on it is slightly different, and create virtually infinite ways to consume it. Our very use of
some systems produces information about ourselves and our network that may be consumed
by other people, the system itself, or the wider web.

Today, I’m going to show you some bits and pieces from my own organization system, my
Memex, projects that I think demonstrate this blur between production, consumption,
organization and interpretation. A report from the trenches, if you will.

Read Dr. Tillett’s paper: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/Mittler.pdf


http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2404825785/
Some rights reserved by stumayhew


What we’re dealing with is a deeply complex dynamic system. Distribution can be immediate.
Some rights reserved by centralasian

Immediacy

Some rights reserved by
massdistraction


Me, Right Now, administered by garrettmurray, active meme in 2009
969 members | 1,821 photos
1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don't change your clothes, don't ﬁx your hair...just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.

http://www.ﬂickr.com/search/?q=merightnow&l=cc&ss=1&ct=0&mt=all&w=all&adv=1


Expectation of availability, of digital plenty. Everything is instant. Why isn’t everything
digitized already? Download anything.
Some rights reserved by vanderwal


An example of immediacy...
4 minutes ago somebody said something about libraries.

A Justin Bieber fan account in Poland with 104,000 followers uses Google to do homework.


https://twitter.com/#!/search/bieber

The Bieber Trench.

What's
happening
to precision?

https://twitter.com/#!/search/bieber

Bicycle Built For 2,000
by Aaron Koblin


http://vimeo.com/3571124 (2008)

“Bicycle Built For 2,000 is comprised of 2,088 voice recordings collected via Amazon's Mechanical Turk web service. Workers were
prompted to listen to a short sound clip, then record themselves imitating what they heard.”

http://www.bicyclebuiltfortwothousand.com/

Roar!

Hum


The hum can be deafening if you try to listen to it.

Some rights reserved by Anirudh Koul


Transition point.
Now, we’re getting very good at moving data around. There are a bazillion datasets on the
web. A bazillion everythings on the web. People expect data immediately, and consume it
rapidly.


It’s not just from normal humans either... Data everywhere.
Governments, particularly here in the US, and Australia and the UK are working hard to
produce and publish large datasets.

http://www.data.gov/


A group called the Open Knowledge Foundation looks after a site called CKAN, which has
almost two thousand open datasets online, usefully declared as open by the way, so
consumption and reuse opportunity is made clear.

http://ckan.net/


There are also pretty quirky collections of data online, like Textﬁles, which is lovingly
collected and arranged by Jason Scott, a self-proclaimed technology history nut.

These 3 examples, from the official to the personal, are just a drop in the ocean of what’s out
there. Even OCLC itself announced the other day that they’d be releasing 1 million
bibliographic records into the wild...

http://textﬁles.com; Jason Scott


The Black-Capped Pigeon.
This most elegant of species is painted the size of life. It was found on the ground in the isle of Java,
having dropped down dead in one of those hot days that are known only in the torrid zone, when the
fowls of the air often perish, unable to respire; when lions, leopards, and wolves immerge themselves up
to their nostrils in the water, to preserve themselves from the scorching sun; and, when even men
themselves have been forced to ascend the highest trees, in order to draw in a more temperate air.
Such a day occasioned the discovery of this species. The fore part of the head, the cheeks, and beginning
of the breast were white: the hind part of the head black: the chin yellow.
It’s overwhelming. Too much to consume.
Delicious bookmarking service. Announced a few months ago that Yahoo! was selling
it. Now sold, users are escaping to other services.
www.archive.org/stream/indianzoology00penn#page/n71/mode/2up


http://pinboard.in - started in 2009
Founder, Mache describes it as “your sink”, but what I enjoy about it is that the system is
osmotic by nature. It’s designed to inhale bookmarks from other systems en masse, but also
to “release” them right back out again in a bunch of different formats.


there’s RSS, API, upload by email, bulk download, browser widgets, bookmarkers etc etc.

there’s life in the production, the system reinforces itself by activity. it also helps me and
others begin to organize what’s important to me on the web. The same sort of
“standardization” that Jim was talking about in his introduction is simply produced by
people’s use of the site. No negotiation necessary.

This leads me to a project by Kevin Kelly called “the Internet Mapping Project”.

“The internet is vast. Bigger than a city, bigger
than a country, maybe as big as the universe. It's
expanding by the second. No one has seen its
borders.
And the internet is intangible, like spirits and
angels. The web is an immense ghost land of
disembodied places. Who knows if you are even
there, there.
Yet everyday we navigate through this ethereal
realm for hours on end and return alive. We must
have some map in our head.”


“I've become very curious about the maps people have in their minds when they enter the
internet. So I've been asking people to draw me a map of the internet as they see it. That's all.
More than 50 people of all ages and levels of expertise have mapped their geography of
online. “

http://www.kk.org/ct2/2009/06/the-internet-mapping-project.php

June 2009


http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/kevinkelly/3566930717


http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/kevinkelly/3543749443/


http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/kevinkelly/3593659716/

Graph/report created by Mara Vanina Osés


“Much to my surprise two days later, a professor in Argentina wrote the first paper with a first
attempt to classify this initial set of maps.”
http://psiytecnologia.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/the-internet-mapping-project2.pdf
http://kk.org/ct2/2009/06/taxonomy-of-internet-maps.php/

Graph/report created by Mara Vanina Osés


“Much to my surprise two days later, a professor in Argentina wrote the first paper with a first
attempt to classify this initial set of maps.”
http://psiytecnologia.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/the-internet-mapping-project2.pdf

Aggregation


We’re getting really good at aggregation. Not just big players, but everyone.
Some rights reserved by tomwestbrook


Locals and Tourists by Eric Fischer
This is Washington, DC.
Blue points on the map are pictures taken by locals (people who have taken pictures in this city dated over a range
of a month or more).

Red points are pictures taken by tourists (people who seem to be a local of a different city and who took pictures in
this city for less than a month).”

“Some cities (for example Las Vegas and Venice) do seem to be photographed almost entirely by tourists. Others
seem to have many pictures taken in places that tourists don't visit.

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624209158632/

Some rights reserved by Eric Fischer


Pretty Maps
“It is an interactive map composed of multiple freely available, community-generated data
sources: Flickr Shapeﬁles, Natural Earth, and Open Street Maps”
http://prettymaps.stamen.com/201008/about/

countries
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/straup/5500038497/


http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/straup/4794210640/

Some rights reserved by
straup


http://www.20x200.com/artists/aaron-straup-cope.html

Different sources consumed and re-interpreted, become products.


https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/05/03/us/20110503-osama-response.html
“We asked readers the following questions: Was his death signiﬁcant in our war against terror? And do you have a
negative or positive view of this event? Readers — 13,864 of them — answered by plotting a response on the
graph and adding a comment to explain the choice. Each light blue dot represents one comment. Darker shades
represent multiple comments made on a single point.”


“Dating Research on OK Cupid”

“Beer Goggles” on OK Trends, blog for the dating site, OK Cupid. Anaylsis of thousands of users, with entertaining
choices & writing. Original witty research.

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-best-questions-for-ﬁrst-dates/


You can’t make this stuff up. Or, well, you could, but...

“10 Charts about Sex”
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/10-charts-about-sex/


Kinect X-Box launched in the U.S. November 2010
133,333 units per day with a total of 8 million units in its ﬁrst 60 days.
RGB camera, depth sensor, and multi-array microphone running software that which provide
full-body 3D motion capture, facial recognition and voice recognition capabilities
* Competition run by AdaFruit Industries to develop an open source driver for the box;
awarded on November 10
* A former Microsoft employee is alleged to have personally sponsored the competition, while
working there.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kinect
http://nxeassets.xbox.com/shaxam/0201/e8/16/e816cf5b-acd6-4204-b158-142f7df17fb9.JPG?v=1#kinect_product_front.JPG

Body Dysmorphic
Disorder
by Robert Hodgin


http://vimeo.com/17073934 (2010)
http://www.ﬂight404.com/blog/?p=472

Robert is an artist living in San Francisco. Prominent in the Cinder community, for “creative coding in C++” - http://libcinder.org/ Of all
the bazillions of things written for the Kinect, Robert’s work is my favourite.


All rights reserved by ﬂight404, used with permission, Made with Cinder and a Kinect sensor.

Withdrawl along surface normals

Runs in realtime. Experimenting with placing line segments along surface normals.


All rights reserved by ﬂight404, used with permission. December 2010

Invisibility Made with Cinder and a Kinect sensor. Runs in realtime.
Video on Vimeo: vimeo.com/17836665

Inspired by the Optical Camouﬂage demo by Takayuki Fukatsu:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qhXQ_1CQjg
Also, the Predator movies.
---
Consumption leads to interpretation, and (re)production.

“Be Your Own Souvenir”


http://www.blablablab.org/

“Barcelona Street Installation Lets You Print A 3D Mini-Me” April 11
http://www.thecreatorsproject.com/blog/barcelona-street-installation-lets-you-print-a-3d-mini-me

Media Surfaces
by Dentsu London & BERG


MEDIA SURFACES “Incidental Media” Dentsu London & Berg, 2011
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/dentsulondon/5141942043/
http://bit.ly/mediasurfaces

Fascinating. Since the physical place can curate information. Gentle, delicate consumption.
Ambient data.


I was driving along in my car the other day, listening to the radio, and I thought to myself,
jeez it’s nice not to have to choose what to listen to. I didn’t even particularly care what they
played... it was just nice to be played to.

Curation is such a relief. Here are a couple I like.
Some rights reserved by net_efekt

JMW Turner St Benedetto, Looking towards Fusina


http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/yourcollection/


http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/yourcollection/
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/yourcollection/splitup/#PictureBox

Connections
by The Metropolitan Museum of Art


http://www.metmuseum.org/connections/maps/

Medieval art curator Melanie Holcomb talks about how maps help her make sense of the
world.


Curated consumption, if I may. Very tightly controlled, personal inputs.

A little tool built by Russell Davies in the UK.
“And here's my other Homesense project. Made which much assistance from Tom and Andy.
It's very simple. If there are more than ﬁve bikes at one of these bike stations the relevant LED comes on. It's a
glanceable guide to which way to walk when we head out. It's going on the wall by the door. No need to reach for
a device, launch an app and navigate to our favourites.”
http://www.homesenseproject.com/ - “Homesense is a project that rethinks how we design smart homes and
investigate how we interact with technologies at home.”
Some rights reserved by russelldavies

Game For The Masses
Amy Franceschini, 2002


So, to a note to end on...

-sculpture
- placed in a gallery
- distribute pucks evenly
- get the pucks

“Game for the Masses is research project
made to observe social interactions around
gaming. It revealed how people use games as
an interface for conversation, interaction,
play and openness. This game prompted
creative thinking and problem solving. The
game was positioned in a gallery with a small
set of rules and instructions, but the game
was left open for development.”
Game For The Masses


Game For The Masses



It’s true. The Internet is one big mass of largely inconsequential mess made by other people
that you will never ﬁnd or care about. You help yourself make sense of it all by making trails
through it, creating sets or indexes of things on it, collecting things about you, in Bush’s
Memex. Now, there are 6 billion memexes that can be trawled for a new sort of information.

“In writing variations
my method is to remain
faithful to the theme.
Never mind the rest!”
Igor Stravinsky


http://books.google.com/books?id=31d5lYCsKsUC&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=Musician+as
+Interpreter&hl=en#v=onepage&q=stravinsky&f=false
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/hec/23600/23698v.jpg

Thanks!
George Oates
glo@abitofgeorge.com


Looking At Data Consumption

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