Google Search and Cultural Representation
January 6, 2016
Google Search has worked its way into our culture as an indispensable, and unquestioned, tool of modern life. However, the algorithms behind the platform have become more sophisticated, allowing Google to tinker more and more with search results. Since so many of us regularly use the search engine to interact with the outside world, Google’s choices (and ours) affect the world’s perception of itself. Researcher Safiya Umoja Noble details some of the adverse effects of this great power in her paper, “Google Search: Hyper-Visibility as a Means of Rendering Black Women and Girls Invisible,” posted at the University of Rochester’s InVisible Culture journal. Not surprisingly, commerce features prominently in the story. Noble writes:
“Google’s algorithmic practices of biasing information toward the interests of the powerful elites in the United States,14 while at the same time presenting its results as generated from objective factors, has resulted in a provision of information that perpetuates the characterizations of women and girls through misogynist and pornified websites. Stated another way, it can be argued that Google functions in the interests of its most influential (i.e. moneyed) advertisers or through an intersection of popular and commercial interests. Yet Google’s users think of it as a public resource, generally free from commercial interest15—this fact likely bolstered by Google’s own posturing as a company for whom the informal mantra, ‘Don’t be evil,’ has functioned as its motivational core. Further complicating the ability to contextualize Google’s results is the power of its social hegemony.16 At the heart of the public’s general understanding and trust in commercial search engines like Google, is a belief in the neutrality of technology … which only obscures our ability to understand the potency of misrepresentation that further marginalizes and renders the interests of Black women, coded as girls, invisible.”
Noble goes on to note ways we, the users, codify our existing biases through our very interaction with Google Search. To say the paper treats these topic in depth is an understatement. Noble provides enough background on the study of culture’s treatment of Black women and girls to get any non-social-scientist up to speed. Then, she describes the extension of that treatment onto the Web, and how certain commercial enterprises now depend on those damaging representations. Finally, the paper calls for a critical approach to search to address these, and similar, issues. It is an important, and informative, paper; we suggest interested readers give it a gander.
Cynthia Murrell, January 6, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Magnetic Forensics Partners with In-Q-Tel to Battle Rising Cyber Crimes
January 6, 2016
The article on GCN titled In-Q-Tel Invests in Digital Forensics Firm discusses the recent addition of Magnetic Forensics to the In-Q-Tel investment portfolio. Digital forensics software is making large strides to improve the safety and security of data in a time when hackers seem unstoppable, and this is the area Magnetic Forensics’ applies expertise and innovation. In-Q-Tel is a technology investment firm that supports and coordinates with the CIA and Intelligence Community. The article explains,
Magnetic Forensics’ flagship product, Internet Evidence Finder, recovers unstructured data — such as social media, chat messages and e-mail from computers, smartphones and tablets — and structures the data for analysis and collaboration. It has been used by 2,700 public safety organizations in 92 counties to investigate cases related to cybercrime, terrorism, child exploitation and insider threats.
Given the almost daily reminders of the vulnerability of our data, investment in this sort of software is timely. Magnetic Forensics’ CEO Adam Belsher explained that IEF works by opening the pipeline of investigator workflow, organizing backlogs, and urgently absorbing the facts of the case to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the issue at hand. Additionally, the partnership will enhance In-Q-Tel’s existing product line while allowing for the creation of new resources for cyber security.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 6, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
How Big Data Is Missing the Mark
January 5, 2016
At this point in the Big Data sensation, many businesses are swimming in data without the means to leverage it effectively. TechWeek Europe cites a recent survey from storage provider Pure Storage in its write-up, “Big Data ‘Fails Businesses’ Due to Access, Skills Shortage.” Interestingly, most of the problems seem to have more to do with human procedures and short-sightedness than any technical shortcomings. Writer Tom Jowitt lists the three top obstacles as a lack of skilled workers, limited access to information, and bureaucracy. He tells us:
“So what exactly is going wrong with Big Data to be causing such problems? Well over half (56 percent) of respondents said bureaucratic red tape was the most serious obstacle for business productivity. ‘Bureaucratic red tape around access to information is preventing companies from using their data to find those unique pieces of insight that lead to great ideas,’ said [Pure Storage’s James] Petter. ‘Data ownership is no longer just the remit of the CIO, the democratisation of insight across businesses enables them to disrupt the competition.’ But regulations are also causing worry, with one in ten of the companies citing data protection concerns as holding up their dissemination of information and data throughout their business. The upcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation will soon affect every single company that stores data.”
The survey reports that missed opportunities have cost businesses billions of pounds per year, and almost three-quarters of respondents say their organizations collect data that is just collecting dust. Both cost and time are reasons that information remains unprocessed. On the other hand, Jowitt points to another survey by CA Technologies; most of its respondents expect the situation to improve, and for their data collections to bring profits down the road. Let us hope they are correct.
Cynthia Murrell, January 5, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Rethinking the J.D. As Artificial Intelligence Takes over Lawyers Work
January 5, 2016
The article titled Report: Artificial Intelligence Will Cause “Structural Collapse” of Law Firms by 2030 on Legal Futures posits that AI will take over legal practice in the near future. Jomati Consultants LLP released the report “Civilization 2030: The Near Future for Law Firms” which estimates that as population growth slows, legal work will be directed mainly toward the arena of geriatric advice and litigation. The article states,
“The report’s focus on the future of work contained the most disturbing findings for lawyers… By [2030], ‘bots’ could be doing “low-level knowledge economy work” and soon much more. “Eventually each bot would be able to do the work of a dozen low-level associates. They would not get tired. They would not seek advancement. They would not ask for pay rises. Process legal work would rapidly descend in cost.” The human part of lawyering would shrink.”
The article goes on in great detail about who will be affected. Partners will come out on top (no surprises there) but associates, particularly those doing billable work rather than client-facing work, will be in much less demand. This may be difficult for the hoards of young law school students produced each year as their positions are increasingly taken over by AI technology. Time to rethink that law degree and consider a career path tailored to human skills.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 5, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Information Technology Units to Do the Change Thing Now. Right Now!
January 1, 2016
I read “Report: IT Departments to Take on Digital Transformation in 2016.” Yep, wake up one day and say, “I will transform myself.” That works really well. How many New Year’s Resolutions have you created? None. How many have you carried out over a 12 month period? None.
The “report” is interesting because it suggests that organizations’ information technology units will undergo a digital transformation. In my experience, organizations’ IT departments are like a slow moving train. Slow moving trains can be tough to stop.
I highlighted this passage in plum crazy purple:
The report [from Pierre Audoin Consultants] claims digitalization will focus on two connected trends: customer experience and the Internet of Things (IoT). It also predicts that organizations will look to mature technologies like big data/ analytics, social media, mobility and cloud computing to create new products and services. However, new business models, processes and value chains after pioneers like Amazon, eBay, Booking.com, Uber and Spotify will continue to put existing businesses – and their IT departments – under greater pressure to rethink their business models.
To illustrate the firm’s prognosticative capabilities, there are 10 trends for 2016. Here you go:
- Digitization
- Cloud computing
- Two speed IT
- Industry 4.0/Internet of Things
- Big data / analytics
- Sourcing / skill management / offshore
- Standardization / automation / optimization
- Agile development / Dev Ops
- Vendor management
- Security.
Some of these trends are puzzlers; for example, two speed IT and Industry 4.0. Others strike me as “been there, done that” jargon; for example, standardization / optimization and vendor management.
I am not sure if IT outfits are going to wake up to a new world of change on January 1, 2016. In fact, my hunch is that change is likely to be like black ink spreading across the pocket of a white shirt. One notices and then reacts. Opportunism, knee jerk decision, cost controls, and the necessary adaptation to dwindling revenues characterize many outfits with which I am familiar.
Search and content processing vendors, for instance, have not change much in the last 30 or 40 years. The new terminology does not equate to technological innovation in many cases.
Stephen E Arnold, January 1, 2016
Overhyped Science Stuff
December 30, 2015
After Christmas, comes New Year’s Eve and news outlets take the time to reflect on the changes in the past year. Usually they focus on celebrities who died, headlining news stories, technology advancements, and new scientific discoveries. One of the geeky news outlets on the Internet is Gizmodo and they took their shot at highlighting things that happened in 2015, but rather than focusing on new advances they check off “The Most Overhyped Scientific Discoveries In 2015.”
There was extreme hype about an alien megastructure in outer space that Neil deGrasse Tyson had to address and tell folks they were overreacting. Bacon and other processed meats were labeled as carcinogens and caused cancer! The media, of course, took the bacon link and ran with it causing extreme panic, but in the long run everything causes cancer from cellphones to sugar.
Global warming is a hot topic that always draws arguments and it appears to be getting worse the more humans release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Humans are always ready for a quick solution and a little ice age would rescue Earth. It would be brought on by diminishing solar activity, but it turns out carbon dioxide pollution does more damage than solar viability can fix. Another story involved the nearly indestructible tardigrades and the possibility of horizontal gene transfer, but a dispute between two rival labs about research on tardigrades ruined further research to understanding the unique creature.
The biggest overblown scientific discovery, in our opinion, is NASA’s warp drive. Humans are desperate for breakthroughs in space travel, so we can blast off to Titan’s beaches for a day and then come home within our normal Earth time. NASA experimented with an EM Drive:
“Apparently, the engineers working on the EM Drive decided to address some of the skeptic’s concerns head-on this year, by re-running their experiments in a closed vacuum to ensure the thrust they were measuring wasn’t caused by environmental noise. And it so happens, new EM Drive tests in noise-free conditions failed to falsify the original results. That is, the researchers had apparently produced a minuscule amount of thrust without any propellant.
Once again, media reports made it sound like NASA was on the brink of unveiling an intergalactic transport system.”
NASA might be working on warp drive prototype, but the science is based on short-term experiments, none of it has been peer reviewed, and NASA has not claimed that the engine even works.
The media takes the idea snippets and transforms them into overblown news pieces that are based more on junk science than real scientific investigation.
Whitney Grace, December 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Another Good Reason for Diversity in Tech
December 29, 2015
Just who decides what we see when we search? If we’re using Google, it’s a group of Google employees, of course. The Independent reports, “Google’s Search Results Aren’t as Unbiased as You Think—and a Lack of Diversity Could Be the Cause.” Writer Doug Bolton points to a TEDx talk by Swedish journalist Andreas Ekström, in which Ekström describes times Google has, and has not, counteracted campaigns to deliberately bump certain content. For example, the company did act to decouple racist imagery from searches for “Michelle Obama,” but did nothing to counter the association between a certain Norwegian murderer and dog poop. Boldon writes:
“Although different in motivation, the two campaigns worked in exactly the same way – but in the second, Google didn’t step in, and the inaccurate Breivik images stayed at the top of the search results for much longer. Few would argue that Google was wrong to end the Obama campaign or let the Breivik one run its course, but the two incidents shed light on the fact that behind such a large and faceless multi-billion dollar tech company as Google, there’s people deciding what we see when we search. And in a time when Google has such a poor record for gender and ethnic diversity and other companies struggle to address this imbalance (as IBM did when they attempted to get women into tech by encouraging them to ‘Hack a Hairdryer’), this fact becomes more pressing.”
The article notes that only 18 percent of Google’s tech staff worldwide are women, and that it is just two percent Hispanic and one percent black. Ekström’s talk has many asking what unperceived biases lurk in Google’s algorithms, and some are calling on the company anew to expand its hiring diversity. Naturally, though, any tech company can only do so much until more girls and minorities are encouraged to explore the sciences.
Cynthia Murrell, December 29, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Analytics Predictions for 2016
December 28, 2015
Well, there is one omission: Predictive analytics. The truth is revealed in “Top 5 Analytics Predictions for 2016.” I like the idea of focusing on five prognostications.
Here is what’s ahead in the analytics sector. Close the flap on your SAS disks:
- Machine learning is “established” in the enterprise.
- The Internet of Things “hits reality.”
- Big Data enriches modeling.
- Cybersecurity is improved via analytics.
- Analytics drives increased industry academic interaction.
A few observations.
Machine learning is a synonym for artificial intelligence and smart software. My experience is that software has included smarter functions for years. Remember Clippy? Don’t you love those disappearing options in Adobe “creative” products?
The Internet of Things remains a bit of a baffler to me. I am not sure about a smart refrigerator, but I am okay with machine tools reporting their “health” to a person who wants to keep downtime to a minimum. Unfortunately that type of IoT application is moving, just not with the pace of an intrepid millennial on the Stairmaster.
The notion of enriching modeling is interesting. The push is to make intelligence systems deliver outputs in a semi or automated fashion. Focusing on the intermediary—that is, the modeler—reminds me of the non user friendly tasks an analyst must perform before outputs are available.
On the cybersecurity front, analytics have been a major thrust for years. I assume that when one predicts the future, information about the past and what’s currently in use are not pre-requisites.
The academic industry thing is an interesting way to make clear that folks with knowledge of math, statistics, and related expertise are in short supply. Universities are in the financial services business. I am not sure their core competency is producing more math types quickly. Well, maybe the Kahn Academy can pick up the slack. C* algebras are really trivial and can be learned in a four minute video.
Quite a list.
Stephen E Arnold, December 30, 2015
Cyber Threat Intelligence Across the Enterprise
December 28, 2015
A blog series from iSightPartners aims to help organizations make the most of Cyber Threat Intelligence. The series is introduced in, “How CTI Helps Six Groups Do Their Jobs Better: A New Blog Series!” Writer Christina Jasinski explains:
“The importance of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) has become more widely recognized in the past year. But not many people realize how many different ways threat intelligence can be utilized across an enterprise. That’s why now is a good time to drill down and describe the wide range of use cases for employing threat intelligence for many different functions within an IT organization.
“Are you a CISO, SOC Analyst or an Incident Responder? Stay tuned….
“This is the first post in an iSIGHT Partners blog series that will delve into how IT security professionals in each of six distinct roles within an organization’s information security program can (and should) apply threat intelligence to their function. Each post will include 3-4 use cases, how CTI can be used by professionals in that role, and the type of threat intelligence that is required to achieve their objectives.”
Jasinski goes on to describe what her series has to offer professionals in each of those roles, and concludes by promising to reveal practical solutions to CTI quandaries. Follow her blog posts to learn those answers.
Cynthia Murrell, December 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Blue Chip Consulting Firm and Its Predictions for 2016
December 27, 2015
I read “10 Business and Technology Trends to Watch in 2016.” These prognostications come from a unit of Accenture called Fjord.
What’s interesting about this list of which horses will win assorted races is that the forecast does not include the phrase “artificial intelligence.” Also, missing in action is the IoT mantra. You know, gentle reader, that your refrigerator will phone home to your health insurance provider when you snag a sugar and fat infused snack during March Madness.
Here’s the list. How many of these buzzwords do you recognize? Hint: Not many. The object of the listing is to stimulate you to hire Fjord to cleave the glacier of your understanding with the white hot heat of the consulting firm’s insight:
- Micromoments
- Services with manner
- The employee experience
- Disappearing apps
- Flattening of privilege
- Government for the people
- Health in our own hands
- Virtual reality
- The return of simplicity
- Design from within.
Quite a list. I am still puzzled with the micromoments thing. Perhaps this is a reflection of the “quality time” blue chip consultants try to set aside for appropriate interaction with their families. Some of the other predictions are Zen like; for example, flat privilege except for those with platinum airline reward cards and the return of simplicity to partner office decorations. And there is no reference to search, content processing, or predictive analytics. There are subsumed under the metaphors used to predict the future. Delphic in a way I surmise.
There you have it. Enjoy your employee experience when you miss your goals for the quarter, gentle reader.
Stephen E Arnold, December 27, 2015
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
