<nettime> "Data Mining for Humanists" (review of Lev Manovich's "Cultural Analytics")

[David Mandl <dmandl@panix.com>]

By me, in the Los Angeles Review of Books (no paywall):

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/data-mining-for-humanists/

IN THE LAST 20 YEARS or so, several factors have combined to make
it possible to gather and analyze vast amounts of digital
information, far larger than any datasets that could be processed
previously. The ever-increasing speed of computer networks and
the plummeting cost of storage make data collection on a colossal
scale much easier, and new "Big Data"-specific technologies and
algorithms enable us to digest, filter, and crunch this mountain
of information with little effort. At the same time, with the
spread of internet use to more or less everyone, and an
increasing number of activities conducted online -- shopping,
chatting, watching videos, creating and sharing cultural
artifacts -- the data and contextual "metadata" from all these
activities are being made available (either voluntarily or
unwittingly) to a slew of commercial and marketing enterprises
and academic and research institutions.

Working on the assumption that this particular glass is half
full (an arguably flawed assumption, but we'll put that aside for
the moment), Lev Manovich, in his new book "Cultural Analytics,"
focuses on the positive side of Big Data, specifically how the
new techniques and technologies can be used to advance our
knowledge of culture, or even reshape culture for the better. The
lab Manovich runs at UC San Diego aims to use methods from
computer science, data visualization, and media art to analyze
contemporary media and users' interactions with it. He also hopes
to change how we view culture, both figuratively and literally,
in ways that are hard to predict and will continue to take shape
as we continue to corral the data digitally. "The scale of
culture in the twenty-first century," Manovich writes, "makes it
impossible to see it with existing methods." Which raises the
question, "How can we see (for example) one billion images?" We
all know, more or less, how to look at and assess a single
painting, but how do we "look at" a billion of them -- a kind of
exercise that is completely new to the human race? And what will
be revealed when we do? What can we hope to find out?

[--SNIP--]

--
Dave Mandl
dmandl@panix.com
davem@wfmu.org
Web: http://dmandl.tumblr.com/
Twitter: @dmandl
Instagram: dmandl

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