Donald Norman, writer and computer science researcher, has emphasized throughout his writings that the key to good design is understandability. But what does understandability mean when talking about the complex technology people are increasingly relying on? In his 1998 publication The Invisible Computer, Norman criticizes the complexity of technology and states that “the dilemma facing us is the horrible mismatch between requirements of these human-built machines and human capabilities. Machines are mechanical, we are biological.” Humans are creative and flexible, we interpret the world around us (often with very little information). We deal with approximations, not the accuracy of computers, and we are prone to error. Norman at first seems to be pitting technology and humans against each other, technology (digital) is precise and rigid, whereas humans (analog) are flexible and adaptive, and raises the question of who/what should dominate, the human or the machine? His conclusion is that computers and humans work well together, that we complement each other, but that we need to move away from the current machine-centered view, and more towards a human-centered approach, making technology more flexible to human requirements. Now almost twenty years later, we are witnessing an evolution in computers, the rise of Artificial Intelligence. To make way for A.I., large internet companies are starting to look towards human biology in the new makeup of computers. In his writing Norman calls on strategies to make the relationship between humans and computers a more cooperative one. Does the current technological evolution mean that those calls have been answered?

Norman compares the computer and the human brain: computers are constructed to perform reliably, accurately, and consistently, all within one main machine, whereas the human brain is much more complex in its computations through the workings of vast amounts of neurons. Outlined in a recent article, “Chips Off the Old Block: Computers Are Taking Design Cues From Human Brains” by Cade Metz, tech companies are starting to realize that due to the decline of Moore’s law, progress is no longer about upgrading the current traditional “single, do-it-all chip – the central processing unit”, it’s about needing more computing power, needing more computers. Traditional chips cannot handle the massive amounts of data to accommodate new technological research like that of A.I. As a new method, specialized chips are being created to work alongside the C.P.U., offloading some of the computing power to various smaller chips. Spreading the work across many tiny chips, makes the machine similar to the brain in energy-efficiency.

In 2011, a top Google engineer, Jeff Dean, started exploring the concept of neural networks, “computer algorithms that could learn tasks on their own” (Metz, C.), which elevated A.I. research in voice, image, and face recognition. These neural networks are similar to our own human abilities to make sense of the world and our surroundings in order to decide what information to attend to and what to ignore. The December 2016 article by Gideon Lewis-Kraus, “The Great A.I. Awakening” details in great depth the trial and error phase in training a neural network. The neural network learns to differentiate between things such as cats, dogs, and various inanimate objects, but all while being supervised by the programmer/researcher who will often correct the machine until it starts producing the proper responses. Once a neural network is trained it can potentially recognize spoken words or faces with more accuracy than the average human. Google Brain, the department that first started working on A.I. within the company, developed the neural network training under the notion that the machine might “develop something like human flexibility” (Lewis-Kraus, G.).

In his argument of humans versus computers, Norman talks about the evolution of human language, and that “communication relies heavily upon a shared knowledge base, intentions, and goals,” resulting in a “marvelously complex structure for social interaction and communication.” But what if a machine could grasp language? A good example of machine evolution in language can be seen with Google Translate. Up until it’s major update in November 2016, Google Translate was only useful in translating basic dictionary definitions between languages. Whole sentences or passages from books would lose their meaning as the words were translated separately and not in the context of the entire passage. But once Google applied its neural network research to Google Translate, the service radically improved overnight. At a conference in London introducing the newer improved machine-translation service, Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, provided this example:

In London, the slide on the monitors behind him flicked to a Borges quote: “Uno no es lo que es por lo que escribe, sino por lo que ha leído.”

Grinning, Pichai read aloud an awkward English version of the sentence that had been rendered by the old Translate system: “One is not what is for what he writes, but for what he has read.”

To the right of that was a new A.I.-rendered version: “You are not what you write, but what you have read.” (Lewis-Kraus, G.)

 

With the A.I. system, Translate’s overnight improvements were “roughly equal” to the total improvements made throughout its entire previous existence.

I would argue that the development of A.I. is taking a more human-centered approach to computers than has ever been seen. The method of using neural networks comes straight from one of our greatest human abilities, which is to learn. A machine that can learn on its own is flexible, adapting to its environment. Norman brings up two different themes in human-computer relationships: one is that of which he believes society to be in (at the time of publication in 1998), the theme of making people more like technology. The other theme is “the original dream behind classical Artificial Intelligence: to simulate human intelligence,” making technology more like people. I believe we are at the gates of that dream of Artificial Intelligence, but instead of trying to make one more like the other, humans and computers are taking an approach that builds off each other’s strengths, through computer logic and human flexibility.

 

References:

Norman, D. A. (1998). The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer is So Complex, and Information Appliances are the Solution. MIT Press. Chapter 7: Being Analog http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/being_analog.html.

Metz, C. (2017). “Chips Off the Old Block: Computers Are Taking Design Cues From Human Brains.” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/16/technology/chips-off-the-old-block-computers-are-taking-design-cues-from-human-brains.html?_r=0. September 25, 2017.

Lewis-Kraus, G. (2016). “The Great A.I. Awakening.” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html. September 25, 2017.

When does an object become information? 3D scanning has created new dimensions in the field of preservation but presents new cultural challenges. In the following I will examine the practice of 3D scanning and printing by cultural institutions, address the possibilities this process offers for preservation at large, and consider some questions that have arisen from its use.

3D scanning is now more affordable and accessible than ever before and offers the opportunity for audiences to interact with historical objects in new ways. In addition to contemplating the exciting new forms in which this technology can give the public a more active role in preservation, I believe it is important to meditate on a few issues that this process may pose. How does 3D scanning change the idea of ownership and authenticity of an object? What cultural disruptions have developed as a result of the emergence of this technology, and what has it offered solutions to?

3D technology can activate public engagement by rendering otherwise off-limits objects into digitally malleable material. Dedicated social platforms¹ and cultural workshops beg the public to participate in the “consumption of heritage, and re-inscription of meanings that are transferred to heritage objects.”² Digital surrogates of objects can give curators the chance to initiate public interaction with a collection in a more hands-on way, offering the chance to participate in the preservation of an object and safely play with historical forms. One institution that has organized this technology into a workshop is the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg. In 2015, the museum conducted a workshop in which participants were given supervised access to original artifacts and introduced to 3D basics such as scanning, computer-editing, and 3D printing.³ Once the participants finished scanning the artifacts they took the digital models and were taught how to edit them in practical and creative ways. This workshop invoked a sense of play with history and asked those present to become digital craftsmen. As Michele Valerie Cloonan writes: “when these cultural remnants are placed into a contemporary context, something new is created.”⁴ A participant that was present at the workshop with his daughter re-mixed two sculptures together by taking the “hard-edged expression of Wilhelm Freddy’s Sphinx” and meshed them together with the “soft, organic features of Wiig Hansen’s Seated Woman.”⁵ This case is an example of how new forms of cultural production can be created from archives and collections, and foster the transmission of heritage between generations.

In war-ridden parts of the world, however, 3D scans have become part of the discourse regarding the preservation of endangered cultural property. The war in Syria is a gruesome example of how warfare has given rise to the use of “digital technology as a tool of preservation—both real and virtual.”⁶ Before being destroyed by the terrorist group ISIS, the Roman arch of Palmyra was thoroughly scanned and digitized into a 3D file by a team from UCLA.⁷ This reaction to the deliberate erasure of history was a direct “response to the threat of destruction and loss.”⁸ The information from those scans were used in 2016 to 3D print a replica of the arch based two thirds of its original dimensions and was installed in New York’s City Hall Park for one week. However, the recreation was devoid of on-site contextual material and prompted mixed reactions, with some saying that it was a form “digital colonialism.”⁹. In an article for Forbes journalist Sarah Bond raised a critical point about the ethics of the duplicate arch:

“There … needs to be more concerted efforts to create knowledge about the object on its new site. Should the NYC public not also be toald, for instance, about how ISIS killed a celebrated Syrian antiquities expert, Khaled al-Asaad,and then hung his body from the ancient Roman columns at Palmyra? Or more about the history of the arch itself? “¹⁰

3D recreations pose challenges regarding provenance, history, and how to show respect for the original.

 

In international politics, 3D scans have become a central element of proposed solutions to spats between countries regarding repatriation. An ongoing dispute between the governments of the UK and Greece about the ownership of the Parthenon Marbles is to note. About thirty percent of the surviving Parthenon Marbles are held by the British Museum and have been in their permanent collection since early 19th century after being chiseled from the Acropolis and shipped to England by Lord Elgin – who had express permission from Greece’s colonial occupiers, the Ottoman Empire. ¹¹Greece’s government and cultural institutions have been pushing the international community to recognize their repeated calls for the Elgin Marble’s repatriation to Athens. Currently, the Acropolis Museum has on display “plaster casts of the sculptures housed in London… interspersed with original pieces Elgin left behind.”¹² One possible way to ease the tension might be to provide the British Museum with 3D surrogates, as Paul Mason proposes in his article “Let’s end the row over the Parthenon marbles – with a new kind of museum.”¹³ An interesting idea, but possibly too idealistic in the face of such a complex problem regarding cultural property. While the calls for the statues repatriation may go unanswered for the foreseeable future, they have nevertheless created “a new kind of cultural property—a kind of meta-cultural property that represents a shared global culture that we are creating today.”¹⁴

As objects are brought over into the digital realm the possibility for a more shared and democratic global culture increases. Artifacts that would otherwise be hidden away can show their face on an illuminated screen and be remixed in multiple dimensions by the public. Endangered historical sites and objects can be captured digitally and provide a blueprint of the past if the originals are destroyed. There are many ways in which 3D scanning can aid preservation, although the issues it presents to society are even more numerous. I hope that in the future this technology will generate new types of interaction with history and give the world a more collective sense of culture.

 

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REFERENCES

Why does the public library system lend out materials for free but charge people for lateness and loss?  There are two basic reasons, but their effectiveness is largely debated. First, libraries want their stuff back so they can lend it out to other people. Fining people is meant to incentivize them to be prompt and responsible with their loans. Second, libraries need to increase funds to pay for replacement material, among many other fiscal needs. However, neither of these goals seems to be ideally met by traditional fining systems which charge between 10¢ and $3 per day depending on the loan item. Libraries across the country have responded with 2 opposing policies; eliminate fines entirely or send the fines to collection agencies.

According to Slate from February 2017, many librarians have concluded that the fines are more effective at deterring people from using the library altogether than encouraging them to return materials. The long term effects of this kind of alienation from a public institution are addressed in this article on libraries and social exclusion:

“Right now, as libraries face limited or diminishing public funding, fees and fines represent alternative revenue. This is a burden, created by citizen voters, public administrators, and librarians, that demonstrably bars low- income users from library access, particularly when applied as a stop on in-house services like computer use. In each of these examples, deliberate decisions are made by those in power—decisions that perpetuate disadvantage for low-income families and blue-collar workers.”

For the bottom line, then, the amount collected in fines may effectively cancel out the amount spent on outreach while instilling in people a sense of shame rather than a love of the library.  This thinking is what motivated Salt Lake City to do away with late fees entirely.

However, the state of Wisconsin in 2016 voted to send fines over $50 to collection agencies, in part to recover the $3.5 million in costs the state racked up due to lost materials. Plumer Lovelace, the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Library Association argues that the state needs to have some leverage, particularly when loaning out big ticket items such as iPads which are expensive to replace and in high demand.  The New York Public Library has the same policy. This year the NYPL started a program called Library Hotspot, where any family with a child in the NYC public school system without home internet access is eligible to borrow a wifi hotspot for the entire school year. The borrower has to be an adult and have less than $15 in outstanding fines on their account.  The fine for not returning the hotspot is $100 and having your library account frozen. It’s hard to imagine having a program like this with no penalties in place.

The modern public library system has always functioned on the simple premise that most people will be responsible with borrowed materials and believe in the value of shared public resources.  In the Slate article mentioned above, the Columbus library system reported that 95% of materials are returned on time, and eliminating fines had no real effect on the rate of return.  So, putting aside the most egregious offenders, most people probably incur library fines due to the same human fallacies – disorganization and forgetfulness rather than premeditated theft.

The penalties, however, have vastly different impacts on people in different economic circumstances.  While a person of means may see $10 in fines as a small donation to the library they are happy to give, a person with low income may see it as an impossible barrier to using the library at all.  There are parallels to parking violations that are incurred on public roads where even the most responsible driver among us gets the occasional ticket or violation eventually.  For some a $50 ticket might be annoying but quickly paid online with a credit card, while for others who simply can’t pay the ticket it can lead to a string of consequences that can result in loss of their driver’s license, their ability to get to work, and even jail time. The disparate impacts of fines are similar in the public libraries, whose mission is in part to serve those populations with the least access to information elsewhere.

A possible middle ground may be to hit up those that are already paying their own fines for a bit more cash to cover those that can’t. The method for doing so is already in action in stores across the country. “Checkout Charity” is by now ubiquitous in nearly every large scale retail chain and it is highly effective for fundraising. The most effortless “ask” is when a customer is prompted to add a donation amount on to their purchase total just at the moment they have their credit card in hand.  Options are either to round up (from, say $8.75 to $10) or to select an amount to add ($1, $5, $10 etc.) According to Marketing Magazine, the more in-line the store is with the charity, the more likely people are to donate.

I ask you: Who’s more likely to support the library than someone who is already in the library to pay their fine?? 

 

I spoke with Kenes Bowling, a manager at Unique Management, the “leading material-recovery service for libraries”.  He agreed that it would be a good idea although it would likely need to be implemented locally between library systems and the specific software they use.  Libraries that already have automated kiosks to track accounts and pay fines with credit cards could add a prompt to donate just as a person goes to pay their fine. Librarians could try different angles to see which ask was most effective, such as “would you like to help cover fines incurred by low income children at this branch?” or “x% of people say they can’t return to the library because they can’t pay their overdue fines. Would you like to make an added donation to help cover the costs?”, or even something unrelated to fines such as “would you like to contribute to our after school tutoring program?” You could even use matching grants or fundraising goal charts to further incentivise people to give.

While this would not change the behavior of those who aren’t paying their fines, it could help to support a loss forgiveness program where latecomers don’t have to pay their fines as long as they bring their items back. It could also improve the experience for the fine payer by transforming them from a ne’r-do-well into a philanthropist with the click of a button. They have their credit cards out anyway and maybe they will feel a little better about their own tardiness if they are helping others.

As for establishing good lending/returning behavior as early as possible, research has shown that kids are largely more responsive to incentives rather than penalties. This has been seen with everything from potty training to homework. What if a kid received a small reward, such as a bookmark or a pencil topper for returning all of their books on time?  It may give them just enough motivation to remind their parents that they need to find that stray copy of “Elephant and Piggie” and return it.

NB – I asked my son Roan (age 7)  what the most effective way would be to get him to return his library books on time, a punishment or a reward. He said I should buy him a motorcycle so he can be sure to get his books to the library on time (not happening, but I’m putting that in the “incentive” column).

References

Graham, Ruth “Long Overdue”. Slate. February 6, 2017. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2017/02/librarians_are_realizing_that_overdue_fines_undercut_libraries_missions.html

Gehner, John. “Libraries, Low Income People, and Social Exclusion”. Public Library Quarterly. March 15, 2010. https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/732194/mod_resource/content/1/Gehner-Libraries%2C%20Low-Income%20People%2C%20and%20Social%20Exclusion.pdf

Piper, Matthew. “Salt Lake City Libraries do away with late fees”. Salt Lake Tribune.  May 25, 2017. http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=5327069&itype=CMSID

Warburton, Bob. “Wisconsin Law Validates Library Use of Collection Agencies”. Library Journal.  March 1, 2016 http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=5327069&itype=CMSID

“Library Hotspot”.  New York Public Library. http://hotspot.nypl.org

Sanders, Sam. “Study Finds the Poor Subject to Unfair Fines, Driver’s License Suspensions”. National Public Radio (NPR). April 9, 2015. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/04/09/398576196/study-find-the-poor-subject-to-unfair-fines-drivers-license-suspensions

Powell, Chris. “Checkout Charity: The Art of Asking for In-store Donations. Marketing Magazine.  December 7, 2015. http://marketingmag.ca/brands/checkout-charity-the-art-of-asking-for-in-store-donations-163196/

Belsky, Jay, Ph.D.  “Rewards are Better Than Punishment: Here’s Why”. Psychology Today. September 25, 2018. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/family-affair/200809/rewards-are-better-punishment-here-s-why

A bomb cloud is the consolidation of architecture, ‘a gaseous representation of both a grave and a building.’ Daily I reflect on the poetry and horror conveyed by Eyal Wiezman’s words as I am bombarded with images of violence and destruction via social media. I hear some say these images desensitize us to the brutality of violence, but what if they could be used for something else, something good? What if they could be used to prosecute those that perpetrate this violence? Earlier this month, I attended a lecture by Eyal Wiezman, founding member of Forensic Architecture research agency, as part of the Cooper Union Intra-Disciplinary Seminar (IDS) public lecture series. I become interested in the work of Forensic Architecture (FA) after reading a Twitter post by one of my LIS 651 colleagues on the Ayotzinapa case FA worked on in Mexico in which 6 people where murdered and 43 students were forcibly disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero.

      

I was in awe as the researchers discussed their project. I am new to the world of data visualization and I was astounded by the 3D architectural models and cartographic incident mapping used in this case. As they spoke, I was immediately reminded of Yochai Benkler’s book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, and his hope for “a new information environment… one in which individuals are free to take a more active role than was possible in the industrial information economy” (2006). Consequently, I visited the FA website and was thrilled to discover that Eyal Wiezman, one of the founding members of Forensic Architecture, had been invited to participate in the IDS series and was to speak at Cooper Union less than a week later.

In addition to his role at Forensic Architecture, Wiezman is an architect, professor of spatial and visual cultures, and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. His lecture introduced the audience at the Rose Auditorium to the incredible work being done by FA, through 2 examples – Rafah: Black Friday, a detailed account of battles on the worst day of fighting in Gaza, and Saydnaya, an architectural recreation of a secret Syrian detention center from the memory of several survivors. He began his lecture by reminding us of the complexity of publicly available data. Citing one of his early projects, a drone mapping of the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian Territories, he went on to explain that once their data was published, it was used by the Israeli military to facilitate the extension of their border wall causing further disruption and destruction for the Palestinians living in the surrounding areas. This was a strong reminder to all those involved with data collection, that no matter how noble are your intentions, the data can be used against you and the probability of abuse must always be at the forefront of your mind.

So what actually goes into the production of a split-second moment? For the Forensic Architecture agency each case is built by using gathered testimonies of witnesses compiled with data and images obtained through multiple channels such as satellites, ground footage and social media. Additionally, they analyze clouds, explosions, smoke plumes, and shadows to verify and correct the metadata of these gathered images. Wiezman demonstrated the forensic architectural building process through a projected video. The result is a critical narrative that he calls the Image Complex, which allows his team to probe the spatial and temporal relationships between the images and begin to reconstruct a timeline of events in realtime. Watching the build process is stunning and absolutely worth going to the FA website where they have videos available for all their projects.

The mission is simple, Forensic Architecture works with the UN, Amnesty International and other activist groups to help them build cases and bring violators of human rights to justice. The technological and ethical complexities of their work are, well, complex. In a world where anyone with a mobile phone can be an activist and an image is “currency in real-time storytelling” (forensic-architecture.org) we open ourselves up to incredible possibilities, but will we use them to help or to harm, engage or exploit? I left Cooper Union that evening and walked up 3rd Avenue with a feeling of optimism, quite rare for me these days, towards the future of Forensic Architecture and their pursuit of justice for those who violate the human rights of others.

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Sources

Benkler, Yochai (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press, 1–18.

PERCS: The Program for Ethnographic Research & Community Studies. “The ethics of fieldwork.” Elon University.

http://ids.cooper.edu

http://www.forensic-architecture.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.forensic-architecture.org/case/ayotzinapa/

http://www.forensic-architecture.org/case/rafah-black-friday/

http://www.forensic-architecture.org/case/saydnaya/

I have worked in the commercial photography industry for twenty years and have witnessed numerous disruptions. Stock photography disrupted assignments. The royalty-free license disrupted the rights-managed license. Digital photography disrupted traditional film photography. Internet marketing disrupted catalog marketing. Each stage and phase has raised questions and stirred angst for professional artists making their living through this creative medium. The digital revolution combined with the growth of internet commerce has created an environment of chaos for commercial content and media business models. Organizing media online so that it is effectively searchable and solving the riddle of how professionally produced content can be funded online have increasingly created obstacles for anyone who makes a living in the space of creative media. (McChesney, Digital Disconnect, p82). At this point, we are witnessing not only radical disruption but potentially destroyed established business models due to a massive shift in what drives revenue in online commerce.

Photo by Coley Christine on Unsplash

Unsplash – The New Reality of Competing with Free
The company Unsplash was founded in 2013 in Montreal, Canada, and is self-identified as a “Beautiful Free Photo Community” with subheading: “Do-whatever-you-wish HD photos. Gifted by the world’s most generous community of photographers.” (Unsplash.com) The CEO and Founder, Mikael Cho, spearheaded the broad adoption of this model of copyright-free photography when he was looking for images for his company Crew’s web site and either did not find something he liked, or found images that were pricier than what he was willing to pay. (Crew’s business model is to link graphic designers with clients though crowd-sourcing: crew.co) He hired a photographer to shoot a custom photograph for the web site and then provided the outtakes in HD online, via Tumblr, at no cost, with the permission of the photographer, for anyone to use in whatever way they wished. The site experienced 20,000 downloads in its first two hours. (Cho, Medium.com)

From that beginning, the company has grown to over 250,000 images submitted by 40,000 contributing photographers, and enables over 10 million downloads per month. (Cho, Medium.com) Their downloading clients include Apple, Squarespace, Everlane, Slack, FB Workspace, to name just a few. (Unsplash.com)

Photographers from around the globe upload their pictures, which are edited by Unsplash curators, for inclusion on the site. All photographs uploaded to Unsplash enter Unsplash’s Creative Commons Zero license, equivalent to a public domain license, or copyright-free license. If a client-user clicks on a contributor’s photo and then onto their Unsplash profile, they will have access to all of the photographer’s uploaded pictures—whether they were selected by the curators for visibility on the platform or not—to download at no cost, and can copy, alter, or distribute them, or use them for products, prints, billboards, commercial advertising, editorial uses, or anything else, even to re-sell the image itself, though the company “discourages” this. They also say it would be nice to include credit for the photographer, but it isn’t necessary. (Boguslawska, Petapixel.com)

Unsplash identified and exploited an inefficiency in the marketplace for image licensing. First time clients and those unfamiliar with licensing creative content become ensnared in the “hassle” of obtaining a license for a photograph, the cost of paying for the license, and then adhering to the demands of the particular license they have acquired. All of this becomes unnecessary when using pictures under the CC0 license. Their process is entirely friction-free. End users do not even need to register on the Unsplash site to download its High Resolution photos.

So who benefits from this model and in what ways? For any person or company wishing the freedom to use high-resolution pictures at no cost, with no licensing restrictions, the benefits are clear: zero restrictions, zero cost. However, what’s in it for the photographers who are willingly uploading their images to Unsplash? Why do they choose to offer their pictures, no-strings-attached, to be downloaded for free in perpetuity? Cho remarks: “it’s this extreme level of giving that produces the unprecedented level of connection.” (Cho, medium.com) The theory on the photographers’ benefit is tied to the idea of generating exposure, building an audience and a following, and this attention—this “unprecedented level of connection” that Cho offers—may potentially lead to paid commission assignments for some photographers or collaborative projects that generate revenue by building business relationships. While theoretically possible, every submission makes for a potentially more robust free collection that effectively drains the industry of paid collaboration opportunities.

Cho does not “explain the potential impact that giving images away for free could have on the value of images.” Presumably no one will pay for an image if they can find a comparable one for free. (Risch, PDNonline.com)

If large companies with substantial budgets, such as those listed in Unsplash’s client list, are using this site to download for free instead of paying for a commercial license, won’t they continue to do so as long as they can find something usable on the platform? As Unsplash grows, more free photos will be available, making it less and less likely that any particular photographer is going to land one of these coveted paid assignments. And all the while the image downloaders are being acculturated to the normalcy and expectation of free. The traditional industry of copyrighted photography will suffer. How do you price your work to cover the cost of professional production, let alone cover living expenses in an environment that creates this level of pricing pressure? Sure – it is disruptive, but it is also destroying a creative industry’s viability.

What is conspicuously missing from interviews with Cho and blog posts about Unsplash, is the business strategy that is most certainly incubating to monetize what they have built. The web site is beautiful. It carries no advertisements. Web hosting, image curating, cloud space, API capabilities, and extensive marketing, are all being paid for by previously raised capital of $3.5 million. Raising capital would necessarily imply that a business plan for eventual capital gain has been shared with investors. Cho explains that Unsplash was originally a loss leader for Crew and that it isn’t currently making any profit. (Calore, wired.com)

As for Mikael Cho and his team at Unsplash, though he focuses his message on love of community, there may be a significant payday in his sights. Crew was sold in 2016 (amount undisclosed). His priority is now to work on Unsplash. With the volume of traffic coming into Unsplash it is a brand that has value for anyone looking to capture eyeballs or track user data. The end game could likely be a sale to a larger company or an IPO that is perhaps at odds with the community vibe (and the notion that it is all about sharing and being generous). The product (in this case, photography) is not the business. The business is clicks and data. It is an entirely different kind of disruption.

They are peddling free, but the story may hold a twist. As we examine this pattern, is it logical to see this relationship as one more piece in the machine that drives and reinforces income inequality? The creators of the product are complicit in the arrangement, providing their intellectual property at no cost with no copyrights, for a shot at being noticed by “the audience.” Big business does not have to pay and even makes money off the backs of free creative content producers. And as the arrangement proliferates, the likelihood of making real money for photography by the small individual producer diminishes, even as that product has true value to the companies that freely use it. Ultimately the value of customer data and audience-building may eclipse the value of pictures. That trajectory has nothing to do with the quality of the image, or whether the creator is amateur or professional. It simply creates a definite benefit for the commercial users who download free content, and a perceived, but questionable, upside for the generous contributor.

Sources:
McChesney, Robert W. (2013) Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is turning the Internet Against Democracy, pp 63-95.

Cho, Mikael. (2017) Medium.com, “Hello Unsplash, Inc” https://medium.com/unsplash-unfiltered/hello-unsplash-inc-ce02b1c79d23 retrieved Sept 11, 2017

Cho, Mikael. (2017) “The Future of Unsplash” https://medium.com/unsplash-unfiltered/the-future-of-photography-and-unsplash-811f114aab7a retrieved Sept 20, 2017

Risch, Conor. (2017) PDNonline.com, “Unsplash CEO Tries to Justify Copyright Grab” https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/08/unsplash-ceo-tries-to-justify-copyright-grab.html retrieved Sept 23, 2017

Boguslawska, Aleksandra (2015) “Why Unsplash is Hurting Photographers”, Petapixel.com, https://petapixel.com/2015/01/08/unsplash-hurting-photographers/ retrieved Sept 13, 2017

Cho, Mikael. (2017) “I Started Unsplash”, https://medium.com/@mikaelcho/i-made-unsplash-and-now-i-m-making-a-book-eaa8e947ad78 retrieved Sept 18, 2017

Calore, Michael. (2017) “The Web’s Premiere Free Photo Library Opens Up Its Vaults”, Wired.com, https://www.wired.com/2017/05/unsplash-api/  retrieved Sept 23, 2017

Unsplash.com, https://unsplash.com, “About” retrieved Sept 11, 2017

A skeleton in the closet. An elephant in the room. Why do we have so many idioms for hiding the truth?  Sometimes, seeing the truth of things can hurt, or make us feel uncomfortable, and our natural tendency is to shy away from that which reveals some darkness about ourselves. But just because something is unpleasant, doesn’t mean it should remain unexamined. The discipline of Library and Information Science traditionally holds that transparency – representing unfettered history – has inherent value to society. Schwartz and Cook (2002) posited that those who control archives control the historical narrative (p. 17).  Therefore, it’s essential that LIS professionals promote transparency with an eye to the power inherent in their position, and wield it to society’s greater advantage.

As we look at instances where LIS professionals can contribute value, ‘difficult heritage’ is an integral concept. Sharon Macdonald (2016) explains it as “rather than emphasizing times of the nation’s glorious achievement…times of evil wrong-doing that did no evident credit to a positive national identity.” (p. 6) Examples of difficult heritage come painfully but freely — the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the slave trade in the U.S. But what about obscured heritage – histories that were intentionally created to serve a rosier self-image? Do LIS professionals have a responsibility to put on their detective hats and actively uncover and curate these hidden narratives? Furthermore, if they don’t take an active role, are they not furthering the agenda of those who buried the truth, by becoming unconscious participants in its secrecy?

Certainly, uncovering alternative history is not an easy task. Hidden heritage is by definition difficult to find, and the history of Hawaii is no exception.  In 1898, the U.S. attempted to annex the sovereign nation of Hawai’i through a Joint Resolution of Congress.  It is not only a common belief that the joint resolution successfully achieved this annexation, but is the “official view of the U.S. with respect to the status of Hawaii.” (Chang, 2015, p. 71) However, under domestic U.S. law, it was (and still is) illegal to annex a sovereign nation using a joint resolution: “Only a Treaty could annex Hawaii.  The Treaty of 1897 was never ratified by the United States.  Annexation by resolution was unconstitutional.” (Chang, 2015, p. 74) This massive deception is one that many American citizens and native Hawaiians are still fooled by. In February 2015, Supreme Court Justice Scalia, “implied that Hawaii was just another colony of Spain, taken in the Spanish-American War, like the Philippines and Puerto Rico.” (Chang, 2015, p. 77) It therefore may not surprise the reader that no museum in Hawaii has dedicated an exhibit to this difficult heritage, much of which was fueled by financial gain, and geopolitical and military strategy.  Even today the U.S. government has not apologized or admitted its shameful past to the Native Hawaiian people. Williamson Chang, a Harvard Law professor and native Hawaiian, has done much of the legwork in uncovering this century-old lie. He was armed with an education and a hunger for the truth about his nation’s past. Why can’t museums or archives represent this very legal (albeit contentious) truth? Is fear of controversy worth restricting knowledge of this injustice?

Thoughtful, considered representation of a difficult and previously obscured past is possible. At Te Papa museum in New Zealand, a permanent exhibit showcases two versions of The Treaty of Waitangi. Written in English and translated into Māori (the language and people of native New Zealand), the treaty was signed in 1840 by a consortium of Māori chieftains and representatives of the British Empire. The treaty is widely considered to be the founding of the country of New Zealand, and essentially gave the Queen of England sovereignty over New Zealand in exchange for the chieftains’ “exclusive and undistributed possession of their Lands, Estates, Forests…and properties.” (Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2017) However, many believe that the Māori did not fully understand the language of the treaty they were signing, and that the word choices used by the British were not translated accurately. For example, unlike the British, “traditional Māori society did not have a concept of absolute ownership of land.” (McAloon, 2008) There isn’t enough room in this post to discuss the specifics of these troublesome and misleading word choices. However, the Te Papa museum put together a brilliant exhibit to showcase the dichotomy. The main exhibit displays large, dramatic versions of the treaty in both the Māori and English languages for visitors to explore with a critical eye. It also presents both treaties with the concerns that modern Māori people have expressed, and the context of events leading up to the treaty signing. It leaves it to the visitor to analyze both narratives and walk away from Te Papa with their own opinion. By taking a page from Heidi L.M. Jacobs, the museum curators are “teaching the conflicts” (Jacobs, 2010, p. 186), asking themselves, their colleagues and their patrons to examine the exhibits for “evidence of struggle over the right to tell the truth.” (Drabinski, 2013, p. 108)

 

Another great example is from the Idaho Museum of Natural History. Dalbello (2009) shares details about its digital exhibit of Idaho Indians, and explains that through the digitizing (and resulting accessibility) of these records, “families of origin were discovered…individual names were recovered from written records.” (p. 6).  These names and stories would never have come to light without the power of a museum to drive the effort. Through use of crowd-tagging and open access to the public eye, obscured heritage can become visible.

LIS professionals have a responsibility to present the truth of humanity’s collective heritage. History is complex, although very often the groups in power would like to have the public believe that only two sides exist: right and wrong. By curating hidden heritage in a thoughtful and informed way, LIS professionals are uniquely qualified to enlighten the public. Some histories are difficult to stomach but easily seen, as Macdonald explores. Others are still obscured from our view. It is essential that LIS professionals take hold of the proverbial shovel, and unearth the buried shadows that haunt us.

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References

Chang, Williamson. (2015). Darkness over Hawaii: The Annexation Myth is the Greatest Obstacle to Progress. Asian-Pacific Law & Policy Journal, 16.2, 70-115.

Dalbello, Marija. (2009). Digital Cultural Heritage: Concepts, Projects, and EmergingConstructions of Heritage. Proceedings of the Libraries in the Digital Age (LIDA) conference, 25-30 May, 2009.

Drabinski, Emily. (2013, April). Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction. The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 83.2, 94-111.

Jacobs, Heidi L.M. (2010). Posing the Wikipedia ‘Problem:’ Information Literacy and the Praxis of Problem-Posing in Library Instruction. Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods, edited by Maria T. Accardi, Emily Drabinski,and Alana Kumbier. Duluth, MN: Library Juice.

Macdonald, Sharon. (2015). Is ‘Difficult Heritage’ Still Difficult? Why Public Acknowledgment of Past Perpetration May No Longer Be So Unsettling to Collective Identities. Museum International, 67, 6-22.

McAloon, Jim. (2008, November 24). ‘Land Ownership – Maori and land ownership.’ Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved from http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/land-ownership/page-1

Ministry for Culture and Heritage. (2017, February 1). ‘Read the Treaty.’ Retrieved from https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/treaty/read-the-treaty/english-text.

Schwartz, Joan M., Cook, Terry. (2002). Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory. Archival Science, 2, 1-19.

Over two weekends in March, I volunteered at the Interference Archive in Gowanus, Brooklyn, as part of an ongoing series of accessioning and cataloguing parties kicked off to handle one of the largest donations the archive has seen. In June 2016, the archive received Sean Stewart’s “‘Babylon Falling Collection’ of underground press and related ephemera” and began a long term project to accession Stewart’s donation. I heard about the accessioning parties through an SAA posting to the Pratt email list.

Interference Archive is a volunteer-run archive, gallery, and events space dedicated to the cultural production of social and resistance movements across the world, although the collection has greater representation from American and later 20th century and contemporary movements. I first visited the archive in 2014 for the opening of an exhibit about prison resistance movements. I had not visited since and I was nervous- I have only minor and non-traditional cataloguing experience, and, frankly, Interference Archive seems really cool. I shouldn’t have worried. The gathering was small, and the volunteer running the event, Charlie, was ready to show me everything I needed to know.

My apprehension was also rooted in the general assumption that archives are closed systems, even while I actively pursue an LIS degree. In “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory” (2002), Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook criticize (especially institutional) archives’ “professional myth of impartiality, neutrality, and objectivity.” Even knowing that Interference is an independent nonprofit, I was still cowed by the power and authority ascribed to record keepers. The last archive I worked in was largely closed to the public, though it received taxpayer funding and all of its content was contributed by community members. Interference Archive, however, is a very open system. Not only do they have fully open stacks- as I learned when spontaneous visitors wandered through the space during the accessioning party- but they welcome community volunteers. One of the most knowledgeable volunteers there was a high school-age intern, who worked alongside the more experienced volunteers with confidence and ownership. In addition, a book club was meeting in the gallery space both weekends, with their readings informed by materials from the archive. Interference Archive is a rejection of the phenomenon, described by Schwartz and Cook that, “what goes on in the archives remains remarkably unknown. Users of archives (historians and others) and shapers of archives (records creators, records managers, and archivists) add layers of meaning, layers which become naturalized, internalized, and unquestioned.” The archive also hosts events where anyone can come and produce the kind of protest ephemera- posters, buttons, etc- that they archive.  It lives the principles of information literacy outlined in “Information Literacy: A Contradictory Coupling” (2003) by Christine Pawley, that “information ‘access’ is not just about information consumerism but also about individuals and groups of people actively shaping their world as knowledge producers in a way that renders the consumer-producer dichotomy irrelevant.” It actively undercuts the secrecy and authority of traditional archives by making its work collaborative and accessible.

I spent about nine hours total slowly paging through back issues of the Industrial Worker, a publication published by the Industrial Workers of the World, labeling each issue and then entering them all into the archive’s CMS. Other publications in the new Babylon Falls collection are from the underground presses of the 1960s and 70s. Underground press is a perfect example of collaborative and volunteer-based cultural production that existed before the internet permitted wide-scale collaboration.

Interference Archive manages their metadata in the open source Collective Access browser platform and keeps an instructional wiki for volunteers. This seems appropriate both for their collaborative structure and their collection theme. For a non-profit archive with an all-volunteer staff, funding may be relatively low, but labor is relatively available, making the free but involved nature of open source a perfect match. Additionally, thanks to the open source movement, institutions like libraries and archives that have a professional democratic focus, and institutions with even more specific collections focus on things like collective action and popular movements, can extend those principles to the tools they use in their daily work. While Yochai Benkler (2006) calls the open-source movement “a new mode of production emerging in the middle of the most advanced economies in the world,” the way that open source supports existing volunteer-run workspaces shows how it also bolsters existing modes of production.  Archives like the Interference Archive or the Lesbian Herstory Archive, can be described as “a flourishing non-market sector of information, knowledge, and cultural production,” some of which existed long before Benkler used those words to describe open-source software. Their market participation in terms of rent and supplies is comparable to the baseline participation of open source coders who have to pay for the physical space and supplies they need to participate in online communities. Of course, as Benkler writes, the scale is significantly different.

Open source software complements existing non-market collaborations. And non-market non-digital collaborations contribute to open source digital projects. At the second session I attended, another volunteer was working in the shared space, preparing materials for a Wikipedia edit-a-thon. She was going through the archives’ materials, preparing them for other volunteers to consume and share on Wikipedia. Technology has changed the meaning of outreach for activism-minded archives from offering themselves as accessible resources to actively defining history and reality in shared digital space. This distinction between their digital catalogue and the edit-a-thon is an illustration of the two stage permeation of computers described by James H. Moor in his 2006 paper, “What is Computer Ethics?”. The former fits the “introduction stage,” where “computers are understood as tools for doing standard jobs.” The latter represents “the permeation stage,” where “computers become an integral part of the activity.” An open source encyclopedia like Wikipedia has changed the reality of contribution to common record for “outsider”, or at least non-governmental, organizations.

I observed one small limitation of Collective Access that is not easily fixed with the limitations of an all volunteer staff. In the field for entering serial issues, each issue had to be entered chronologically- there was no support for sorting by date within the field. If an issue was discovered out of order, you could either delete all the entries up to that date and then enter the new issue and re-enter the others, or enter it at the end, permanently out of order. This also necessitates meticulously ordering all issues before beginning the process of cataloguing them, which, while I enjoyed the chance to look over the Industrial Worker a few times, cumulatively uses time that would not be necessary with a sort function. While this problem seems solvable with available technology, each minor solution takes time and technological know-how from volunteers. This is a minor drawback. Overall, Collective Access is flexible and customizable, and Interference Archive appears to have consistent volunteers.

 

Since volunteering, I have remained on the email list for volunteers. I have not made it back to the archive yet, but I plan to return soon (probably when this semester is over). Observing and participating in an archive that turns the traditional power structures of archives on its head fundamentally changed the way that I imagine archives can work.

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Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press.

Pawley, C. (2003), Information Literacy: A Contradictory Coupling. Library Quarterly, 73(4), 422–52.

Moor, J. H. (1985). What is Computer Ethics? Metaphilosophy, 16(4), 266–275.

Schwartz, J. M., & Cook, T. (2002). Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory. Archival Science, 2(1/2), 1-19.