Good Sense

Melissa Dereberry's Blog

Archive for the category “Technology”

14 May 2011
4 Comments

The Party’s Over

The Party’s Over

Have you ever noticed that Facebook is often little more than a barrage of personal vendettas, gripe sessions and complaints?  Don’t get me wrong—overall, there are a lot of positive things going on in social network central—everything from baby announcements to birthday greetings to weight loss to all manner of personal accomplishments and triumphs.  On the other hand, there’s a lot of bad news, too.  People launch indignant complaints and grievances like brooding teenagers at a sleepover.  Facebook is crawling with passive aggressive banter that can make even the most liberal of us groan with aggravated distaste. 

Here’s a paraphrase of one of my favorite Facebook grievances:

            I’m really sick and tired of so-called friends.  Yeah, you know who you are.  I’m so over it.  Moving on.

I have personally witnessed people on Facebook:

  • Criticize their spouse
  • Complain about their job
  • Slam law enforcement and public officials and administrators
  • Openly insult random people
  • Post provocative and/or crude photos or links
  • Make threatening or degrading statements to a person or group
  • Announce they are not home, on vacation, or that their spouse is not home (not a big deal amongst friends, unless your privacy settings allow your status to post to anyone who is searching or looking).

Most of the time, I am pretty open-minded.  Not much bothers me unless it is openly racist, pornographic or violent.  But I have to say, I am puzzled.  Why do people feel compelled to so willingly air their private information, thoughts and problems? 

It’s interesting, to say the least.  I mean, some of us are just more chatty or open with others.  We are the ones who never met a stranger, who wouldn’t mind sitting down with someone we just met and telling them about our crazy childhood, or our obsession with bubble wrap, for example.  We are social butterflies, flitting from one conversation to another, in hopes of squirming our way into them.

Then, there are those of us who are simply more private.  We tend to keep to ourselves.  We aren’t particularly social, but we have friends—often, we have more close, deep relationships with fewer people.  We are guarded.  It may take us months to tell a friend about a problem we have or a difficult experience we went through.

Some of us may fall in the middle.  We are outgoing and social, yet prudent in how we communicate, and in what we choose to reveal about ourselves.  We demand an understated respect from those around us.

I would classify myself amongst the second group.  I’m a private person—to a degree.  I’ve been told I’m hard to get to know, but then, once you get to know me, there’s a whole lot of deep stuff underneath the surface.  Pretty much pegs my personality, I think.  For those of us who fall into this group, Facebook can confound us.  We sit back, eavesdropping on other people’s lives, wondering, what on earth people are thinking.  The acronym TMI (Too Much Information) takes on new meaning. 

I mean, do people think no one is paying attention?  Are they firing off in hopes that the one person they’re mad at will suddenly, upon reading their post, have an “AHA!” moment and feel terrible for being such a jerk?  Are these ramblings merely cries for help?  Are they self-directed therapy of some sort?  Are they momentary lapses of reason?

Oh boy, I am probably going to lose some friends over this one…

I don’t know about you, but sometimes, I just want to check out.  Thankfully, Facebook gives me the option to do just that.  Have you ever, for the preservation of your own sanity, selected a blanket removal from your news feed of all posts by a particular person?  Have you ever just wanted to turn off the conversation?

I am going to show my age here, but when I was a kid, we had a party line.  For those of you young ‘uns who don’t know that that is, it’s a shared telephone line amongst neighbors.  In other words it’s like having about fifteen people in a house with one phone line and two telephones.  If you had a hankering to, you could pick up the phone all hours of the day and actually hear your neighbors’ private conversations.  As a kid, it could be wildly entertaining—hence the name, “Party”—until you got bored listening to some lady talk about her bunions and decided to hang up. 

Somewhere, sometime way back, a smart individual decided that party lines were a bad idea.  The whole modern day telecommunications industry was founded on the principle that everyone should have their own line because we don’t need to know each other’s business—for personal privacy, as well as safety reasons.  What a concept! 

Facebook is a little like a party line…except, I’m not eight years old, and I’m not back in my pink shag carpeted room with my Shawn Cassidy poster, muffling a giggle as the neighbors argue over dog poop on the phone.  Somehow, it’s not so fun anymore.  The party’s over.  Sigh.  Growing up sucks.

Posted in Culture, Media, Social Networking, Technology and tagged ,
09 Feb 2011
2 Comments

Wired In: Relationships and The Social Network

I recently saw The Social Network, and among the many things I like about it, there is one scene in particular that sums up the entire message of the film, for me.  It’s near the beginning, after Mark Zuckerburg gets upset over losing his girlfriend.  He and a couple of his friends are gathered in a dorm room, putting together an elaborate practical joke that would ultimately be the seed of the Facebook phenomenon.  The filming shifts between Zuckerburg at his computer, a voice-over of his thoughts as he hacks into the school’s database, a couple of his friends in the background, and a compilation of other images meant to represent the stereotypical college social dynamic:  A string of party-goers, lots of drinking, laughing, talking, and random debauchery.  Zuckerburg’s friends seem impatient, even bored, and at one point, one of them plops down on the bed, then, a few seconds later, is seen plopping down on the couch with a drink, flipping on the television.  At first, you might wonder:  Would these friends be having a whole lot more fun if they were at the party?

The scene is poignant because after all, social networking—and indeed, computer technology as a whole— has come under a lot of criticism for its purported effect on “normal” and healthy social interaction.  Our technology, many people argue, can isolate us from one another.  Indeed, the friends in this scene are not really interacting, are they?  Zuckerburg is immersed in what he is doing.  He is “wired in,” the idiom used to describe computer programmers at work throughout the movie.  When they are at work, it is understood that you are not supposed to disturb them.

Many of us have wondered if technology isolates us from each other. Does chatting with someone on a computer actually lead to less human contact?  This scene, for me, drives home a very different message:  So much of what we consider “normal” social interaction can be just as meaningless and isolating as spending a few hours wired into a computer.   The dynamics of human relationship become more about how we are connected rather than why we are connected.

You are familiar with the phrase alone in a crowded room.  I spent a good deal of time in my twenties caught up in the party scene.  I attended far too many parties, drank a few too many, and carried on more pointless conversations with people than I care to admit.  All told, none of it had a lasting impact on who I was, who I was to become, or who I would share my life with.  In fact, it amounted to a whole lot of wasted time, time that might have been better spent in front of a computer.  Communicating in the social network, at least, requires a bit of thought, and, if nothing else, it prompts us to explore our ideas, values, and beliefs–and that, in my opinion, can take us further than a thousand passing connections.  It might even result in a billion dollar idea.

Images:  Microsoft

Copyright, 2011 by Melissa Dereberry

Posted in Culture, Movies, Social Networking, Technology and tagged , , , , , ,
01 Feb 2011

In The Face Of Danger

Artificial Intelligence To Keep Us Safe?

In the mid-1990s, a friend of mine was attending graduate school in Chicago.  One night, she was asleep in her bed when she woke up suddenly to find a strange man crawling in her bedroom window.  What she did next might have saved her life.  She sat up and calmly, firmly said, “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?”  Within seconds, the man mumbled about someone named Jose Garcia and clamored out.  It was obvious, she said, the man was dumfounded by her reaction.  I hate to think what might have happened had she panicked, screamed in fear, or even attempted to assault him.  Was there something in her face that exuded confidence and power, enough to ward off a potential attacker?  Or was she simply able to mask her fear enough to fool him?  To what extent can our human intelligence “read” people?

We think we’re pretty good at it, most of the time.  Most of us have internal radar that can help us sense people who are untrustworthy, for example.  But how much can we detect?  And could a computer potentially do it better than we do? 

You may be familiar with the term “Artificial Intelligence,” a branch of computer science that studies how smart our computers can be—relative to human intelligence.  As it turns out, a computer that can analyze our behavior is not all that farfetched.  What if our machines could know more about us than we do?  What if computers could recognize and even predict behaviors based on facial expressions? 

In 2008, Steve Wilkins, the forensic services supervisor for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office in Tacoma, Wash., used facial recognition software, a photo taken from a security camera at an ATM, and a database of prisoner mug shots taken over a 16-year period at the Pierce County jail to identify a suspect in a forgery and theft case.  At that time, the office was one of two in the country pioneering the use of a program called Morphoface, which analyzes images and compares them against a database of available possible matches (Mulick). 

According to Mulick, the technology itself has been around for a while, and it’s gotten some criticism for potentially violating privacy laws.  In 2001, she says, it was used at the Superbowl in Tampa, Fla., to identify felons as fans made their way through the turnstiles into the stadium.  More recently, in Toronto, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation is getting ready to unveil facial recognition software in 27 casinos.  The system will scan everyone who comes into the casino and compare those photos to a database of self-exluded gamblers—in other words, people on a voluntary ban list.  If they return to the casino, the system will flag them (Robson).

But what if this technology could recognize way more than just appearance?  What if it could analyze the intricate movements of a person’s face to determine things like mood, state of mind, or even intent?  What if the technology could not only identify criminals, but also the potential for criminal behavior?

A 2010 study published in the journal Advanced Imaging explores this possibility.  According to the study, humans have approximately 40-90 unique facial muscles that create about 5,000 expressions.   And it is from those expressions that we decide things like whether or not we trust a person, or whether or not that person is happy.

Using sophisticated computer technology, researchers at the Machine Perception Laboratory, Institute for Neural Computation (University of California, San Diego) were able to code and analyze facial expressions as never before—and, while the technology is not at the level and accuracy of actual human analysis, it can identify, through video streaming and its imaging database, emotions such as anger, contempt, disgust, drowsiness, pleasure, etc.

The technology works by focusing in on what are called “micro-expressions,” or the hundreds of involuntary facial movements that indicate mood or intention.  If you’ve watched programs like The Mentalist, you get the idea.  Our face, according to this study, gives signals even we don’t know about.  I have to wonder—was my college friend’s face twitching involuntarily with extreme fear, at the same time that she was consciously disguising it?  Is it easier to fool each other than it might be to fool a machine?

The applications of this technology are interesting, to say the least.  Technology in automobiles can detect if a person is going to fall asleep at the wheel, indicate dishonesty on a polygraph more accurately, tell doctors if a patient is in real or “fake” pain (Nelson), or even suggest when a prison riot might break out, and who will start it (Lohr). 

The possibilities are mind-blowing.  Could a computer detect a crime before it happens?  Could a personal camera placed outside our home, or carried on our person, alert us if a person is potentially dangerous?

This technology, of course, is based on the idea that Truth is absolute, that somehow the truth of situations and human behavior exists independent of what we choose to believe about them, that deviant behavior might be categorically defined, reduced to a specific set of criteria. 

As Lee Nelson describes, “The truth always is present in some form. Trying to control one’s facial muscles can send mixed signals, leading others to be unsure about causal intentions. Changing how we feel, inside, alters our expression on the outside. Thus, even the best liars eventually give themselves away.”

Copyright 2011, Melissa Dereberry

****

Images:  Microsoft.

Mulick, Stacey.  “Facial Recognition Software Gives Pierce County Help in Tough Cases.”  Tacoma News Tribune. Dec. 22, 2008, web edition:  http://www.seattlepi.com/local/393308_computercrime23.html). 

Lohr, Steve.  “These Computers—Watch US and Learn.”  The Virginian Pilot [Norfolk, Va.]  January 2, 2001, Sunday Edition:  A10.

Nelson, Lee. “Machine vision and your face: the Facial Action Coding System is a comprehensive inventory of the muscles and their movements that form frowns, glares, grimaces, and smiles.” Advanced Imaging 25.3 (2010): 12+. Academic OneFile. Web. 1 Feb. 2011.

Robson, Dan.  “High-Tech Facial Recognition To Keep Gambling Addicts Out of Casinos.”  Guelph Mercury [Ontario, Canada] January 12, 2011, Final Edition, Local:  A4.

Posted in Artifical Intelligence, Misc., Technology and tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment
20 Jan 2011

Can I Have A Read Receipt For That?

Have you ever requested one of those “read receipts” from an email you’ve sent?  Have you ever been asked to deliver a receipt?  Annoying as they are, they at least purport to serve a purpose.  Namely, to make sure the person has received the email and has opened it.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Since we have the option to not deliver a receipt when it’s asked of us, most of the time, they don’t come back, but I actually got one today.  And, as promised, returned to me today was the receipt, with a note at the bottom of it which reads:

Note: This Return Receipt only acknowledges that the message was displayed on the recipient’s computer. There is no guarantee that the recipient has read or understood the message contents.

What?  You mean our computers can’t read minds?  Worse:  You mean people actually might not read my emails, and (gasp!) might even lie about having read them?

Well…duh!

So I started thinking.  Why put this at the bottom of the receipt?  Why does a read receipt need a disclaimer?  What actual purpose does it serve?

Did some programmer, deep in the maze of Microsoft headquarters, plugging away on his keyboard, halfway between a honey nut bagel and a flash of impassioned purpose, make a conscious decision to throw it in?  Did he fear that somewhere, years from now, a middle-aged housewife would, after receiving a read receipt and believing that the party understood the content of the email, decide to sue because things didn’t work out the way she’d hoped?  Is this what we’ve come to? 

Maybe. 

Maybe said programmer’s boss had a superiority complex and when he could find absolutely NOTHING wrong with the programmer’s work for the day, called him in for a review anyway and invented ridiculous stuff for him to do, micromanaging the poor sap into a fetal position on the floor.  Maybe, having lost all faith in humanity’s ability to make intelligent observations about life, he decided we weren’t smart enough to figure out the logistical realities of sending an email.  Or, maybe the programmer was just feeling squirrely that day.  Stuck in a mindless pit of a job, bored beyond belief, he decided to write in some pointless language just to see if any of us are paying attention, to poke fun at our worship of technology.  

Well…duh!  We depend so much on our technology that it takes on an authority it was never meant to have.  It’s a tool, after all.  Something we use as a means to an end–not the end itself.  We assume that most people who would bother to send the receipt are honest, genuine people.  People who would never claim to have read something they hadn’t.  We assume that the tool actually does what we want it to do.

What if someday, our technology could somehow read our behavior, decide if we’ve comprehended what we read by gauging how well we’ve processed or used it?  What if technopathy were real, not just a far-fetched concept in some science fiction story?  Years ago, I saw an ad in a magazine that showed a close-up of someone’s head, with an electronic port imbedded into it.  I have no idea what the ad was for, but I will never forget the image that suggested someday, we might just be able to plug ourselves in, get more intimately intwined with our technology than we ever dreamed.  I remember when web cams first came out and everyone was thinking…someday, we will all be able to see each other when we are online.  It will become commonplace.  And I remember thinking, Would I really want to see everyone?  And for them to see me?  Not on your life.  We don’t really want the world getting that close to us. 

Maybe this is where we keep a comfortable distance between ourselves and our technology.  After all, for everything that makes us  smarter, more technologically savvy, and more productive, there are things that make us uniquely human, and I for one would like to keep it that way.

Posted in Technology and tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment

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