ALBERTO PEPE

A Clustering-Based Semi-Automated Technique to Build Cultural Ontologies

Authors: Ramesh Srinivasan, Alberto Pepe, Marko A. Rodriguez

Title: A Clustering-Based Semi-Automated Technique to Build Cultural Ontologies

Venue: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Volume 60, Number 2, Pages 1-13. 2009.

Abstract: This article presents and validates a clustering-based method for creating cultural ontologies for community-oriented information systems. The introduced semiautomated approach merges distributed annotation techniques, or subjective assessments of similarities between cultural categories, with established clustering methods to produce cognate ontologies. This approach is validated against a locally authentic ethnographic method, involving direct work with communities for the design of fluid ontologies. The evaluation is conducted with of a set of Native American communities located in San Diego County (CA, US). The principal aim of this research is to discover whether distributing the annotation process among isolated respondents would enable ontology hierarchies to be created that are similar to those that are crafted according to collaborative ethnographic processes, found to be effective in generating continuous usage across several studies. Our findings suggest that the proposed semiautomated solution best optimizes among issues of interoperability and scalability, deemphasized in the fluid ontology approach, and sustainable usage.

* Preprint also available on eScholarship, here.

A Grateful Dead Analysis

Authors: Marko A. Rodriguez, Vadas Gintautas, Alberto Pepe

Title: A Grateful Dead Analysis: The Relationship Between Concert and Listening Behavior

Venue: First Monday, volume 14, number 1, 2009.

Abstract: The Grateful Dead were an American band that was born out of the San Francisco, California psychedelic movement of the 1960s. The band played music together from 1965 to 1995 and is well known for concert performances containing extended improvisations and long and unique set lists. This article presents a comparative analysis between 1,590 of the Grateful Dead’s concert set lists from 1972 to 1995 and 2,616,990 last.fm Grateful Dead listening events from August 2005 to October 2007. While there is a strong correlation between how songs were played in concert and how they are listened to by last.fm members, the outlying songs in this trend identify interesting aspects of the band and their fans 10 years after the band’s dissolution.

* Preprint also available on arXiv, here.

why I am vegetarian

“Why are you vegetarian?”
I get asked this question a lot. Like many, I am vegetarian for a number of reasons: moral, ethical, political, economical, environmental. However, every time I try to explain my rationale, I often get mixed, and somehow disappointing, reactions. “What about eggplants and carrots? Don’t you care for their suffering?”. Aargh. Many people I talk to think that I am trying to convince them to go vegetarian, which is not the case at all. Becoming vegetarian was the most natural and rewarding decision in my life. Yet, it was a strictly personal decision. I do not preach vegetarianism.

So, what’s the best answer? In the past few days, I have been reading The omnivore’s dilemma by Michael Pollan. In his book, Pollan analyzes the national (American) eating disorder by unpacking the processes of three principal food chains: the industrial, the organic and the hunter-gatherer. He describes in great detail the journeys that foods make to get from the natural world to our dinner tables. These journeys, it turns out, are often quite convoluted. Thinking about the atrocious, denaturing, mechanistic processes operated by the food industry raises an important question: “What are the moral and psychological implications of killing, preparing, and eating a wild animal?”

In our times, this question is conveniently obfuscated by the food industry which obscures “the histories of the foods it produces by processing them to such an extent that they appear as pure products of culture rather than nature”. Mass production of foods has delegated the act of killing to the hands of butchers and machines. This, in turn, has alienated us from the inherently human practice of gathering food, breaking the relationships that link us “to what we eat, to the fertility of the soil and the energy of the sun”. My choice to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle is an attempt to honor these relationships and come to terms with the foods I eat - those foods that I could gather and prepare by myself.

Could you kill a wild animal? Could you stand the blood, the screams, the fear, the suffering? I can’t. This is why I am vegetarian.