The Turing Normalizing Machine

A machine learning experiment trying to decode social normalcy. This is a collaboration between Yonatan Ben-Simhon and myself and was initially presented at the Science Museum in Jerusalem as a part of the Other Lives exhibition inspired by the life and work of Alan Turing on his birthday anniversary. More at the project’s page: mushon.com/tnm Continue reading The Turing Normalizing Machine

RE: Open Knowledge Festival—Between Open Data and Public Knowledge

The first Open Knowledge Festival (#OKfest) took place in Helsinki, Finland, September 17-22, 2012. The festival, arranged by the UK based Open Knowledge Foundation was dedicated to the growing culture of openness extended through digital technology. Following that spirit it covered 13 different “topic streams” coordinated by multiple program planners and attracting talks, panels, workshops … Continue reading RE: Open Knowledge Festival—Between Open Data and Public Knowledge

Dis-Information-Visualization Workshop Summary / Helsinki Sep 2012

The 1st Open Knowledge Festival was also the host of the 1st Dis-Information-Visualization workshop, a critical attempt to actively explore the dark side of information visualization. In the full day workshop (led by me, Mushon Zer-Aviv, and organized by Pixelache and the Mushrooming Network) 4 groups were encouraged to lie with infographics. Rather than falsifying the data, the dis-info-visualizers have manipulated its meaning by creating truthful, yet misleading representations.

We started with an introductory presentation offering a few critical tools through which to investigate (and generate) visual manipulation. The talk suggested that rather than looking at data information visualization as “Beautiful Evidence” (to quote the title of a book by Edward Tufte) we should read them as often beautiful and sometimes even seductive arguments.

Continue reading “Dis-Information-Visualization Workshop Summary / Helsinki Sep 2012”

At the Open Knowledge Festival, Helsinki

click to enlarge This week I’ll be presenting Wikipedia Illustrated and participating in other events at Helsinki’s Open Knowledge Festival. I would love to see you there: Monday, Sep 17, 5pm Open Publishing and Visual Free Culture – A satellite event hosted by M-Cult and Pixelache, discussing Collaborative Futures, Wikipedia Illustrated and more Thursday, Sep 20th, 4pm … Continue reading At the Open Knowledge Festival, Helsinki

לדעת קהלים נסתרים / Getting intimate with Invisible Audiences (Hebrew Translation)

The following is a Hebrew translation and presentation documentation for my Sept 2010 paper. I recommend reading the original, hyperlinked and slightly more up-to-date text in English. Both the original article and a video of the accompanying presentation are available in English.

Continue reading “לדעת קהלים נסתרים / Getting intimate with Invisible Audiences (Hebrew Translation)”

When Teaching Becomes an Interaction Design Task: Networking the Classroom with Collaborative Blogs

p>I wish I was in NYC these days for Mobility Shifts, an international future of learning summit. My recent parenthood along other commitments prevented me from joining but I was happy to contribute to the Learning Through Digital Media reader where I published an essay about my experience teaching with collaborative blogs. The peer-review process was interesting, and we were all invited to review and comment on each others works paragraph by paragraph. This definitely improved my paper and was generally an enjoyable and educating process.

Like the rest of the essays in the book, mine titled: “When Teaching Becomes an Interaction Design Task: Networking the Classroom with Collaborative Blogs” is published on the site and is available for download in multiple formats. My “Topics in Digital Media” graduate students at NYU’s Media Culture & Communication program have created a video response to the paper, which is possibly one of the most exciting memories I take with me from my NYC teaching years.

I am embedding an online version of the book here and would cross post the full article below it. I hope you would enjoy the essay, and hopefully find it useful for your own teaching. Let me know what you think.

Learning Through Digital Media Continue reading “When Teaching Becomes an Interaction Design Task: Networking the Classroom with Collaborative Blogs”

Lost in the Open

As a part of our (Galia Offri & mine) involvement in this year’s Transmediale Festival in Berlin we participated in a panel discussion titled “Lost in The Open”. The focus of the discussion which I moderated was to hash out some of the challenges for Free Culture beyond its epic battles against centralized institutions, record … Continue reading Lost in the Open