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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".
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 too await our overlords to assign me to a group. Then I can finally know what it is I'm supposed to act like.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
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 !!
Cosplayers might break your Pseudocode. Lots of dark clothing and non-standard hair colors as well as face make-up / lighter skin tones.
Cosplayers aren't real people though. They are characters.
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
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.
Even this perspective makes you part of an "urban tribe", the "non-conformity conformists".
I totally agree with most groups, like sports. I defend LInux like a fanboi because I support the free software movement ideologically, and I use it. Not like a sports fan to me. On another topic, is the link in your sig SFW?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
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.
Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't NEED to follow ME, You don't NEED to follow ANYBODY! You've got to think for your selves! You're ALL individuals!
The Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals!
Brian: You're all different!
The Crowd: Yes, we ARE all different!
Man in crowd: I'm not...
Those aren't the Urban Tribes I learned in history class. Aren't they supposed to be Collina, Esquilina, Palatina and Suburana?
Maybe they should come up with a uniform, like beatniks. Berets and sunglasses, Man.
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
(A) The people most likely to do that are the ones who have the least personal accomplishments so they outsource their pride to whatever groups they can manage to identify with. It is a sign of deep insecurity.
(B) This NYT article has nothing to do with that. It is about identifying where you grew up or otherwise lived for a long period of your life based on your word and pronunciation choices.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Cosplayers are real people portraying characters. Their tribe is that of "cosplayers".
So... this is para-dice? Not quite what I thought it would be.
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
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.
Quite True,
I want to be different so I will go Goth, I will dress up and act like all the other people who act Goth.
Hipsters, yea those guys are just trying to fit in, it is just hip to seem like you are not trying to follow a style.
Bikers would be next on that list... However a lot of their dress is functional, leather isn't just stylish because it looks tough, but it will save you skin if you fall of the bike.
Surfers, mostly functional ware. When they are not surfing they can look different.
Formal is almost the definition of trying to fit in with the group.
I don't a hatred of Goth people, however that group seems the most hypercritical in their fitting in.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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"
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
we can ascertain your tribe by getting a response to a few questions (cause it's fun to "pigeon-hole" and label people) , but you have to answer these questions about yourself and your two closet friends who are not Significant Others:
1. Age
2. Biological Gender and then Gender you Self-Identify
3. Number of and Sexual Orientation of Your Sexual Partners in Last Five Years.
4. Children? and are some of them living with you?
5. Four Favorite Activities or Hobbies
6. Occupation and Income
7. Two Personal Heros
8. Two Favorite Kind of Music
9. Favorite system of government
10. Favorite economic system
11. Personal Religion?
12. What three causes have you donated in last year?
13. Community service or activity that benefits strangers?
Bikers you mean bikers who ride bikes or people who want to buy in to the Hd myth lifestyle. Or a merkins who just want an excuse to wear crotchless leather chaps?
the Romans thought the goths were funny, at first.
making a computer crudely approximate what humans do to each other all the time with their brains?
it won't change anything.
By who? The "tribe" that likes pigeonholes?
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They're good decisions if you're happy with them, that's all the validation I need.
Twinstiq, game news