[MUSIC PLAYING] AMELIA ACKER: So I went to UC Irvine for undergraduate, and they had an undergraduate research opportunities program, and I applied to study the Japanese internment camps, executive order 90355. I went to all these different museums and libraries and waited in the reading room for the documents, and IT took a while for the archival documents to come out. And I was like, oh, I can help you. Or I could go back there and see what those documents look like. And they were like, no, no, you're not allowed back there. Only archivists can go and pull the boxes off the shelf. And I was like, what is an archivist? [MUSIC PLAYING] CHARLIE BENNETT: You are listening to WREK Atlanta, and this is Lost in the Audio Vault. No, Lost in the Stacks, the Research Library Rock'n'Roll Radio Show. I am Charlie in the studio with the gang minus Ameet. Matthew, Wendy, Fred, and Cody are here. Each week on Lost in the Stacks we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Our show today is called data cultures. A few weeks ago, the Georgia Tech Library crew was treated to a visit by Dr. Amelia Acker, assistant professor and provost teaching fellow with the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. MATTHEW RITCH: Amelia spent a few days embedded with us to study what software preservation activities look like at our library. WENDY HAGENMAIER: During the visit, our fearless board up, Matthew, our fantastic retro tech research assistant, Maura, and I gathered together for a chat with Amelia about data traces, mobile communication, and the future of remembering. MATTHEW RITCH: If you want to join the conversation, the hashtag for the show is LITS 434 for Lost in the Stacks, episode 434. Feel free to tweet your thoughts, questions, or SMSs with that hashtag. Some SMS's, our songs today are about geolocation, computers, and phones, things that most of us use daily. And perhaps, we should examine that usage a little more closely and a little more critically. I'm just going to check my phone first. This is Checking my Phone by Bob for Apples right here on Lost in the Stacks. [MUSIC PLAYING] You just heard Checking my Phone by Bob for Apples. Today's show is called data cultures. Retro tech research assistant Maura and Wendy and I interviewed Dr. Amelia Acker a few weeks ago. We began by asking Amelia about how she got interested in archives. AMELIA ACKER: So when I graduated, I got a contract job processing archives at the UCLA special collections, and I was the Ralph Bunche research archivist, and I reprocessed the Bunche collection, which is a really big collection. And it was really fun and exciting. I'd already processed a couple of other collections, but I learned during my experience there that I really wanted to talk to people and learn more about the records that people were creating in the now and how those would turn into archives. I also-- processing is so amazing, but I got really lonely. I wanted to be more around people and talk to record creators and people who used archives. So I started thinking about scientific records and electronic records, in particular. And so that's when I decided that I wanted to know a little bit more about the environments that we create records now. And that's when I decided to go back. So when I started my doctoral studies, I worked as a GRA at this center called the Center for Embedded Network Sensing. And they started doing participatory sensing campaigns in communities. And this was when there was the $100 Android phone was released, this Droid on Verizon. So we were able to deploy mobile phones in the field. And one of the interesting things about sensors is people are pretty smart. So if you put sensors in their hands, they can say, this is an environmental change that's important to me. So since these data campaigns with bike commuters and pollution on their ways to work, commuting, participatory sensing campaigns with everyday scientists interested in invasive plants, so you could take pictures of invasive plants, and I worked on a project where we asked people about what was important to them in an urban area called Boyle Heights, which is in East Los Angeles. And it's what we now call a food desert. It's bounded by three freeways, and it's right next to downtown. So we gave these mobile phones to folks, and we developed a couple of different apps to help them take pictures of snacks, commuting, and what their, sort of, sense of safety was in their neighborhoods. And when we started it, people would ask us, will people know how to use these smartphones, will it be easy to understand how to take a picture and upload an app. Like, how could you-- how do you even explain an app to people? And it just was so easy, and we were working with bilingual communities. I developed this bilingual instructional kit, and it was just right away when we were doing the deployments, people were reading and writing really easily on their phones. And they knew how to text message already on feature phones, and it was just really easy to collect data as a community together. And once I started seeing that, I was like, wow, where is this moment, or when does writing and reading on your phone become so easy? And where did that happen? And why does everyone do it? Why does my grandmother do it? Why does my little brother do it? Like, why is it so easy to do? And so I really wanted to know about the history and development of the standard itself. And so yeah, working on that GRA project and this, sort of, community data campaign was what really got me thinking about where SMS started. WENDY HAGENMAIER: And so there was also a little piece, maybe you mentioned your grandmother or your little brother was your own usage or reflecting on your own phone usage or the records you were creating in your life, did that impact your interest in text messaging or in archives at all? AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, sure. So when I started college, it was pretty typical for folks to get your first cell phone at the end of high school or when you went away to school for college. And at that time in the US, you'd have to pay to read your text messages. And then they started these rates where you could read your text messages at night for free. So I remember waiting until 9:00 PM to read all my text messages. And then later on, I realized that you would have to start deleting text messages in order to receive more. So there was like limited amounts of memory on the phone. And I always thought like, oh, wouldn't it be cool to have saved the first text messages I sent or the first text messages I received when I would read them after hours when they were free. And there was really no way to do that, especially with early feature phones. And so I sort of always wondered, where did those text messages go? If you had wanted to save them, how would you have done it? Would you just have to keep buying new phones? And this was also before another regulation where dongles were all-- I don't know-- custom for each kind of handset. So it was really hard on users to share information in a, kind of, peculiar way. And so I just remember thinking, oh, if you wanted to share the photos that you took, if you wanted to share the ringtones that you bought, these sort of mobile traces, how would they live anywhere but the feature phone? And so that was, sort of, I don't know, the origin story for me. Yeah. WENDY HAGENMAIER: And so currently you work at the University of Texas at Austin. Can you talk a little bit about what your role is there and some of the classes that you teach? AMELIA ACKER: Sure. So I'm an assistant professor in the School of Information, and I'm an information scientist who, sort of, deploys qualitative methods to study different kinds of digital preservation contexts. So I already said, I used to be an archivist. Now, when I describe my work, I talk about how I'm really interested in the archives of the future. So how are the records or information contexts that we're involved in now, particularly, with mobile ICTs and next generation networks like 3G, 4G, and soon 5G, how does that new information landscape change the ways in which we create records but also the ways in which we think about saving them or deleting them or preserving them, which we know are all very different sorts of things. I'm really excited. This upcoming year, I'm teaching a new class called critical data studies, where we'll be thinking about the different ways that data collection and creation is involved in almost every area of our lives, whether you're a student, whether you're a sweetheart, a daughter or a parent, a consumer. We're creating data in all of these new different ways. So I'm really excited about that new class. MATTHEW RITCH: And reading your work, you had two terms you used a couple of times. You talk about data hermeneutics, and then you also talk about data culture. I was just interested in how you think those things, how you define them and how they've changed recently and why you're studying them. AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, sure. So gosh, hermeneutics is a big topic for a podcast. So historically, hermeneutics has meant the interpretation of texts. And so for some folks, like in theology that's interpreting the Bible, in Greek antiquity, which is where the word comes from, we're talking about interpreting things like poetry, things like epics, things like laws, sometimes even things like common sense, so phrases that we all agree are true and thinking through, what do they mean, how do they tie us together, and how might they be something that can be applied everywhere throughout all times, so things like-- I don't know-- laws like justice. When I talk about data hermeneutics, I'm really interested in thinking about what are the myths, the ideals, the ethics around the creation of data that all of us can assume are true or that we all hold to know and want about data. So when I think about data cultures, this is, kind of, connected is what's at stake when we're constantly creating data together. And so that's one of the things that I think is really interesting about this moment, as compared to earlier information ages is what we might call them is that just being here together and having these machines on, we're creating data together, right. And it says a lot about who we are. We can assume if we look at all these traces that some of us might belong to Georgia Tech. Some of us might be a visitor. Some of us use Android devices. Some of us use iPhones. But we can learn a lot about us individually and as a group together when we're creating data. So when I'm thinking about cultures, I'm particularly interested in those traces that we leave behind, which even 20 or 30 years ago may not have been possible and may not have been collected or known. MATTHEW RITCH: This is Lost in the Stacks, and we'll be back with more about data cultures with Amelia Acker after a music set. CHARLIE BENNETT: You can file this set under G70.212.G412. [THE BREEDERS, "SAFARI'] [TWO MOONS, "BEING HERE"] That was "Being Here" by Two Moons and before that "Safari" by The Breeders, songs about information on our current and future locations. [MUSIC PLAYING] MATTHEW RITCH: This is Lost in the Stacks, and our guest today is Doctor Amelia Acker, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Information. We talked with Amelia about all of the data we're constantly creating together. Do you think that-- I know you said that this moment is important to study these things because we're generating so much more. Do you think it's being responsibly maintained, this data being generated? AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, that's a great question, responsibly maintained, so-- MATTHEW RITCH: Whatever that means to you. AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, no. Yeah, so since 2013, since the Snowden leaks, we've known that lots and lots of data and metadata, in particular, from Americans are being collected by surveillance agencies but also private corporations. And so we know that there's lots and lots of different contexts for data collection, data brokers, data enablers that are constantly generating and using and relying upon us to continue to create them. But maintaining it, I don't know. That's a great question. What does it mean to maintain things? Like I said before, it's not clear to me that I could go back and retrieve some of the earliest data that I created on my mobile phone. But maybe in a surveillance context, a police officer could figure out that about me. So I don't know. Responsible maintenance, that's a really big question. MATTHEW RITCH: Ideally, if we could use this data for a purpose other than generating ad revenue, how would we do that? AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, how would we do it? MATTHEW RITCH: Could we maintain this level of data for public usage? AMELIA ACKER: It's a great question. I don't know. I don't know. We're getting to the point where it's even hard to conceptualize our collections. So if I told you, hey, can you remember the first Gmail that you ever wrote? MATTHEW RITCH: I actually do. AMELIA ACKER: OK, you can, all right, the second. But it would be, kind of, hard to even go back and retrieve it, right? So we can come up with interesting use cases, but it's not necessarily clear to me that we need to. So that's another thing I consistently think about is like responsible collection might also mean getting rid of stuff, what archivists called appraisal in order to have responsible, preserved collections. We want to know the stuff we don't need to keep, right. And we know that that's-- I know there are physical and resource constraints that are involved in keeping everything all the time. And that's something that we should also be thinking about too, I think, is appraising that stuff or weeding it out. WENDY HAGENMAIER: You talked about-- the question was about, yeah, responsible management or who's the custodian. Is the question that follows, who is it? Is it the individual? MATTHEW RITCH: Is it Google? WENDY HAGENMAIER: Is it the corporation? Is it the institutional archives? I guess, who do you-- which actors in this like responsibility or appraisal process do you think are having the most way right now. And sort of, where do you see things moving in terms of who's doing the appraisal of-- AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, so it's not clear to me that we're actively seeing a lot of appraisal happening in some of the corporate contexts. But certainly in our everyday lives, we have data vulnerabilities. We get new machines. We forget about a hard drive and the like. So we do have some agency over our own stuff, but oftentimes that's a material constraint or tied to the devices itself. In terms of the people who have the most sway over our data, it seems to me that those are for profit corporations and increasingly platform developers and owners, right. So platforms like Google and Facebook but also platforms like Apple and Yelp even, right, just to find regular reviews. We're giving lots and lots of personal data away. I don't know. Have any of you guys read a terms of service lately? MATTHEW RITCH: I used to read them. AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, so there's this area about personal data management, what you're responsible for as a user and what the company is responsible for their stewardship. And those are just really mind boggling because they can do almost anything with your data. And once it's been reused or reused or let go, we've really ceded control. And so it's really hard to get that back once you say, yes, I do want to be a user of these platforms and give away my data. MATTHEW RITCH: So with all this context, what are your current most interesting research topics to you? What are you most excited about? What are you studying? AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, sure. So the most exciting thing that I think about right now is how will I get access to the data that I'm creating now in the future? And if I do get access from Twitter, from Facebook, from Tinder, what will I do with that access? What will I do with it? Will I gift it to an archive? Will I gift it to my kids or my friends or my family, or will I just delete it? What will happen? What will I know once I've got that data? So I'm really interested in talking to users about these new contexts of access and what that looks like. Another big area that I've been thinking about is reproducible results. When social media researchers collect data from APIs or from platforms through APIs, what do they do with that data? And how can they share it or ensure that their experiments that they're running can be reproduced by other scientists who want to vet their claims? And that seems really, really hard under the current access regime. Let's see. Another big area is APIs themselves. So APIs are application programming interfaces or software that allow platforms to talk to each other, or for developers who are interested in getting access to platform data, to pull it down and to use it in different ways. Increasingly, we're seeing violations of personal information or personal data, like Cambridge Analytica being violations of those terms of service of APIs, except APIs are govern all of us, whether you're a student, whether you're a librarian, whether you're a for-profit developer. And it strikes me that APIs themselves are this weird new artifact that we should be citing, that should have some sort of time stamp, and that we should have really clear ideas about, OK, an API from today is very different than an API in two months. And that changes our personal data, the impact that it can have on-- I don't know-- our personalization context. MATTHEW RITCH: I read another one of your pieces on update culture. AMELIA ACKER: Oh, yeah. MATTHEW RITCH: So that's one area of update culture we are not aware of is when APIs are being constantly changed. And who knows what's happening underneath the hood? AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, so in that study, we talked to and looked at the ways that Tinder users and Tesla users reacted to updates that were behind the scenes, no knowns that developers were aware of and were posted on APIs, but ones that users may not see. But what we found was some drastic updates, like, was it blocking spam were really felt by the users, and they were really aware that updates were happening. And so I'm also interested in some of these folk ways when people say, hey, my experience really is changing, and I don't like it. That's, kind of, fun and weird. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Yeah, it seems like it becomes very difficult to reproduce anything if things, updates are happening all the time, and they're happening behind the scenes. AMELIA ACKER: Yeah. And so that might be a question for us in terms of the scientific method and reproducibility of results. When we're looking at data cultures that move so fast and software is being updated constantly, there's this constant churn of change. How can we say this is how it was now and this is how people are acting the same or similarly? So yeah, it also impacts the ways that we create knowledge about what's actually going on. MATTHEW RITCH: Do you think it's going to slow down anytime? AMELIA ACKER: No, I think it's just going to get faster. I think-- I read an article a couple of years ago about research in internet time and how when internet-- anything that happens on the internet happens really, really fast and is diffuse. And so I'm increasingly thinking that we need better methods for examining these quick, quick changes. I still am figuring out what those are, but-- of course. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Like, that checks in for a specific moment. AMELIA ACKER: Exactly. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Captures everything in that one moment. AMELIA ACKER: Totally. WENDY HAGENMAIER: So you're working on a book project right now. And is the scope of the book similar to the research areas that you talked about and Matthew asked about, sort of? FRED RASCOE: We will be back with more from Amelia Acker on the left side of the hour. [MUSIC PLAYING] MIKE JEGERFELT: Hey, this is Mike Jergefelt. I'm a medical librarian in Stockholm, Sweden. And you're listening to Lost in the Stacks, WREK Atlanta. There's coffee, yo. (SINGING) Lord knows it come scientific. There's nothing special about it at all. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Today's Lost in the Stacks is called data cultures. In 2014, our guest, Amelia Acker, submitted her dissertation called Born Networked Records, A History of the Short Message Service Format. MATTHEW RITCH: She wrote, my concern with these born networked records is less about the context of this new format, and more about the processes of information of texts becoming stabilized and standardized into a format. We need to remember old debates about records based on the assumptions that transactions give rise to stable ideas about evidence but at the same time disinter the ways in which infrastructures of transmission shape recorded information in the moment and over time as collections of structured metadata. This involves giving an account of that is itself historical of how metadata happens, what record creators and institutions do with these traces of transmission, including how we think, communicate, remember, and archive. A discussion of how new formats are born, networked records forces contemplation of the archive, which as both an actual place and everyday experience, tells us a great deal about the present and future impact of mobile communication technologies on collection futures. And as this work ends, the future work begins. File this set under QA75.5.C611375. [MUSIC PLAYING] CHARLIE BENNETT: "Computer World" by Kraftwerk, a song about the networks we use and feed information to on a daily basis. MATTHEW RITCH: Our show today is called Data Cultures. Our guest is Dr. Amelia Acker, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Information. Man, that's a long name for a school. We asked Amelia about the topic she's most excited about researching at the moment. AMELIA ACKER: I'm really interested in this change of state right now between it used to be that when you would create information, you would be responsible for storing it, or you would have some ideas about where it lived. But increasingly with platforms, when we create data, we don't necessarily know where it lives or where it goes and who else can see it or who else can be in charge of it. And so increasingly, we're seeing that there's a distance, right, a really real and then also a metaphorical and then a legal illegal distance between the stuff that we create, that we read, that we write, that we listen to and then where it lives. And so it used to be like our parents had collections of vinyl records or tapes. I used to have collections of CDs. Now, I have some playlists on Spotify, but that can be locked down at any moment. And so my music, my music is now subscription-based model. And so I'm really interested in this distance between the people who create information and then where that now lives and data centers that I may not be even aware of, right. And what does that actually mean for the ways we remember together? And how will it change our ideas about preservation, right? How do we-- do we preserve this experience of creating a playlist? Do we preserve those MP3's? Can we even access the digital rights to them if I wanted to give you all my playlists from Spotify? How could an archive even reproduce that experience. So I'm really interested in this moment of like, how do you remember things if you don't have stewardship or control over the evidence that you're creating as a culture? MATTHEW RITCH: Is that alienation? What do you mean? Like, is that like cheapening the user experience? Oh, do we feel less connected to our music because it's or whatever service you're using? That's a great question. It's decentralized in that way. AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, I'm always nervous about saying this is a good thing or a bad thing for the way people experience things. Because as far as I can tell, people are still crushing on people, falling in love, going through breakups, and they still listen to music and make music to connect to our world and to feel experiences. And I don't know whether making a CD or making a playlist for someone is that much different. But I know that knowing where it lives or knowing you have access to it or putting it together is very different. And that seems like it's worth investigating more. Whether or not it's alienating, I don't know. I couldn't say. But there's something there, right, that it's so different. It seems important. MATTHEW RITCH: Maybe it's an issue of long memory. Maybe short memory is fine, but it's because these things are new, we haven't tried doing long memory with them yet. I have CDs in my car from five or six years ago that my friends wrote on by hand, but will I be able to find a Spotify playlist in five years? AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, right. MATTHEW RITCH: So maybe that's the difference there. We just haven't encountered it yet. AMELIA ACKER: Right. And they also-- that's another interesting, like-- I don't know-- thing to think about is the encounter. One of the ways in which we remember things is we go into the garage, and we see the old album. We go into the back of the trunk of the car, and we see the old CDs, but we encounter the stuff. You have to have these encounters in order to remember and go through that process of time, right, or reflection. How is that going to change in a streaming culture? We don't really know. And so I think for about 2,000 years in written culture, we've had these, sort of, historic moments of when you go back and encounter your personal collections. And I think increasingly as we move our experiences into personalized platforms, especially for profit platforms, I think those moments of encounter are going to be very different and very new and nuanced. And I don't know, we got to start thinking about them so. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Do you think we may opt in for the moments of encounter? Like, do you think the moments of encounter will become part of the service in the way that Facebook reminds you about what you did or often in a way that you-- it's not the serendipitous or even the user's choice? AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, no, that's a great-- that's a great question. So yeah, you can imagine-- we're already seeing ways that platforms are nudging us towards remembering the past. So my Google Photos assistant says, hey, this is what happened two years ago on this day. And I'm really moved by that. It's really cool. We're also seeing time hop from I think it's Twitter and Facebook. So yeah, we are getting these reminders. But what's interesting to me about that is all those are phone mediations, right? They assume us having a phone and that we captured it in that moment and that we captured it on a platform. What if there are experiences that we have that aren't captured with a phone, or aren't memorialized because they're-- I don't know. They're the everyday or they were kind of sad or they're something we didn't think about to capture with and tag or check in. Those are the things that fall outside of that platform-- I don't know-- control or buckets that I think are worth thinking about and that we might lose. So we might consider-- I don't know-- how those create documents or how they could create documents? I think there's this whole other area that's that I'm really drawn to is thinking about how these platforms and these next generation mobile networks create completely new opportunities for us to do stuff together, and that we may not have the same appraisal ideas. So I was just visiting with a friend who is going through a breakup, and their ex just deleted all of the pictures of them on their Instagram. And that's how they want to go through the breakup. But for the other person who wanted to see those photos again or maybe save those, they're not in control of those, right. So there's lots of encounters where you think, well, we did this together, right, or we're creating these engagement layers together. But only one person has control, or only one person put it on their user account. And that's like this other how are we going to negotiate appraisal in the future is, kind of, another opportunity for us to think about this distance collapsing or expanding in different ways. WENDY HAGENMAIER: It's interesting that the term alienation came up. And in some way, for me, I could imagine a distance between me and the stuff that I own, or I don't even own it anymore, license it. It's, kind of, liberating. And maybe it's the Marie Kondo like thing of just detachment from the material world that sounds appealing. So I wonder if there is something that's emotionally positive for society about moving further away from the data that we're interacting or the memories we're making or something? AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, I haven't really thought about it that way. But I know that when I deleted my Facebook account, it definitely sparked joy. So I understand-- I understand what you're talking about. But yeah, I guess what's interesting to me is why does that spark joy or what does that mean that it feels so good to let go or it feels so good to subscribe instead of collect that says something about our culture in this moment that's worth thinking about? But I have a hunch that it's going to change the ways that we just even encounter forgetting. And I think it also might be a symptom of just having unlimited storage options or knowing-- this fatigue of knowing that at any moment Netflix or Home Depot or Target is going to be hacked again, and my personal information is going to be leaked out. MAURA HOWELL: How do you see people who opt out of these kind of optional digital data collection services like Facebook and Twitter and social media? Do you think not having those people's data around will affect the way we can look back on this period of time and reflect on that? AMELIA ACKER: It, kind of, depends on what kinds of services you're talking about opting out. So at this point in the United States, most adults have a mobile phone that connects to an internet network. Most people in from their teens all the way to their 40s have a smartphone with 80 apps that they're engaging with every day. So the majority of people are using devices. I don't have the specific numbers, but most people, more than half of adults in the United States get their news from social media platforms. And so it's interesting to think about those folks who aren't using it and how they are represented in these shadow ways on the platforms by their families, by their partners, by their coworkers and how even if you want to opt out and resist, how you're constantly being pulled back in by your community, by the people that you talk with on the phone, by the people that you go out and have events with, or people who take pictures of you and the like. Whether or not we'll regret not having them, I think, no, it's great to have people who are non-users because it shows that there are still some stalwarts or people who live their lives without it. But increasingly, it's super hard to do. MAURA HOWELL: Yeah. Like, for instance, I was thinking for people who go to eat at a place that only accepts credit cards, and they don't use credit cards. I feel like people in the future might end up in that situation where they're excluded from a lot of experiences because they don't want the digital data collected about them. AMELIA ACKER: Yeah, totally. There's tons of different experiences, particularly, like. If you want to cross borders, if you want to do airplane travel or go through customs, certain government benefits that if you're unbanked or if you don't have a credit card, you can't participate. And it's really wacky. In some ways, it also tells us how we're being governed as citizens too, not just as consumers who buy goods. WENDY HAGENMAIER: For librarians going forward or archivists, folks working in institutions, interfacing maybe with students, maybe with eight members of the public coming in, what are some things do you think we can keep in mind and try to bring to our practice that would empower positive data cultures? AMELIA ACKER: So the biggest observation that I've had is that there's different media ideologies between students who are going to college now, and maybe librarians and archivists that are our age in the ways in which we think about saving or naming or moving around records, information, and data. And so my kid brother, who's 15 or 16, has different ideas about streaming services or storing files than I do just because of the nature of our ages and the services that we use. And so one of the things that I think is really important is that we don't put any moral opinions upon what it means to have a file naming convention of a particular kind of way or having ideas about storage or where stuff should live. But that in a streaming culture, we constantly assume things about saving or naming things. So that's one thing is that folks-- younger folks who are constantly creating data aren't typically concerned about storing stuff in the same way that earlier generations are. The second thing I think that is important to keep top of mind is that if you are in a modern organization, you are constantly creating data, and that's important to just talk about. You're personally creating data. You're creating data as a student, as an educator, as a worker. Just being in spaces like this, data is being captured about us all the time. And just being aware of those things in our environment, whether we just speak it and say it, hey, how many microphones are in this room right now? It's not just this one. That's really important to start thinking about how our data culture exists because we're creating culture with these devices and with these networks. WENDY HAGENMAIER: This is Lost in the Stacks. Our guest today is Dr. Amelia Acker, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Information. How many microphones are there in this room? [MUSIC PLAYING] CHARLIE BENNETT: Cody, you got to count before I go on air. CODY: At least 10. CHARLIE BENNETT: At least 10. File this set under 10 mics, TK6570.M6M385. MATTHEW RITCH: You just heard "Telecom" by Mining Boom. Before that was "Beechwood 45789" by the Marvelettes. Those were songs about our relationship with our phones. [MUSIC PLAYING] CHARLIE BENNETT: Our show today was called data cultures. Our guest was Dr. Amelia Acker, assistant professor and provost teaching fellow with the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. We talked about the data we create, share, license, and control or don't control. What's one data set you've created or assembled that you always want to be able to control yourself that you'd never trust a platform to steward or preserve for the long term? Anybody in here got an answer to that? FRED RASCOE: Charlie, I think things like journals and letters. I just think even in my own personal history, I can't imagine wanting to just turn over wholesale things like that to an archives or some sort of digitization platform. CHARLIE BENNETT: And Wendy, isn't that exactly what you want us to do? WENDY HAGENMAIER: Turn it over? No. I mean, well, only if you're comfortable with it. I'm very resistant to trusting anyone with my own-- increasingly, I just want to remember as the way that I document my life. And that's just in my head. And it won't get exported anywhere. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, I burn old journals once they've been completed and have sat around just long enough to get to New Year's, into the fire. MATTHEW RITCH: Almost all the photos, I take are on my cell phone. And every like three months I'll export them all to my computer. CHARLIE BENNETT: And then break the cell phone. MATTHEW RITCH: And break the cell phone right now. I'll export them and say, photo dump 8/3/19 or whatever the date was, and I can have a record of when I dumped each photos. But Google Photos always tries to upload my photos to its own servers without me telling it. I tell it not to but it does it anyway. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Just say no. MATTHEW RITCH: So then I go on Google Photos and delete them. And so that's like I'm exercising control. WENDY HAGENMAIER: And with that, let's roll the credits. [MUSIC PLAYING] CHARLIE BENNETT: Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, produced by me, Charlie Bennett, Ameet Doshi, Wendy Hagemeier, and Fred Rascoe. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Charlie was our engineer today as well. CHARLIE BENNETT: Holding on for dear life everybody. WENDY HAGENMAIER: And the show was brought to you in part by the information age and its discontents. FRED RASCOE: Legal counsel and-- oh gosh, how do I pronounce this word, Wendy? MATTHEW RITCH: Data Hermeneutics. FRED RASCOE: Data hermeneutics, data hermeneutics, band name were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Special Thanks to Amelia for being on the show, to Matthew and Maura for their part in the interview. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening. FRED RASCOE: Find us online at lostinthestacks.org, and you can subscribe to our podcast pretty much anywhere you get your audio fix. CHARLIE BENNETT: Next week on Lost in the Stacks, we kick off the fall semester by digging into a book that no person wrote. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Time for our last song. As Amelia talked about today, increasingly, it is hard to live without the benefits we see from using the networks that leave our digital traces behind. We'll need to develop a long term positive data culture if we're going to have any control or privacy. Because let's face it, we're not just going to stop using these information networks. We're humans. We like to communicate in many ways. There's just something about us. So let's close with "Something About Us" by Daft Punk right here on Lost in the Stacks. Have a great weekend, everyone. [DAFT PUNK, "SOMETHING ABOUT US"]