This is the space where we will live blog the event – encouraging engagement, comments and discussion as we speak. If you wish, the twitterfeed is also a virtual space where we invite questions and comments to the #dahphdie hashtag. We will respond to, and engage with these feeds throughout the morning.
Here are some sites that we will encounter during the session:
Tim Berners-Lee on the next web Raw Data Now TED.com talk
data.gov US government open data site
data.gov.uk UK government open data site
data.southampton.ac.uk U of Southampton open data initiative
W3C World Wide Web consortium Standards for the world wide web – excellent, open site with great links you can trust for factual, up – to – date information on contemporary thinking about web technologies – the introduction at http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission is excellent.
Jaron Lanier on youtube (at 23 minutes in)Lanier’s recent book ‘You are not a gadget’ is about the primacy of the individual in the digital domain, and his worries about the ‘hive mind’, and what happens to people when they are ‘anonymised people’. It is, depending on your perspective, a dystopian or prophetic view of the web from within -and a necessary to read.
Clay Shirky’s article on ontologies (2005) ‘Why ontologies are overrated’. Shirky is known for his ideas about cognitive surplus, there are a number of his TED talks too. Here he gives the example of the Periodic Table of Elements as an almost perfect ontology, almost.
Tim Berners-Lee on the year Open Data went worldwide.
This Week (at 14 minutes in) President elect Michael D Higgins speaks about restoring the connection between science and culture in his first interview as president elect, RTE radio news, October 30, 2011.
Key terms: all via w3c
The semantic web: In addition to the classic “Web of documents” W3C is helping to build a technology stack to support a “Web of data,” the sort of data you find in databases. The ultimate goal of the Web of data is to enable computers to do more useful work and to develop systems that can support trusted interactions over the network. The term “Semantic Web” refers to W3C’s vision of the Web of linked data. Semantic Web technologies enable people to create data stores on the Web, build vocabularies, and write rules for handling data. Linked data are empowered by technologies such as RDF, SPARQL, OWL, and SKOS.
– linked data – XML technologies… all at W3C and also the basics are introduced via w3schools.com
A useful beginning description of DATA is here: http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm
The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a consortium which collectively develops and maintains a standard for the representation of texts in digital form.
and now for something completely different the Beyonce …remediation or plagiarism and the levels in between http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/oct/11/beyonce-de-keersmaeker-dance-move
Digital Cultures Workshop University College Cork 
Other data sites we will mention today:
medici.org
https://republicofletters.stanford.edu/
RT @mikecosgrave Republic of letters map of C18 correspondence skewed by the volume of published Voltaire letters #dahphdie
Any plans to discuss Dbpedia?
Test
Aptly enough, this is Irish Open Data Week – http://workspace.opendata.ie/wiki/National_Open_Data_Day_2011#Irish_Open_Data_Week_7th_-_11th_November_2011
here is john unsworth’s article on scholarly primitives (we’ll discuss them in a minute)
http://www3.isrl.illinois.edu/~unsworth/Kings.5-00/primitives.html
Discovering Annotating Comparing Referring Sampling Illustrating Representing Unsworths list
Data is the value of a property of an object – Vikas, Jeremy and Catherine
Maynooth: Data is a recorded observation, without interpretation.
observation of what?
What is the impact of what you decided to record? If you don’t record it, is it then not data? If a tree falls etc.?
Information is the patterns that we infer when we process the data
– Jeremy, Catherine and Vikas
Maynooth: Data is the building blocks on which information is structured.
Knowledge is how we interpret the information – Catherine, Jeremy and Vikas
data: raw information yet to be contextualized to form knowledge
Imho, you can’t use ‘information’ to define what is data, as you may end up with a cyclic definition.
Completely agree. Data is used to develop information, and in turn knowledge. But this information or knowledge will later become data for someone else…
Anything can be data, depending on the information or knowledge you are trying to create. For me, Yeats’ poetry is data…
The Guardian newspaper commonly prints visualizations of data as a means to further understand data sets. They’ve dedicated a section of their website to it…. http://www.guardian.co.uk/data
Data is the abstraction of information into its smallest components
That’s interesting – how does it. fit with what Nora said on Twitter about data: “#dahphdie when you’re involved in a creative project you are creating data – but you’re so involved can you accurately describe the data?”
Hi from Galway, don’t think you can hear us!
Quick response-
Data; info gathered by yourself and others for analysis?
2 types;
Quantitive data- own art practice, others, interviews, conferences, live feeds
Qualitive data- surveys, open data online
In poli sci, qualitative includes text of speeches, manifrstos, interviews etc. tools like NUDIST can encode images and video for qualitative data analysis
Can you say that Data is something that is processed by computer and information something that needs human interpretation?
Data has existed long before computers: birth statistics, shipping logs, etc.
People often assume that data means numbers, and assume that’s even the crazy made up numbers of economists have some ‘scientific’ objectivity
test
Catherine, Vikas, Jeremy
If we don’t describe data we can’t understand it, or how to use it.
We can’t share it, others can’t use it.
Describing data helps us analyse and summarise the outcomes.
Yes – thank you all – that is one and a half pages of notes summarised right there! A really useful comment.
..of our research
The Poughkeepsie Principles (1987) which lead to the establishment of the TEI set out standards for describing encoding schemes for digital texts. Such standards lend themselves to interoperability and a wider understanding of data. Just one example of the importance of describing data.
People might find it. useful to reader about thatmeeting and see what drove the discussions at that stage
There’s probably something a little more contemporary and more visually pleasing on the meeting.
http://www.tei-c.org/Vault/ED/edp01.htm
A description provides a point of entry into understanding the data
Describing data transforms data because in describing it you interpret it in a way that makes it your own. Catherine Ann Cullen
and that becomes information!
or knowledge?
Describing data facilitates interoperability. It enables data discovery, sharing, it allows for the creation of data standards.
might data be the collaborative effort to create a substance for a collective memory
imho, the raw materials used would be data, and the substance, the result of the creative process, would be information
@Catherine, it seems that in interpretting data you also create more data, perhaps for others to interpret.
Describing data is like creating an index for a book – without the index the book is unusable or or very little use. Catherine
would that be metadata?
Question;
Is open data believable? Can anybody put anything up there to bend data info for their own purpose?
Nora, Galway
I think the more pertinent question is what are the effects or consequences of data manipulation and who is responsible for data interpretation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy
very interesting question!
In the virtual world, it is very easy to create a fake identity, or to create artefacts and allude them to somebody
Yes – Jaron Lanier – is very aware of this – the anonymising effect, that he characterises negatively in his chapter on trolling… The advent of cyber bullying etc.
link as example of ‘fake’ net art;
http://www.stunned.org/imma/
can you put up link to republic of letters and medici website – cant find email with link
Other data sites we will mention today: medici.org https://republicofletters.stanford.edu/
thanks
medici.org
https://republicofletters.stanford.edu/#maps
cheers and thanks
According to Russell Ackoff, a systems theorist and professor of organizational change, the content of the human mind can be classified into five categories: 1. Data: symbols 2. Information: data that are processed to be useful; provides answers to “who”, “what”, “where”, and “when” questions 3. Knowledge: application of data and information; answers “how” questions 4. Understanding: appreciation of “why” 5. Wisdom: evaluated understanding.
Interested to see peoples reactions to Ackoff and Bellinger (http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm)
That’s interesting, could you post up the title of the book / essay where he says this?
It’s in the link
using the analogy of a picture created from joining the dots, the dots are the data, each dot has a description, the joins between the dots are the connections between the data and provide more information about the dots (data), the final picture from all the joined dots is the knowledge?
Ackoff’s definition sounds like one of a computer. Where does love, affection, emotion fit in to his definition? Catherine
We bring the humanity – we direct the machine – in Lanier’s terms … You are not a gadget – the machine is not and never will be a person – or able to understand, intuit, feel and it will never ‘know’ …
All definitions of data can be contested, there appears to be no agreed definition. Does the same apply to definitions of knowledge ?
re. “knowledge” – can someone give you “knowledge”? (e.g. a local guide to Mount Everest vs. tourist guide) We usually use the words ‘data’ and ‘information’ to signify things that you can pass from one person to another. We use ‘knowledge’ and ‘wisdom’ to signify something that you can possess. You ask someone for ‘information’, but you don’t ask them for ‘wisdom’ … Does this mean that there is an internal human process that has to be gone through to achieve ‘knowledge’ and ‘wisdom’?
Yes I think there is a human assimilation and interpretation that leads to wisdom, not sure about knowledge. Not everyone attains wisdom, though many acquire knowledge.
I think that you are absolutely right – and this is at the heart of what we are getting at here – and Lanier is key to this – the machine will do what we tell it to do, but nothing else. It cannot think – and there has been a flawed understanding emerging via science fiction and other forms
I think this is a very important aspect of Digital Humanites which I posted about on the forum last week. One needs to be careful what it is they are asking the computer to do. If we are submitting a text to a computer we should be prepared to do something with the text after the computer is finished with it.
Yes – the machine does not ‘think’ or create meaning, or understand. It is very much at the heart of the last two weeks’ seminars… we organise the data, create relationships… and interpret the operations that the machine performs
As demonstrated by Searle’s Chinese Room experiment…
Just had a glance at the Ackoff model of the human brain and I find the last stage, wisdom, to be very interesting. @Catherine, perhaps this is where love, affection and emotion comes into it? There are five stages but I wonder can these be taken to be happening in a non-chronological way?
Or can it be that for some aspects of what makes us human, the earlier stages do not apply? where we go by instinct / intuition? where the human brain can make unrelated inferences that are not representable by today’s data tools? Refer Commander Data of Star Trek NG
Absolutely – there is no comparable machine ‘model’ of the human brain. I hope that by including Lanier people will read him and insert themselves into their research, as only the individual humanist/creator/performer has the understanding of the knowledge that leads us to ‘wisdom’ (I like to call that ‘meaning’)
when image and music is represented in digital form, the data that is created can be used to power now outputs, so music data can be used to create image data and image data can be used to create music data, but what this sometimes reveals is that there are common points of abstraction that can work in both music and image domains – digitization helps this common access
Suggest to me a cross ref to Howard Gardeners work on Multiple Intelligence s which, in teaching and learning, leads to the idea that’s it’s is important to create multiple entry points to learning
Maybe you’re right David. I don’t like the way Ackoff calls our moral and ethical codes ‘special types of human programming.’ He seems to think we are basically computers with a soul.
I don’t think that’s will go the distance to appreciation of beauty! Use the force, Luke!
Yes I would agree with you Catherine, it is a very digital definition of the human mind
Sorry for the late entry.
I agree, Ackoff calling our moral and ethical codes ‘special types of human programming’ is pretty depressing. Makes you wonder whether there is even a place for a soul,
However, whether we have a soul or not, technology is central to our civilisation, a key component of our intellectual culture, or our ethical viewpoint. I have read several places that technology is alien, even inimical to ethics as part of the humanities and indeed the arts. Which of course is wrong. Mario Bunge, back in ’79 wrote that our culture is a complex system of heterogeneous interacting components some past their creative prime, others blossoming, others, like digital arts and humanities, are just budding.
Bunge said modern technology is is an essential part to all of these components, however being so young, it is the least understood, even though it interacts so strongly with each one. if fact the humanities and technology are probably the only components of living culture that interact vigorously with all the other components.
So perhaps Ackoff is wrong, and perhaps programmes likes ours will help prove him wrong because the many contacts between digital arts and humanities, that is, technology enabled arts and humanities and the myriad other aspects of our culture is leading to an organic integration between the digital world and the actual world we still live in. The funny thing is, if we do not have a soul now, perhaps tru’ technology, we as humans will gain one: a “deux ex machina”.
An image we’ll discuss on Tuesday (15 nov):
It’s the one discussed by Foucault in Les mots et les choses, regarding representation
A “classic” case of 2d to 3d: the Laocoon group, 1c BC, Roman copy of Greek origiinal
Interpretation
http://www.abcgallery.com/P/picasso/picasso211.html