complex relationship between collaboration and innovation on Monday night. (Carolyn Corcoran/DD)
The future of the news is dependent on defining our relationship with data, which is currently in the “it’s complicated” phase, the director of ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination said on Monday night.
Director Ed Finn discussed the challenge of identifying what qualifies as news and the collaboration needed to advance technology at the fifth Must See Monday of the semester in the Walter Cronkite School.
Finn’s lecture, which he described as “improvisational,” mimicked the uncertainty of the future.
“What we mean by news is not so easy to pen down anymore,” Finn said. “The boundaries between the sources of information, the reporters, the editors and even the publications have all started to get awfully blurry, maybe even erased.”
Finn highlighted his work with Project Hieroglyph as a way to cultivate innovation for the future. Through this project, the technology and experiments that exist in science fiction novels, called novum, are made a reality by pairing the science fiction authors with scientists and engineers in the academic and public sectors.
“Science fiction is really effective (at) connecting us to that future role, making it just strange enough so that we know it’s not our world, but it’s still a world that we can imagine living in,” Finn said.
At Project Hieroglyph, the objectivity that exists in journalism is replaced by collaborative, imaginative storytelling, Finn said.
“You are inviting people in to tell the story with you, to buy into it, to make it better,” he said.
Finn also spoke about his research and interest in algorithmic culture, explaining how societies engage with new forms of digital platforms.
“We’ve begun systematically outsourcing vital chapters of our personal narratives,” Finn said. “The most shocking thing about the fact that Target might know you’re pregnant before your parents find out is not the surveillance; it’s that our digital breadcrumbs are telling stories about us that are deeply secret.”
This, by default, leads to privacy issues and a new level of invasion, he said.
“We’re at this really uncertain, complex place in terms of our relationship with data,” Finn said. “It’s more complicated and more contradictory than it’s ever been.”
Though data and consumers have set their Facebook status to “it’s complicated,” the results of the digital revolution have already begun as it transforms and, in some instances, consumes, the identity of the public, Finn said.
“Our digital selves are out there, shadowing us,” Finn said. “They show up at our job interviews, at our first dates, at loan evaluations, insurance claims.”
Finn concluded with a video of David Rothenberg, a musician who performs with live, flying drones.
Sophomore Samuel Morgan Wiseman, a digital culture major with a focus in music, questioned the science and technology behind the drone performance during a question and answer period. After the lecture, Wiseman went to talk with Finn.
“Finding things, like performances from the future, are very relevant to my interests,” Wiseman said. “I’m very excited about this sort of thing.”
Finn has worked as a journalist and holds a doctorate in English from Stanford University. He is also an assistant professor at the School of Arts, Media and Engineering as well as the department of English at ASU.
While introducing Finn, professor of practice at the Cronkite School Gregg Zachary said, “From the humanities we approach science and technology, the environment, invention, acts of creation– and that’s what is at the center of what Ed Finn does.”
Contact the reporter at carolyn.corcoran@asu.edu
