DISCUSSION #1
What is Research?
Aug 28, 2022. By Sierra Zhang
To me, all of the knowledge the human race has ever discovered, academically or not, makes a huge interrelated web. Through research, we either find and make new “connections” between spots on the web or expand the web three-dimensionally (imagine the web not being like a spiderweb but rather a Rubik’s Cube; please see my illustration below). I have done a series of research since my first year in high school and college, the most significant being a multimodal comparative study on René Magritte’s and Philip Guston’s artwork and a recently published paper discussing the relationship between heart rate increment and BMI.
[Fig. 1] The Illustration of a 3D knowledge web.
I deep-dived into The Washington Post author Geoffrey A. Fowler’s 2022 article, “I gave Instagram photos of my baby. Instagram returned fear.” The title immediately resonates with me since when I choose to share photos of my friends and me on the web, I always fear losing control of choosing who to share with, causing an instant loss of privacy. In the article, Fowler expressed that “We the users need transparency about how algorithms work — and the ability to press reset when they’re not serving us” (Fowler). By describing his experience with his child’s Instagram account and the algorithm in its current state, Fowler further encourages the platforms to give control back to the user. From this article, I learned that research is not limited to looking up stuff online or in the library; it can also be calling up “an expert who would explain” (Fowler) or simply observing how the subject matter performs or unfolds.
Read the Original Article
I would like to digress a little since this article made me uneasy. My friend and I discussed during our trip in July how I think social media platforms and algorithms are not doing the right thing or going in the right direction. They are currently treating users as cows that they can squeeze milk from for the business's own good.
Just look at these quotes from this article:
“But over time, the company decided your friends alone aren’t enough to keep you opening its apps” (Fowler).
“It’s monitoring every single thing you do in the app” (Fowler).
“… amplifying extreme content is one of the consequences of training algorithms to focus on what it calls “engagement,” or content that leads people to interact” (Fowler).
“Facebook doesn’t want to allocate any more time to features that don’t cause it to grow” (Fowler).
Recently, internet companies were always quoting Steve Jobs’ famous quote on “standing at the intersection of technology and liberal arts.” But in my opinion, they obviously DID NOT get it right: Intersecting technology and humanity isn’t to create fear and frustration to keep people on the platform. It means promoting human enthusiasm and creativity and enabling more people to do more things confidently. Using the word “humanity” in ads is a weighty decision, and they better live up to it. To everybody who plans to work in the tech industry in the future, please notice that technology, alongside everything else, has its two sides. Please never forget to evaluate the products’ impact on every user’s physical and mental health before making a decision.