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Can a Computer Identify Your Urban Tribe?
Zothecula writes "Whether it's fashion, a favorite football team, or a certain kind of music, humans seem to enjoy being considered part of a larger group, and often self-identify as such. With this in mind, students from the University of California, San Diego Jacobs school of Engineering are currently developing a computer algorithm that can deduce from an image whether you're a goth, surfer, hipster, or biker."
Urban Tribe: Neckbeard
I sent the tribe an e-mail stating, "Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any tribe that will accept people like me as a member".
People are so interested in looking exactly the same... It's the opposite of an ACTUAL style.
Just take color averages.
Pseudocode:
Goth if you're wearing a lot of black or your hair is a non-standard color
--In order to distinguish from Bikers, take the average of the face and determine if it is mostly flesh-colored (facial hair and helmets)
Surfer if you're wearing bright colors
Hipster if your color average does not fall into the other three categories for largely symbolic and ironic reasons
Many of us are disturbed by the idea of automated facial recognition being coupled with all the video surveillance that's becoming more and more prevalent in public places, to track us wherever we go, and that's bad enough. Now you're telling us that they're taking it to the next level and developing automated video profiling software? Is the world of Minority Report just around the corner?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Right now, it's correctly indentified every one of the students who sat down in front of it as "overweight nerd"
Everybody is unique. Just like everybody else...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I don't even know what "tribe" I'm a part of. It would be amazing if I was able to figure that out.
Now this computer thingy is figuring out who I am OMG!
Defending something for which you have no part in its success is silly to me. Whether it be sports or being a Windows fanboy, I just don't get it. The blind patriotism some people have is also baffling. Being a groupie and making arguments on behalf of people/companies/teams as if their actions somehow reflect on you as a person is delusional, sorry.
Twinstiq, game news
I am E) a gothic surfer hippie hell's angel wannabe !! Now all I need to do is wear black, learn to surf, where a flower on my scalp, and kill some motherfucker !!
I ran it myself and it said, "Loser."
Someone has too much time on their hands.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It says I'm a terrorist...Hold on...Someone is at the door
I shudder to think of what this tribe would look like, and how it would be characterized.
whether you're a goth, surfer, hipster, or biker
As often happens, I was placed in "none of the above" when social classification came around.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
called Quest.
I am not a Hynerian!
It seems to me that the only application for this sort of this is attempting to attract venture capital to create a "business" that can be sold to Facebook/Google/Yahoo/whatever to aid in their quest to give marketers even more information which they think might help them sell more stuff.
While this is unsurprising, it's also pathetic. Sigh.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
So some people with (arguably) too much time on their hands have come up with an "algorithm" that will place me in one of several arbitrarily defined groups. BFD.
I would consider myself a member of at least five different tribes. While there is overlap between these tribes the overlap is nowhere near complete. For example I am a crafter and a gamer. While there are many gamers who are also crafters there are at least as many who are not.
I don't belong to one, plain and simple, i am self inflicted loner. And no, you, my slash dot co readers aren't it, as i dont agree with many of you on many different topics.
I love goth and industrial music, have been to hundreds of concerts, met and was friends with many band members. But I look decidedly regular. I'm looking back at my old photos, and I see one of a standard geeky guy with regular hair and glasses, wearing an admittedly hideous blue windbreaker, partying with Nik Fiend.
So this algorithm shouldn't only associate your face with your culture, but use the faces of those around you to establish your culture. But then I have friends who are in a death metal/industrial band, and their mainstream family members come to concerts to show support. So we'd have regular people labeled as being in the death metal culture if we did that.
I'm impressed they were able to identify all 4 urban tribes in America and Europe! That's usually a job for anthropologists, and not all of them get it right either.
Those aren't the Urban Tribes I learned in history class. Aren't they supposed to be Collina, Esquilina, Palatina and Suburana?
So... this is para-dice? Not quite what I thought it would be.
Didn't the goths live in Scandinavia during 700 B.C. before moving south to Italy? What, there is another kind of goth? I've been reading too much ancient history.
While most of us value the privacy of our life choices, members of urban tribes are willing to share the information with others by making their clothing and music tastes easily identifiable to everyone. I can't help but think any corporate parties interested in this algorithm would improve their PR tenfold by actually taking the polite, sociable route of asking for this kind of information instead of aggressively profiling potential customers like criminals. It would certainly yield much more accurate data.
Of course, it would be 'racist' to want to identify with your own race - IF YOU'RE WHITE...
Future US TV Journalists will not have to risk error or waste their time stereotyping the people in their reports! They can spend their important time investigating celebrities!
Police cameras can profile people without bias so they know who to abuse and who not to abuse! No more frivolous lawsuits over police prejudice!
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
It surprises me CS students often fail to comprehend the potential ramifications of experiments such as these.
The subculture weirdoes dress in a certain common way exactly to be easily identifiable. It's about as subtle as holding a blinking "I'm a goth." sign over their head. So while I think that the software is impressive, I wouldn't worry about the privacy implications much, it's only able to profile extroverts who want to be noticed.
Nonconformity is a myth.
Are they replicating if they're cosplaying their own original characters? (Do not steal :p )
or biker goths...
or biker surfers
or goth surfers
all four of which would be "tribes" I've hung out with over the years.
at one point in the 80's and 90's if you had to pin me down to a "tribe" then "biker goth" would be about as good (and not a particularly good "good") and you could narrow it down to.
Now I just belong to that tribe called "boring old farts who love to tell the youth how much more authentic we were back in our day"
This technology sounds great for our future robotic police force. Police robots will need these algorithms to determine who to harass and what approaches to take.
As a cyberneticist, who grew up playing Shadowrun instead of D&D, I'm perfectly fine with being defined as a member of the non-human tribe.
Reminds me of the interiew snippet in A Hard Day's Night.
reporter: Are you a Mod or a Rocker?
Beatle(Ringo IIRC): I'm a Mocker.
So much for tribes.
Me? I'll go w/ Zoot Suit, with side vents, 5 inches wide!
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
none of all that bullshit, because you baby are deviant.