Mtg 21/24: Tue-29-Mar-2022

Outline for Today

{"desc"=>"Happy Tuesday"}

{"desc"=>"Social media and live TV"}

{"desc"=>"In order to succeed in a computer science (CS) education, CS students must learn how to translate reality into code, algorithms and other computational knowledges and practices."}

Media

Transcript

Zoom Audio Transcript

• Okay well. I think i've got through my checklist here. today. Oh.
• that's good.
• So the Canadian side won the game on Sunday, so now they officially going to the World Cup. And we'll see how they do their. bit of good news. The Oscars and Sunday night. yeah so that was my second question. see it live, did you hear about it. Did you hear about it. So. One thing in here, I think, is krista coming. Chris rock also was. Things that came up. discussion. So. what's the benefit. of our social media connections. In this case. transparency. So I said, maybe transparency, transparency is easier to provide or achieve because of the easy access to the rafi from the event. yeah. wasn't stage, because this is. This is a no publicity is bad publicity. And certainly people are talking about the Oscars more more than they may have been otherwise. So there's. A link to it but. there's a comment by the associate. counsel for the N double a CP in the States and made a comment about. The impacts of the violence. shown live on international television. And and kind of normalized or. yeah normalized. will have far reaching impact, so we won't be yet begin to understand. So I think there's some deeper issues here, other than just. Who is in the right or wrong. backup reminder. anyway. So I might ask if. Our social media. and other computer based communication technologies, provided provide us more tools to have. Better conversations and better. and better conversations about these important issues. So there's Twitter. 140 characters are guess now it's 280 characters. Meaningful conversations about. Important issues. These technologies. social media help us get. Under here more, but under represented. sessions and voices on issues.
• Yes.
• Our social media good at. singling out. or focusing on. important comments, so that they can.
• I don't think so usually.
• On time but usually just the most.
• what's the word.
• charged topics, the most reactive or. Once they get the people talk about. Controversial yes it's not necessarily the most important. it's the one that people argue. and talk about both not the. best. or most. So I said I found the comment from the Council of the naacp the one I mentioned about the violence and impacts of. It. be understood, for a long time. So I read that in the CBC news story. So, on the one hand, we have. All the people making comments about the issue. And then journalists have a role to curate. This presentation that discussion. Because i'm not sure that I would have found that comment, otherwise I try to avoid going to Twitter directly. I think this is a good example of how Curry operation can be used productively to. highlights people's opinions and how they are viewing it. So. sources have. are just. Repeating things. They encounter but they're applying judgment and analysis to the pieces they include. tweets and new stories they're all nicely formatted because. that's part of twitter's branding to make sure that. You know it's three Twitter. Any.
• tweets from people who.
• You don't know all but they are or.
• two.comments of people there's no.
• Chapter forever they're saying. depends on which do scientists do this because the CDC and I. trust them usually an idea, please say that the example of just. Using people's reactions.
• i'd like a story or.
• More information yeah yeah. Okay, show me that we can use sources in different ways. say something is popular because it has a lot of retreats or comments or likes or. understanding that those aren't necessarily. Very good metrics to us. Because there aren't any. controls that we have on those kinds of. things about the mechanisms that we can use to collect them. So that made me think of also on Sunday night they had these. User polls, were the top five most. Popular movies, according to fans and they are voted online, and so they didn't have. Those controls. Now right. This is example I use my wife and she. She wasn't so sure about it so i'll lay it out for you and see whether. see what whether it's. So often. The Canadian Football League they have. The websites around the rough riders they have Poles. For who are the best players are some some things like that and usually. The saskatchewan. player gets the most votes. Regardless of what the question is. it's going to come out the people working in the polar couldn't take the rough riders answer so that's the local professional sports team in the province. In the city and. So. The guys, regardless of what the reality is the polls are going to say one thing. And so, regardless of what the reality is when you're talking about. Where the most part of the movies. it's going to depend on who's answering the call. Now is that. That circuitous journey and up, and the reason in a meaningful place. You get my point I was trying to wait. Okay, one person got my point. Is is that a general issue with any sort of statistics, like if you put a spotlight all. The people who are going to get the for all always from eastern people like. people to vote on a. 40% of the people go to work first websites, people who have you know you're always. that's a problem with any type of statistics, you have to be. Careful with who's taken yeah so when you put things online. we're not actively. Choosing the sample of people. yeah just. For. tweets for people who. don't think it should be encouraged, even by popular Germans. Please let me see, let me see if this is the author of these are now that makes the source high in. It does not make it relatable enough or the patients who. make their image being somewhat of a particular CBS NBC endorsing. The information that information it, it may have all about. So. Yes. The empty bullet point here. I made a comment. Right. I didn't format it properly said knock on whatever resolve my computer problems so. On Thursday. You saw me having. Some problems i've had problems with the past few days, so I upgraded to MAC os 12.3 from 11 point something. and In the process, I broke my website. But I think i've. worked at all the problems now. So. The things that. I will. Get marks posted today. That I promised on Thursday. Like comment about. Using the general feedback that I posted before you resubmit it the project proposal. still holds. Now, in terms of writing up the Web assessment. I don't know what else. Are there any particular questions about that. So try. thing I wanted to highlight in the news I supposed to do attendance. or I forget. Opinion piece. On CBC website this morning or last night. Talking about. delegation visiting the Pope and talking about. are seeking an apology from. The Church about in relation to residential schools in Canada. So creeping in here is about sprouting the doctrine of discovery. Which is a. was used to say that people colonizing North America. And Africa can have to. respect. The people who are already living here. So, how does that relate to computer science so. The master's. thesis. And a masters of arts thesis. Learning computer science was hard and learning computer science is harder. So in the. In the abstract for for that document and i'll adjust this to. include the link I just. didn't get it sorted out in time. They. So, in order to succeed, is it in a computer science, education and computer science Students must learn how to translate reality, the code algorithms and other computational practices. That seem reasonable it's a saying you can agree with. So the rest of the abstract. samantha breslin refers to these processes and practices as rendering technical a term which also encompasses all computational processes and practices shape. Reality material perceptual ways technical renderings create computation of worlds that enabled computer scientists and CS students to frame the world in terms of problems and solutions that are computation solvable. Or, this is only possible by reducing our reading the social, cultural, political, economic and historical aspects in reality. And one CS students learn how to render technical to becomes very difficult to think in ways that are the full complexity of reality. ethnography. Inside of my experience in learning to take around the boundaries constructed by processes of rendering technical my narrative revolves around the work shop political intervention I organized and facilitate. With friends and colleagues in tech to begin a conversation with the social, political challenges facing us as technologists. The workshop with Stephen my jury to from non critical CS students to computer programmer and computing computer programming educator. becoming increasingly skeptical of Silicon Valley dog went to graduate student wishing to commit and contribute to the difficult anonymous and work of undoing the social hierarchy and the interlocking oppressions produced by the relations of settler colonialism. That descriptions of the path, I have walked and of my experiences. Trying to invite other technologies to learn family to be to my learning can offer insights for academic and activists educators interested in education for social change. So we are rendered technical. it's just a matter of how do we go about doing things. How questions, instead of why questions. Talk about divide and conquer approach to solving the problem. Is that. neutral language. If we think about our phrasing that kind of. That kind of approach. So is there a. particular perspective. But is. This a divide and conquer approach is that a neutral. praising the idea. or. Does it come from. A particular. As a result from particular way of viewing things particular history that we've. gone through. And we've all gone through maybe we have different perspectives on that we have always been on the. On the more. On the side with more positive outcomes.
• It seems like a pretty true praised me validates.
• Even if it doesn't serve something else it's a general statement say two.
• Things one time focus on one thing first.
• Full. Okay. So we found some people who said I really have a problem with. That language. Someone has a problem with this language. CS is not for you. So there's two parts, their. computer science is not for you. And I don't understand your perspective computer science is not for you, but I understand your perspective. Okay, so. that's. that's a reasonable comment, why should we change. To peace 2% of the population. might be 2% but it might also be 20%. So i'm not sure how much. I guess the question is if there's one person who. might like to study computer science, but doesn't find it. Welcoming for them is that. Is that a person is that person's perspective, not to be wandering could be. A million people if if we're excluding a piece of the population. Is it in. Are we serving that discipline of computer science, or are we just serving the discipline. And so the other, the comment of a 98% so well with the 98%. Really suffer. Are we doing things to. make them uncomfortable. By including the 2%. So I mean I appreciate perspective that. That, I think, maybe the way the way the comments frame. It maybe that's.
• This.Is an official.
• I guess i'm just saying. That maybe. Change is difficult or changing perspective is difficult. But there might be more opportunities. that come with a change that would. The word seeing beforehand. So i'd rather try and look at the glass is half full, instead of half empty, so to speak. Not thinking about computer science as a discipline or. Do we have to maintain the status quo or. bar honor traditions. Free look at. The problems that we have in world. And we say that maybe. can think of an example of open source software, you know, they say, the more people involved in. Working on the problem, the. more quickly they'll become will find a solution. And that's just not for open source stuff and in many places cases where we like to get as many people working on a problem as possible. So if we think that people with different perspectives than ours. My lead us to a solution to the big problems that we have. Just from a selfish point of view. wouldn't it be nice to engage as many different ideas as possible so that we come to a solution to the problems. Alright, so another comment and chat. So we can fix this by saying divide and solve instead of divide and conquer. So that reminds me of the phrase. This property to kill to kill two birds with one stone. And then that there was an effort to change that into say free two birds with one seed. So we can rephrase. The ideas. And then, where do we draw the line and word what is reasonable to trigger someone's. So, again. So that gives us back to our first topic of discussion. Well, what can a comedian say that's not going to get slapped in front of. A worldwide audience. And still. Not. And still add value to the conversation about it. So can soft I know who said. Okay. Keegan. Anyway, the hand up.
• yeah, so it is kicking in, in my opinion, I don't think a comedian should ever be smacked in it publicly in front of the world visits the comedian's job to play on these lines, no matter like. I think there's been far worse said jokes by comedians that hasn't resulted in this, but there's like it's the job of the comedian to to entertain people and whether the joke was too far, not should not result in in the way it did.
• yeah so and then let economy is it's not about. me interviewing somebody. Someone thought it was okay to resort to violence.
• Exactly.
• yeah so.
• So we can be responsible for other people thinking do. I guess, we can think about. Oh well, we can do offer songs that promotes the values you'd like to see in the world. So sometimes tough conversations need to be had. Sometimes bad jokes need to be told I guess. So you can see how. Going on live there, sorry. cheat. yeah thanks Keegan and corey. So we're almost at a time here so. i'll post some more information there and we can have it will take up this discussion again on Thursday and we'll. Talk about the final exam on Thursday as well. get some information and. we'll go from there okay. anything to wrap up anything. communicate before we go for the day.
• Professor Would I be able to talk to you after class a couple things that I asked you.
• yeah so i'll stick around in the zoom as a sticker talk to me right away, after class, then I have office hours 10 to noon. To three to 330. as well, so you can find me on zoom then. Okay, thanks, very much for today. Welcome
• Have a good one.
• hey.
• Okay, so now it's time class questions. While we're still here, otherwise come and see me and then. After I get my coffee for the morning.
• yep so Professor just wanted to talk about my absence, last week I didn't attend the class either on Tuesday or Thursday, they also didn't do the meeting response I got coven.
• And i've just made here.
• that the whole week and I just got better just recently this this weekend.
• that's good to hear so you're not. Not suffering any long term effects it there, you know of yet.
• Not that I know, though. My breathing has gotten kind of. Like i'd say restrict like I haven't I haven't gone for a run or anything like that, but. Like i've been kind of short of breath more than usual. So hopefully that's not a long term thing just a being sick type of thing. yeah.
• Okay, so a couple attendances here and there. Oh.
• I just wanted to see if it would affect my mark type of thing. I should have I should have told you at the time but, honestly, I was.
• yeah. Okay. it's not a big impact. But i'll try and keep in mind if you want to send me a note though you helped me.
• Okay, thank you, Professor. Good rest your day.
• thanks you too, take care. Okay, so the rest of the other questions, please come and see me after 10. In my zoom office or. But that's easier way. anyway. Okay, thanks again take care bye.

Zoom Chat Transcript

• Goodmorning!
• morning
• Good morning
• Good Morning
• gm
• Good morning
• Good morning
• Good Morning
• Good morning
• hurray!
• chris had it coming
• Have you uploaded the marks for the proposal re-submissions yet??
• Am i late for attendence
• no
• you wont convince me that it wasn't staged. the Oscar ratings are so bad they needed people to talk about them. this has worked and now people are talking about the Oscars for the first time in a decade
• No, because all the controversial issues all social media are very biased to one side and will ban those that oppose
• best examples are the vaccine, trans issues, and political ones like the hunter biden laptop scandal in the US that had even media companies locked out of their accounts for reporting on which has now been confirmed to be true
• Can you move the camera a little bit over? I cant read the entire comment
• I found the comment from the counsel at the NAACP from reading CBC news story. Is this an endorsement for curation?
• That’s what is says
• Could anyone share the attendence please?
• Attendance password has not been posted yet.
• The opposite of curation: including tweets (nicely formatted) from people whose authority is unknown or unchallenged -> unless specifically framed as a popular reaction
• Are you gonna talk about the web assessment assignment and the date of posting the marks for project proposal and blog entry?
• Are there any particular questions you have about the web assessment?
• Student password
• yes
• why should we change the language or practices to appease 2% of the population?
• so why potentially make the 98% suffer or change for the 2%
• I'm going to take 2 stances on this
• the problem isn't that a comedian said something that triggered someone its that that someone thought it was ok to resort to violence
• Thank you
• Thank you

Responses

The most important thing that I encountered:

• Discussion of the latest news
• we should be carefull of what we do in public spaces
• The oscars are wildin
• Discussion on Will Smith slapping Chris rock on prestige Oscars was supposed to be staged because the ratings and attention the Oscar used to get doesn’t get much of it these years . That’s the reason why it was staged According to me
• In today's class we discuss that news sources are uses post of social media to publish in there article. The news sources should apply judgement and analyze unless they are specifically used to show a famous reaction.
• I do think that we need to do change even just for a few people.
• Events like will smith slapping chris rock can be made worse by social media
• today's class was very interesting the professor told us a way that in order to succeed in computer science one should know how to convert reality into code or create an algorithm so that it can benefit all of us.
• Today I learned about the importance of paying special attention to the inclusion of diverse perspectives in the work force. Here if we judge people for going against the norms or having a different opinion we may lose out because that opinion may be what solves the problem we are working on.
• All the controversial issues all social media are very biased to one side and will ban those that oppose.
• I think social media played a major role in presenting the Oscars incident transparently. People quickly formed their opinions and chose sides. I personally believe that resorting to violence of any sort is not acceptable. Even if you are offended, you must strive to address the issue without violence. Having said that, joking about one’s mental illness is not acceptable as well. As professionals, comedians should draw the line and if lines are crossed, the audience need to resolve the issue through talks.
• Today's discussion on how technology does not allow more diverse voices and opinions have intrigued me. I never looked at this matter from the perspective of how the controversial issues on social media are biased to one side and will ban those that oppose it.
• Next assignment
• Technology help to encourage more divers voices and opinions through its open resources.
• To answer the first question that was discussed earlier today, social media and other people play a big role to spread a story or information online. With the latest issue about the Oscars, it spread quickly and several memes resurfaced online. Some say it was staged so that it will be talked in social media. Hence, giving more attention to the Oscars event. Honestly, if Chris Rock have offended Will, it could have been handled privately.
• The most important thing I learned is that being a taught as a computer science professional can change how you view regular situations. It was mentioned in class that people who are trained in computer science tend to look at situations in a more technical sense instead of looking at the whole reality.
• We talked about the Oscars. We talked about Will Smith, and we talked about computer-based communication.
• I learned that technologies, especially social media, discourage the diversity of voices and opinions. Most people would rather take sides than to think critically about an issue.
• Social media played a role in the Will Smith and Chris Rock story by spreading it widely within minutes of it happening. Allowing people to see this on TV (and on social media platforms) allows for many people to spread their opinions on the matter and potentially "cancelling" either person for what they did.
• That certain events in pop culture are staged for publicity.
• how to make cs work for the world instead of vice versa
• The importance of the internet and social media in delivering news and information almost immediately, keeping the world and society updated on what goes on close by and around the world.
• I learned that although technology can be a great tool for communicating with people with various mindsets, it is often the wrong and less meaningful topics that are talked about on social media.
• I learned that transparency could help you see the flaws in humans. If the show was pre-recorded that altercation would have been edited out before being aired. Live streaming creates transparency in processes. Additionally, I learned that computer technologies help us have meaningful communication relating events that occur in the world. If the incident that occurred at the academy awards happened 2 decades earlier, conversations of the average individuals will be limited to people in their immediate circl
• In Today's class, we have discussed about the few questions such as computer-based technology support us in haring better and more meaningful conversation about important issues. what role social media play in how story covered???
• The topic related to computer was quite engaging
• In todays lecture we discussed about the Chris Rock issue and how professional he is as he never changed his expression and keep running the show. And then we discussed about ‘Do computer based technologies support having more better and more meaningful conversations about the important issues’. We discussed this topic more in detailed and had a good discussion on it.
• In today's lecture Prof explained about Chris Rock who is very professional in his reaction and in choosing not to press charges.
• Today we talk about role did social media (and millions watching live) play in how the story was covered. Do important comments rise to the top of the discussion? what perspective is built in to this language? if we find someone who has a problem with this language, what do we do?
• Computer based comms helps us to voice our opinions and also see more diverse opinions. Now to fix the world's problems we need more people to contribute to problems, in this way we will have more unique solutions and sustainable future.
• While social media allows for more voices to be heard, it also makes it harder to distinguish facts from opinions.
• The most important thing I learned was about the different ways people can perceive social media in regards to how useful it is in obtaining true and factual information,
• The most important thing that I learned in today class will be opinion on role of social media in the play how social media news covered and mainly point given by student that all social media are very biased and examples of it and another important thing I learned will be opinion on divide and conquer approach when to solve a problem
• Chris rock had it coming
• The most important thing i learnt today was technologies and world issues connections.
• In todays class, we discussed about Chris rock and also we spoke about computer based technologies.
• Today’s meeting and discussion about the role of social media in big events was interesting to discuss and especially important as, with the example given in class about Will Smith, I’ve seen many different opinions and many of those opinions have flip-flopped due to what they’ve seen/read on social media. This further accentuates the need to regulate how global events are being informed on social media to the public.
• The most important thing I have learned today is that social media does not get effective only on trending, regardless if the Will Smith and Chris case was staged or not. It showed us how the trending working and how the social media has affected people and their behaviours and how could trending distract people from the bigger issues and most important issues.
• Discussing the oscars incident was pretty entertaining
• News coverage is an important part of public opinion formation. However, due to the influence of journalistic philosophy, media business operations, values and national interests. The media's emphasis on objectivity does not exclude its tendencies. So we need to have our own understanding and judgment.

The most difficult thing for me to understand:

• the most difficult thing for me to understand was that how all the controversial issues on social media are biased to one side and how can they ban those who oppose without any major issues.
• Why is negativity still a selling point when it comes to media? There is the perspective that no publicity is bad publicity but can't that be a turnoff when there is too much of it? If the media is just a bunch of drama and clickbait, how can a person understand the legitimacy of the media source? Furthermore, what about their understanding of the truth? Shouldn't the people who have become entrenched by social media be desensitized by the fake and catchy titles? What might prevent that from happening?
• Based on social media and how we can have meaningful conversations on certain topics, I believe it can help to spread important concerns on topics and express their opinions and claims. However, it is easier to spread misinformation with accessible and manageable platforms. So, what you read on the internet is mostly 50/50. How are we going to move forward in life if many people who use social media are trapped in a toxic environment?
• Last week, we talked about Instagram and violence. Today we talked about the violent action of Will Smith. On social media, I see that's a lot of people said that violence in any form is not acceptable. So what about Russian? Violence toward Russian is acceptable? I believe not. But a lot of people shows their double standard.
• I had internet issues which kept me out of the lecture for a big portion of time. I learned the details about the wesite assesment.
• Why in controversial issues, social media tends to be biased to one side and bans those that oppose?And what is the purpose behind it

The thing about which I would most like to know more:

• Today we talk about the news about a award function which was aired on tv. It was trending on twitter. I was thinking about the algorithm which made it trending and the role of social media today.
• if we shouldn't include tweets from people that are unknown or unchallanged authority then should twiiter come up with a way to filter how tweets are organized in important disccusions?
• I would be interested in knowing if there is any empirical evidence regarding whether the most valid opinions rise to the top of social media platforms, or if expertise is a more minor factor.
• The thing from today's lecture that I would most like to know more about is the language of the phrase "divide and conquer." Why do people find this phrase as problematic? Same goes from killing two birds with one stone. It was changed to feeding two birds with one seed, but that reduces the effect of the phrase because if you feed two birds with one seed then both birds only get half a seed each which gives a feeling of incompleteness/unfulfillment..
• I am learning that people take a snapshot of the times they are in and assume all of history is exactly the same. Take what the discussion on whether technologies helping to encourage diverse voices and opinions. The comment that "all controversial issues are biased to one side or the other". It has only really been like this for a decade or two, and not necessarily how human beings interact with each other naturally. Maybe technology is the cause of that? Maybe it isn't I would like to know more about it.
• Today we talked about how social media is playing a key role when it comes to dealing with controversial issues as happened in the Oscar event. I believe it is a good way to start meaningful conversations but it is important to respect others' privacy. Example: Several people tweeted about Jada Smith's condition "alopecia" after the Oscar controversy. Is it breaching others' privacy or getting more attention about an autoimmune disorder?
• I would like to know more about the web assessment assignment, such as seeing a sample of what we are expected to write
• I would like to see a discussion on Elon Musk's consideration of creating a new social media platform and how it will compare to other platforms like twitter.
• About what ways language is harmful for computer scientists. I believe the only term I heard mentioned today was conquer as in the "divide and conquer" strategy. I would love to learn more about this issue and how I can help to create an inclusive computer science community.
• More on cons of how technology can help us have more meaningful conversations.
• I would like to know more about computer based communication technologies
• Is about the social implications of tracking software built into Social Media.
• From today's lecture discussion, I would like to know more about how computer-based communication technologies support us in having better and more meaningful conversations about the important issues. I would also like to explore whether the computer technologies help to encourage more diverse voices and opinions.
• Getting to know more how role of social media play in way some stories are covered and how does it affect people and society? Would love to know more about it in detail.
• After today's session I think Nobody expects Canada to dismantle itself and return to precolonial conditions. But people do expect this country to acknowledge its past, confront its racist foundations and abide by UNDRIP. To begin, it must disavow this Doctrine of Discovery as the foundation for its national policies and laws. Decolonization, true reconciliation, demands nothing less. Canada must understand that residential schools are only part of the story.
• I have always wondered how the banking system works, and how they maintain such securities that are almost impossible to break through. Nowadays, almost all the banking system is online, which is quite impressive but amusing as well. We can do all kinds of work related to the bank just using the bank application. How does they maintain such applications and securities related to it?
• How can blockchain technology be used in different aspects of life?
• is there any list or record of what word triggers what people
• What is curation and how important is understanding it to how we process information online? What implications does 'who is doing the curation' and 'how is it managed' have on our modern society?

Wiki

Link to the UR Courses wiki page for this meeting