Materializing Data Bias(3)| FMP
18/7/21–25/7/21
🤝Teammates: Tiana Robison, Jinsong (Sylvester) Liu,Luchen Peng.
After defining the problem, we quickly invited our target audiences to our workshop. As John reminds us, we need to take into account the audiences’ degree of acceptance and understanding, especially for this complex topic. In that situation, we decided to learn about participants' attitudes and understanding towards algorithms firstly rather than algorithmic bias.
Sharing Experience
In this workshop, participants shared their previous internet experiences under the influence of algorithms in different areas initially.
Most of them have a positive attitude towards algorithms. They think that the algorithm has brought convenience to life to some extent.
When talking about the negative, What they are more worried about is that privacy is threatened. Min expressed that sometimes she feels worried that her private information will be shared making her feel unsafe.
From this discussion, It is obvious that the inequality caused by the algorithmic bias has not been paid enough attention to and recognized compared with the privacy problems for the public.
This proves once again the importance of this subject. How to expose the invisible negative influence to the public is an important part of this research.
Using metaphor to visualize their experience
The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of
thing in terms of another (Lakoff and Johnson,1980). The second part invites participants to build a physical metaphor of the “general algorithms”. turning the abstract world’s experience into the real world.
Here are the participants’ works which were randomly selected to be displayed.
”Fragile balloons Like the relationship we build through algorithms.”
— Huanhuan
Huan-Huan ecternalized her experience when using a dating app. She believes that users as fish ( pins) in the data sea. The algorithm picks up two of the fish and lets them meet.(two pins in the red circle). After a complex and long journey (tangled ropes), they will build a relationship but is fragile (a balloon that is about to be poked). In this work, she points her suspicion to the algorithm, thinking that the algorithm can never replace people to make truly suitable and correct choices.
“For me the algorithm is like DNA”
— Fianda
Finanda expressed that when talking about algorithms, she prefers to describe them as a whole. She thinks the algorithm is like DNA having interconnected strings. Different colors strings symbol different areas such as Health, Finance. Personal information is constantly exchanged and transmitted on various strings to keep the algorithm machine ( DNA) running.
Summary
Workshop and artifacts analysis shows that the public’s experience to algorithms is more of a feeling of contradiction. Participants tend to choose materials and colors that show opposite and conflicting properties, such as “nails and balloons,” “Blue and red.” It was also reflected in their descriptions like “happy but dangerous”. Meanwhile, The public experience to algorithm also includes the perception to uncertainty. They believe algorithms are complex dynamic things, which is hard to be seen through and controlled. It is reflected in those repeated metaphors ( ocean, chain, net) and elements ( wisted lines).
In the next step, We hope to move on in this project and bring the abstract concept -data bias to the participants.
