Re: [xmca] Deb Roy: The birth of a word

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Nice to hear from you Michael-- A fellow communication person.

I fully agree its very exciting for researchers in mass media studies,
Michael. Think a few minutes about the level of surveillance. Think about
who could afford that tech
for that surveillance.

When I do that it worries me. But, then, I am soooo retro!
:-)
mike

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 6:41 AM, Michael Lithgow <malithgow@gmail.com>wrote:

> It's my first time contributing to this listserv, but if I can add to the
> wonder being expressed about how this technology might effect media
> research
> - I think the potential for studying how news frames emerge, transform over
> time, compete and slowly solidify into shared understandings is also
> exciting.  To be able to watch in something like real time the discursive
> ebb and flow of popular negotiation for hegemonic understanding is
> remarkable.
>
> Michael Lithgow
> PhD Candidate, Carleton University
> School of Journalism and Communication
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 4:32 PM, Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:
>
> > Thanks, Peter. Someone also posted on this to the local LCHC group list,
> > and I replied with the following after watching the video (a TED
> > presentation):
> >
> > Yes, this is pretty amazing. I was reminded of the work that Lev Manovich
> > is doing here at UCSD on cultural analytics, trying to identify
> quantitative
> > patterns in large amounts of video and image data, such as changing
> patterns
> > in news programs as  to how much focus there is on the presenter vs the
> > content, the rise of digital content backgrounds, etc.
> >
> > But the MIT group has taken this much further, particularly in
> > cross-linking television content to online commentary by viewers in real
> > time. This should be the end of the Nielsen ratings, if they weren't gone
> > already, but its also potentially the end of the survey industry as well
> --
> > why do phone surveys of hundreds when you can get real time reactions
> from
> > millions. I can see the news shows commissioning this for "spin" on major
> > events, speeches, maybe the 2012 election. And this may be worrying,
> because
> > it has an inherent tendency, esp. at the current level of the technology
> (re
> > semantic analysis) to grossly over-simplify what are in fact much more
> > complex meanings being created.
> >
> > I am happy to see the work on context factors, social input and settings,
> > in the work on language development in the home. It's Gregory Bateson
> meets
> > massively parallel computing (GB did some of the first in-home filming of
> > his daughter's first years). But in relying on very simple indices, like
> > utterance length, it's again going to oversimplify. I don't think they
> can
> > analyze at this point just how the setting and the dialogue, over more
> than
> > one turn, scaffolds a sense of meaning for the child. Much easier of
> course
> > to trace the growth of phonology and single word acquisition. Still it's
> a
> > good step.
> >
> > Quite fascinating to see something Ivan and I were predicting last year:
> > people getting used to multi-video displays, where in this case you see
> > simultaneous video across about 6 rooms in the house in 6 video views,
> and
> > then all the tv/cable channels at once, dozens of small video displays in
> a
> > giant array. How to see this? Of course their visual magic of
> re-rendering
> > this into a 3D fly-through view of the whole house eliminates the
> > simultaneity in favor of sequentiality, and some neuroscience work
> suggests
> > that we are best at doing sequential pattern recognition. But even a
> > multi-video view can appear sequential to the brain when it is visually
> > scanned in real time by the eyes' movements and attention focusing.
> >
> > Every other word he says is about privacy concerns, but you still can't
> > disguise the Big Brother potential here: total panopticon surveillance,
> > video and audio, 24/7 in private as well as public settings. In the UK
> there
> > are already serious concerns being raised about access to the ubiquitous
> > outdoor security cam footage, massively increased in the last 10 years
> > everywhere in the country, as it leaks from the anti-terrorism units for
> > whose use it was originally justified to local police departments, etc.
> > Combining this with effective video and semantic pattern recognition
> > algorithms presents a real danger to privacy and freedom.
> >
> > Tis a good wind that blows no ill.
> >
> > JAY.
> >
> > Jay Lemke
> > Senior Research Scientist
> > Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
> > University of California - San Diego
> > 9500 Gilman Drive
> > La Jolla, California 92093-0506
> >
> > Professor (Adjunct status 2009-11)
> > School of Education
> > University of Michigan
> > Ann Arbor, MI 48109
> > www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke> <
> http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
> >
> > Professor Emeritus
> > City University of New York
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mar 11, 2011, at 12:30 PM, Peter Smagorinsky wrote:
> >
> > > MIT researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son learned
> > language -- so he wired up his house with videocameras to catch every
> moment
> > (with exceptions) of his son's life, then parsed 90,000 hours of home
> video
> > to watch "gaaaa" slowly turn into "water." Astonishing, data-rich
> research
> > with deep implications for how we learn.
> > >
> > > http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html
> > > __________________________________________
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> > >
> > >
> >
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>
>
>
> --
> Michael A Lithgow
> 514.983.1965
>
> PhD Candidate, School of Journalism and Communication
> Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
>
> Research Associate, OpenMedia.ca
>
> Contributing Editor, ArtThreat.net <http://www.artthreat.net>
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