The next big thing in digital: Visual Search and Image Recognition

 



The likes of Google and Facebook are going beyond the hypertext form of indexing into a visual realm. Say hello to the hyperimage.

It's being used for online shopping in Google's Boutiques.com website and will be coming soon to all Facebook users as part of its 'facial recognition' photo tagging feature, enabling your name to be suggested to friends when a photo looks like you.






But the potential for this goes far beyond the mere enhanced shopping or stalking experience. This could be another step closer to the real Memex.

With the sea of data that traverses the internet every day, the web now faces the same challenges that traditional media, librarians and scholars have struggled with for years. How do we sort all that information out and present it so that it makes sense? And how does one find quality information that's relevant?

NYU Professor Clay Shirky highlighted this issue during his presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York:

"All of those other media types have the same economics. Whether it's a printing press or a TV tower: 'It cost me a lot of money to get started, and so I had to filter for quality'.

So here's what the internet did: it introduced for the first time post-Gutenberg economics. The cost of producing anything by anyone has fallen through the floor, and as a result, there's no economic logic that says you have to filter for quality before you publish."


It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure.

In the pioneering article, 'As We May Think', published in the Atlantic Magazine's July, 1945 issue, Dr. Vannevar Bush clearly vents his frustrations on the way scientific research is organised and retrieved, based on the system design issues he observed which are quite similar to what's happening on the web today:

"Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path.

The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.

Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency. The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory."

Perhaps we could all be using visual 'filters' for trawling the web in the not too distant future. As image recognition reaches maturity it could very well become an an alternative method or welcome addition to the keyword search. So here's hoping for Bush's, "Selection by association".

Accepting the unaccepted

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An online example of geeks as 'resistance' and 'project' identities based on Castells' theory of the network society which explains how producers use language strategically to invite audience members to collaborate in the cause.

It’s the rise of the token smart guy, coming to a computer screen near you. Nowadays the mass media is saturated with symbols of ‘geekdom’ through tech websites and magazines, sci-fi genres, comic books brought to life, and even infamous hackers and their ‘underground’ society are now frequently portrayed in films and reported in the news. “In a new media environment characterized by sharing and creative repurposing, some fan practices and texts once labeled as ‘geeky’ or ‘nerdy’ seem much less stigmatized” (Tocci 2007, p. 1).

According to Quail (2009), the nerd has been historically constructed as an awkward, math-savvy, social and sexual failure which Konzack (2006, p. 2) dubs as an “intellectual cultural movement”. Drawing from Castells’ (2004, p. 8) identity structures, it would seem that nerds and geeks have formed their own sub culture of ‘networked individualism’ out of resistance and project identities as a defense mechanism from the world that shunned them.

A subset of this intellectual cultural movement would be the ‘hacker’ culture, in the mass media sense of the term, which encompasses the illegal activity of ‘crackers’ and primarily denotes advanced ICT expertise.

One well known hacker within this culture is Eric Steven Raymond (ESR), a writer, IT professional and self professed nerd and geek. On his website , ESR promotes his books, essays and viewpoints including a “HOWTOs” section on “Hacker History and Culture”.

ESR employs many techniques as elements of persuasive ‘techie-oriented’ language in the form of logical arguments and even humour found in his “Rootless Root” eastern philosophical parody of hacker culture. An authoritative voice is prominent throughout his website, using pronoun language to address the audience as though in direct conversation. For example, on his “In Case You Care” page, ESR writes: “If you are a really serious geek, you probably want to know about my home hardware.”

In ESR’s guide on “How to Become a Hacker”, rules of the hacker culture are outlined for the audience. From the outset, the audience is introduced to ESR as the “editor of the Jargon File” and other “well known documents” implying authority, and even social proof by saying, “I often get email requests from enthusiastic network newbies”. The audience is also appealed to emotionally through the semiotic “geek” and “nerd” identifiers, as ESR asserts in “The Hacker/Nerd Connection: Being something of a social outcast helps you stay concentrated on the really important things, like thinking and hacking”. The reason why these identifiers connect with the inscribed reader is interpreted by Scott (n.d.) as a “deviant (or moral) career”:

Stigmatising labels are hugely powerful in shaping our sense of who we are in relation to significant others and to the wider society, and so a moral career can be one of the most defining influences upon self identity.

Although nerds and geeks have formed resistance and project identities in response to being social outcasts, they have also developed into legitimizing identities (e.g. Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak), whose complementary influence has become ever pervasive in modern society. Kendall (1999, p. 8) relates this to the ‘revenge of the nerds’: “Money confers status in the USA, and business and monetary success confer masculinity. Hence the ‘revenge’ of this previously non-hegemonic group."

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