Memory Metadata
4 days ago
- #memory
- #metadata
- #technology
- The author reflects on a personal photograph of her sister and niece, recalling the humid August air and her sister's tender expression.
- The photograph's digital metadata reveals technical details like pixel count, memory usage, and the device used to take it.
- Google Maps and Street View provide additional layers of memory and data, showing the exact location and documenting urban changes over time.
- Google's Street View images are part of a larger dataset used to train AI systems to interpret the world, with photographs taken by anonymous contractors.
- Waymo's self-driving technology uses similar data to create a simplified, labeled version of the world, erasing human labor behind the scenes.
- Facial recognition software, like that in the author's iPhone, categorizes people based on vast datasets, sometimes failing to recognize darker-skinned individuals accurately.
- The author contrasts her personal interpretation of the photograph with a machine's algorithmic analysis, highlighting differences in meaning and use.
- The photograph's pixels and metadata make the memory both unique and replicable, situated in space yet distributed globally.
- The author's niece and sister are rendered both intimately known and unknowable through the layered artifact of digital memory and metadata.