Week 9

When I first saw this visualization, I couldn't help but smile when I found myself on the outskirts of the graph... as one of the outsiders (as was often the case growing up). Without many edges coming or going, I find my degree of connectivity on this music quiz, to be quite similar to mine in real life. As one of my only friends and family members to not be on social media, I would rate my connectivity to be very low. Now being a Technology Coach, connectivity is essential in my line of work and unfortunately for me, "how connected an individual node [person] is becomes a key metric of its significance within the network [school district]" (Systems Innovation, 2015, April 19). So due to the fact that I'm aspiring to become a technology consultant for my school district, I'm thinking of starting my own social networking page for educational purposes- this way I can stay in the loop of all things new to tech and education!

Although I'm always eager to find out the latest news and learn about new emerging technologies, when thinking about diving into social networking and media, I get anxious. Yes, having a high degree of connectivity will help ensure the "immediate likelihood of catching whatever is flowing through the network" (Systems Innovation, 2015, April 19), however this lifestyle comes at a price- as "high connectivity is not always a positive thing (Systems Innovation, 2015, April 19). Not only can it attack our physical hardware through viruses, connectivity and humans' addiction to social networks has also led many to experience emotional pain or mental strain; heartache, depression, guilt, loneliness, stress, anxiety, fear, and more!

I think there there are a huge number of reasons some responses are similar to one another, and not knowing the rationale behind each of our choices, makes it, in my opinion, very premature to be making any real connections. For example, due to my extension, I didn't yet have all 10 of my choices finalized when I did my quiz, so I ended up choosing my last couple songs rather quickly (which I also changed prior to submitting my task)! For me, the visualizations (as with much of the data shared with us in the media) tell only a small part of the story, and it is presumptuous to be using such minimal data to make inferences. Some peoples' music choices may have been impacted by the time of day they selected them or how they were feeling at the time.

Yes, graphs allow us to "capture how different networks interrelate and overlap to effect each other" (Systems Innovation, 2015, April 18), however when data is solely coming from one source- a multiple choice quiz- the results can be misleading.

In order to understand a graph it's best to have more information, rather than less- so I think if there would have been more edges to this graph, like those in a "multiplex network" (Systems Innovation, 2015, April 18), we would have been able to get a better idea of how we are all connected or interrelated to one another. For example, in addition to asking us our music choices, it would have been beneficial to ask what criteria we used to make our choices, why we omitted certain songs, and even our level of familiarity and understanding of music as an art itself (as I have zero)! That way if our music choices didn't connect with someone else's, maybe our criteria used to select our music would have or the songs we chose to omit? I believe with more specific questions about music, our background, and our song choices, this quiz and its corresponding visualization have the potential to reveal interesting connections and relationships amongst those who complete it. Without further detail however, this quiz holds little merit.

Upon perusing the site, I also found out that Palladio (the software used to create the visualization) is made "for analyzing relationships across time" (Humanities + Design, Stanford University), making the visualizations inaccurate as the results are misrepresented.

This task drives home a key lesson we need to teach our students (and our children), to not believe everything they see. Although many of us are trained that 'seeing is believing', that is most definitely not always the case, especially when it comes to what we find in the media or on the internet. Looking at graphs and data with a critical eye is key to better understanding them.

Unless more questions are added that allow us to share more details about our answers, then no, our 'null' choices will never be reflected in the data. Which is another reason why the data derived from this type of representation is misleading.

As much as I'm advocating that more information is a good thing, I am not referring to information we provide to third parties on the web. I am referring solely to information provided via secured surveys or quizzes administered by educational or research institutions for learning purposes.

"The fight to extract as much data as possible from out interactions online" (Pēna, 2022) is a real one- as is the invasion of our privacy. Algorithms can be scary when not used appropriately (or ethically). They represent rules companies use to weight the network around us. By 'giving companies permission' to "infer what our preferences are, predict our behaviour, and monitor our navigation patterns" (Code.org, 2017), we are simultaneously giving them permission to learn as much as they can about us for whatever purpose serves them, and it most likely isn't for the common good!