{"id":179,"date":"2010-09-16T16:39:21","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T06:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/urbancodemakers.net\/blog\/?p=179"},"modified":"2010-09-16T16:39:21","modified_gmt":"2010-09-16T06:39:21","slug":"admin-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.urbancodemakers.net\/blog\/2010\/09\/16\/admin-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Admin rights…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When we say data, what do we really mean?<\/p>\n

Do we mean just numbers?\u00a0 Do we mean the unending streams of computer code that encode images or sounds?\u00a0 Do we mean the rules that govern how those numbers ebb and flow?<\/p>\n

As our research continues, as we’ve been gathering reference points of movement around the city, we’ve been…asked about our processes, about what we are doing, about what we are gathering and why?\u00a0 Most offensively of all, we’ve also been asked if we have the right to gather the data?<\/p>\n

The right?<\/p>\n

We aren’t entirely sure what this means.\u00a0 In reality, all we are doing is sampling people’s position in the city at regular intervals. Anyone on the street could do the same.\u00a0 The data here is a cloud of seemingly points in 3d space.\u00a0 We could plot it on a screen – and in fact we have – and it would mean nothing to anybody without hours of intensive pattern recognition analysis of our aggregate sets, exploring our thousands of samples, divining them for their patterns.<\/p>\n

Is a collection of points in 3d space data?\u00a0 Or is it just noise?\u00a0 Is a collection of samples over time data?\u00a0 Or is it also just noise?\u00a0 Maybe noise is just patterns that take place over timescales we can’t comprehend, or maybe it’s there in pattens that only emerge at a higher dimension or in sequences of time that we can’t perceive.\u00a0 Or perhaps the order finds itself out of the noise.<\/p>\n

Regardless, we fail to see the issue.<\/p>\n

We are urban codemakers.\u00a0 We make code from the urban environment.\u00a0 That is what we have been invited here to do, so now to have our methods questioned seems…uncharitable.\u00a0 How can the inhabitants of a city hope to improve it if they can’t understand it?\u00a0 A certain amount of work is required, and certain costs need to be paid – nothing is without a price – in order to better understand systems.\u00a0 We must observe, hypothesise, experiment, learn, improve, adapt.<\/p>\n

Anything else is a waste of our time.<\/p>\n

But, we are nothing if not reasonable, and we are nothing if not open to the opinions of a city’s inhabitants.\u00a0\u00a0 They are, after all, the source of the data we gather and it would be…uncharitable of us not to at least ask their opinion.<\/p>\n

So, here we are, asking for another opinion.\u00a0 The data we are gathering, the ethereal points in a Cartesian space – are they yours?\u00a0 Or do they belong to the city itself?\u00a0 And if either, who has the right to observe them?\u00a0 You, us, the city?\u00a0 Or are you just patterns finding yourself in the chaotic dust of the urban space?\u00a0 And if you are, does it matter what we do?<\/p>\n

We will…wait for a response before returning to our mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we say data, what do we really mean? Do we mean just numbers?\u00a0 Do we mean the unending streams of computer code that encode images or sounds?\u00a0 Do we mean the rules that govern how those numbers ebb and … More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.urbancodemakers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.urbancodemakers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.urbancodemakers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.urbancodemakers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.urbancodemakers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.urbancodemakers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247,"href":"http:\/\/www.urbancodemakers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.urbancodemakers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.urbancodemakers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.urbancodemakers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}