ALBERTO PEPE

Faith in the Algorithm, Part 1

Authors: Marko A. Rodriguez, Alberto Pepe

Title: Faith in the Algorithm, Part 1: Beyond the Turing Test

Venue: Proceedings of the AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy, The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour, Edinburgh, Scotland. 2009.

Abstract: Since the Turing test was first proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, the primary goal of artificial intelligence has been predicated on the ability for computers to imitate human behavior. However, the majority of uses for the computer can be said to fall outside the domain of human abilities and it is exactly outside of this domain where computers have demonstrated their greatest contribution to intelligence. Another goal for artificial intelligence is one that is not predicated on human mimicry, but instead, on human amplification. This article surveys various systems that contribute to the advancement of human and social intelligence.

Twitflick: visualizing the rhythm and narrative of micro-blogging activity

Authors: Alberto Pepe, Sasank Reddy, Lilly Nguyen, Mark Hansen

Title: Twitflick: visualizing the rhythm and narrative of micro-blogging activity

Venue: Proceedings of the Digital Arts and Culture Conference 2009

Abstract: Micro-blogging is a form of online communication by which users broadcast brief text updates, or tweets. This article explores the temporal component of micro-blogging activity by emphasizing its narrative nature: an individual tweet is an expression of personal online presence at a given time, yet it necessarily embodies the context of a broader developing story. We present Twitflick, a digital media platform that blends a continuous stream of real-time text updates from Twitter with related user-uploaded images hosted on Flickr. Twitflick acts as a space in which distributed, temporally-authentic personal narratives, in the form of photographs and text, reinforce, extend, and even misrepresent each other. The visualizations provided by Twitflick capture the quotidian rhythms of online social exchange and draw attention to the poetic potential of web 2.0.

Political protest Italian-style

Authors: Alberto Pepe, Corinna di Gennaro

Title: Political protest Italian–style: The blogosphere and mainstream media in the promotion and coverage of Beppe Grillo’s V–day

Venue: First Monday.  Volume 14, Number 12. 7 December 2009

Abstract: We analyze the organization, promotion and public perception of “V–day”, a political rally that took place on 8 September 2007, to protest against corruption in the Italian Parliament. Launched by blogger Beppe Grillo, and promoted via a word–of–mouth mobilization on the Italian blogosphere, V–day brought close to one million Italians in the streets on a single day, but was mostly ignored by mainstream media. This article is divided into two parts. In the first part, we analyze the volume and content of online articles published by both bloggers and mainstream news sources from 14 June (the day V–day was announced) until 15 September 2007 (one week after it took place). We find that the success of V–day can be attributed to the coverage of bloggers and small–scale local news outlets only, suggesting a strong grassroots component in the organization of the rally. We also find a dissonant thematic relationship between content published by blogs and mainstream media: while the majority of blogs analyzed promote V–day, major mainstream media sources critique the methods of information production and dissemination employed by Grillo. Based on this finding, in the second part of the study, we explore the role of Grillo in the organization of the rally from a network analysis perspective. We study the interlinking structure of the V–day blogosphere network, to determine its structure, its levels of heterogeneity, and resilience. Our analysis contradicts the hypothesis that Grillo served as a top–down, broadcast–like source of information. Rather, we find that information about V–day was transferred across heterogeneous nodes in a moderately robust and resilient core network of blogs. We speculate that the organization of V–day represents the very first case, in Italian history, of a political demonstration developed and promoted primarily via the use of social media on the Web.

Reinventing airspace: spectatorship, fluidity, intimacy at PEK T3

Author: Alberto Pepe Gentile

Title: Reinventing airspace: spectatorship, fluidity, intimacy at PEK T3

Venue: ACE: Journal of Architecture, City & Environment. Year IV, Issue 10. Pages 9-19. 2009.

Abstract: In this article, I explore the contemporary practice of air travel conceptualizing airports as socio-technical mobilities. Drawing both from the notion of “space” posited by Michel de Certeau and that of “non-place” by Marc Augé, I argue that the supermodern nature of air travel has generated forms of crisis that have embedded themselves in the architecture and the modus operandi of contemporary airports. Airports are necessarily located in a physical and tangible sense, yet their function is so tightly coupled with transience, mobility and spectatorship, that they bring anthropological accounts of “place” to unprecedented extremes. In this article, I analyze three tensions that are inherently bound to the contemporary practice of air travel and that present themselves as symbiotic phenomena: spectatorship/solitude, fluidity/control, intimacy/sameness. I explore the presence and interplay of these tensions in the spatial (spectatorship), technological (fluidity) and physical (intimacy) arrangements of the recently completed Terminal 3 at Beijing’s International Airport.

epistemological deliverance

or: how to disable the News Feed on the Facebook

The Facebook recently unveiled a new home page design. One of the new features* is the real time stream:

The stream lets you know what’s happening right now in your world by showing you everything your friends and other connections, such as celebrities, athletes and politicians, are sharing. **

But what if you don’t want to know “what’s happening right now in your world”? Luckily, the new version of the Facebook allows you (the user) to control fairly well what information about your friends goes into the stream and, importantly, what friends it comes from:

When you’re reading the stream to keep up with friends, you’ll see everything that’s happening. Of course, you may be more interested in certain friends. **

Yes, of course. But I am not going to tell the Facebook which friends I “may be more interested in”, especially because this (choosing friends) reminds me of Zizek’s account of love: a structure of imbalance. Following this line of thought, to ensure equality and balance, one has two options: a) to be updated on (i.e. to know about) ALL their friends or b) NONE of them. I chose the latter. I embarked on a social epistemology experiment and decided to (ab?)use this new feature of the Facebook, thus hiding all my friends from my news feed. Result (after some 400 clicks):

* Is this really new? Didn’t they call it “Live feed” in the previous version?

** Parts in Italic are from the Facebook Blog