A data janitor is a person who works to take big data and condense it into useful amounts of information. Also known as a "data wrangler", a data janitor sifts through data for companies in the information technology industry. A multitude of start-ups rely on large amounts of data, so a data janitor works to help these businesses with this basic, but difficult process of interpreting data. While it is a commonly held belief that data janitor work is fully automated, many data scientists are employed primarily as data janitors. The information technology industry has been increasingly turning towards new sources of data gathered on consumers, so data janitors have become more commonplace in recent years.
Neural network Gaussian process
A Neural Network Gaussian Process (NNGP) is a Gaussian process (GP) obtained as the limit of a certain type of sequence of neural networks. Specifically, a wide variety of network architectures converges to a GP in the infinitely wide limit, in the sense of distribution. The concept constitutes an intensional definition, i.e., a NNGP is just a GP, but distinguished by how it is obtained. == Motivation == Bayesian networks are a modeling tool for assigning probabilities to events, and thereby characterizing the uncertainty in a model's predictions. Deep learning and artificial neural networks are approaches used in machine learning to build computational models which learn from training examples. Bayesian neural networks merge these fields. They are a type of neural network whose parameters and predictions are both probabilistic. While standard neural networks often assign high confidence even to incorrect predictions, Bayesian neural networks can more accurately evaluate how likely their predictions are to be correct. Computation in artificial neural networks is usually organized into sequential layers of artificial neurons. The number of neurons in a layer is called the layer width. When we consider a sequence of Bayesian neural networks with increasingly wide layers (see figure), they converge in distribution to a NNGP. This large width limit is of practical interest, since the networks often improve as layers get wider. And the process may give a closed form way to evaluate networks. NNGPs also appears in several other contexts: It describes the distribution over predictions made by wide non-Bayesian artificial neural networks after random initialization of their parameters, but before training; it appears as a term in neural tangent kernel prediction equations; it is used in deep information propagation to characterize whether hyperparameters and architectures will be trainable. It is related to other large width limits of neural networks. === Scope === The first correspondence result had been established in the 1995 PhD thesis of Radford M. Neal, then supervised by Geoffrey Hinton at University of Toronto. Neal cites David J. C. MacKay as inspiration, who worked in Bayesian learning. Today the correspondence is proven for: Single hidden layer Bayesian neural networks; deep fully connected networks as the number of units per layer is taken to infinity; convolutional neural networks as the number of channels is taken to infinity; transformer networks as the number of attention heads is taken to infinity; recurrent networks as the number of units is taken to infinity. In fact, this NNGP correspondence holds for almost any architecture: Generally, if an architecture can be expressed solely via matrix multiplication and coordinatewise nonlinearities (i.e., a tensor program), then it has an infinite-width GP. This in particular includes all feedforward or recurrent neural networks composed of multilayer perceptron, recurrent neural networks (e.g., LSTMs, GRUs), (nD or graph) convolution, pooling, skip connection, attention, batch normalization, and/or layer normalization. === Illustration === Every setting of a neural network's parameters θ {\displaystyle \theta } corresponds to a specific function computed by the neural network. A prior distribution p ( θ ) {\displaystyle p(\theta )} over neural network parameters therefore corresponds to a prior distribution over functions computed by the network. As neural networks are made infinitely wide, this distribution over functions converges to a Gaussian process for many architectures. The notation used in this section is the same as the notation used below to derive the correspondence between NNGPs and fully connected networks, and more details can be found there. The figure to the right plots the one-dimensional outputs z L ( ⋅ ; θ ) {\displaystyle z^{L}(\cdot ;\theta )} of a neural network for two inputs x {\displaystyle x} and x ∗ {\displaystyle x^{}} against each other. The black dots show the function computed by the neural network on these inputs for random draws of the parameters from p ( θ ) {\displaystyle p(\theta )} . The red lines are iso-probability contours for the joint distribution over network outputs z L ( x ; θ ) {\displaystyle z^{L}(x;\theta )} and z L ( x ∗ ; θ ) {\displaystyle z^{L}(x^{};\theta )} induced by p ( θ ) {\displaystyle p(\theta )} . This is the distribution in function space corresponding to the distribution p ( θ ) {\displaystyle p(\theta )} in parameter space, and the black dots are samples from this distribution. For infinitely wide neural networks, since the distribution over functions computed by the neural network is a Gaussian process, the joint distribution over network outputs is a multivariate Gaussian for any finite set of network inputs. == Discussion == === Infinitely wide fully connected network === This section expands on the correspondence between infinitely wide neural networks and Gaussian processes for the specific case of a fully connected architecture. It provides a proof sketch outlining why the correspondence holds, and introduces the specific functional form of the NNGP for fully connected networks. The proof sketch closely follows the approach by Novak and coauthors. ==== Network architecture specification ==== Consider a fully connected artificial neural network with inputs x {\displaystyle x} , parameters θ {\displaystyle \theta } consisting of weights W l {\displaystyle W^{l}} and biases b l {\displaystyle b^{l}} for each layer l {\displaystyle l} in the network, pre-activations (pre-nonlinearity) z l {\displaystyle z^{l}} , activations (post-nonlinearity) y l {\displaystyle y^{l}} , pointwise nonlinearity ϕ ( ⋅ ) {\displaystyle \phi (\cdot )} , and layer widths n l {\displaystyle n^{l}} . For simplicity, the width n L + 1 {\displaystyle n^{L+1}} of the readout vector z L {\displaystyle z^{L}} is taken to be 1. The parameters of this network have a prior distribution p ( θ ) {\displaystyle p(\theta )} , which consists of an isotropic Gaussian for each weight and bias, with the variance of the weights scaled inversely with layer width. This network is illustrated in the figure to the right, and described by the following set of equations: x ≡ input y l ( x ) = { x l = 0 ϕ ( z l − 1 ( x ) ) l > 0 z i l ( x ) = ∑ j W i j l y j l ( x ) + b i l W i j l ∼ N ( 0 , σ w 2 n l ) b i l ∼ N ( 0 , σ b 2 ) ϕ ( ⋅ ) ≡ nonlinearity y l ( x ) , z l − 1 ( x ) ∈ R n l × 1 n L + 1 = 1 θ = { W 0 , b 0 , … , W L , b L } {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}x&\equiv {\text{input}}\\y^{l}(x)&=\left\{{\begin{array}{lcl}x&&l=0\\\phi \left(z^{l-1}(x)\right)&&l>0\end{array}}\right.\\z_{i}^{l}(x)&=\sum _{j}W_{ij}^{l}y_{j}^{l}(x)+b_{i}^{l}\\W_{ij}^{l}&\sim {\mathcal {N}}\left(0,{\frac {\sigma _{w}^{2}}{n^{l}}}\right)\\b_{i}^{l}&\sim {\mathcal {N}}\left(0,\sigma _{b}^{2}\right)\\\phi (\cdot )&\equiv {\text{nonlinearity}}\\y^{l}(x),z^{l-1}(x)&\in \mathbb {R} ^{n^{l}\times 1}\\n^{L+1}&=1\\\theta &=\left\{W^{0},b^{0},\dots ,W^{L},b^{L}\right\}\end{aligned}}} ==== ==== z l | y l {\displaystyle z^{l}|y^{l}} is a Gaussian process We first observe that the pre-activations z l {\displaystyle z^{l}} are described by a Gaussian process conditioned on the preceding activations y l {\displaystyle y^{l}} . This result holds even at finite width. Each pre-activation z i l {\displaystyle z_{i}^{l}} is a weighted sum of Gaussian random variables, corresponding to the weights W i j l {\displaystyle W_{ij}^{l}} and biases b i l {\displaystyle b_{i}^{l}} , where the coefficients for each of those Gaussian variables are the preceding activations y j l {\displaystyle y_{j}^{l}} . Because they are a weighted sum of zero-mean Gaussians, the z i l {\displaystyle z_{i}^{l}} are themselves zero-mean Gaussians (conditioned on the coefficients y j l {\displaystyle y_{j}^{l}} ). Since the z l {\displaystyle z^{l}} are jointly Gaussian for any set of y l {\displaystyle y^{l}} , they are described by a Gaussian process conditioned on the preceding activations y l {\displaystyle y^{l}} . The covariance or kernel of this Gaussian process depends on the weight and bias variances σ w 2 {\displaystyle \sigma _{w}^{2}} and σ b 2 {\displaystyle \sigma _{b}^{2}} , as well as the second moment matrix K l {\displaystyle K^{l}} of the preceding activations y l {\displaystyle y^{l}} , z i l ∣ y l ∼ G P ( 0 , σ w 2 K l + σ b 2 ) K l ( x , x ′ ) = 1 n l ∑ i y i l ( x ) y i l ( x ′ ) {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}z_{i}^{l}\mid y^{l}&\sim {\mathcal {GP}}\left(0,\sigma _{w}^{2}K^{l}+\sigma _{b}^{2}\right)\\K^{l}(x,x')&={\frac {1}{n^{l}}}\sum _{i}y_{i}^{l}(x)y_{i}^{l}(x')\end{aligned}}} The effect of the weight scale σ w 2 {\displaystyle \sigma _{w}^{2}} is to rescale the contribution to the covariance matrix from K l {\displaystyle K^{l}} , while the bias is shared for all inputs, and so σ b 2 {\displaystyle \sigma _{b}^{2}} makes the z i l {\displaystyle z_{i}^{l}} for different datapoints more similar and
Greedy embedding
In distributed computing and geometric graph theory, greedy embedding is a process of assigning coordinates to the nodes of a telecommunications network in order to allow greedy geographic routing to be used to route messages within the network. Although greedy embedding has been proposed for use in wireless sensor networks, in which the nodes already have positions in physical space, these existing positions may differ from the positions given to them by greedy embedding, which may in some cases be points in a virtual space of a higher dimension, or in a non-Euclidean geometry. In this sense, greedy embedding may be viewed as a form of graph drawing, in which an abstract graph (the communications network) is embedded into a geometric space. The idea of performing geographic routing using coordinates in a virtual space, instead of using physical coordinates, is due to Rao et al. Subsequent developments have shown that every network has a greedy embedding with succinct vertex coordinates in the hyperbolic plane, that certain graphs including the polyhedral graphs have greedy embeddings in the Euclidean plane, and that unit disk graphs have greedy embeddings in Euclidean spaces of moderate dimensions with low stretch factors. == Definitions == In greedy routing, a message from a source node s to a destination node t travels to its destination by a sequence of steps through intermediate nodes, each of which passes the message on to a neighboring node that is closer to t. If the message reaches an intermediate node x that does not have a neighbor closer to t, then it cannot make progress and the greedy routing process fails. A greedy embedding is an embedding of the given graph with the property that a failure of this type is impossible. Thus, it can be characterized as an embedding of the graph with the property that for every two nodes x and t, there exists a neighbor y of x such that d(x,t) > d(y,t), where d denotes the distance in the embedded space. == Graphs with no greedy embedding == Not every graph has a greedy embedding into the Euclidean plane; a simple counterexample is given by the star K1,6, a tree with one internal node and six leaves. Whenever this graph is embedded into the plane, some two of its leaves must form an angle of 60 degrees or less, from which it follows that at least one of these two leaves does not have a neighbor that is closer to the other leaf. In Euclidean spaces of higher dimensions, more graphs may have greedy embeddings; for instance, K1,6 has a greedy embedding into three-dimensional Euclidean space, in which the internal node of the star is at the origin and the leaves are a unit distance away along each coordinate axis. However, for every Euclidean space of fixed dimension, there are graphs that cannot be embedded greedily: whenever the number n is greater than the kissing number of the space, the graph K1,n has no greedy embedding. == Hyperbolic and succinct embeddings == Unlike the case for the Euclidean plane, every network has a greedy embedding into the hyperbolic plane. The original proof of this result, by Robert Kleinberg, required the node positions to be specified with high precision, but subsequently it was shown that, by using a heavy path decomposition of a spanning tree of the network, it is possible to represent each node succinctly, using only a logarithmic number of bits per point. In contrast, there exist graphs that have greedy embeddings in the Euclidean plane, but for which any such embedding requires a polynomial number of bits for the Cartesian coordinates of each point. == Special classes of graphs == === Trees === The class of trees that admit greedy embeddings into the Euclidean plane has been completely characterized, and a greedy embedding of a tree can be found in linear time when it exists. For more general graphs, some greedy embedding algorithms such as the one by Kleinberg start by finding a spanning tree of the given graph, and then construct a greedy embedding of the spanning tree. The result is necessarily also a greedy embedding of the whole graph. However, there exist graphs that have a greedy embedding in the Euclidean plane but for which no spanning tree has a greedy embedding. === Planar graphs === Papadimitriou & Ratajczak (2005) conjectured that every polyhedral graph (a 3-vertex-connected planar graph, or equivalently by Steinitz's theorem the graph of a convex polyhedron) has a greedy embedding into the Euclidean plane. By exploiting the properties of cactus graphs, Leighton & Moitra (2010) proved the conjecture; the greedy embeddings of these graphs can be defined succinctly, with logarithmically many bits per coordinate. However, the greedy embeddings constructed according to this proof are not necessarily planar embeddings, as they may include crossings between pairs of edges. For maximal planar graphs, in which every face is a triangle, a greedy planar embedding can be found by applying the Knaster–Kuratowski–Mazurkiewicz lemma to a weighted version of a straight-line embedding algorithm of Schnyder. The strong Papadimitriou–Ratajczak conjecture, that every polyhedral graph has a planar greedy embedding in which all faces are convex, remains unproven. === Unit disk graphs === The wireless sensor networks that are the target of greedy embedding algorithms are frequently modeled as unit disk graphs, graphs in which each node is represented as a unit disk and each edge corresponds to a pair of disks with nonempty intersection. For this special class of graphs, it is possible to find succinct greedy embeddings into a Euclidean space of polylogarithmic dimension, with the additional property that distances in the graph are accurately approximated by distances in the embedding, so that the paths followed by greedy routing are short.
Cringe culture
Cringe culture () is an Internet phenomenon and neologism characterized by the mockery and ridicule of content, behaviors, or expressions deemed embarrassing or awkward. The term cringe evolved semantically from describing personal secondhand embarrassment to becoming a dismissive label applied to various forms of online expression and fan behavior. The phenomenon emerged in the early 2000s as a response to awkward online content but gradually transformed into a cultural force that impacted fan communities, creative expression, and social media behavior. Cringe culture gained particular prominence through online platforms like Reddit and 4chan, and has been observed to cause the decline of various fandoms when they become labeled as cringe. Cringe culture has extended beyond Internet communities into academic and professional settings. Educators have noticed increased self-consciousness among students about displaying effort in their work (known as tryharding). By the early 2020s, a cultural pushback against cringe culture began to emerge, with public figures and celebrities advocating for authentic self-expression and rejecting the fear of being perceived as "trying too hard". == Origin == The term cringe underwent semantic change from its original usage describing an involuntary physical response, then to embarrassment. The term gained popularity in online forums during the early 2000s, when public self-humiliation online was a relatively novel phenomenon. Early cringe culture drew much of its content from YouTube. According to Kaitlyn Tiffany of The Atlantic, the majority of cringe stemmed from people who did not seem to understand that anyone in the world could see their videos. The phenomenon initially focused on empathy and secondhand embarrassment, with viewers relating to the awkward situations they witnessed. Popular early examples of cringe include the 2002 viral video Star Wars Kid and "My Video for Briona for Our 7 Month", in which a man winks, licks his lips, and makes romantic declarations to his partner. Early cringe culture encompassed multiple styles, including self-deprecating, playful, and hostile forms. On /b/ (4chan's "random" board), early cringe discussions targeted groups like Tumblr users, social justice warriors, fangirls, and furries, while also being used to describe "normies" who lacked sufficient knowledge of Internet culture to understand its ironic humor. In July 2012, Reddit user Michael Dombkowski took over the dormant r/cringe subreddit after watching a KENS5 segment about teen werewolves. Dombkowski created RSS feeds to alert him whenever someone mentioned cringe anywhere on Reddit, then encouraged users to visit his subreddit. The subreddit collected 10,000 monthly pageviews in its first month, which grew to 941,000 by September 2012 and 5 million the following month. According to The Daily Dot, Dombkowski had intended the subreddit to elicit empathy from viewers rather than to mock its subjects. On November 9, 2012, Dombkowski banned all images from r/cringe and created r/cringepics as a spinoff subreddit for image-based content. The community initially opposed this decision, as users worried that it would fragment the community. In a few months, r/cringepics overtook r/cringe in traffic and subscribers. By 2014, the combined subreddits amassed over 500,000 subscribers and more than 30 million monthly pageviews. In a March 2013 company AMA ("Ask Me Anything"), Reddit's general manager Erik Martin stated that he hates "r/cringepics and anything cringe related and the whole idea." == Impact == Cringe culture has impacted various fandoms. Screen Rant dubbed the phenomenon in which a fandom abruptly dissipates when suddenly deemed cringe (due to the actions of individuals within the fandom or the fandom being re-evaluated as a whole) as the "My Hero Academia Effect". My Hero Academia initially enjoyed popularity in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the resurfacing of embarrassing TikTok videos of convention-goers in 2020 caused the My Hero Academia fandom to be deemed cringy, and thus was abandoned by many anime fans. Similarly, the fandom of the Homestuck webcomic, which ran from 2009 to 2016, faced scrutiny when cosplayers filled bathtubs with Sharpies to achieve gray skin coloring (emulating the design of the Homestuck characters), which led to property damage at hotels and convention bans. Many fans subsequently abandoned the fandom, and as a result, according to Screen Rant, the Homestuck fandom was almost non-existent by 2024. It is worth noting that as of September 27, 2025 animation studio SpindleHorse, also responsible for the popular animated show Hazbin Hotel (another common recipient of Cringe Culture discussion) has released a Homestuck animated pilot episode on YouTube. Other fandoms that were deemed cringy include the Stranger Things and Hazbin Hotel fandoms. Isobel Heal of Varsity described being "far too insecure as a teen to even consider listening to songs inspired by My Little Pony or Five Nights at Freddy's regardless of how catchy they were," but found that attending a Living Tombstone concert allowed her to overcome these inhibitions. She wrote that everyone in the crowd was "completely unafraid to engage in the silliness of the entire night," which allowed her to "let my guard down and enjoy the evening without fear of feeling 'cringe.'" Heal described her experience of singing along to tracks like "Discord", a My Little Pony–themed song, provided what she described as healing "the wounds of the younger me" and represented a form of reclaiming interests that had been suppressed due to social pressure and bullying. == Reactions == New York University professor Ocean Vuong observed that students increasingly hesitate to reveal effort behind their creative work. Vuong stated that students often say "I want to be a good writer, but it's a bit cringe" and perform cynicism because it can be misread as intelligence. In May 2022, Taylor Swift addressed cringe culture in her commencement speech at New York University: she advised graduates to "learn to live alongside cringe" and that "cringe is unavoidable over a lifetime." Other celebrities have made public speeches fighting against the perceived notion that "tryharding" is cringe. In his 31st Screen Actors Guild Awards acceptance speech, Timothée Chalamet emphasized his pursuit of greatness and the effort he invested in his roles, which diverged from typical humble acceptance speeches. In her 67th Annual Grammy Awards acceptance speech, rapper Doechii also stressed her dedication and hard work. According to The Daily Dot, X users called Chalamet and Doechii's speeches "refreshing" and decried those who embrace cringe culture as "miserable losers". In 2023, Critical Role dungeon master Matthew Mercer spoke against cringe culture at New York Comic Con: "We live in an odd time of 'cringe culture' where anything that's honest can be called cringe. And I don't agree with that." Mercer argued that much of what is dismissed as cringe consists of "people being their authentic self." In October 2025, actress and singer Ariana Grande discussed her experience with cringe culture in an interview on the podcast Shut Up Evan. She described the phenomenon as "unfair", stating that people should be allowed to express passion and happiness without judgement. She further explained that in the wake of her leading role in the 2024 film Wicked there were those who perceived the behavior of her and costar Cynthia Erivo during the film's press tour as "inauthentic" and therefore cringe. == Analysis == In 2021, Steven Dashiell wrote in the journal Studies in Popular Culture that cringe culture functions as a mechanism for social boundaries within the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom, and that cringe culture operates not only between different communities but also within fandoms themselves. In his analysis, Dashiell examined a Reddit thread where a brony (an adult fan of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic) expressed embarrassment about other bronies. The thread received over 400 comments in which participants engaged in what Dashiell termed other-izing: distancing themselves from behaviors they deemed cringeworthy. Rather than defending the criticized bronies, commenters consistently used the term cringe to describe their reactions to certain fan behaviors while distinguishing themselves from the so-called "deviant brony" to normalize their own participation in the fandom. A February 2024 Hinge report revealed that more than half of Generation Z worries about cringe while dating and are 50 percent more likely than millennials to delay responding to avoid seeming overeager.
Cultural technology
Cultural technology (Korean: 문화기술; Hanja: 文化技術; RR: munhwagisul) is a system used by South Korean talent agencies to promote K-pop culture throughout the world as part of the Korean Wave. The system was developed by Lee Soo-man, founder of talent agency and record company SM Entertainment. == History == === Coinage === During a speech at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2011, Lee said he coined the term "cultural technology" as a system about fourteen years prior, when S.M. Entertainment decided to promote its K-pop artists to all of Asia. In the late 1990s, Lee and his colleagues created a manual on cultural technology, which specified the steps needed to popularize K-pop artists outside South Korea. "The manual, which all S.M. employees are instructed to learn, explains when to bring in foreign composers, producers, and choreographers; what chord progressions to use in what country; the precise color of eyeshadow a performer should wear in a particular country; the exact hand gestures he or she should make; and the camera angles to be used in the videos (a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree group shot to open the video, followed by a montage of individual closeups)," according to The New Yorker. The term "cultural technology," apart from Lee's systemized definition, can be traced back to the lectures of Michael White, an Australian social worker, educator, and therapeutic theorist and his works Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends (1990) and Maps of Narrative Practice (2007). Its usage may also date further back to French philosopher Michel Foucault (1977). South Korean computer scientist Kwangyun Wohn said he coined the term "culture technology" in 1994. Cultural technology has also been one of six technology initiatives of the South Korean government since 2001. In regards to cultural technology, the Korean Wave is considered one of the most successful outcomes of government support of exporting Korean entertainment products. === The Four Core Stages === The cultural technology system originally employed by SM Entertainment since the 1990s existed in four stages: Casting, Training, Producing, and Marketing/Managing. Each of these four stages were curated to help spread the Hallyu wave through the development of its artists, and are present in the strategies of many other South Korean talent agencies when creating, debuting, and marketing groups. ==== Casting ==== While the majority of K-pop idols are from South Korea, some are from Japan, China, or Thailand. Many of Korea's entertainment companies, such as SM's Global Auditions, Bighit's Hit It auditions, and YG's Next Generation, host worldwide auditions. Scouting and streetcasting are also common, with members like BTS's Jin recruited for their looks or other surface reasons. Sometimes, casting agents go to dance schools to recruit the top dancers to be trained further at the entertainment company. ==== Training ==== Idols train extensively before debut. They receive training in dance, vocal activities, presentation, and other areas that will benefit them in the industry. Oftentimes, this training will last for years at a time, and trainees are in the proverbial dungeon. Before debut, idols and groups attempt to gain fans through pre-debut activities. SM Entertainment has a system in place called SM Rookies, which is a pre-debut team that hosts concerts and releases videos that strengthen the fanbase of the group even before their first single is released. Other forms of pre-debut activities include featuring in other, more seasoned idols' videos—like Nu'est in Orange Caramel or Exo in Girls' Generation-TTS Twinkle or BTS in Jo Kwon. One particular method of pre-debut training is coupled with casting in production shows, like Sixteen and Produce 101, in which members for a final group are selected and trained. ==== Producing ==== The production of music is integral in culture technology. For cultural technology, production of music helps create differentiated content to set trends in the K-pop world—trends that vary from music to also costume, choreography, and music videos. SM in particular focuses heavily on the expansion globally. Some companies also outsource production to more internationally famed parties, like Cube Entertainment's partnership with Skrillex for 4minute's Act. 7. ==== Marketing/Managing ==== In the marketing and management stage, talent agencies seek to broaden their reach. Often, idols have potential for being actors and actresses in dramas, or perhaps hosts/permanent members of variety shows like Kim Hee-chul in Knowing Bros. This so-called omnidirectional marketing lineup ranges over lifestyle and seeks to reach many aspects of living, like music, TV, drama, entertainment, sports, and fashion. This is also where older groups find new life, like Super Junior. Companies are not complacent but experiment constantly to develop the best marketing for the best management system. Marketing also aspires to branch out to international audiences, sometimes via the implementation of variety shows. Despite being primarily in Korean, these variety shows are accessible to all due to the simplistic, easily understood nature of shows—game-oriented shows like Run BTS! or consistently subbed shows like Weekly Idol are popular in showing the fun-loving side of idols. == Evolution into New Culture Technology == In February 2016, SM hosted a press conference discussing the future of SM and its cultural technology. Lee Soo-man announced the implementation of New Culture Technology, an SM-specific system. While SM's cultural technology in the past relied on local, Korean artists like Rain and BoA, the updated model tries to embed more and more foreign singers from strategic markets into larger girl or boy bands. These imported singers are then used to promote their acts back in their respective home countries. New Culture Technology is five projects—SM Station, EDM, Digital Platforms, Rookies Entertainment, and MCN—and one experimental group, NCT. It is a convergence and expansion of SM's four core culture technologies developed and deals heavily with interaction and the desire to innovate through communication. === SM Station === SM announced their intention of creating a new song every week for 52 weeks. Through this constant output of music, they intend to stray away from conventional forms of music and show active movement in digital music market and physical album market through freely and continuously releasing music. Additionally, this SM Station will feature collaborations between artists, producers, composers, and company brands outside the SM label. The name of SM Station is both derived from the radio station and the metaphorical train station. === NCT === Neo Culture Technology (NCT) introduced the idea of "Interactive". SM company tried to connect the targeting market, customers and artist, in order to lead the K-pop culture. NCT (Neo Culture Technology) is the new artist group formed by SM that embodies the concepts of cultural technology. With the seemingly limitless combinations and groups, SM aspires to make the whole world a stage for NCT. Since 2023, there are six NCT groups, who debuted on the digital song sales: NCT U, NCT 127, NCT Dream, WayV, NCT DoJaeJung, and NCT Wish. As of October 2023, the group consists of 25 members: Johnny, Taeyong, Yuta, Kun, Doyoung, Ten, Jaehyun, Winwin, Jungwoo, Mark, Xiaojun, Hendery, Renjun, Jeno, Haechan, Jaemin, Yangyang, Chenle, Jisung, Sion, Riku, Yushi, Daeyoung, Ryo, and Sakuya. ScreaM Records ScreaM Records has been released by SM Entertainment as an EDM label since 2016 for "SM TOWN: New Culture Technology". ScreaM Records is made for "performances made to be enjoyed". It collaborates with inside and outside Korean well-known EDM DJs. ScreaM Records has first launched collaborated song "Wave" E-Mart's home electronics store, Electro Mart. "Our goal is to provide opportunities to producers who have yet to be discovered and produce world famous DJs from the Asian scene." a ScreaM Records representative said. == Three stages of globalization == According to Lee, there are three stages necessary to popularize Korean culture outside South Korea: exporting the product, collaborating with international companies to expand the product's presence abroad, and finally creating a joint venture with international companies. As part of their joint ventures with international companies, South Korean talent agencies may hire foreign composers, producers, and choreographers to ensure K-pop songs feel "local" to foreign countries.
Gonioreflectometer
A gonioreflectometer is a device for measuring a bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF). The device consists of a light source illuminating the material to be measured and a sensor that captures light reflected from that material. The light source should be able to illuminate and the sensor should be able to capture data from a hemisphere around the target. The hemispherical rotation dimensions of the sensor and light source are the four dimensions of the BRDF. The 'gonio' part of the word refers to the device's ability to measure at different angles. Several similar devices have been built and used to capture data for similar functions. Most of these devices use a camera instead of the light intensity-measuring sensor to capture a two-dimensional sample of the target. Examples include: a spatial gonioreflectometer for capturing the SBRDF (McAllister, 2002). a camera gantry for capturing the light field (Levoy and Hanrahan, 1996). an unnamed device for capturing the bidirectional texture function (Dana et al., 1999).
Digital studio
A digital studio provides both a technology-equipped space and technological/rhetorical support to students (commonly at a university) working individually or in groups on a variety of digital projects, such as designing a website, developing an electronic portfolio for a class, creating a blog, making edits, selecting images for a visual essay, or writing a script for a podcast. == History/theory == === Overview === Digital Studios are places with different names but similar objectives. They have risen in response to the need for resources dedicated to improving students' interactions with digital technologies for rhetorical ends. Digital Studios have often been theoretically and administratively linked to writing centers, which are sites where students can seek assistance with their text-based projects. The academic term that has been used for this kind of site (i.e. a writing center with a focus on digital and new media) is multiliteracy center. Besides having a multimodal focus, Digital Studios also make a departure from writing center model in allowing students the freedom to work in the Studio without one-on-one interaction with a writing tutor. === The rise of technology === ==== Computer literacy in popular culture ==== As early as 1983, computer literacy was being hailed in The New York Times as the "new goal in schools." As computer technology became more ubiquitous, and the World Wide Web became more popular and accessible, and as the teaching of computer skills became official US policy with the enactment of the "Technology Literacy Challenge" by the Clinton Administration in 1996, educators across disciplines began to investigate with renewed vigor the role of computer technology in curriculum as both a means and an end. ==== Scholarly interest in 'multiliteracies' ==== The same year that President Clinton initiated the "Technology Literacy Challenge", the New London Group (NLG) issued a call for scholars of literacy pedagogy to account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies. This includes understanding and competent control of representational forms that are becoming increasingly significant in the overall communications environment, such as visual images and their relationship to the written word – for instance, visual design in desktop publishing or the interface of visual and linguistic meaning in multimedia. This account for new text forms, combined with a similar account for "increasingly globalized societies," is called 'multiliteracies' by the NLG. ==== Technological literacy in rhetoric and composition ==== Two years later, during the 1998 CCCC Chair's Address, Cynthia Selfe (who founded the peer-reviewed journal Computers and Composition in 1983) addressed professionals in the field of Rhetoric and Composition with an objective similar to that of the NLG, arguing that as a field, composition scholars had "paid technology issues precious little focused attention over the years." She called this lack of attention "dangerously shortsighted." What was needed, Selfe claimed, was for teachers to "pay attention" to "how technology is now inextricably linked with literacy and literacy education in this country." In a way, Selfe's call marked the beginning of a new scholarly interest in what Selfe called "critical technological literacy": Composition teachers, language arts teachers, and other literacy specialists need to recognize that the relevance of technology in the English studies disciplines is not simply a matter of helping students work effectively with communication software and hardware, but, rather, also a matter of helping them to understand and to be able to assess – to pay attention to – the social, economic, and pedagogical implications of new communication technologies and technological initiatives that affect their lives. Scholars who took up this call included Barbara Blakely Duffelmeyer, who conducted studies involving the incorporation of "critical computer literacy" (an adaptation of Selfe's term) into first-year composition. ==== Communications across media, inside and outside school ==== The years following Selfe's address saw more rapid advancements in mobile technologies, social media, and Web 2.0, creating even more new venues of composing for teachers to pay attention to. In her own CCCC Chair's Address in 2004, Kathleen Blake Yancey cited these new venues in her argument as a "new curriculum for the 21st century," one that would bring "together the writing outside of school and that of inside." Such a curriculum, she said: is located in a new vocabulary, a new set of practices, and a new set of outcomes; it will focus our research in new and provocative ways; it has as its goal the creation of thoughtful, informed, technologically adept writing publics. A professor at Clemson at the time of her speech, Yancey also argued for the creation of an undergraduate major in composition and rhetoric. She soon moved to Florida State University, where she helped to establish a new major in line with the one she argued for at CCCC called Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM). As teachers and administrators across the country looked to incorporate more digital technology into their curriculum, the need for spaces for digital composition and for support with the innumerable digital composing platforms became apparent. A Digital Studio is one such space. === Link with writing centers === With the need for support for students who would engage with digital writing and multimedia projects, professionals involved with work in writing centers began to draw comparisons between their traditional work — assisting students with alphabetic texts on the page — and a new kind of work: assisting students with their multimedia projects on the screen. John Trimbur predicted in 2000: My guess is that writing centers will more and more define themselves as multiliteracy centers. Many are already doing so – tutoring oral presentations, adding online tutorials, offering workshops in evaluating web sources, and being more conscious of document design. To my mind, new digital literacies will increasingly be incorporated into writing centers not just as sources of information or delivery systems for tutoring but as productive arts in their own right, and writing center work will, if anything, become more rhetorical in paying attention to the practices and effects of design in written and visual communication — more product-oriented and perhaps less like the composing conferences of the process movement. Later, just months before Yancey delivered her CCCC Chair's Address, Michael Pemberton, writing in the Writing Center Journal, asked: As we enter an era when electronic publishing and computer-mediated discourse are the norm, an era when new literary genres and new forms of communication emerge on, seemingly, a weekly basis, we must ask ourselves whether writing centers should continue to dwell exclusively in the linear, non-linked world of the printed page or whether they should plan to redefine themselves – and retrain themselves – to take residence in the emerging world of multimedia, hyperlinked, digital documents. To put it plainly, should we be preparing tutors to conference with students about hypertexts? Pemberton also surveyed (by his account) the forty-year history of how "writing centers [have] viewed new technologies," observing that "the relationship between writing centers and computer technology has been, overall, only a cordial one." Pemberton's article is evidence of the continuing discussion among writing center professionals about the need for support for students' digital creations, support which they saw as analogous to work in writing centers. In 2010, a collection edited by David Sheridan and James Inman, Multiliteracy Centers: Writing Center Work, New Media, and Multimodal Rhetoric, was published. Many of the chapters therein cite the above Trimbur and Pemberton quotes as they work to explain the exigence for the collection, the instances in which multiliteracy centers have been established (the founding of the Clemson Class of 1941 Studio for Student Communication is the subject of two chapters), and both theoretical and practical analyses of potential futures of such work. === 'Studio' vs. 'Center:' A break from the model === The conflation of digital studios and writing centers into multiliteracy centers is helpful in some respects, for example, administratively the two may be managed in similar ways and staffed by the same people. In other respects, it has been said that it is better to separate them into two distinct kinds of facilities. The very choice of naming a "writing center" or "digital studio" by either (or another) title, for instance, ought (according to some) to be informed by what kinds of student-activities are expected to take place there. A writing center is a place for individual students to seek help from individual writing