“Reading” Faces

As we’ve extensively discussed throughout our Digital Humanities class – accessibility, interactivity, and precision have become the face of new materialities in the digital and technological web interface. The way we access and interact with one another has become increasingly more “in your face” with social media, and online social sites, such as Facebook, twitter, linked-in, instagram and so forth. These online social profile sites are a form of new materialities in the sense that they give us access in a new digital format to present a subjective “reading” of ourselves. One of the major components of these social profile sites is putting up pictures, such as profile pictures. Recently a new facial recognition technology has begun being developed, which “will mean users will almost never have to tag their own pictures and Facebook will do it for them” (Baliga). The article I have included details the development and process stating the “technology will create a 3D map of facial features and create a colorless model to narrow in on specific characteristics” with an accuracy of 97.25%. Clearly this “reading” of a person’s face through this technology is unlike how another human “reads” or recognizes someone. This form of “new materialities” creates an interface of “reading” faces through a technological interface and coding, much like the way a computer “reads” a text document. 

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2014/03/19/Facebooks-Deep-Face-facial-recognition-technology-to-have-near-human-accuracy/3151395247809/?spt=mps&or=4