westid

if you watch them sad little shows on the telly, then likely you have discovered the part of “currently existing technology” [Mei Ling] that is taking the domesticated animal industry by storm. in case you don’t know: ridiculously exploited and underpaid people are welcomed into comfortable, ergonomically designed, air conditioned data / image “offline learning” computer labs have been sprouting up all over the place, in economically vulnerable slums throughout africa. a job that is too low paid, and not adequately skilled to be realistically considered a white man’s vocation, is available to all sorts of people willing to do a simple thing mindlessly alongside large complements of colleagues for thousands of items a day

offline learning is a term that is used in artificial intelligence, where basic things such as what something looks like, and what that something is called are fed into a computer project using example after example after example, with the ultimate goal being that – the experienced system – will slowly but surely learn [via being fed by someone manually] so many examples of [an object], from so many different angles, in so many different image qualities, and in so many different colours; it will become adept at identifying any [given] with fewer and fewer mistaken guesses, just by looking at any particular image / live camera feed following a wealth of manually highlighted and labeled examples that can be “legit” because a person [hundreds of people] are (a) given the next image (b) highlight a rectangular section (c) label the selection they have chosen with an object etc. (d) trust with a confidence in itself that comes with every single example of object because each example – while the intelligent system is offline because it can’t reliably function until a comprehensive variety of things have been learned

the process for the employee is simple. they are sat at a computer, and given an image. these images will usually be things like “anonymised” photographs / video clips – from millions of social media users without their knowledge / because consent will be given by you already if you want to have that account badly enough in the first place – and the images aren’t “of” something, but that doesn’t matter because the data pisser-abouter will have 2 functions for each … (1) drag and select an object [any object] with cursor (2) label each object you can select and identify until you have covered everything on your current image such that it is time to start with the next one

anywayze … some things are things, such as a face for example. if someone shows you a face, you will probably be able to tell that “yes – this is a face.” but for intelligent systems that’s merely obvious if ever so slightly vague. most imaging systems with a mildly decent resolution can take that crucial next step into the useful world; here is a face, there is another face, here is your face. if you stand there in front of a computer input device such as a camera, as soon as it detects your face in so much as a split second – it can compare you with every face that it has ever seen. probably a bit useless if you know when / how all the faces your computer is ever going to encounter. probably not so useless if it can tell you every single date and time and in today’s capable world the mood or expression where it has ever seen your face. and now that it’s seen you, the next report is going to include what it noticed about your face when you presented yourself this time, too

well, it’s not exactly the newest of news. what is up and coming good news about things like this though – is the dog’s nose. say you have a dog – every now and again it’s something that one may happen across. well, things like documented ownership, details recorded by a vet, previous owners, current owners – all sorts of things like that, can now all come together just as soon as these new computer systems measure the geometry of … not the dog’s face, but the nose! imagine some scraggy little dog gets rescued from somewhere; infected with flesh-eating sores, caked in it’s own byproducts of various bodily functions. not good, right?

now it turns out that – no matter how different a given dog may look through years of negligence, being ripped apart by giving birth to litter after litter after litter – some shitty camera device detects a clear enough geometry of the end of the dog’s nose … just wow, so fucking surreal. turns out this pooch is the one that went missing from town when you left her tied up outside for literally seconds while you were in the shop doing a couple of lottery tickets and getting the paper. she’s covered in blisters all over her tits from just getting haggard from the industrial scale … well, industry. why have they cut her ears off? almost didn’t recognise her without most of her ears

at least someone hit the jackpot, right? and there you have it. forth coming from another corner stone of biometric identification, the fingerprint, the key features and dimensions of your face, the full strand of your DNA sequence … usher in the brave new world of the dog’s nose print. unique to every dog, and as far as my limited knowledge of the dog industry goes … not something that gets sliced off for whatever reason ears are sliced off from dogs

one thing that the human / beast / pattern / definition / comparison / identification / detection always makes me wonder is that it’s the characters. all of the rest of the people from the “good old days” who are still alive, usually too humble / modest to appreciate that [affectionately] they themselves comprise, often lament the steadily diminishing colloquial utopia of the “characters.” sometimes when i have that dream where i’m on the car park round the back of pleasant st [not the library one] there’s this kubby hole under a set of steps going up to some gaff that keeps the bins in it

when i have this dream though, the kubby hole isn’t there but instead a door going into this low-lit kitchen made of beautiful black marble, sat around a table in the middle of the room surrounding what appears to be piles of money – eyes burning from the thick, unmistakable essence of old holborn, smog-set thick in the air

i remember someone called the meat, the magistrate, the captain, eric, spud, and hector. sometimes i come across places and people like this in real life so it was always a bit disorienting. the captain, “how many dya want?” my grandad was indeed a character even albeit from days gone by. going in to join them reminds me of the first time that i was “sent” to get grandad, the first time i went into this place. just smoke and laughter and that smell like paul’s denim jacket on new year’s eve. it doesn’t make sense mostly because you lose a load of the context without realising it just by waking up. every time they drink and drag themselves around in the neverending legacy of the “characters” – i feel privileged to have, even for a little while and in not as intense a way, been there for long enough to know what some of these characters are, and even to get to know one or two of them

is that it, though? no, it’s not that. i doubt the ongoing institution of the character people from the good old days who are still alive, around places that in spite of the trend line demographic, still exist. you can walk up the street and get a butty. sometimes they have these nice prawn baguettes at this one place; gregg’s. they have these strange screens that show you a live image of yourself and the other people who are standing around in the shop. these monitors always flash some sort of square / cuboid shape occasionally when the image sort-of detects a detailed enough example of your – and other people’s – face

in many ways it reminds me of the invention of the EAN, and then further more the QR. these have visual patterns that are automatically detected such that they count or represent some obscure set of data. it is through this – the CCTV at gregg’s up the street – that i take solace in the fact that no, it’s not all over

in the olden days the characters had names, and foolish folderol or folly about them, entertaining intoxicated people in pubs for performances or piss-takes. i suppose the characters are still around, in some way, at some degree of measure

one thing’s for sure, though. you don’t need a legend or a legacy to be a character yourself. all you need is a face. a face and an appetite – because that is probably the continuity of the “character,” conveyed i suppose by the continuous captured comparison of a camera

haven’t had one of them gregg’s buttys for a bit actually. wonder if they still do em …