User:Angeliki/Reading notes

Simone, A. (2018) Improvised Lives: Rhythms of Endurance in an Urban South

Notes and abstract from the chapter 1 The Uninhabitable

Abstract

It refers to an urban life that is improvised and impossible to police because of its impossibility to be repeated second time, there is no pattern easily recognisable. This is an uninhabitable world. The one is intervening in each others lives and there is a lot of information but no ways to solve it. Unemployed men waiting and women living in domestic spaces divided by walls which "are not just porous sieves of information but marks of complex geographies where bonds and cuts in webs of lateral relations are made".

Even improvised lives need a place to be held and supported. This book supports the practice of districting. Taken the example of black urbanisation and the work of Sun Ra exo-planetary efforts are made to be part of the center of the city. "For Sun Ra, then, districting referred to an incessantly inventive practice of operating in the discontinuities between having a location in which one is identified and from which one can identify and speak to others"

(Paths to be constantly crossed

changing paths constantly difficult to police (that is a form of resistance)

The people don't trust the big people behind the scenes and they know all of them.)

Notes

The non-repeatability is a form of resistance because it is impossible to police it.

Burgess, M. (no date) ‘This Algorithm Could Ruin Your Life’, Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/welfare-algorithms-discrimination/ (Accessed: 14 March 2023).

Some highlights

"Imane’s background and personal history meant the system ranked her as 'high risk.'"

"These include its machine learning model, training data, and user operation manuals. The disclosures provide an unprecedented view into the inner workings of a system that has been used to classify and rank tens of thousands of people. With this data, we were able to reconstruct Rotterdam’s welfare algorithm and see how it scores people"

"Experts who reviewed our findings expressed serious concerns that the system may have discriminated against people"

"More than 20,000 families [in Rotterdam] were wrongly accused of childcare benefit fraud after a machine learning system was used to try to spot wrongdoing"

"Each week, she meets with a group of mostly single mothers, many of whom have a Moroccan background, to talk, share food, and offer each other support. "

"De Rotte, the director of the city’s income department, says these changes include adding a “human dimension” to its welfare processes."

Notes

"The pattern of local and national governments turning to machine learning algorithms is being repeated around the world." This reminds me of the article about Voice Recognition Software to Screen Refugees https://gizmodo.com/experts-worry-as-germany-tests-voice-recognition-softwa-1793424680. The software's inaccuracy affected the lives of many asylum seekers. The governments were trying to replace completely the work of linguist experts with this algorithm.

The relationship of tech companies with governments in order to develop tools for public use is obscure to the public: "The system, which was originally developed by consulting firm Accenture before the city took over development in 2018, is trained on data collected by Rotterdam’s welfare department."

This lack of communication and coordination between tech and social workers: "The government auditor found there was “insufficient coordination” between the developers of the algorithms and city workers who use them, which could lead to ethical considerations being neglected."

Platforms like Facebook become spaces for v=creating groups of support: "Throughout her investigations, she has heard other people’s stories, turning to a Facebook support group set up for people having problems with the Netherlands’ welfare system."

Abstract

Use of metaphors that gets outdated with the years. Cuber is an older term than internet. Clear divide between analogue and digital but more complex. Meeting between a café and cyberspace.

"It was social networking in a true sense". A network between very different users in different spaces and status. Internet cafes allowed lower class to have access to internet.

In the beginning they were still more limited spaces where somebody could find internet. "The first decade of the new millennium would introduce new scenarios involving access to the internet in public spaces."

" manga cafés to be found throughout Japan and South Korea, which combine internet access, comic books and TV."

"Private cubicles are also available to internet café users in Africa who use it for different purposes. (...) women browsing dating sites in search for potential white husbands"

"These kinds of stories – whether they’re nonfiction or fiction – where internet cafés turn out to be places from another world(...) These places seem at once forbidding and attractive."

Media art exhibition in 2010 called 'Speed Shows' introduced by Aram Bartholl, who rented all the computers of an internet cafe, brought the media art audience in such a place, for some of them for the first time.

The case of Rotterdam: closure stories

"Firstly, the city doesn’t have and never really had any “classic” internet cafés." Internet seems to be accessible in different places.

"Secondly, Rotterdam has a great number of belhuizen (call shops), which took over the internet café functions for an entirely different segment of the city’s population – a poor, less-educated one, with an immigrant background."

In 2006 “Leefmilieuverordening belhuizen” (Quality of Life regulations regarding call shops) regulations, were enacted by the city, regulating the opening of new call shops:

"The regulation is meant to fight against the increase in the numbers of call shops by preventing empty real estate from exploited as a call shop."

"The reasons for this new law include, among others: oversupply, tax evasion, and the disruption of the social order on the streets where belhuizen are located."

"“Dispersion”, a book by Columbian architect and urbanist Diego Barajas, which analysed the role that Rotterdam’s call shops played in the lives of Cape Verdean immigrants."

"new re-territorialisation where "“the territory of a Cape Verdean nation has been established in the urban dimension of Rotterdam … where a belhuis creates a new local, an artificial condition of home, and a new landscape of its own right.”""

The market changed and gentrification replaced the cafes with other type of stores.

At Zwaanhals: "Therefore, the landlords in the neighbourhood have a direct incentive for getting rid of these call shops if they want to attract better tenants."

Another reason for wanting them closed:

"The neighbourhood’s residents often demand their closure because of what happens in the street in front of these places (noise around the clock, etc.), which is deemed inappropriate for a residential neighbourhood." and drug dealing. A angry sign: "It is not allowed to call dealers or to deal in drugs and stolen things."

Bad reputation/ loitering:

"Some of these closure stories, however, are much more sensational and involve violence (...) The suspicion was never confirmed, but this location will never shake off the stigma of having been a terrorist den." "Even without sensational arrests, common people seem to be convinced that belhuizen serve as hiding places for terrorists, explosives-manufacturing labs, or money laundering establishments for terrorist organisations. "

The start of bad reputation: "At the time, KPN had a monopoly in the telecommunications market. It was only in 1997, after the telecommunications market had been liberalised[18] that legal belhuizen began offering their services through other providers.(...) Yet the idea that they were shady businesses in this way or another remained and got firmly implanted in the public mind"

"But often the belhuis is linked to illegal activities"

But in fact the drug- and illegal migrant-related cases are rare, isolated cases.

loitering:

"The only recorded offenses associated with belhuizen mostly involve disturbing of the public order, in other words, teenagers hanging around."

"The image of teenagers loitering around on belhuizen doorsteps plays a significant role in the shaping of the negative image that are associated with call shops." ". They also make a lot of noise, they smoke and spit on the sidewalk, and get into fights. Disturbing the public order is the most common offense associated with call shops. It’s also the only offense that any of the café owners will admit to."

transformation:

Replacement of phone booths by internet connections in 2003/2004: "This is when call shops began undergoing their transformation from providing a service for immigrants to an urban nuisance."