This section will hold all of my weekly summaries for DGST.
Week 3
I had never heard of, let alone explored, the idea of Geocities. I was interested to hear in the podcast that Geocities was the 3rd most visited website. I was intrigued by the idea of Geocities and I even used it in a concept for a short story for my Social Media class!
Need a lottery number? Use this Hypercard stack to find the right one!
Week 6
This week, we read the short story “The Soft Truth.” When discussing the story with my table, we all agreed it was difficult to interpret. I think the author struggled with severe mental health issues and was using the sphere as a coping mechanism. It is possible she was imagining herself and having visions.
My table and I were able to analyze a few different projects but our favorite was definitely STEALING UR FEELINGS. This website used the webcam to analyze our faces to see our reaction to different things. The website was fun, functional, and easy to use. We also focused a lot of time on GooBing Detroit. This website focused on areas of Detroit that were affected by the financial crisis.
For my fortune teller project, I am thinking about doing a treasure theme. The treasure box may be the submission area with jewels and coins surrounding everywhere.
Week 10
The ELIZA Effect
Conversations with Eliza were not like what it’s like to talk to AI characters now. Eliza used keywords from my prompets to answer what I was saying. I used being broken up with as an example problem. I told her, “my boyfriend broke up with me,” and she responded with, “your boyfriend broke up with you.” Yes, Eliza, that is exactly what I said. She is reluctant to say anything about herself. When she is unsure how to answer, she will usually respond with another question.
AI and Race
Alert II, as stated in the manual, is a criminal justice information system. When computer systems like this started to come out, it was all in the hands of white people. They were the ones creating these systems and controlling them. As stated in the reading, “Computers process and manipulate data.” These systems were manipulating the data and producing it in a form that seemed to target people of color. There were no people of color with the access to monitor these things. All crime became “data” and these people who then became data, lost their identity in the eyes of those prosecuting them.