Tag Archives: Silicone Valley

OHD_BLG_0052 It’s all about the cleaners

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I always get frustrated when I clean my fridge. There are so many little ridges that stuff gets into. I even have to have the door of my fridge open a certain way, which is not logical in the day-to-day of opening it but is the only way I can make sure that I am able to take out the shelves to clean them properly. This is an example of people designing a product without thinking about maintenance. The designers were not thinking about the cleaners they were thinking about the users. In a capitalistic and consumer driven world this is not surprising. We want to sell products to the users and cleaners are not important. Cleaning is after all a women’s job and who gives a shit about them. However cleaners are extremely powerful. If cleaners go on strike you have a big problem.

Waste disposal strike during the winter of discontent

However, cleaners do not generally go on strike. They are often women, who are most likely from a minority background and need the money. Striking is a privilege.

But cleaners are extremely powerful and this is proven by the new types of cleaners and maintenance workers. The computer guys. The IT department. The software developers. However unlike domestic cleaners our digital cleaners are mostly privilege educated men. This in combination with the fact the we view digital as our new god, means that we view these new, digital cleaners in a very different light. These types of digital cleaners are a luxury. Don’t get me wrong being able to employ a cleaner to clean your house is also extremely privileged, but this is a whole new level.

Now some might point out that the digital cleaners need way more training but then I would invite them to clean a university building. To be able to clean fast and well, while simultaneously being completely ignored by your fellow humans and having to deal with the disgusting things that come out of these humans, you need to be really good and have a lot of experience. The most elite cleaners, those who work in very fancy hotels, have to under go extreme training. They are different jobs but one is not harder than the other and the difference in pay a shameful.

But what does this have to do with archives, because that is what I am normally talking about. Well, in this article by archivist Charlie Morgan he talks about Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!, which is one of my favourite art pieces. With her work Ukeles brings to light the people to who have to maintain the work after it has been created. Morgan writes that as a society we are focused on creation and under value maintenance (not surprising as this is either done by women, or the working class.) This focus has led everyone including archives to become obsessed with collection. GIMME ALL THE STUFF! This is like my fridge completely ignores the maintenance staff. How are we going to look after all this? WHO CARES I WANT IT!

Not helpful. Especially when people are handling sensitive informative which many archives do (so does most of Silicone Valley, but that’s another issue.)

My work is about getting people to reuse oral history, to give purpose to the storing of recordings, but I must NEVER forget about the cleaners. I cannot design any thing extremely complicated because most archives cannot afford the luxury digital cleaners. They have to do all the cleaning themselves. Heck, I was talking to an archivist who said the they currently were not doing any archiving they were doing building maintenance. Archiving is not the job you think it is. Archiving is cleaning. Cleaning up the world’s information.

OHD_BLG_0076 ʇǝɹɔǝs ʞɹɐp ǝɥʇ

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In Frisch’s ‘Three dimensions and more’ he discusses the idea of the deep dark secret of oral history being like the unopened shoe box of homemade videos – unwatched. After digesting this idea for the last two years I suddenly realised something. Oral history as a field exists because of technological advancements. The field is completely intertwine with technology: the recording devices used to make the first recordings, the internet now allowing for international zoom interviews, it all depends on technology. This made me think that maybe the deep dark secret is not an oral history problem but in fact a technology problem. It’s not oral history’s fault that much of technology is not particularly focused on sustainable storage. There is focus on speedy communication; phones, text messages, social media and trading; online shopping and targeted advertising. Even accessing knowledge (aka googling) is not based on accuracy but more speed and attention.

Digital storage is a minefield from ‘things that exist on the internet forever’ to link rot and from the now unreadable mini-disc to hard drives that can store two terabytes of data. It is so extreme that it is clear that no has really thought about beyond uploading it. Technology, like many things in capitalist society live solely in the present, so the way it views time extremely 2-dimensional. There is no thought about how this attitude towards storage affects the past or the future. The amount of time and money that is required to keep archives up to date with their digitisation is not covered by the amount of money and time archives actually have. Beyond the archive our day to day interaction and documentation has an unknown future. What are your next of kin going to do with your Facebook page when you die? Or your instagram? Your Snapchat? Your emails? Your iCloud? Your laptop, smart phone, hard drivers and tablets? Currently it is likely that it will either disappear or be inaccessible.

The way we store our data in this blasé way has the potential to create a black hole of information in the timeline of human history. This attitude is completely inefficient when it comes to accessing and reusing. Unless of course you are Facebook, Google or Apple. These mega gods of information are able to mine astronomical amounts of data and use it. But in order to use it they strip every single bit of humanity from the process. The only way to use the truly insane amounts of data is by reducing the human producer so much that literally become zeros and ones. No feelings, no aura, just nothing. Oral history cannot do this because oral history is fundamentally human. Just like home videos that are filled with nostalgia and memory, they take time to watch or listen to because there is so much emotion and memory that needs to be digested while viewing. But the data that is used by big tech is void of this emotion.

In conclusion, due to oral history’s long term yet slightly abusive relationship with technology it has got this deep dark secret of unused archives. But in truth technology does not support what archives are trying to do. The creators of this technology just do not give a shit because that’s the nature of the capitalistic beast. I suggest therefore that we take a reverse attitude towards this relationship. Oral history needs to inform tech what they need in order to make archives work better because clearly tech has no idea what it is doing.

OHD_BLG_0087 Design Thinking Sprint report – 03/02/21

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I did a mini design sprint today. It was really fun to do something design-y after such a long time. It was about data and data collection. At the beginning the workshop lead showed us different data collection tools, including ‘My Activity’ page on my Google account. On this page I could see what they had been tracking but I also saw how I could turn them off or at least ‘pause’ them. This makes me think that they can unpause them at some point like how your bluetooth automatically switches on all the time.

During this mini design sprint we were challenged to design the app for Newcastle University, which is something I had already done for the university across the road during MDI. The end product my team came up with was a personalised data set report.

The main aim of the personalised data set report was to make the data less passive. We found that the way the data was presented in an example version of the app was flat and not very informative, so we wanted the information to be more personalised. The idea of having the data set report was because I asked the others if they would actually look at this information every day if they had access to it? The answer was no, they won’t look at it every day, but they might if one, it wasn’t constant and two, if it was personalised. So we made the personalised data set report.

This way the information can be condensed and the user can get a better overview of their data over a certain period of time, instead of being bombarded with information constantly. The second thing we did was make the data less passive by getting the user to respond to it. For example, the user could put in targets in response to the data set or they could tweak their recommendations to get the app to push for a different genre of event.

The lead was very happy with our idea.

My big problem with data collection is that one, it’s sneaky, two, it’s too much and three, I don’t have easy access to it. Basically you can boiling these three points down to one – data collection is not user friendly. Firstly, the user is often unaware of it because it is hidden in long ass terms and conditions. Secondly, the shear quantity of data mined off one person makes it impossible for that same person to look through it and digest it. And lastly, the user does not have access to it or at least the access is hidden and complicated. I need to read up on the freedom of information act…

I just realised this is the exact point that guy tried to make to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook in the Great Hack and real life obviously.

BTW did you know that there is an online library which you can log onto and sit in a virtual library? I need to know where to find it.

OHD_BLG_0094 The Abstract Archive and the Material Archive

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Archives Nationales, Paris 2004, photographer: Patrick Tourneboeuf

Look at this picture. [you can no longer look at this picture. I tried to link the picture in but then the image came up. I found this funny, so I am keeping]

Look at this archive with all its documents carefully organised and safe. It looks untouched and tidy. Perfect preservation. This images embodies what Ariella Azoulay calls ‘the abstract archive’ in her piece Archive. ‘The abstract archive’ refers to a place devoid of time, politics and humans and embodies the Hegelian concept of ‘Aufhebung’ – simultaneously preserving and canceling. This archive is perfect, but it also does not exist. Instead we have what Azoulay calls ‘material archives’. Archives full of politics and complex systems of power. Who can access the archive? What can be archive? What should not be archive? Who categorises the archive?

I like either of these archives. One of them is super boring and the other can be used as a tool for oppression. I want a fluid archive. An archive that is constantly changing and always questions authority. But isn’t complete chaos, like the internet where everyone can upload anything and also access everything (except in China and North Korea). And where the chaos has to be navigated by algorithms created by unelected power hunger figures (mostly white men) that push certain things to front depending on how much the pay. No not that. Something nicer.

Quick note: I actually wanted to write about back at the beginning of October when I zoomed into the first NYU talk but I kept putting it off because I wanted to write ‘properly’ about it. I think that I need to get into the habit of writing things straight away in order for this website to work as a journey of my work.

OHD_BLG_0096 The little tiny matter of ethics

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Back during my MDI times I read a Buzzfeed that led me to the website Ruined By Design. It is the website for the book ruined by design by Mike Monteiro, which at the time I did not buy because the sample chapter was enough for whatever essay I was writing at the time. However as the start of my PhD draws ever closer I decided that it probably would be a good idea to read the whole thing. So I order the rather expensive zine and paid for it to be shipped all the way from America.

The hilariously designed anti-design book is on the whole very angry. Not too surprising as currently there are so many ex-silicone valley people speaking out against the designing happening in the valley (see the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma.) But this one is a particularly feisty.

However, I like it. I like it a lot.

It starts with Monteiro discussing how designers need something like the Hippocratic oath because their work has such a huge impact on society. Fabulously, he comes up with his own code of ethics for designers. He, like any good designer, happily invites and encourages people to edit, improve and update.

So I think I am going to do it. I am going to put the code of ethics up on here and work out what I need to do in order to meet the code. I am not going to do it now though because it’s dinner time!