Dear Facebook, This is How You’re Breaking Democracy: A Former Facebook Insider Explains How the Platform’s Algorithms Polarize Our Society

in Current Affairs, Life, Technology, TED Talks | October 5th, 2020

Is this what we want? A post-truth world where tox­i­c­i­ty and trib­al­ism trump bridge build­ing and con­sen­sus seek­ing? —Yaël Eisen­stat

It’s an increas­ing­ly famil­iar occur­rence.

A friend you’ve enjoyed recon­nect­ing with in the dig­i­tal realm makes a dra­mat­ic announce­ment on their social media page. They’re delet­ing their Face­book account with­in the next 24 hours, so shoot them a PM with your email if you’d like to stay in touch.

Such deci­sions used to be spurred by the desire to get more done or return to neglect­ed pas­times such as read­ing, paint­ing, and going for long uncon­nect­ed nature walks.

These announce­ments could induce equal parts guilt and anx­i­ety in those of us who depend on social media to get the word out about our low-bud­get cre­ative projects, though being prone to Inter­net addic­tion, we were near­ly as like­ly to be the one mak­ing the announce­ment.

For many, the break was tem­po­rary. More of a social media fast, a chance to reeval­u­ate, rest, recharge, and ulti­mate­ly return.

Legit­i­mate con­cerns were also raised with regard to pri­va­cy. Who’s on the receiv­ing end of all the sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion we’re offer­ing up? What are they doing with it? Is some­one lis­ten­ing in?

But in this elec­tion year, the deci­sion to quit Face­book is apt to be dri­ven by the very real fear that democ­ra­cy as we know it is at stake.

For­mer CIA ana­lyst, for­eign ser­vice offi­cer, and—for six months—Facebook’s Glob­al Head of Elec­tions Integri­ty Ops for polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing, Yaël Eisen­stat, address­es these pre­oc­cu­pa­tions in her TED Talk, “Dear Face­book, This is How You’re Break­ing Democ­ra­cy,” above.

Eisen­stat con­trasts the civil­i­ty of her past face-to-face ”hearts and minds”-based engage­ments with sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ists and anti-West­ern cler­ics to the polar­iza­tion and cul­ture of hatred that Facebook’s algo­rithms foment.

As many users have come to sus­pect, Face­book rewards inflam­ma­to­ry con­tent with ampli­fi­ca­tion. Truth does not fac­tor into the equa­tion, nor does sin­cer­i­ty of mes­sage or mes­sen­ger.

Lies are more engag­ing online than truth. As long as [social media] algo­rithms’ goals are to keep us engaged, they will feed us the poi­son that plays to our worst instincts and human weak­ness­es.

Eisen­stat, who has val­ued the ease with which Face­book allows her to main­tain rela­tion­ships with far-flung friends, found her­self effec­tive­ly demot­ed on her sec­ond day at the social media giant, her title revised, and her access to high lev­el meet­ings revoked. Her hir­ing appears to have been pure­ly orna­men­tal, a pal­lia­tive ruse in response to mount­ing pub­lic con­cern.

As she remarked in an inter­view with The Guardian’s Ian Tuck­er ear­li­er this sum­mer:

They are mak­ing all sorts of reac­tive changes around the mar­gins of the issues, [to sug­gest] that they are tak­ing things seri­ous­ly – such as build­ing an ad library or ver­i­fy­ing that polit­i­cal adver­tis­ers reside in the coun­try in which they adver­tis­ing – things they should have been doing already. But they were nev­er going to make the fun­da­men­tal changes that address the key sys­temic issues that make Face­book ripe for manip­u­la­tion, viral mis­in­for­ma­tion and oth­er ways that the plat­form can be used to affect democ­ra­cy.

In the same inter­view she assert­ed that Facebook’s recent­ly imple­ment­ed over­sight board is lit­tle more than an inter­est­ing the­o­ry that will nev­er result in the total over­haul of its busi­ness mod­el:

First of all, it’s anoth­er exam­ple of Face­book putting respon­si­bil­i­ty on some­one else. The over­sight board does not have any author­i­ty to actu­al­ly address any of the poli­cies that Face­book writes and enforces, or the under­ly­ing sys­temic issues that make the plat­form absolute­ly rife for dis­in­for­ma­tion and all sorts of bad behav­iour and manip­u­la­tion.

The sec­ond issue is: it’s basi­cal­ly an appeal process for con­tent that was already tak­en down. The big­ger ques­tion is the con­tent that remains up. Third, they are not even going to be oper­a­tional until late fall and, for a com­pa­ny that claims to move fast and break things, that’s absurd.

Nine min­utes into her TED Talk, she offers con­crete sug­ges­tions for things the Face­book brass could do if it was tru­ly seri­ous about imple­ment­ing reform:

  • Stop ampli­fy­ing and rec­om­mend­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion and bias-based hatred, no mat­ter who is behind it—from con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists to our cur­rent pres­i­dent.
  • Dis­con­tin­ue per­son­al­iza­tion tech­niques that don’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate between tar­get­ed polit­i­cal con­tent and tar­get­ed ads for ath­let­ic footwear.
  • Retrain algo­rithms to focus on a met­rics beyond what users click or linger on.
  • Imple­ment safe­ty fea­tures that would ensure that sen­si­tive con­tent is reviewed before it is allowed to go viral.

Hope­ful­ly view­ers are not feel­ing maxed out on con­tact­ing their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, as gov­ern­ment enforce­ment is Eisenstat’s only pre­scrip­tion for get­ting Face­book to alter its prod­uct and prof­it mod­el. And that will require sus­tained civic engage­ment.

She sup­ple­ments her TED Talk with rec­om­men­da­tions for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence engi­neer Guil­laume Chaslot’s insid­er per­spec­tive op-ed “The Tox­ic Poten­tial of YouTube’s Feed­back Loop” and The Fil­ter Bub­ble: How the New Per­son­al­ized Web Is Chang­ing What We Read and How We Think by MoveOn.org’s for­mer Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Eli Paris­er.

Your clued-in Face­book friends have no doubt already point­ed you to the doc­u­men­tary The Social Dilem­ma, which is now avail­able on Net­flix. Or per­haps to Jaron Lanier’s Ten Argu­ments for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.

Read the tran­script of Yaël Eisenstat’s TED Talk here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Prob­lem with Face­book: “It’s Keep­ing Things From You”

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Com­put­er Sci­en­tist Cal New­port

This Is Your Kids’ Brains on Inter­net Algo­rithms: A Chill­ing Case Study Shows What’s Wrong with the Inter­net Today

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

GPS Tracking Reveals the Secret Lives of Outdoor Cats

in Data, K-12, Maps, Nature, Science, Technology | October 2nd, 2020

We track sharks, rhi­no, and bears, so why not Boo Boo Kit­ty, Peanut, and Pump­kin?

The Long Island feline res­i­dents volunteered—or more accu­rate­ly, were volunteered—by their human com­pan­ions to par­tic­i­pate in a domes­tic cat move­ment study as part of the inter­na­tion­al Cat Track­er project.

Each beast was out­fit­ted with a GPS track­er-enhanced har­ness, which they wore for a week.

(Many cat own­ers will find that alone some­thing of an achieve­ment.)

In total, almost a thou­sand house­holds in four coun­tries took part—the Unit­ed States, New Zealand, Aus­tralia, and the UK.

Sci­en­tists were par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed to learn the degree of may­hem these cher­ished pets were vis­it­ing on sur­round­ing wildlife in their off hours.

Any­one who’s been left a present of a fresh­ly mur­dered baby bun­ny, mole, or wing­less bat can prob­a­bly guess.

It’s a con­sid­er­able amount, though by and large the domes­ti­cat­ed par­tic­i­pants stuck close to home, rarely trav­el­ing more than two foot­ball fields away from the com­forts of their own yards. The impulse to keep the food bowl with­in easy range con­fines their hunt­ing activ­i­ties to a fair­ly tight area. Woe to the field mice who set up shop there.

Their move­ments also revealed the per­il they put them­selves in, cross­ing high­ways, roads, and park­ing lots. Researcher Hei­dy Kikil­lus, who tracked cats in New Zealand, report­ed that a num­ber of her group’s sub­jects wound up in a fatal encounter with a vehi­cle.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, gen­der, age, and geog­ra­phy play a part in how far a cat roams, with males, younger ani­mals, and coun­try dwellers cov­er­ing more ground. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, those who have not been neutered or spayed tend to have a freer range too.

“With­out the moti­va­tions of food and sex, most cats seem con­tent to be home­bod­ies,” zool­o­gist Roland Kays, one of the US Project lead­ers, not­ed.

Amer­i­can cit­i­zen sci­en­tists who’d like to enroll their cat can find infor­ma­tion and the nec­es­sary forms on the Cat Track­er web­site.

The cat-less and those with indoor cats can enjoy pho­tos of select par­tic­i­pants and explore their tracks here.

And what bet­ter fall craft than a DIY cat track­ing GPS har­ness?

via Nation­al Geo­graph­ic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

In 1183, a Chi­nese Poet Describes Being Domes­ti­cat­ed by His Own Cats

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

How Humans Domes­ti­cat­ed Cats (Twice)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Google Introduces 6‑Month Career Certificates, Threatening to Disrupt Higher Education with “the Equivalent of a Four-Year Degree”

in Education, Technology | September 5th, 2020

Update: You can find the first of the Google Career Cer­tifi­cates here. They’re also added to our col­lec­tion 200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies. 

I used to make a point of ask­ing every col­lege-apply­ing teenag­er I encoun­tered why they want­ed to go to col­lege in the first place. Few had a ready answer; most, after a deer-in-the-head­lights moment, said they want­ed to be able to get a job — and in a tone imply­ing it was too obvi­ous to require artic­u­la­tion. But if one’s goal is sim­ply employ­ment, does­n’t it seem a bit exces­sive to move across the state, coun­try, or world, spend four years tak­ing tests and writ­ing papers on a grab-bag of sub­jects, and spend (or bor­row) a large and ever-inflat­ing amount of mon­ey to do so? This, in any case, is one idea behind Google’s Career Cer­tifi­cates, all of which can be com­plet­ed from home in about six months. Find the first ones here.

Any such remote edu­ca­tion­al process looks more viable than ever at the moment due to the ongo­ing coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, a con­di­tion that also has today’s col­lege-apply­ing teenagers won­der­ing whether they’ll ever see a cam­pus at all. Nor is the broad­er eco­nom­ic harm lost on Google, whose Senior Vice Pres­i­dent for Glob­al Affairs Kent Walk­er frames their Career Cer­tifi­cates as part of a “dig­i­tal jobs pro­gram to help Amer­i­ca’s eco­nom­ic recov­ery.” He writes that “peo­ple need good jobs, and the broad­er econ­o­my needs their ener­gy and skills to sup­port our future growth.” At the same time, “col­lege degrees are out of reach for many Amer­i­cans, and you shouldn’t need a col­lege diplo­ma to have eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty.”

Hence Google’s new Career Cer­tifi­cates in “the high-pay­ing, high-growth career fields of Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment, and User Expe­ri­ence (UX) Design,” which join their exist­ing IT Sup­port and IT Automa­tion in Python Cer­tifi­cates.

Host­ed on the online edu­ca­tion plat­form Cours­era, these pro­grams (which run about $300-$400) are devel­oped in-house and taught by Google employ­ees and require no pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence. To help cov­er their cost Google will also fund 100,000 “need-based schol­ar­ships” and offer stu­dents “hun­dreds of appren­tice­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties” at the com­pa­ny “to pro­vide real on-the-job train­ing.” None of this guar­an­tees any giv­en stu­dent a job at Google, of course, but as Walk­er empha­sizes, “we will con­sid­er our new career cer­tifi­cates as the equiv­a­lent of a four-year degree.”

Tech­nol­o­gy-and-edu­ca­tion pun­dit Scott Gal­loway calls that bach­e­lor’s-degree equiv­a­lence the biggest sto­ry in his field of recent weeks. It’s per­haps the begin­ning of a trend where tech com­pa­nies dis­rupt high­er edu­ca­tion, cre­at­ing afford­able and scal­able edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams that will train the work­force for 21st cen­tu­ry jobs. This could con­ceiv­ably mean that uni­ver­si­ties lose their monop­oly on the train­ing and vet­ting of stu­dents, or at least find that they’ll increas­ing­ly share that respon­si­bil­i­ty with big tech.

This past spring Gal­loway gave an inter­view to New York mag­a­zine pre­dict­ing that “ulti­mate­ly, uni­ver­si­ties are going to part­ner with com­pa­nies to help them expand.” He adds: “I think that part­ner­ship will look some­thing like MIT and Google part­ner­ing. Microsoft and Berke­ley. Big-tech com­pa­nies are about to enter edu­ca­tion and health care in a big way, not because they want to but because they have to.” Whether such uni­ver­si­ty part­ner­ships will emerge as falling enroll­ments put the strain on cer­tain seg­ments of the uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem remains to be seen, but so far Google seems con­fi­dent about going it alone. And where Google goes, as we’ve all seen before, oth­er insti­tu­tions often fol­low.

Note: You can lis­ten to Gal­loway elab­o­rate on how Google may lead to the unbundling of high­er ed here. Lis­ten to the episode “State of Play: The Shar­ing Econ­o­my” from his Prof G pod­cast:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies.

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Google & Cours­era Launch Career Cer­tifi­cates That Pre­pare Stu­dents for Jobs in 6 Months: Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment and UX Design

Google Launch­es a Free Course on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Sign Up for Its New “Machine Learn­ing Crash Course”

Google Launch­es Free Course on Deep Learn­ing: The Sci­ence of Teach­ing Com­put­ers How to Teach Them­selves

Mal­colm Glad­well Asks Hard Ques­tions about Mon­ey & Mer­i­toc­ra­cy in Amer­i­can High­er Edu­ca­tion: Stream 3 Episodes of His New Pod­cast

Niet­zsche Lays Out His Phi­los­o­phy of Edu­ca­tion and a Still-Time­ly Cri­tique of the Mod­ern Uni­ver­si­ty (1872)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 65 ) |

What Did the Roman Emperors Look Like?: See Photorealistic Portraits Created with Machine Learning

in Art, History, Technology | August 27th, 2020

We can spend a life­time read­ing his­to­ries of ancient Rome with­out know­ing what any of its emper­ors looked like. Or rather, with­out know­ing exact­ly what they looked like: being the lead­ers of the might­i­est polit­i­cal enti­ty in the West­ern world, they had their like­ness­es stamped onto coins and carved into busts as a mat­ter of course. But such artist’s ren­der­ings inevitably come with a cer­tain degree of artis­tic license, a ten­den­cy to mold fea­tures into slight­ly more impe­r­i­al shapes. See­ing the faces of the Roman Emper­ors as we would if we were pass­ing them on the street is an expe­ri­ence made pos­si­ble only by high tech­nol­o­gy, and high tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped six­teen cen­turies after the fall of the Roman Empire at that.

“Using the neur­al-net tool Art­breed­er, Pho­to­shop and his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences, I have cre­at­ed pho­to­re­al por­traits of Roman Emper­ors,” writes design­er Daniel Voshart. “For this project, I have trans­formed, or restored (cracks, noses, ears etc.) 800 images of busts to make the 54 emper­ors of The Prin­ci­pate (27 BC to 285 AD).”

The key tech­nol­o­gy that enables Art­breed­er to con­vinc­ing­ly blend images of faces togeth­er is what’s called a “gen­er­a­tive adver­sar­i­al net­work” (GAN). “Some call it Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence,” writes Voshart, “but it is more accu­rate­ly described as Machine Learn­ing.” The Verge’s James Vin­cent writes that Voshart fed in “images of emper­ors he col­lect­ed from stat­ues, coins, and paint­ings, and then tweaked the por­traits man­u­al­ly based on his­tor­i­cal descrip­tions, feed­ing them back to the GAN.”

Into the mix also went “high-res images of celebri­ties”: Daniel Craig into Augus­tus, André the Giant into Max­imi­nus Thrax (thought to have been giv­en his “a lantern jaw and moun­tain­ous frame” by a pitu­itary gland dis­or­der like that which affect­ed the colos­sal wrestler). This par­tial­ly explains why some of these uncan­ni­ly life­like emper­ors — the biggest celebri­ties of their time and place, after all — look faint­ly famil­iar. Though mod­eled as close­ly as pos­si­ble after men who real­ly lived, these exact faces (much like those in the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-gen­er­at­ed mod­ern pho­tographs pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) have nev­er actu­al­ly exist­ed. Still, one can imag­ine the emper­ors who inspired Voshart’s Prin­ci­pate rec­og­niz­ing them­selves in it. But what would they make of the fact that it’s also sell­ing briskly in poster form on Etsy?

Vis­it the Roman Emper­or Project here. For back­ground on this project, vis­it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Five Hard­core Deaths Suf­fered By Roman Emper­ors

Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

The His­to­ry of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Min­utes: A Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

Roman Stat­ues Weren’t White; They Were Once Paint­ed in Vivid, Bright Col­ors

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 14 ) |

When We All Have Pocket Telephones (1923)

in Technology | August 11th, 2020

From Eng­land’s Dai­ly Mir­ror (Jan­u­ary 23, 1923).

Find more time­ly pre­dic­tions in the Relat­eds below.

via Neil Gaiman

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee, The Rule of Eugen­ics (1926/35)

In 1911, Thomas Edi­son Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like in 2011: Smart Phones, No Pover­ty, Libraries That Fit in One Book

In 1964, Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like Today: Self-Dri­ving Cars, Video Calls, Fake Meats & More

Jules Verne Accu­rate­ly Pre­dicts What the 20th Cen­tu­ry Will Look Like in His Lost Nov­el, Paris in the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry (1863)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

A Virtual Tour of Ancient Rome, Circa 320 CE: Explore Stunning Recreations of The Forum, Colosseum and Other Monuments

in Architecture, History, Technology | August 5th, 2020

If you’re a reg­u­lar read­er of this site, you’re like­ly famil­iar with the sim­u­la­tion hypoth­e­sis, the idea that con­scious expe­ri­ence is noth­ing more than a com­put­er pro­gram. This con­cept has many sci-fi impli­ca­tions, from Matrix-like sce­nar­ios to the rad­i­cal idea that every­thing in the uni­verse is soft­ware, run by incom­pre­hen­si­ble beings who might as well be gods. One of the more plau­si­ble ver­sions sug­gests that we are liv­ing in an “ances­tor sim­u­la­tion,” designed by future human soci­eties to recre­ate their past.

Pre­sum­ably, sim­u­lat­ed ances­tors would cre­ate their own ances­tor sim­u­la­tions and so on, ad infini­tum. There’s no way to know where on the con­tin­u­um we fall, but wher­ev­er it is, ances­tor sim­u­la­tions are on the way… maybe. They’re rudi­men­ta­ry at the moment, con­sist­ing of immer­sive video games and VR recre­ations of ancient cities.

Each iter­a­tion, how­ev­er, is bet­ter than the last, as we have seen in the case of Rome Reborn (or Rome Reborn®), a 3D dig­i­tal mod­el­ing project designed to recre­ate the city’s archi­tec­ture as it was in 320 CE, through expert ren­der­ings informed by archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­ans and “vir­tu­al archae­ol­o­gists” like Dr. Bernard Frisch­er, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia.

Back in a 2012 Open Cul­ture post, Matthias Rasch­er explained the sig­nif­i­cance of this year, “when Rome’s pop­u­la­tion had reached its peak (about one mil­lion) and the first Chris­t­ian church­es were being built.” His­to­ri­ans will also rec­og­nize 320 as fol­low­ing direct­ly on the heels of the Dona­tion of Con­stan­tine that gave the city to the Pope. We can tour the vir­tu­al streets of this rapid­ly chang­ing ancient city, though the bur­geon­ing pop­u­la­tion is nowhere in evi­dence. Noth­ing moves, grows, or changes in Rome Reborn. In that sense it is still like so many pre­vi­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tions of antiq­ui­ty.

Now in ver­sion 3.0, Rome Reborn began as a 3D mod­el in 2007, and was first owned by the Regents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia. It now oper­ates, under the aus­pices of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, as a pri­vate com­pa­ny called Fly­over Zone. They have oth­er such dig­i­tal recre­ations in their prod­uct line, includ­ing “Athens Reborn®, Hadri­an’s Vil­la Reborn®, Baal­bek Reborn®, Egypt Reborn®, and His­tor­i­cal Games®.” Rome Reborn’s design­er, Dani­la Logi­nov, has released increas­ing­ly detailed pro­mos of the project over the years, and you can see these many videos here.

To ful­ly expe­ri­ence this sim­u­lat­ed Rome, you’ll need a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty head­set. The third ver­sion of the 3D mod­el has been made pub­licly avail­able. “You can immerse your­self in the ancient city and even enter into some of its most famous build­ings while lis­ten­ing to the com­men­tary of high­ly qual­i­fied experts,” the Rome Reborn site promis­es. Famous build­ings one might explore include the Roman forum and the Basil­i­ca of Max­en­tius. It is not an expe­ri­ence based in real­ism. In some of the sim­u­la­tions “you can opt for a whirl­wind  fly­over tour of the city,” notes Meilan Sol­ly at Smith­son­ian.

This rough­ly two-hour tour is like noth­ing any ancient Roman ever expe­ri­enced. “Com­par­a­tive­ly, the two site vis­its place users in the driver’s seat,” Sol­ly writes, “afford­ing them free­dom to roam through recon­struct­ed streets and halls.” It’s not quite the stuff of a sim­u­lat­ed uni­verse just yet, but it may not be too far in the future before Rome Reborn® ful­ly lives up to its name. Learn more about ancient Rome, cir­ca 320 CE, in the videos here, and learn more about Rome Reborn at their offi­cial site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tion of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influ­ence

An Ani­mat­ed Recon­struc­tion of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Vir­tu­al­ly-Recre­at­ed Streets

French Illus­tra­tor Revives the Byzan­tine Empire with Mag­nif­i­cent­ly Detailed Draw­ings of Its Mon­u­ments & Build­ings: Hagia Sophia, Great Palace & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Revisit Scenes of Daily Life in Amsterdam in 1922, with Historic Footage Enhanced by Artificial Intelligence

in Computer Science, Data, Film, Technology, Travel | August 3rd, 2020

Welkom in Ams­ter­dam… 1922.

Neur­al net­work artist Denis Shiryaev describes him­self as “an artis­tic machine-learn­ing per­son with a soul.”

For the last six months, he’s been apply­ing him­self to re-ren­der­ing doc­u­men­tary footage of city life—Belle Epoque Paris, Tokyo at the start of the the Taishō era, and New York City in 1911—the year of the Tri­an­gle Shirt­waist Fire.

It’s pos­si­ble you’ve seen the footage before, but nev­er so alive in feel. Shiryaev’s ren­der­ings trick mod­ern eyes with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, boost­ing the orig­i­nal frames-per-sec­ond rate and res­o­lu­tion, sta­bi­liz­ing and adding color—not nec­es­sar­i­ly his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate.

The herky-jerky bustling qual­i­ty of the black-and-white orig­i­nals is trans­formed into some­thing fuller and more flu­id, mak­ing the human sub­jects seem… well, more human.

This Trip Through the Streets of Ams­ter­dam is tru­ly a blast from the past… the antithe­sis of the social dis­tanc­ing we must cur­rent­ly prac­tice.

Mer­ry cit­i­zens jos­tle shoul­der to shoul­der, unmasked, snack­ing, danc­ing, arms slung around each oth­er… unabashed­ly curi­ous about the hand-cranked cam­era turned on them as they go about their busi­ness.

A group of women vis­it­ing out­side a shop laugh and scatter—clearly they weren’t expect­ing to be filmed in their aprons.

Young boys look­ing to steal the show push their way to the front, cut­ting capers and throw­ing mock punch­es.

Sor­ry, lads, the award for Most Mem­o­rable Per­for­mance by a Juve­nile goes to the small fel­low at the 4:10 mark. He’s not ham­ming it up at all, mere­ly tak­ing a quick puff of his cig­a­rette while run­ning along­side a crowd of men on bikes, deter­mined to keep pace with the cam­era per­son.

Numer­ous YouTube view­ers have observed with some won­der that all the peo­ple who appear, with the dis­tant excep­tion of a baby or two at the end, would be in the grave by now.

They do seem so alive.

Mod­ern eyes should also take note of the absences: no cars, no plas­tic, no cell phones…

And, of course, every­one is white. The Nether­lands’ pop­u­la­tion would not diver­si­fy racial­ly for anoth­er cou­ple of decades, begin­ning with immi­grants from Indone­sia after WWII and Suri­nam in the 50s.

With regard to that, please be fore­warned that not all of the YouTube com­ments have to do with cheeky lit­tle boys and babies who would be push­ing 100…

The footage is tak­en from the archival col­lec­tion of the EYE film­mu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam, with ambi­ent sound by Guy Jones.

See more of Denis Shiryaev’s  upscaled vin­tage footage in the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Vin­tage Footage of Tokyo, Cir­ca 1910, Get Brought to Life with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Watch Vintage Footage of Tokyo, Circa 1910, Get Brought to Life with Artificial Intelligence

in Film, History, Technology | July 6th, 2020

For more than 200 years, the rulers of Japan kept the coun­try all but closed to the out­side world. In 1854, the “Black Ships” of Amer­i­can com­man­der Matthew Per­ry arrived to demand an end to Japan­ese iso­la­tion — and a com­mence­ment of Japan­ese world trade. With­in decades, many fash­ion-for­ward Euro­peans and even Amer­i­cans could­n’t get enough things Japan­ese, espe­cial­ly the art, crafts, and cloth­ing that exem­pli­fied kinds of beau­ty they’d nev­er known before. (Vin­cent van Gogh was a par­tic­u­lar­ly avid fan.) But if Japan changed the West, the West trans­formed Japan, a process ful­ly in effect in the footage above, shot on the streets of Tokyo between 1913 and 1915.

These scenes may look famil­iar to ded­i­cat­ed Open Cul­ture read­ers, and indeed, we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured anoth­er ver­sion of this film back in 2018. With its speed cor­rect­ed to remove the herky-jerk­i­ness com­mon to old films and with back­ground noise added, these glimpses of the men, women, and many chil­dren of the Japan­ese cap­i­tal, all of them liv­ing between the inward-look­ing tra­di­tion of their coun­try as it had been and the onrush of moder­ni­ty from with­out, already felt real­is­tic.

But now you may feel you’ve been per­son­al­ly trans­port­ed to this cul­tur­al­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly heady time in the Land of the Ris­ing Sun thanks to the work of Denis Shiryaev, a Youtu­ber who spe­cial­izes in enlarg­ing and restor­ing vin­tage film clips with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.

Shi­rayev is also respon­si­ble for the enhanced ver­sions of scenes from Belle Époque Paris, czarist Moscow, Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, New York City in 1911, and even the Lumière Broth­ers’ ear­ly motion pic­ture The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion. At the begin­ning of this video he reveals the stages of the process that brought this cen­tu­ry-old footage of Tokyo to greater vivid­ness: de-nois­ing and dam­age removal, col­oriza­tion, facial restora­tion, and upscal­ing to 4K res­o­lu­tion at 60 frames per sec­ond — all assist­ed by neur­al net­works that, “trained” on rel­e­vant visu­al mate­ri­als new and old, crisp and weath­ered, to deter­mine the best ways to make it all look more con­vinc­ing. The results may make you won­der what else will soon be pos­si­ble — sure­ly not a feel­ing unknown to  these ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Toky­oites.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Life on the Streets of Tokyo in Footage Record­ed in 1913: Caught Between the Tra­di­tion­al and the Mod­ern

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Time Trav­el Back to Tokyo After World War II, and See the City in Remark­ably High-Qual­i­ty 1940s Video

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

1850s Japan Comes to Life in 3D, Col­or Pho­tos: See the Stereo­scop­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of T. Ena­mi

The Entire His­to­ry of Japan in 9 Quirky Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast