Info 202 Fall 2011

I thought this was a pretty cool way of visualizing the metacrap issue. Without the existence of tag soup--if the metadata were more uniform and reliable--then one would imagine that the images would vary less and yield less interesting aggregate color maps. But what is the an image of "Tuesday", or "Rage", or "Howl", examples of which can be found in the Gallery section of the site. Certainly those words of phases which are more tangible yield more similar images; words that are landscapes and cities seem to have a horizon line in the image, whereas imprecise words or words that describe less tangible things have a broader palette set. 

This site and the discussion of metacrap also makes me think of the neurological phenomenon of synesthesia. Synesthesia is basically a crossing of pathways in the brain where people experience a different sensory response from a stimulant than "normal," the classic example being people who see colors when they hear sounds and music. Apparently synesthesia is a common sight in children as their brains are remapping themselves and before the links are broken and all people have some underlying level of synesthesia from these unbroken connections. Associating numbers or the days of the week to colors, or having positive/negative feelings towards even and odd numbers are a pretty common occurrence and due to these crossed pathways. I've heard of examples where a room of people will each be given a box of crayons and told to doodle as they listen to music. Collectively, there will be color trends throughout the room with different pieces of music. This long tangent is basically an example of the fact that people may not just be lazy, stupid, or liars, (maybe it falls into the Know thyself category) but there are sorts of underlying reasons for a person to tag an object with a specific tag. Especially if that tag is not a tangible object or part of a controlled vocabulary. 

Copious examples follow.