[SIGCIS-Members] Virtuality versus transprency -- trying to locate a quote about the difference

Fri Oct 31 08:56:10 PDT 2014

Dear Tom,

I couldn’t agree more with your point about the contradictory meanings of transparency. I wrestled with this a bit in a short piece a few years back, noting:

The idea of transparency seems straightforward enough: the transparent entity has nothing to hide, just as a transparent pane of glass reveals everything about an object on the other side. The problems with the metaphor emerge as soon as we consider a picture of the object posted on an opaque pane, or a textual description of it: how are these indirect representations transparent? The paradox of transparency is that the metaphor conveys unproblematic revelation of true information, and yet in practice it takes a lot of institutional and political work to achieve a credible and relevant relationship between the audience of the information and whatever the information is about. 

Here’s the whole paper--really just some tentative thoughts--on “defense transparency”: http://www-igcc.ucsd.edu/assets/001/502529.pdf

Best,

Jon

Sent from one glowing rectangle to another, perhaps without a keyboard

From: Thomas Haigh
Sent: ‎Friday‎, ‎October‎ ‎31‎, ‎2014 ‎7‎:‎23‎ ‎AM
To: 'sigcis'

It is actually the policy version of “transparency” that prompted me to remember the quote. (Thanks to all those who responded). Journalism sociologist/historian Michael Schudson from Columbia University was visiting our Social Studies of Information group at UWM last week and speaking on the “Origins of Transparency” which he located in the 1960s/70s developments of the Freedom of Information Act, public disclosure of EPA impact statements, etc.

However, contrary to Matthew’s point, it seemed to me that the meanings are actually opposite in the two areas. Something that is “transparent” in CS is invisible – you look right through it without seeing it. In the political sense, a “transparent” process is one where all the details are visible to the public. 

It seems to me that the CS sense is a more intuitive use of the metaphor. Making a political process transparent would literally mean that you see straight through it to whatever is behind it, but also that the process itself is invisible. When we talk about making the workings of government transparent the metaphor somehow seems to have mutated to mean the opposite.

Tom

From: matthew.battles at gmail.com [mailto:matthew.battles at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Matthew Battles
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2014 5:26 AM
To: Nabeel Siddiqui
Cc: James Cortada; thaigh at computer.org; sigcis
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Virtuality versus transprency -- trying to locate a quote about the difference

All this does have me wondering about the internet-and-society field's interest in, and advocacy for, a certain kind of "transparency" in civil discourse shares lineage with transparency in the comp-sci sense, to the effect that transparency (in the sense of openness and publicness of bureaucratic or deliberative decision-making process) is a quality that can be produced and modified computationally. There is an ideological disposition there to see government as a kind of social UTM upon which different norms, beliefs, and commitments may be run like so many lines of code...

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Nabeel Siddiqui <nasiddiqui at email.wm.edu> wrote:

Dear Tom,

I believe this is from an old 1978 poster that IBM released dealing with virtual memory.  It is sometimes attributed to Scott Hammer, who worked at William and Mary before I got here as a graduate student.  Here is him explaining that this is the first time he saw it:  http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/92q3/seeit.html

Hope that helps.

Sincerely,

Nabeel Siddiqui

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 11:02 AM, James Cortada <jcortada at umn.edu> wrote:

By the way, Mike is alive and well.  Mike can you pipe in and confirm.  This is a fabulous insight and expression.  It should be quoted frequently!!

Cheers.

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 9:24 AM, David Hemmendinger <hemmendd at union.edu> wrote:

>I heard it from Mike Williams, when he had his professor of computer science hat on! Here's how he said it:
>
>If it is there, but you can't see it, it is transparent.
>If it isn't there, but you see it, it is virtual.
>If it is there, and you see it, it is real.
>
>For the purposes of symmetry, what if something is not there and you can't see it?

        If it isn't there and you can't see it, you're ok.

        David
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-- 

James W. Cortada

Senior Research Fellow

Charles Babbage Institute

University of Minnesota

jcortada at umn.edu

608-274-6382

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This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members

-- 

matthew battles
associate director, metaLAB (at) harvard
fellow, berkman center for internet and society

twitter = @matthewbattles

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