INVISIBLE LABOR FOR DATA: INSTITUTIONS, INFRASTRUCTURE, AND VIRTUAL SPACE

Americans are accustomed to a wide range of data collection in their lives: census, polls, surveys, user registrations, and disclosure forms. When logging onto the Internet, users’ actions are being tracked everywhere: clicking, typing, tapping, swiping, searching, and placing orders. All of this data is stored to create data-driven profiles of each user. Social network sites, furthermore, set the voluntarily sharing of personal data as the default mode of engagement. But people’s time and energy devoted to creating this massive amount of data, on paper and online, are taken for granted. Few people would consider their time and energy spent on data production as labor. Even if some people do acknowledge their labor for data, they believe it is accessory to the activities at hand. In the face of pervasive data collection and the rising time spent on screens, why do people keep ignoring their labor for data? How has labor for data been become invisible, as something that is disregarded by many users? What does invisible labor for data imply for everyday cultural practices in the United States? Invisible Labor for Data addresses these questions. I argue that three intertwined forces contribute to framing data production as being void of labor: data production institutions throughout history, the Internet’s technological infrastructure (especially with the implementation of algorithms), and the multiplication of virtual spaces. There is a common tendency in the framework of human interactions with computers to deprive data and bodies of their materiality. My Introduction and Chapter 1 offer theoretical interventions by reinstating embodied materiality and redefining labor for data as an ongoing process. The middle Chapters present case studies explaining how labor for data is pushed to the margin of the narratives about data production. I focus on a nationwide debate in the 1960s on whether the U.S. should build a databank, contemporary Big Data practices in the data broker and the Internet industries, and the group of people who are hired to produce data for other people’s avatars in the virtual games. I conclude with a discussion on how the new development of crowdsourcing projects may usher in the new chapter in exploiting invisible and discounted labor for data.

To be a woman here is to be invisible: in search of the dispossessed femininity in Middle-earth

In my thesis I examine J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954-55), the fantasy epic written on the basis of a fictional universe created by Tolkien, complete with elves, dwarves and other mystical creatures – with languages, alphabets and grammar created for all. While rich linguistically, Tolkien writes a decidedly male description of his world, often neglecting any acknowledgement of female existence. Tolkien’s monolithic stature amongst other fantasy authors made me conduct a feminist reading of The Lord of the Rings, with an eye for the way female experience is marginalized to the point of omission. Tolkien’s linguistic accomplishments have overshadowed the illogical aspects of his work, namely the omission of genders, societal classes and features of society necessary for the fictional universe to retain its cohesion. This cohesion suffers from a totally male experience in the novel which is willfully blind to these features I listed. My theoretical framework is built on ideas in Toril Moi’s Sex, Gender and the Body (2005) and bell hook’s Feminism is For Everybody (2000). Michel Foucault’s ideas of power and hidden histories assist in performing a close reading of the source text and interpreting the results. My thesis focuses on the transformation that the values associated with the concept of equality have undergone. This is best illustrated in the treatment of the few female characters in the novel – Galadriel, Éowyn and Arwen – as their beauty and existence interferes with the ordering of the male-dominated world.

Eficacia de los métodos de reacondicionamiento de los brackets en relación a su resistencia a la tracción. Estudio in vitro

El reacondicionamiento de los brackets es una alternativa que trae consigo beneficios a la práctica ortodóncica. Por tal motivo el propósito de este estudio fue determinar la resistencia a la fuerza de tracción, de los métodos de reacondicionamiento, para ello se utilizó el Tensómetro Universal de fuerzas Z005 serie 157864 ( Zwick/Roell; BE, Alemania); con el mismo que se realizó el estudio in vitro y se obtuvo resultados que mostraron cual presentó mayor resistencia. La investigación se realizó con un total de 90 muestras, las mismas que se las dividieron en 3 grupos de 30 respectivamente. Los resultados de la prueba de tracción fueron los siguientes: grupo 1 (brackets nuevos) fue el grupo que tuvo mayor resistencia a la fuerza de tracción con una media de 11,32 MPa con una desviación estándar mínima de 10,51MPa y máxima de 12,26MPa, grupo 2 (brackets arenados) tuvo una resistencia a la fuerza de tracción de 8,36 MPa con una desviación estándar mínima de 7,20MPa y máxima de 9,49MPa y el grupo 3 (brackets flameados) tuvo una resistencia menor a la fuerza de tracción de 4,73MPa y una desviación estándar mínima de 3,37MPa y máxima de 5,84MPa. La resistencia a la fuerza de tracción de brackets nuevos y reacondicionados, mostró datos diferentes en cada grupos, los mismos que fueron estadísticamente significativos, teniendo un valor de p ≤ 0,05 y registró que el grupo de brackets arenados es el más resistente a la fuerza de tracción, referente a los dos métodos de reacondicionamiento; pero ninguno de los métodos de reacondicionamiento investigados se asemeja o supera a los valores que reporta los brackets nuevos.

Invisible, therefore isolated: comparative effects of team virtuality with task virtuality on workplace isolation and work outcomes

The new standards of technological and flexible arrangements have made virtual work prevalent for almost everyone in all levels of an organization. Whether in a virtual or traditional setting, current working conditions allow anyone to collaborate, work and interact with others through electronic means of communication, thereby creating a lack of face-to-face contact. Even though the dynamics of virtuality have been widely elaborated at the team level, there are still many unknowns about the impacts of virtuality experienced at an individual level. This paper aims to shed light on the relationship between workplace social isolation, job satisfaction, perceived performance and turnover intention comparing individual responses to team virtuality and task virtuality. Our findings propose that there are statistically significant relations between individual task virtuality, workplace social isolation, satisfaction, perceived performance and turnover intention in organizations. The results also reveal that task virtuality is a better predictor than team virtuality in estimating workplace social isolation and turnover intention.

Resistencia al desprendimiento de brackets utilizando peróxido de carbamida 10% antes del adhesivo en una técnica convencional de cementación de brackets

Resistencia al desprendimiento de brackets utilizando peróxido de carbamida 10% antes del adhesivo en una técnica convencional de cementación de brackets.

The Visible and the Invisible Hilary Mantel

This talk addresses the scarcity of critical material on Hilary Mantel’s writing in the academy. It questions the suitability of the ‘origin’ paradigm within the criticism that is available, which closes off the excess of Mantel’s texts through attempts to ‘unite’ her corpus. The ambiguity of her writing, and its suspicions, suggest Jacques Derrida’s thought as a pertinent means to read the differences in her work differently. The proximity of Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophy with Derrida’s thought allows the significance of ellipsis to surface as a liberating catalyst for weaving the implications of Derrida’s thinking through the writing of Mantel. This synthesis constitutes an original combination because Mantel’s writing has not been closely studied, Derrida’s notion of ellipsis has been eclipsed by philosophy, and the combination of these two ‘invisibilities’ is seminal. The talk begins with an exploration of the mythologies I discovered and interrogated during the course of my thesis. It then considers the key points in Mantel’s writing career. In particular taking her from the difficulty and invisibility of 1979 when A Place of Greater Safety, her first novel, was rejected, to winning the Booker prize twice in succession in 2009 and 2012. It thereby traces the story of her shift from invisible to infamous, in terms of her treatment by the mainstream British media as well as her phenomenal post-millennium success.

Cambios corticales en los dientes anteriores superiores e inferiores con Brackets convencionales, Damon y biofuncional QR en pacientes de trece a veinte y cuatro años

En el mercado existen varios sistemas de tratamiento en ortodoncia, los cuales deben ser estudiados para evitar que causen alteraciones en el periodonto, especialmente en los procesos alveolares corticales, por lo que el objetivo de este estudio fue conocer los cambios óseos alveolares, sean reabsorciones, aposiciones o ningún cambio óseo. Para realizar el estudio, se tomó como muestra tres sistemas de tratamiento: Sistema de Autoligado Damon, Sistema Biofuncional QR y Sistemas Convencionales Roth y MBT, estos brackets se aplicaron en 18 pacientes (seis de cada sistema), los cuales fueron sometidos a una tomografía antes del tratamiento y otra después de finalizada la etapa de alineación y nivelación. En los estudios tomográficos se realizaron trazados para medir en milímetros las corticales alveolares vestibulares, palatina y lingual, de los seis dientes anteriores superiores e inferiores, siendo la muestra total de 216 dientes. Para obtener los resultados del estudio, se ingresaron los datos recolectados en una hoja de cálculo Excel y procesados estadísticamente mediante el software SPSS versión 22, con las pruebas ANOVA y Tukey, obteniendo como resultados en el promedio de reabsorción ósea total p= 0,05 y con el Sistema Biofuncional QR una significancia de p= 0,025, en este último se demostró la presencia de aposición en la cortical lingual mandibular. Se concluyó que todos los sistemas de tratamiento causan reabsorciones óseas, siendo el Sistema Damon el de mayor reabsorción, seguido del Sistema convencional y luego el Sistema Biofuncional QR, produciendo este último una aposición estadísticamente significante. En los dientes anterosuperiores no existieron cambios óseos significativos y en los dientes anteroinferiores las mayores reabsorciones fueron en las piezas 42 y 32 y aposición en la pieza 41

The invisible hand: transversal thinking with new materialism in curriculum design

This proposal invites participation in a design intensive, in which educators bring along an idea for a unit, seminar, lecture, lesson as the basis for a practical and creative workshop merging conceptual art, writing, poetry and curriculum planning, while engaging playfully with New Materialism. In this work we seek to move beyond merely interrogating designs for future subjects, and to embolden our thinking about curriculum, asking questions to explore how the pedagogical imagination works with both the material and immaterial, the corporeal and incorporeal, within ecologies continually transforming in the process of making. Through this, we explore ways to challenge “delivery”, or “conduit” metaphors of education, to see design as “situated” in new ways involving both human and nonhuman elements, resisting stasis, resisting closure. This workshop positions curriculum design in the realm of the artist/activist, rather than that of the bureaucrat/technician and opens up a space for reflection on the processes of making curriculum. The workshop also therefore seeks to question how knowledge around curriculum is produced, and to document the ways in which our work as educators is part of a continuous becoming, as we ourselves, and our designs, co-emerge. We remember that curriculum design is fundamentally a creative project, always taking form and transforming in relation to what surrounds us, rather residing in documents, which tend to conceal the entanglements around their making. Instead, we embody and live curriculum; it is happening now

Invisible walls: Do psychological barriers really exist in stock index levels?

We investigate whether the levels of a stock market index contain any evidence of a behavioural bias depending on the proximity of the index level to 'psychological barriers'. These are certain index levels (usually in multiples of 100) at which the market tends to stick before breaking out either up or down. Extant behavioural finance literature has attributed this to investors' subjective perception of 'something special' about certain index levels where in fact no rational economic basis exists for such a perception. We carry out an empirical analysis of the NASDAQ Composite index and find that barrier effects are indeed present in that stock index. We employ simulation analysis to validate of our obtained results.

Visualidad y filosofía : La imagen artística como visión de lo invisible

Fil: Solas, Silvia. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (UNLP-CONICET); Argentina.

Visualidad y filosofía : La imagen artística como visión de lo invisible

Fil: Solas, Silvia. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (UNLP-CONICET); Argentina.

Review essay : the invisible infrastructure of standards

Review essay of Standards: recipes for reality, by Lawrence Busch, Cambridge and London, The MIT Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-262-01638-4; The gold standard: the challenge of evidence-based medicine and standardization in health care, by Stefan Timmermans and Marc Berg, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2003, ISBN 978-1-59213-188-4;Standards and their stories: how quantifying, classifying, and formalizing practices shape everyday life, edited by Martha Lampland and Susan Leigh Star, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8014-7461-3.