The politics of memory
Keeping a diary and letting A.I help write it, may help immigrants to save their lifes.
Migration is one of the global biggest challenges we face today. Since nowadays we are living in complex times of massive interconnectedness it is necessary for migration policy to meet technology. In the past and in the present, migrations have taken place as a natural movement of human groups in search of food and shelter, and later in the modern era because of political asylum and wars in search for humanitarian support, or simply because people aims to achieve a better a life. However, no matter what were the circumstances or reasons, when we decide to move from one place to another or from one continent to another, we all become exposed to a different form of vulnerability. Because migration is not only about leaving a geographical space it is about leaving behind other people, belongings, and even memories.
While doing some research on migration, I found in The Guardian an article about an NGO who supports refugees from Syria. They mention how much help is desperate needed, and how much migration has increased in the last years. But what really caught my attention was a declaration speaking about the needs and challenges they face; “Give me water, shelter, and a cell phone…that’s all we need”.
I believe it is true when we say that cell phones are nowadays one of the cheapest technologies, and also one of the most common objects to bring while traveling. Nevertheless, not everyone is privileged to afford the latest equipment or a data plan service. Some people just, don’t have enough tech skills, to download apps etc. and take advantage of technology. But most people, especially immigrants just acquire the cheapest devices because they just can’t afford something else, even basic ones.
With this mindset, I wonder if is possible to use text-messaging interfaces with machine learning to tell people stories on a very conversational way and help migrant communities, use story telling to write their own history on a digital journal stored in a cloud base service.
Project Brief
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Initial hunch
A.I. has increased its use on the everyday services and customer assistants, why not use it to assist people to create everyday memories?
Hypothesis
Data it’s being recorded by a diverse number of organizations and actors through diverse mechanisms. This data is being used either to understand or analyze human behaviours and history. This being said, how does A.i, understands which stories and moments are worth to understand and study? How does A.I. analyzes potential value of determined human behaviours (both in moral and economic ways)? and how inclusive or exclusive this process is? Has A.I. any social, racial and gendered bias?
With this project, my intention is to explore through mobile devices, the creation of diaries by people with limited access to technology and communication services, assisted remotely with the use of artificial intelligence through text messages.
Community
Immigrant community in the US with access to a cell phone device.
Concept + Technology
“Great chat-based apps will message you just enough helpful information you need and then wait silently until you pull asking for more specific information.” — Matt Hartman from BetaWorks.
Using bots and chat interfaces with natural language understanding, having conversations to recognize personal insights and topic classifier, to create timelines of the user’s daily moments. The service will also have a series of commands to build a hidden homescreen pulling information only when the user is asking. The user instead of downloading an app or use of different interface will only require the cell phones text messenger.
Feedback
– How storytelling will help to unveil story-data that might help build more comprehensive migration policies and services?
– The feeling is that the proposal leans more to be a solution that helps to gather memories from migrants to empower them to tell their own story on an easy way.
– Let’s be careful of not profiling people and to seek a solution to make a safe space to do so. Also to integrate options or ways to connect people through their stories.
