How the Rise of Education Affects Aspects of Society

Group Project by :
Eoghan Long, Andrew Wiggins, Luke Crowley & Andrew Douglas

March 27, 2017 Open Source

https://cdn.datamatic.io/runtime/echarts/3.4.0_125/embedded/index.html#id=105169224990731449065/0B6aWtdd10Gr-VUk1OW9maVNqMXc

In recent years, there has been a massive increase in Irish people of all ages enrolling or re-enrolling in third level education in order to better themselves, increase their job prospects and secure more professional work placements. This dramatic increase is mainly due to the crash of the Irish Economic Boom in 2008, in which many found themselves out of work or unable to secure full time employment due to insufficient higher level educational qualifications. Many higher level educated individuals were still victims of the crash but had better chances achieving other employment abroad and at home. Due to the massive amounts of unemployed during the harshest period of the crash, crime was at an all-time high. There was an increase in crime within the sectors of theft and burglary, which ranges from aggravated to petty. All in all 2008 to 2010 were the toughest years in recent times for the Irish people.
We wish to highlight, through visualization tools, the increase of individuals returning to education and how it is having a considerable effect on crime and deprivation in Irish society. The image below is an interactive doughnut-chart indicating the increase of those entering and returning back to third level degree/higher education over the last 12 years, from boom to bust and back again.

https://cdn.datamatic.io/runtime/echarts/3.4.0_125/embedded/index.html#id=105169224990731449065/0B6aWtdd10Gr-Nm9EcE1CSHREckE

The above doughnut-chart was created using Datamatic.io, which is a partly free online interactive tool and can also be linked to one’s Google Drive. We used the Central Statistics Office and Central Applications Office of Ireland to gather the relevant data-sets for student enrollment over a 12 year period from 2004 to 2015. The amount of those enrolling/returning to third level education has increased from 143271 individuals in 2004 to 182623 in 2015. The largest increase can be seen during the period of 2009 and 2010 of 4366, which is very noticeable on the main interactive graph and is also within the period best known as the height of the downturn. This period also sees a substantial decline in crime but an increase in deprivation, indicating a direct correlation between the three.

Crime:

http://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/8qQMC/1/

 

As the recession arrived in 2008, people began to struggle and along with this many people lost their jobs. This led to an increase in people returning to further their education and try get jobs either at home or abroad. However, with this dip in the economy came a rise in thefts and burglaries around these years as can be seen from the interactive graph above which was created using an online tool called Data-wrapper. This information was gathered from the Central Statistics Office’s crime offences records. These record are split up between the counties Garda stations and yearly quarters. We specifically chose theft and burglaries as representations of crime increase due to the large increase in both during this time frame compared to other crimes. As more and more people chose to further their education in recent times, with an increase of approximately 40,000 new students entering third level education in comparison to ten years ago, there has also been a drop in the number of burglary and theft related incidents in recent times. It could be said that the improvement in the economy in conjunction with a more educated population has led to a decrease in theft and burglary related crimes. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues in the coming years.

Deprivation:

http://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/zNU9S/3/

 

As seen in the above graph, which was also created using the visualization tool Datawrapper, we can discern that there are similarities between the deprivation rate and the previous data. This rate is based upon the average living standard of a person with a third level qualification, or more specifically, their inability to provide a stable income or provide themselves with an adequate living standard. Following the Irish Economic crash and subsequent recession which commenced in 2008, deprivation rates amongst individuals who have graduated from tertiary education began to rise significantly. Between the years 2013 and 2009 there had been an increase of nearly 7%. As of 2015, the deprivation rate is still higher than at the time of the boom  The reason why this is interesting is that is seen above, is that due to the financial crisis people entering  Tertiary Education increased significantly. The socially agreed upon solution to poverty is to educate its population. This brings up many questions, such as the standard of Third Level qualifications, but more significantly it proves that even though an increased number of people are pursuing further education, the poverty amongst those with a third level (or higher) qualification has increased. This increase of deprivation is similar to the rise in crime following the crash.

Poverty:

http://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/mA2zx/1/

http://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/FjZZO/1/

The above graphs represent the percentage of Irish people who fall under the poverty threshold or who are at risk of falling under this threshold. The first graph represents this in relation to those who have not gone to college and the second represents those who have received a Third level degree or higher that are at risk of poverty. We can see that between 2006 and 2015 those who had received a third level degree never rose above 6.5% while those without a third level degree soared over 10% in 2012. While it is now more advantageous to have a degree as seen by the difference in poverty rate in 2015 being 6% in Non-Degree members of the public versus 2.5% of those with degrees, it was not always the case to be in a vastly better position. As we can see in 2007, the difference between Non-Degree (1.5%) and Degree (2%) members of the public was in at a 0.5% favoring those of the public who did not have a degree. It was later around 2008-2010,  during the recovery from the Celtic Tiger bust that we see the skill-sets of those with degrees come into play where they became less likely to be at risk of poverty and less members of this set were in constant poverty when compared to their Non-Degree counterparts. We also see that after 2011, the Non-Degree deprivation rate also glides ahead of their Degree counterparts and even in 2015 their is ~1.5% disparity between the two.

Using this interactive visualization and comparing the discrepancies over the years between both factions here we can see the major appeal to gain a third level degree in today’s world and also how those with degrees are more likely to remain less pressured when a crisis situation such as a recession hits again in the future.

Conclusion:

With the use of multiple visualization tools we wished to highlight how the increase of those enrolling/returning to third level education have had a direct influence on crime in Ireland. The argument we wished to highlight is that a better educated society can have drastic effects on the criminal aspects of a society. In researching the available data-sets we were surprised to see an increase in deprivation and poverty even though education numbers had increased and crime was decreasing. The increase in deprivation and poverty highlighted how difficult  it is for those trying to further their education in order to increase their availability within the workplace. Only from 2013 on wards we can see a slow decline in deprivation and poverty. This can be associated with the increase of back to education schemes and other further education allowances. Education is one of the fundamental corner stones in any developing society and need continuous encouragement in order for it to be successful.

Data collected:

Our data was primarily collected from the Irish central statistic office website (http://cso.ie/en/index.html). The Statbank on the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) under the Social Conditions file was critical in completion of our project. We downloaded relevant data tables and then compiled the data in a way readable the tools we used (namely Datawrapper, Datamatics and RAW Graphs). These free online tools would then use our compiled data to create visualizations. It was only a simple matter of later refining our graphs and making sure our data was easy to read for a first time viewer. The visualizations we created include:

1. We used all data-sets of enrollments all over the country from 2004 to 2016.
2. We used all data-sets of crimes in the country from 2004 to 2015.
3. We used all data-sets of the deprivation rates for third level students from 2004 to 2016.
4. We used all data-sets for the poverty percentages of third level students from 2004 to 2016.

In total we have over 20 folders of data-sets which we gathered the relevant information from in order to create our visualization in order to argue out hypothesis.

Bibliography:

• Datamatics, Open-sourced data visualisation tool, Accessed March 11, 2017. https://datamatic.io/

• Data-wrapper, Open-sourced data visualization tool, Accessed March 19, 2017. https://www.datawrapper.de/chart/s3seF/upload

• Raw-graphs, Open-sourced data visualization tool, Accessed March 24, 2017. http://rawgraphs.io/

• Central Statistics Office, Ireland, Governmental free data access, Accessed March 11, 2017. http://www.cso.ie/en/

• Central Statistics Office, Ireland, StatBank, Crime & Justice, Accessed March 11, 2017. http://www.cso.ie/px/pxeirestat/DATABASE/Eirestat/Recorded%20Crime/Recorded%20Crime_statbank.asp?sp=Recorded%20Crime&Planguage=0

• Central Statistics Office, Ireland, StatBank, Income/living, Accessed March 11, 2017. http://www.cso.ie/px/pxeirestat/DATABASE/Eirestat/Survey%20on%20Income%20and%20Living%20Conditions%20(SILC)/Survey%20on%20Income%20and%20Living%20Conditions%20(SILC)_statbank.asp?SP=Survey%20on%20Income%20and%20Living%20Conditions%20(SILC)&Planguage=0

• Higher Education Authority, Ireland, Statistics DataSets, Accessed March 15, 2017. http://www.hea.ie/en/statistics/overview

 

Fossil Finder – Zooniverse

As part of my  Digital Humanities course, I looked into a website called Zooniverse. What it does is allow people from all over the world to collaborate on projects from a wide variety of topics. I was immediately interested in the Archaeology projects since that is my “minor” subject I took with my course. After a bit of checking around I found one in particular to be intriguing.

It was named Fossil Finder and focused on Lake Turkana in Kenya. What they did here was take photographs  of sections of areas which they wished to excavate. They allowed members to interact with these photos in order to find points of interest to excavate in, I’ll explain this a little more in detail a little later.

Lake Turkana is a heritage site in Kenya and one of the world’s largest desert lakes, the idea that I had a chance to be part of such a large excavation while still in the warmth of my living room behind a screen instead of in the baking sun, sweating like a pig and looking like an Indiana Jones rip-off was an opportunity I jumped at. Each photo was taken by genuine archaeologists or remote drone working hard to find shards of bones which would help identify where they should start their excavation. Each Image was high resolution and represented a nominal on the ground of 34x23cms each. As you can imagine, an entire excavation with photos of this size lead to a lot of photos for one person to look through and by a lot I mean over 9,700. This would take weeks even for a large team to sort through so the group came to Zooniverse instead.

With Zooniverse, about 6,400 collaborators including myself were able to sort through this plethora of pictures for the archaeologists at Lake Turkana’s site. Using forums to communicated (which had about 5000 unique topics by the end of the endeavor) were able to find 109,000 potential artifacts for those at the site, many of these would likely have gone undiscovered if not for the collaboration of the group. The system was very simple, you would be presented a simple page with a picture in the center and had users drag over different “Bull’s Eye” Markers for different types of artifacts onto the pictures. Green for Stone Tools, Blue for Fish Bones, Yellow for Fossil Shells, White for Root-Cast / Rhizolith and Red for “Interesting” and “Rare” discoveries such as skulls / bone fragments. Below is an example of how it all works.

As previously mentioned a forum and chatroom were provided in case anyone was unable to understand the goal of the project or the interface or explain away any other problem that they may encounter. Their was also a small tutorial in the beginning when you first joined the project in order to get everyone with grips with the project. After someone completes a photo, adding what they believe to be appropriate markers it would be submitted to a large repository of images. The major goal of this project was of course to identify as many potential artifacts as possible – in particular they were interested in fossilized bone and stone tools. Each image would often have a few potential examples but they were rare and not always obvious. As well, there are all sorts of odd things in the images that are not significant such as animal dung. As you gained experience I felt my skills with identifying finds improved the longer I played around with this project.

Comparison & Cataloguing : Classification page a “Need more help” button will open a help file. As well, the Field Guide tab on the right will open pictorial catalogues of previously discovered items for comparison.Will an expert check my tags? Primarily the data will be used in mapping and statistically to identify hot spots for “boots on the ground” to check. Significant finds will be collected, though most images will NOT be revisited.

The classification page also had a “Need more help” button that would open a help field as well as a Field Guide tab on the right which would open pictorial catalogues of previously discovered items for comparison, it was super new use friendly to say the least. With that being said – with it being so open for use by newer members I had to ask myself two questions. They were: “Am I doing this right?” and “Will someone with more experience think my work is affecting the project negatively?”. Well, after a little digging I found others had asked similar questions to the developers and had already received these answers. “Don’t worry! Each image is seen by at least ten people – the wisdom of crowds saves the day.” So even if I was making mistakes their was other users there at my back in case I caused a disaster in miscataloguing a potential find. Also with so many other viewers, while there are no do-overs, you can bring missed items to the finds forum (The Finds Forum alone has over 5,000 posts in it as well!) so nothing important will be missed. So anything I missed but saw later I could tell someone else about and they would fill it in for me. Finally, more advanced users seemed more than willing to help others as long as they did not appear to be jeopardizing pre-existant work and were very appreciative to all work submitted by new users. This friendly atmosphere really drew me deeply into this project and I found myself adding bull’s eyes to picture after picture for several days even though I was slightly late to the party.

The project really encouraged learning from mistakes & working together in this project with many others from around the globe. If a problem was ever encountered there was always a user with an exact answer. A few questions I asked that were answered within a day were:

How Can I see better? (I had been having issues with one picture I was given of lower than average quality) – See the Help Index for suggestions how to zoom, colour shift or otherwise manipulate the images.

What If I see a skull or jaw? (I thought I had hit the motherlode! Turns out I was just over-excited but the team still put up with me) The chances are very low so you should first consider every other more mundane explanation of what you see, but like a lottery, someone may win so tag it!

I can compare this part of Zooniverse in a way to Open Street Maps which I worked with last year in that, a collaborative group creates something that others can benefit from. While OSM helps day to day users with a map of the world, Zooniverse is a little more specific but can also greatly help a team with a high level of work. “Many hands make light work” is a saying that rings in my mind here.

Getting down into the Nitty-Gritty of the project, it had a great user interface and left me with a great impression of the website. It made sure that I was ok with each image it presented to me before I began scanning them for artifacts hidden amongst them and just the general friendly user atmosphere was more than amiable.

Some of the more interesting finds got put into Collections such as this one
which is potentially an example of bone being found. This was a way to reward users who found rare objects and incentivizes other users to continue examining pictures for rare objects, it was inspirational and while I wasn’t able to add much to contribute to the Research forums, as I am not an osteologist, (a bone archaeologist specialist) it was fascinating to read about the potential implications of discovering different animal bones could mean for the surrounding area such as the dietary habits of the people who resided at Lake Turkana millennia ago.

This project also had an adjacent blog I stumbled on whilst working on the project that kept up to speed with the research and discoveries that the community found in real time can be found here. It in itself provides an interesting incite into the minds of those behind the project and makes for an interesting read.

There were a few shortcomings and drawbacks to the site. Mainly, it doesn’t give context for where the photo was taken. I know all the photos came from Lake Turkana but was this one I’m now examining in the Northern part of the lake? Southern? Is it close to that last one I just did? This might help me determine what I’m looking at and also give myself some context if I can link a couple of the pictures I’ve examined to one another. Also, it doesn’t give context to the time period of these fragments so while I can find a rock that looks shaped to be used like an axe, I can not distinctly say if it is a Mesolithic, Neolithic or any other variation of an axe. Furthermore, It makes it trickier to identify an object as a distinct artifact or just a coincidence like this.

Despite this, I had a very pleasant time using Zooniverse and exploring this project. I hope you enjoyed reading my article as much as I enjoyed playing around and examining the artifacts above! Until next time! Thanks for reading.

E-Literature & Gaming-Relations

What is E-literature you may be asking yourself? Well a definition offered by the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) states electronic literature “refers to works with an important literary aspect that takes advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer.” [1] However, it can be much more than that. Of course E-literature refers to your Kindle or reading a digital news article on the train on your iPad but it also offers new depths for stories to explore.

E-literature to me also revolves around new ways of showing a story. Be that through game-play elements such as [2] Pry (2016) allowing you to see into the mind of the protagonist ever step of the way and understand their motives and decisions vividly unlike the pages of a novel could express. It could also be like in [3] Journey (2012) where you are initially a mere wandering wayward vagabond learning small tidbits of the world as your explore a wasteland and find little pieces of information along the way that tell a story unlike any novel could express without words.

Stories are developing beyond the medium of pen and paper. Many mediums are looking towards creating video-stories such as in interactive Youtube videos such as Hell Pizza’s Zombie Attack. Videos like this craft  a story with some different outcomes depending on the viewer or reader. E-literature is a medium where you do not merely read and enjoy a novel but instead interact with it, explore it and absolutely become a part of the story yourself.

I’ve been a firm believer in anything being able to create a grandiose story when people come together to put it together. As a Dungeons & Dragons (I’m gonna get nerdy for a second, just let it happen!) player and long time Dungeon Master, I know that crafting a story, setting and world can take months of work to pull off. However, that world would go nowhere without the players to push the story forward. I understand that this is not entirely E-Literature as it is not online but it does connect people together to create a collaborative story. Together the players work to craft their story.

It might be a little irrelevant but Roll20 is an online place for D&D players to find each other and play online as well which, in my opinion, is the pinnacle of E-literature as you craft your own story online with other people, the possibilities of these tales are endless.

I hope this was an enjoyable read! Thank you for making it to the end!

Bibliography :

[1] Electronic Literature Organization – http://eliterature.org/

[2] Pry 2016 – http://prynovella.com/

[3] Thatgamecompany – Journey 2012

Personality and Computer Analysis

So recently a friend of mind showed me this quiz (sadly now closed as HelloQuizzy was shut down. Sorry for anyone stumbling on this post now – 15/4/2018) and it got me thinking about computer analysis of human people in general such as on dating websites. I will mainly focus on the quiz I linked however as it’s fantasy related (and I do love fantasy) but also because it does a great job at showing your results compared to others.

After playing around with the quiz it turns out my RPG class would be this : A Mirror Mage.

I assume you think I’ve gone off the deep end right now with me saying that I’m a mage and can sling spells around and such. Well, let’s not get too hasty with the mental stability allegations! At the end of the quiz you are presented with six attribute ratings. These are : Strength (Athleticism and how important it is to you), Bloodlust (This one is a bit odd but think about it more as your own independent action, how driven you are), Intelligence (Academia and how important it is to you), Spirit (How willing you are to continue preserving against a challenge), Vitality (Similar to spirit but more about your physical willingness rather than mental fortitude) and Agility (Not really your speed here, it’s more how open you are with people, someone with high agility is often very charming or well spoken.) Once finishing the test you’re rated from 1-100 in each stat (and anything above 35 is usually of exceptionally high importance to you).

To take my stats into consideration, I received a 40 Strength, 15 Bloodlust, 20 Intelligence (probably shouldn’t admit that haha), 43 spirit, 53 Vitality and 17 Agility. So I bet you’re thinking “well that’s great but what the hell does it mean?” Well, it means I’m more of a physical person than a studious one, I’m quite a passive person who doesn’t love to be in the limelight but I am always happy to take up a challenge and keep going until I resolve it.

What really interests me is the section at the bottom (after all the fluff about your class and it’s abilities). At the bottom you can compare yourself against everyone else who ever took this test! You can see that a lot of it is just fantasy flair (I mean no one in real life is actually proficient with Necromantic Wizardry or I sure hope not anyway) but some things are quite interesting to look at, such as if you lean more towards good (angelic) or malignant (demonic) tendencies. In the end, this isn’t the most extensive personality quiz out there but it sure throws a lovely fantasy flair on it!

I had two of my close friends take the test as well to which both got the “Spell Slayer” result. Both had similar stats of high intellect, bloodlust and agility. Meaning I tend to have friends who are more independent than me, usually more studious and much better silver-tongued speakers than I. It just seemed to be the trend! I think if an extensive study of which classes were more likely to be amicably with one another was carried out sometime it would have some rather interesting results.

But for as fun as this fantasy idea quiz is, if you really want to have your personality analyzed go to this quiz, it is called the Jung and Briggs Myers Typology test and puts people into two categories of “I” (Introvert) or “E” (Extrovert), “N” (iNtuitive) or “S” (Sensing), “F” (Feeling) or “T” (Thinking) and “J” (Judging) or “P” (Perceptive). It’s a much clearer analysis than the above test and has a rather large amount of works to back up its authenticity. I would say if you truly want to go in-depth and learn about yourself go there but if you just want a fun little side-quest take the fantasy option!

Thank you for reading!

Bibliography :

J.H.B. – What fantasy RPG class would you be? – https://www.helloquizzy.com/tests/the-fantasy-rpg-class-test

Schuerger – 16Personalities Jung & Briggs Mysers Test – https://www.16personalities.com/

How AI in Video Games is furthering our knowledge of programming AIs in general.

AI had humble beginnings. In 1957, Arthur Samuel successfully played a match of checkers with an artificial opponent. [1] This came with some restrictions however, such as his opponent being the size of the room he was playing in. We’ve come a long way since that almost prehistoric computing period and a new age of AI has dawned on us in video games such as Bioshock Infinite‘s Elizabeth being an almost new standard of AI on her own.

Elizabeth [2] is a very interesting example of AI. She isn’t just a follow along companion or just a recruit you can hire like in The Elder’s Scrolls : Skyrim or Fallout, Elizabeth adapts to the player she is with. She can follow or lead while being reactive to the protagonist character and still proactive in pushing players through the story arcs. The team in charge of programming her faced many challenges in non-combat situations. Will having her function to merely follow the player they said it opened “a comedy of errors” while in play. They knew for this character they needed to step up the AI from previous video games.

They wanted Elizabeth to feel like a real person next to you during the campaign. Never too close to you to be “creepy” but also never straying too far as to become impersonal with the main character. It was a tricky blend but through long hours programming they were able to create what is now a critically acclaimed as the best AI in video game history! It is a far cry from the AI of Watson in Sherlock Holmes : Crimes & Punishments. Who would often feel like he was stalking the player with his obsessive teleporting. (Gif Attached)

At its core, Artificial Intelligence is imbuing interaction between people and machines. Video games already blend this line with player input being the key factor of progressing the story. But what is AI? This is an interesting question Graft, K. [3] posed to multiple game AI developers on Twitter. Some responses were quite interesting such as “Teaching the game to make decisions that provide context for the player’s own decisions”. Now I’m not one to spell the “end is nigh” for teachers out there but that does sound awfully similar to how teachers in school show pupils how to do tasks and homework. Perhaps one day we could see AI implemented into the real world through similar means? Though that is probably as far away from us as we are from that checker game in 1957!

Currently, AI is still a developing format with limited research. Sadly, The video game industry takes almost no note of cutting edge AI research which is truly a shame in my eyes. As if we could combined or albeit limited research of AI with the expertise of developers who knows what we could create. However, the challenge of learning with less data known is well known and almost inspiring to computer scientists these days [4] so it may be possible one day soon we will have Terminators and Personal AI Assistants helping us out in our regular routines!

Thank you all for reading, I hope this article on how AIs are currently evolving was suitably entertaining!

References:

[1] – Togelius, J. Why Video Games are essential for inventing Artificial Intelligence. http://togelius.blogspot.ie/2016/01/why-video-games-are-essential-for.html

[2] – Corriea, A.R. The long road to building AI for Bioshock Infinite’s Elizabeth. http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/18/5522450/the-long-road-to-perfecting-ai-for-bioshock-infinites-elizabeth

[3] – Graft, K. When Artificial Intelligence in Games becomes… Artificially intelligent. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/253974/When_artificial_intelligence_in_video_games_becomesartificially_intelligent.php

[4] – Knight, W. To get truly smart, AI might need to play more video games. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601009/to-get-truly-smart-ai-might-need-to-play-more-video-games/

Gaming in Education and Holograms

Last year, I discussed Gaming in Education and the positive effects it could enable students between more diverse interesting classes to less likely chance of burning out. While looking into this I discovered Hologram Videos and how some teachers have found ways to incorporate them into their classes (albeit, it is a very limited practice as of right now).

While limited, it is possible to create a hologram with your Smartphone right now if you wanted to try it! I’ll leave a link to the creation of the apparatus you’ll need to make to do so here as well as a video made for holograms.

and once you have this created, place it on the video below for results. (This requires viewing the video below on a Smartphone)

Now, how are these relevant to Gaming in Education? Well, the videos are exceptionally interactive, they’re more or less 3D models of figures, places and such. One day perhaps that Butterfly or Jellyfish could be intractable in a Biography class, allowing “dissection” of creatures without all the grisly bits in between.

We’ve seen great success come from Holograms before from concerts with Tupac from beyond the grave to vocaloids like Hatsune Miku in Japan (Essentially animated musicians coming to life on stage!). But I want to look at the possibility of such a thing coming to the class or boardroom one day. Instead of Skype calls, you could almost be sitting next to someone in the same room while in reality there in America. Would it be possible?

Well, it is sort of a Reality already. The iCandy glass and other Virtual Reality augmentation devices can already perform such a task over skype giving the illusion of real perspectives near the person. That is merely an illusion however, can we take it a step further?

The answer is yes, Cisco have been developing something known as TelePresence Live Holographic Calls and there is even a video circulating YouTube showing off the strides they’ve made (they even had a conference in front of a live audience). So the technology is definitely there! It is just sad to say it is not cost-effective as of yet and the “interactive” nature of this equipment is in its primitive stages as of yet. One day we may see “touch-screens” similar to our smartphones incorporate holograms we can play with on our phones (imagine Pokemon GO where you could pet your virtual friend!) but that is sadly still a futuristic idea but not complete technological jargon! Our technical know-how just may evolve to a stage where holograms are common place everywhere between meetings and in the classroom to give students from primary school to college “hands-on” experience without the actual need for having to actually dirty your hands.

Here is a link to Cisco’s Presentation, it is very interesting and I recommend you give it a watch if you have time! (Or at least the first 2 minutes to see the holograms come on stage). This is quite primitive (it was from 5 years ago) and I believe they were using a projection screen which is technology that can be dated up to 15 years ago but with correct innovation it does show just how far this technology could go.

Thank you for reading!

 

 

Visual Analysis of “Artemis Fowl”

As my final Digital Humanities assignment of this semester, I was tasked to analyse any publicly available text using some visualization tools such as Voyant 2.0. I chose to analyse Artemis Fowl (2001, E.Colfer) in this way as it was the first book I read as child and nostalgia drew me back to it. There will be spoilers to the plot of this book beyond this point! Consider yourself warned should you wish to delve further.

So, just what does this jumble of text tell us? At first glimpse it looks pretty meaningless, like a kid just scribbled all over his parents’ walls. However, we can see all the main (and even most of the side characters) names appear in this block of words.

First, we have our main characters:

-Artemis Fowl (His name appears 748 times in total): Our protagonist, the boy genius who kidnaps our second main character, Holly and holds her at ransom.
-Captain Holly (Her name appears 429 times): A fairy and captain to the armies of fairies who live just below our feet.
-Commander Julius Root (His name appears 269 times): Commander of the fairy armies, his mission is to save Holly from Artemis.
-Butler (His name appears 229 times): Artemis’ most loyal and deadly servant, military-trained man but with a soft side for his younger sister.

and our secondary cast:

-Foaly (184 appearances): A centaur who is an expert in all things computing, he is allied with Commander Root.
-Mulch (149 appearances): A convicted criminal Dwarf with a nack for burrowing into places no one else can get to. He is reluctantly recruited by Root when it looks like he may be Holly’s only hope of escape.
-Juliet (84 appearances): Butler’s sister who he cares about above all else, even Artemis.

Now, using Voyant’s Trend tool, we are able to see when and where each character is mentioned in the story. This* is a link to a trend page of voyant which compares the frequency of characters appearing in the story. We can see from it, Artemis is always a character in focus, being the protagonist. However, Holly spikes in importance at chapter two and then is pushed to the side in a way by chapter four while other characters see more of the spotlight. Comparing mentions of characters in this way can show their importance to the story line at that moment (such as Commander Root receiving no mention in chapter one, due to this chapter primarily focusing on the kidnapping of Holly.)

Other words being used such as “Fairy”, “Troll” and even “Human” to an extent in context show us a little of the world in which Artemis Fowl resides. It is a fantasy world where ages ago, humans evolved and pushed fairies (who were weaker bodied but technologically superior) under the Earth, where they stayed and were forgotten about except in myths. Artemis believed in these myths and lures Holly – which is where the story begins, however it shows that in the ancient past of this world humans and other mythical creatures were at war, setting up a resentment of one another bringing racism into the novel as a theme (which is developed on in further installments of the series).

It also allows Colfer to write about fantastical creatures such as Dwarves with the power to burrow miles into the Earth, Trolls – mindless but powerful and dangerous creatures which dwell beneath our feet and so much more which gives this series a real flavour of that “fantastical but almost believeable world” one can truly immerse themselves in.

So, in answering, Voyant allows us to quickly glimpse and assemble the image of an entire book, it’s characters, main themes, genre and even the frequency of characters appearing in one amazing tool. It is a fantastic way to covert raw data into visual text and particularly great at turning novels and texts into one “bite-sized” chunk.

*Link to trending voyant page : http://voyant-tools.org/?corpus=d7d717b6b78e14ed7a0d3f081d420657&query=artemis&query=holly&query=root&withDistributions=raw&docId=799701add56d38cc81a7f6df42c2b527&mode=document&view=Trends

Bibilography:

Eoin Colfer,  Artemis Fowl (2001),  Viking Press

Open Street Map Participation

Our project was to contribute to Open Street Maps by either responding to an Humanitarian needed cartography initiative or mapping our local neighborhood on Open Street Maps (OSM for short). I chose to participate in initiative #1623 which included mapping Fiji (the island of Vanua Levu from the city of Lekutu to Naduri) as the Island had recently been hit by one of the most powerful storms recorded to date in the Southern Hemisphere. We were tasked with mapping three “blocks” or sections of the map, this included hand drawing roads, buildings and farmland in the affected areas the storm affect Fiji. We were also tasked with reviewing the work of another member of the OSM community and validating there work as correct.

This was the first time I ever attempted to use software such as this and of course, I started off pretty confused. I stumbled into locking myself to Task #300 and edited this area using Bing Maps and ID Editor. I noticed someone more experienced had already filled out a secondary road on this area, which was a boon to someone as inexperienced as I. Knowing this could affect people in that area, I wanted to map this as precisely as I could, so I spent well over an hour mapping ever dirt road, building, farmland and one lake no one else had marked on a nearby adjacent block. Feeling that I had confidently filled out this block, I saved it and marked it as complete. I may also mention that upon starting this the map was 70% complete and had two more experienced members of the community working on nearby blocks with me, this gave me much more confidence in the case of an error being made (by an inexperienced member such as myself) it would be corrected.

After gaining some confidence in using the software I moved onto Task #299 and Task#352. While the task only asked to map roads, I also marked down houses, farmlands and any water features I could find. Though it may not have been required it may certainly be useful knowledge to locals of the area. It certainly is an enriching feeling to know you may be helping emergency services around the world find routes to areas and potentially saving lives. All of my tasks have been set as complete but not yet validated, I am eagerly awaiting validation so I can either see my mistakes and improve from there or potentially even be praised for using the software well as a first timer! (Though I expect the former much more likely than the latter)

Gaining confidence on the software, I decided to validate Task#350 which was submitted by another member of the OSM community. After reviewing their work I noticed they had omitted several roads and had forgone mapping buildings and farmlands completely. I personally edited as many omissions as I could find, when I believed to be finished I validated the work as complete. However, within an hour I received a message from another member of the OSM community. This message stated that they had noticed I was a new account so they checked my validation and noted I had also omitted a road. They added this in and allowed me a second chance to validate Task#350 again. My second validation was accepted as correct.

However, this experience really showed me the community of OSM, they are extremely diligent and keen to fix mistakes as soon as possible. If not, my mistake and omission of that road could have been critical in an emergency service making it to a site in time and not. I was surprised for the level of scrutiny the community shows the mapping but also very thankful for it as it is only after many iterations that a map is charted to complete accuracy.

As a consensus, while OSM is not the easiest to access community, due to the learning curve and figuring out the level of accuracy expected of members, the members are extremely active and welcoming. When criticism occurs, it is only to help each other improve our mapping skills and never an attack on another person. It is exciting to view your interpretation of a map to become locked into place as the true routes of that area. The community strives for accuracy and collaboration. After helping out on this project of mapping Fiji I believe this community is both noble and extremely important. I am impressed by the more experienced members the most of course, the re-correction of my validation and allowing me to submit it again did not turn me away, it made me want to try harder and be more precise with my maps in the future. I firmly believe that as long as members of the community uphold this standard then OSM may even replace google maps in terms of usefulness one day as the members on OSM constantly update everywhere they can.

 

Digital Research Tool Review

After spending some time looking for interesting tools on the DiRT (Digital Research Tools) directory, I stumbled upon one particularly interesting historical research site. Being an archaeology student, I was drawn to ORBIS, a geospatial network model of the ancient Roman World at the height of its power. (Roughly 200 AD) ORBIS reconstructs the time cost and financial expense associated with a wide range of different types of travel in the Roman Empire.

Background, Development and Research
Developed by Digital Humanities Grant of Stanford University and Center for Textual and Spatial Analysis (CESTA), ORBIS is essentially, a website that gives the feel of a Google Maps for an ancient Roman Empire, however it goes into extreme depth and details on Roman Life. For example, we can explore how a merchant would travel from Roma to Corinthus in the Summer by oxcart and see the routes he would take and expenses that would need to be accounted for. (If you’re curious, it takes roughly nine and a half days and you’ll be taking a detour in Messana.) Finally, we can see that this route would cost you roughly ~252 denarii (ancient Roman Currency), with 250 of the denarii being spent on sea travel.

While ORBIS is a pretty niche site, it is stunningly detailed and could be used as a tool to study questions in various fields of study about antiquity, including trade and social interaction in the past. Below is an image of the rivers and roads that have been modeled into ORBIS.

ORBIS is a free close-sourced webpage that anyone can access. While it deals with a niche subject matter, anyone can find an interest in discovering forgotten information of the Roman Empire, such as the cost of transporting a kilogram of wheat or a legion of soldiers across the Empire.

Using ORBIS
With ORBIS, it is possible to create your own roman routes and discover the price of transport as a merchant living in the past. ORBIS contains 632 sites of the Roman Empire and covers close to 10 million square kilometres detailing the maritime and terrestrial travel. It even accounts for the monthly wind conditions and strong currents / wave height in increasing or decreasing the cost of travel by sea.

In calculating any route in ORBIS you are presented with three options, “Fastest”, “Cheapest” and “Shortest” routes. The fastest route will always take the least amount of days to go from point A to point B, however it will not take into account the cost factor of sea travel or land travel so will often end up well over the amount of denarii any reasonable business man would ever spend!

The cheapest route option will, as expected, calculate the least expensive route. This route is often much longer than the fastest route, however you’ll have denarii to spare after traveling by these routes! In study, the cheapest routes are often taken by merchants selling grain and can be used to see social interaction of Roman people as they traveled and who they may interact with along the journey.

Finally, the shortest route will calculate the geographically closet route. However, many of the roads or sea-ways were less used and this often results in a journey that is both longer and more expensive that would have been expected.

When you become more advanced at using these routes, you can move onto network diagrams, clustering and flow diagrams which give another perspective on movement based on priority routes and seasons. This is distinct from making routes as this shows the priority of routes during the year. (For example, the cheapest route may be more popular in Summer, but the fastest route may be used more frequently in Winter due to goods being in a higher demand)

Goals
The goal of ORBIS was initially to model an ancient Roman World and contextualize the information of routes that had long since been forgotten in a modern way. This data is now digitized and preserved forever in an interactive medium. It can also be used to analysis the networks of travel and routes in Roman times and can be used to analysis the spatial distant between Roman sites.

To this, I will say ORBIS has achieved its goals, not only does it bring us a modern overview on the topic of Roman socialization and life expenses but it allows us to in a way travel back in time and plan our own routes across the world.

Design and Accessibility
ORBIS is not a simple website to use at first. However they do offer tutorials in the about tab in the top right of the screen which allowed me as a beginner to understand the procedures in making my own routes within 20 minutes.

One small technical problem some may encounter is that this website is designed with Chrome and Safari in mind, so accessing it with Internet Explorer or other web browsers may leave users with unsatisfactory results. However, there is another version of ORBIS (which they link you to immediately when accessing the website) for those browsers.

Final Word
ORBIS is an amazing example of how we can digitized information that is otherwise long forgotten into an interactive website. Some may ponder as to what advantage digitization of the past in such a manner is important in our world. Well, simply put, ORBIS makes finding the records of these routes a simple process rather than the alternative of looking through ancient ledgers to find the same information. In a way, ORBIS even feels like a game where you are managing the routes people travel in ancient Rome, and that makes it not only a useful resource but in a way, fun aswell.

Until next time, this stream is going offline, thank you all for reading!

 

On the Topic of Emojis

It seems our module has really taken a shining to this topic. From Andrew Wiggins’ post (which I believe to be the first on this, correct me if I’m wrong) to the most recent presentations with Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen being converted to Emoji by a member of my course. It’s pretty apparent this topic really brought some emotes to our group 😉 .

While it’s pretty much old news by this stage and no longer a hot topic of debate, I thought I’d close this blog (well, the necessary posts for this semester) out with the topic that so many of us started off with.

So, we all know what emojis are and there general usage is to make some feel an “emot”-ion from viewing them. What I’m here to introduce to us all today is the various and cultural differences emojis have around the world. We all know the general smilies and emoticons we see on Android or Iphone everyday. (Little picturing listing them below)

But did you know in Japan there exists a huge variant to emojis, the kaomoji. They’re slightly more complex than ours (they require 2bits where our emojis only use one and can not be replicated by an English keyboard.) An example : (｡=◕‿‿◕=｡)

These kaomoji are understandable without the necessity to tilt your head. (for example : =) and (　＾∇＾) ). Both represent a happy emotion, but the kaomoji is clearly this without having to tilt your head (though nowadays, applications will often correct emojis to pictures.)

Then this type of kaomoji developed into a western style. This is when kaomoji is replicated on western keyboards. (<(o_o<)) Though, not many kaomoji are imitable.

Beyond Kaomoji from Japan, Korea also have a variant to our standard emojis by using Korean Hangul letters. They’re called Jamo emojis as jamo is the korean word for letter. An example is : ㅠㅠ which represents a crying face.

Eventually the styles of emoji and then there imitations lead to the creation of 2channel style emojis. Essentially, the internet as a culture created their own variant of emojis.Originally appearing on the internet forum board 4chan it combined many different languages (such as Kannada) to create an even greater variety of emoji to be used. An example of a 2channel style emoji would be : ಠ_ಠ which is supposed to appear as a disapproving look.

To me, seeing the vast variety and cultural differences of emoji from around the globe really makes me believe emojis are a new way in which we express ourselves. I don’t believe it possibly to see quite so many variations and nuances from culture to culture if they were not important to us as individual beings. Personally, I like to try replicate kaomoji with my western keyboard. I do this I believe because I’m showing both that I have an interest in the Japanese culture while also noting I’m from a western society.

Perhaps I’m looking at this too philosophically but I do honestly believe there is a tie in with culture, our own personal passions and the emoji. What do you believe? Does it have something to do with cultures wanting to express themselves through 1 or 2 bit expressions? Leave a comment to discuss! Until next time, this stream is going offline and in case I do not write again until after the holidays, Merry Christmas everyone!

References:
To generate Kaomoji’s I use http://japaneseemoticons.me/