COURSE SCHEDULE:
| Week 1
|
Week of
(26 Aug) |
Introduction |
| 1 | 27 Aug | Syllabus |
Brief introduction to class concepts (self-tracking, self knowledge, self control, self transformation, quantified self, human augmentation, datafication, dataism, data humanism, data doubles, digital humanities); discussion of course infrastructure
| 2 | 29 Aug | Initial Discussion |
Materials: The Quantified Self (5 mins); Quantified Self | Maarten ten Braber (20 mins) ; Quantified Self: Your digital self-help mentor (3 mins)
Readings: Why People Self Track Track ; The Personal Analytics of My Life; Rettberg “Quantified Selves” in Seeing Ourselves Through Technology
Quantified Self: A Global Phenomenon? Check out the traces of QS around the world. Are they all the same? Are there differences? Where has the movement appeared? where does the movement seem to have persisted? Tokyo, Singapore, London, Beirut, Dubai, Toronto, Portland, Paris, Geneva, San Francisco, Munich, Budapest, India. Can you find any groups in the places you have lived in the world who are interested in self-tracking, or alternatively who are advocates for digital privacy or digital citizenship?
Discussion: What does it mean to measure the self? What are the different aspects of our bodies and minds that are being measured? Is there a difference between quantification, measurement and datafication? How does measurement of our selves and our bodies serve different purposes? Who is doing it? What insights do proponents of quantification claim to gain? What might it mean to “see ourselves through technology”? Can self-quantification serve the individual good? The public good? Do certain identity positions find more expression in this conversation? What kinds of citizenship might be needed if quantification becomes a form of monitoring and profiling? What digital traces do you leave in the world?
| Week 2 | Week of
(1 Sept) |
QS: An ecosystem of niche topics |
| 3 | 3 Sept | Short presentations on quantifying the self |
Students in the course will work in pairs and choose one of the topics below (other topics are possible, but should be pre-approved by the instructor). In a short presentation of about 5 minutes, please discuss its relation to the quantification of human life. What is the position of the subject vis-a-vis the quantification? To what extent do you feel quantification serves as optimization, violence or even control? Is quantification voluntary? Can we opt out from it? If there is data produced, what happened to it? Is it attached to certain identities?
In addition to the topics raised in previous classes (particularly class 5), here are some other potential topics for our short presentations: Driving in the UAE; Bodybuilding; dieting; psychometrics & IQ tests; eugenics; bookkeeping; Weight gain in Abu Dhabi; phrenology; carbon footprint; food miles; actuarial science; competitive sport quantification; quantified baby; GPS receivers, pedometer, biofeedback; LinkedIn; mood rings; genetic testing; Google analytics; smart appliances; standardized tests; class assessment breakdowns; GPA; Google Sensorvault; algorithmic choreography ; air pollution wearables; smart toothbrush.
You might link your presentation to some of the issues raised in this medical article “The Rise of Consumer Health Wearables“.
| 4 | 5 Sept | Parables of Self-Quantification |
Watch: Dear Data
Read:
Benjamin Franklin, chapter 9 of Autobiography (excerpt in drive) full download here.
Daniel Defoe, beginning of A Journal of a Plague Year (excerpt in drive) full download here.
Thomas Jefferson, “Aborigines”, Query 11 from Notes on the State of Virginia (excerpt in Wayback Machine here)
Skim this very useful article: “Data Organization in Spreadsheets”
Discussion: Can we say that these 18th century writers were producing data? If so, why? To what extent are the statistics they discuss represented in graphic form or in prose language? or both? How do their data describe, abstract or objectify human beings?
Brainstorming about later project: Each student should begin to think of ways that they will record some aspect of their lives every day and begin keeping a journal, digital or analog.
Hints: Tracking your workouts | Ask Me Every | Awesome QS
9 Sept Drop deadline
| Week 3 | Week of
(8 Sept) |
|
| 5 | 10 Sept | NYU Web Hosting : An Introduction to Self-publishing, Setting up a WordPress |
Why do we want to publish on the web? What is different about web publication? Have you ever heard about web hosting, a service offered by NYU? What is risky about going public and open by writing on the web? What is different about web writing and social media?
Explore: Fake Name Generator | Increasing Your Digital Privacy
Blog 1: What are ways that you “keep track of yourself” intentionally? What are ways that you are tracked? Can you think of any self-tracking methods that are unintentional or incidental? Write a blog post in which you attempt to identify ways that you measure your own life. (due date 15 Sept extended 19 Sept)
| 6 | 12 Sept | Introduction to Zotero |
Guest speaker: Introduction to Zotero (Beth Russell, Center for Digital Scholarship)
Watch here for some other examples of QS.
Over the semester you will use Zotero to curate a bibliography (a digital “literature review”) on a particular topic related to new frontiers and challenges of our world of datafied selves. This will include creating a “Google alert” on a number of relevant keywords, organizing relevant past literature in Zotero and writing a blog posting about it.
Possible topics (beyond any data centered topic presented in class 3) include: health apps, human augmentation; healthy ageing; personal data art; biohacking; non-invasive probes; consciousness hacking; location tracking; workout-sharing; online tracking; personal informatics; chemical body load counting; cookies; pain tracking; internet time tracking; the hidden labor of data; QS in developing countries; data brokerage; data paranoia; digital stalking; digital legacy and many others.
Blog 2: Develop your idea from the short presentations on Tuesday September 3 into a coherent, 500 word blog posting. You can integrate any of the feedback from the in class presentations. You should write this posting individually (and express your own evolving opinion) about quantified self even though you worked on the presentation in pairs. (due date 18 Sept, extended 19 Sept)
| Week 4 | Week of
(15 Sept) |
Encounters with our Data Doppelgänger |
| 7 | 17 Sept | Sensors, Selves and Privacy |
Readings: Which Sensors do I Have in my Smartphone? ;Maturo/Moretti “Self-Tracking and the Quantification of Everyday Life” ; “Your Smartphones are Filled with Trackers” ; Trackography; “How to Restrict the Amount of Data Apps Collect about You” (Nield)
Browse: Furberg’s Self-Generated Fitbit Dataset (Zenodo) ; On Twitter, see your geosocial footprint.
Watch: “5 Sensors that Make Your Smartphone Smarter”
“What Your Privacy is Worth More Than You Think”
Demo: The instructor will demo Privacy Badger on Chrome.
Discussion: How does accessing information leave its trace on you? What are cookies? What are the basic features of smartphones? apps? Do apps have cookies? What data from what sensors are being recorded and saved?
Want to know more? Check out FemTechNet’s suggestions for Locking Down Your Digital Identity. See the NYT’s highly interesting Privacy Project.
Need some tips on privacy? Privacy (EFF) Need a digital detox?
| 8 | 19 Sept | Visualizing our Google data I |
Prepare: Go to your Google Account and request a “takeout” of some of your data. Make sure that you do this before class–it can take some time. Take a look at it before class.
Read: Balsamo, “Introduction: Taking Culture Seriously in the Age of Innovation (thru page 16)” Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work
Discussion:
What are normative formats for Google takedown data (CSV, JSON, HTML)? How has Google “cooked” some of your data captured by sensors? Who makes who, machines or humans? What would Balsamo say about your Google data?
| Week 5 | Week of
(22 Sept) |
Optional project ideation session #1: Sun 22 Sept 1200-1315 (C2 328) : Bring your rough ideas for your personal datasets and work on them (these could include what Google has already collected about you).
| 9 | 24 Sept | Visualizing our Google data II |
Stevens and Wernimont, “Seeing 21st Century Data Bleed Through 15th c. Wound Man”
“Your Fitness Tracking Device Could be Open to Hacking” The National
Fitness Trackers Reveal the Location of Military Bases
We will look at ways we can create some basic visualization: umap.openstreetmaps.fr, rawgraphs.io, AntConc, Google Charts. (non-free solutions: Tableau).
Discussion: What is visualization? How can it be helpful? How can it be deceptive?
Blog 3: Identify one way that NYUAD campus life is datafied. Talk to people to try to find out where the data is collected and where it goes. How does it make life smoother, safer, better? Are there privacy concerns about this form of data? (due date 28 Sept to be turned in in class, 1 Oct) This blog is not optional. It will be done on paper and not in web hosting.
| 10 | 26 Sept | Liberal Humanism & Surveillance Capitalism |
Read: Zuboff, Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism & the Prospects of an Information Civilization
“What does the panopticon mean in the Age of Digital Surveillance?”
Michel Foucault on the panopticon, Discipline and Punish (excerpt in Drive) Read the whole excerpt here.
Gilles Deleuze, “Postscripts on the Societies of Control” (excerpt in Drive) Read the whole essay here.
Examine: Bentham’s image of the panopticon here
Discussion: What is the panopticon? Do you agree that a discipline society has become a control society? What role does measurement or quantification play in the two excerpts? What is “surveillance capitalism” according to Zuboff? How does Foucault situate a disciplining society? How does Deleuze resituate it?
Blog 4: In a 500 word blog posting, contrast the views of surveillance and adding positive value to humanity that you have encountered thus far in the course? In your opinion do the benefits of quantification of self that we have discussed outweigh the elements of control or threats to privacy? (due date 2 Oct)
| Week 6 | Week of
(29 Sept) |
Datasets of the self / Intentional Tracking |
| 11 | 1 Oct | Intentional self-tracking and Data storytelling |
Explore: Self-tracking tools | Awesome QS
Read: Spitz, Data retention |SnapChat launches location
Prepare: for class, everyone should prepare to say a few words about a self-tracking device/app that they researched. Try to choose one that you have never heard about before.
We will return today to the question of our self-tracking and build out our datasets.
Blog 5: Do some research about one of the self-tracking tools mentioned in the QS Guide, Quantifyme.io or Awesome QS and write a review of one of them. Look for your preferred device/tool on social media and the blogosphere. How are people using it? What material form does the tool take? What is the specific insight that people claim they gain from it? What are the explicit costs (enrollment, devices needed, subscription)? Are there any hidden costs (data give away, freemium service, infrastructure requirements?) Where do the data sit? (due date 5 Oct 10 October)
| 12 | 3 Oct | Dataset clinic – today will we take a look at the datasets you have begun to work on
Setting up for Jupyter notebooks on 10 October |
| Week 7 | Week of
(6 Oct) |
Optional project ideation session #2: Sunday 6 Oct 10-1115 : Bring some ideas for your Zotero bibliography and practice collecting citations.
| 13 | 8 Oct | Global Shakespeare and the Digital Humanities conference: go to the conference anytime between 7-9 October to attend one lecture |
Lectures of relevance to the course include (all take place in A6 009, except MacKay’s lecture which will be in the large A6 auditorium):
7 Oct 930-1015 Susan Bennett (Calgary), “Rethinking Global Shakespeare and the Digital Archive”
7 Oct 1130-1215 Daniel Shore (Georgetown) “Shakespeare’s Idiom: Combinatorial Creativity Across Languages”
7 Oct 330-415 Kristen Highland (Sharjah) “Hamlet in the Digital Age”
7 Oct, 630-8 Ellen MacKay (UChicago), “Not without qualms: Shakespeare, Digitization and Critical Making” register here (food after)
8 Oct 130-215 Meaghan Brown (Folger Library) “Mapping Shakespeare’s Contemporaries: Early Modern Drama’s Global Stage”
8 Oct 330–415 Sixta Quassdorf (St. Gallen) “HyperHamlet: A Database of Quotations from and Allusions to Shakespeare’s Most Famous Tragedy”
8 Oct 415-500 David Wrisley (NYUAD) “Accessing Global Shakespeares through Re-Translation and Visualization”
9 Oct 930-1015 Cyrus Patell (NYUAD) “Mapping NYUAD’s Global Shakespeare Project”
9 Oct 230-315 Jan Rybicki (Pedagogical University of Kraków) “The Stylometry of Shakespeare in (Polish) Translation”
9 Oct 315-400 Anupam Basu (Washington University) “From Access to Analysis: Scale and the Digital Turn”
Blog 6: Write a posting about the lecture you attended. Digital Humanities methods applied to literature and culture are a very different kind than studying the quantification of the self. What kinds of insights do the speakers provide about measuring Shakespeare and his translators/performers? How has Shakespeare “turned into data?” What do you think about quantifying Shakespeare and his reception around the world? Is it going too far to quantify literature? (due date 13 Oct) 22 Oct)
| 14 | 10 Oct | Extracting data from an app |
In preparation for class today we will choose an app or other source of data and see what we kind of data we can extract from it or how it help us (or prevents us) from extracting data.
Examples: Moment / Health / FitBit / MyFitnessPal / QS Access / LinkedIn / Uber / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Soundcloud
For interesting tips on extracting data, see also “Exposing the Invisible- The Kit” from Tactical Tech.
Readings: On the life and death of OpenPaths | Resurrecting OpenPaths
Berners-Lee’s Solid
How can I know what data is created by using apps or web resources? What happens when an app dies? Is deprecated? What happens when a company goes out of business? Where do the data go? What issues of privacy arise? Which companies have the best privacy policies? What is GDPR?
Before you leave for break, make sure that your dataset is underway and in Drive so that others in the other course can work with it. Please make sure that you normalize any issues in the data from the beginning that have emerged. Please make sure that create a second tab that explains the values included and gives a few sentences about the nature of the dataset so that those working on the dataset are able to understand it and transform it optimally.
No class: 7 week exams and fall break: 14-21 Oct
| Week 7 | Week of
(20 Oct) |
| 22 Oct | No class. Classes meet on a Sunday schedule |
| 15 | 24 Oct | Working with self-tracking data |
Platforms for visualizing our self-data (ArcGIS Online, UMap, Voyant Tools, Raw, geojson.io) Creating our own data or using the datasets of “self-tracking enthusiasts” like the FitBit data we saw before or OpenStreetMap GPS traces
See TacticalTech’s guide to Visualization Tools. Try ImagePlot for your image data.
Hands on (time permitting): Using a Jupyter notebook (& Python) to explore IOS Health Data For the exercise you may use your own Health data or some sample datasets will be provided for you in Drive.
Blog 7: What are you discovering about your personal or self-tracking data as you explore it using digital tools? Is there “self-knowledge in numbers”? How do numbers tell stories? Can someone other than yourself know you through your data? What are the subtleties that are missed? (due date 30 Oct)
| Week 8 | Week of
(27 Oct) |
Data and the Body |
| 16 | 29 Oct | Data and Bodily Movement |
Read: Biped: A Dance with Virtual and Company Dancers, IEEE Multimedia | Where Flesh Meets Form
Explore: Eververse (be patient, the site generates poetry slowly)
Watch: Eververse; Lifeforms Software (inserted below)
Discussion:
30 Oct, Algorithmic Dance Performance, 8pm, Merce Cunningham’s BIPED: How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run. Tickets will be booked for the whole class. Please arrive at least 10 minutes before the performance begins. Pick up your ticket under the instructor’s name at the NYUAD Arts Center box office. Watch some footage here and here.
| 17 | 31 Oct | Data and Biopolitics: Prevention or Brokering? |
Reading: Maturo, Antonio et al, Digital Health and the Gamification of Life (in Drive)
Alelyani/Ibrahim “Would Quantified Self Prevent Obesity and Diabetes Among Adults in Saudi Arabia?”
Paterson, The Biopolitics of Sensation, Techniques of Quantification...
Ajana, “Digital Health and the Biopolitics of the Quantified Self“
How much is your data worth? What are Data Brokers?
Continued one-on-one consultations for final project ideation
Blog 8: Outline an idea for your building an app that takes into account issues we have discussed this semester that balances personal or social good while minimizing hazard. Think of this as a rough draft for one of your final projects. This blog is not optional. (due date 5 Nov extended 15 Nov)
5 Nov Zotero bibliography and 500 word summary of findings (composed as a blog posting) due
| Week 9 | Week of
(3 Nov) |
Data and Artistic Creation |
Want to learn some basic Python for Data visualization? Go to Taylor Hixson’s session in C2 306. 12-1pm.
4 Nov Withdrawal and change of grading basis deadline for 14-week courses
5 Nov Zotero bibliography and 500 word summary of findings (composed as a blog posting) due
| 18 | 5 Nov |
Presentation on the Collaboration Between Music and Data Visualization: Kaki King (NYUAD Arts Center Artist-in-Residence), Max Bernstein and Annie Dorsen
Watch: Bruises: the Data We Don’t See (and here). Annie Dorsen on algorithmic theater.
Reading: Bruises
| 19 | 7 Nov |
Debut of the sonification student data and conversation: Kaki King I (NYUAD Arts Center Artist-in-Residence); Annie Dorsen; Robert Rowe
| Week 10 | Week of
(10 Nov) |
Translating the Data of the Self into Performance |
Optional project ideation session #3: Sun 10 Nov 10-1115 : Bring a draft of your app idea for the final project and ideate together.
11 Nov, Open Studios. Presenting some element of your semester’s work!
| 20 | 12 Nov |
Experimentation and feedback: Kaki King I (NYUAD Arts Center Artist-in-Residence); Annie Dorsen Place: Reading Room
13 Nov, performance of Data Not Found. Class will be provided with tickets (Q&A)
Optional project ideation session #3: Wed 13 Nov 5-6 (C2 339): Bring a draft of your app idea for the final project and ideate together.
| 21 | 14 Nov |
Post-Performance Talk Through with Kaki King III (NYUAD Arts Center Artist-in-Residence) Place: Reading Room
Prepare a few questions about the piece for conversation.
| Week 11 | Week of
(17 Nov) |
Futures : Internet of Things |
| 22 | 19 Nov |
Optional project ideation session #4: Wed 20 Nov 1800-1900 (C2 328) : Bring your write up of the dataset from the artist residency. (part #2 of the portfolio)
| 23 | 21 Nov | Internet of Things |
Watch: Enchanted Objects TedX (15 mins) | A Day Made of Glass montage (90 secs)
Readings: Jørgensen, “The Internet of Things,” A New Companion to Digital Humanities
Hanvey, “Your Car Knows When You Gain Weight”
Thought questions: What are the relationships between fiction and our present/future devices that the TedX talk speaker makes? How are they similar to the design fictions evoked by Jørgensen? What do you think of the idea of a future of “unavoidable data”? What do you think of the speaker assertion about the relationship between IoT and the desire for “immortality” bound up in QS practices? what about the relationship of IoT and cost cutting in business or energy saving measures? Are these the best ways to achieve such goals?
Blog 9: The IoT conversation is usually articulated in terms of the relation between objects. Does it extend or complicate the narrative around quantified selves? How might we say that it is more difficult to opt-out of quantification in a world of “unavoidable data”? (due date 23 Nov)
| Week 12 | Week of
(24 Nov) |
Project work |
Optional project ideation session #5: Mon 25 Nov 1700-1800 (C2 328) : Bring any part of your final work.
| 24 | 26 Nov | Challenging Datafication
Quantified Community |
Reading: “Challenging Datafication” (Hintz et al, in Drive)
The Quantified Community at Red Hook: Urban Sensing and Citizen Science in Low-Income Neighborhoods (Kontokosta)
Chinese phone cradle for boosting your phone's daily step count. Some insurance companies in China allow people who consistently reach a certain daily step count to get discounted health insurance premiums. pic.twitter.com/pJFBSYqdlb
— Matthew Brennan (@mbrennanchina) May 14, 2019
GeoLocater : Spoof Your GeoLocation in Mozilla Firefox http://t.co/BW3igOxd
— TrishTech (@TrishTech) May 19, 2012
#HongKong protestors point lasers at police to prevent facial recognition from Chinese government pic.twitter.com/4ncjwwJDaT
— #DigitalRightsDev (@DigitalRightsDv) July 31, 2019
| 25 | 28 Nov | Data Storytelling Lab |
Today we will work on drafts of Part #1 of the Final Portfolio. A data storytelling exercise on your favorite of the datasets you worked on this semester.
Blog 10: Write a wrap-up post for this course, including major lessons that you have learned, potential lines of new inquiry, etc. The audience for this posting should be that of total novices. Use no technical terms or specialized vocabulary. Assume no understanding of the topic. This blog is not optional. (due date 5 Dec)
| Week 13 | Week of
(1 Dec) |
| 3 Dec | No classes : Commemoration and National Day |
| 26 | 5 Dec | Visiting “Speculative Landscapes” |
Optional blog: You are invited to go to the NYUAD gallery’s show “Speculative Landscapes”. Write up your reflections about its relation to the course themes.
| 27 | 10 Dec |
| 28 | 12 Dec | Classes meet on a Tuesday schedule |
Optional final consultations: 16-17 December, 9-5pm (instructor’s office)
All work due: 17 Dec, 11:59pm