Butler in a Box

Butler in a Box

Butler in a Box was an early voice-controlled home automation device developed in 1983 by magician Gus Searcy and programmer Franz Kavan. The device allowed users to control various home electronics, such as lights and phones, using voice commands. It predated modern smart speakers and virtual assistants by several decades. == History == The idea for the Butler in a Box originated in 1983 when Searcy was asked by friends why he couldn't simply command lights to turn on and off if he could pull rabbits out of hats, given his background as a professional magician. Searcy partnered with former IBM programmer Kavan to develop the device, with their first prototype being named "Sidney". The Butler in a Box combined remote control technology with voice recognition to enable control of home devices. However, it faced challenges due to the technological limitations of the era and its high price point of nearly $1,500 (equivalent to around $3,700 in 2021). == Features and functionality == Users could activate the Butler in a Box by speaking a wake word, typically a traditional butler name, and the device would address the user as "boss". It was capable of performing tasks such as: Turning lights on and off, controlling individual zones if lights were connected to remote control modules Making and receiving phone calls Setting timers Pairing with sensors to function as a security alarm system However, the device required extensive voice training for each user, a time-consuming process compared to modern voice recognition. Additionally, settings and trained commands would be lost if power was out for over 3 hours due to the volatile memory technology used at the time. == Reception and legacy == While innovative for its time, the Butler in a Box did not achieve widespread commercial success due to its high price and the technical limitations of the 1980s. Nevertheless, it served as an important early step in the development of home automation and showcased the potential for voice-controlled technology to enhance accessibility and convenience in the home. Decades later, products like Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple's Siri would make voice-controlled smart home devices commonplace and affordable, building on the groundwork laid by early attempts like the Butler in a Box.

Gradient vector flow

Gradient vector flow (GVF), a computer vision framework introduced by Chenyang Xu and Jerry L. Prince, is the vector field that is produced by a process that smooths and diffuses an input vector field. It is usually used to create a vector field from images that points to object edges from a distance. It is widely used in image analysis and computer vision applications for object tracking, shape recognition, segmentation, and edge detection. In particular, it is commonly used in conjunction with active contour model. == Background == Finding objects or homogeneous regions in images is a process known as image segmentation. In many applications, the locations of object edges can be estimated using local operators that yield a new image called an edge map. The edge map can then be used to guide a deformable model, sometimes called an active contour or a snake, so that it passes through the edge map in a smooth way, therefore defining the object itself. A common way to encourage a deformable model to move toward the edge map is to take the spatial gradient of the edge map, yielding a vector field. Since the edge map has its highest intensities directly on the edge and drops to zero away from the edge, these gradient vectors provide directions for the active contour to move. When the gradient vectors are zero, the active contour will not move, and this is the correct behavior when the contour rests on the peak of the edge map itself. However, because the edge itself is defined by local operators, these gradient vectors will also be zero far away from the edge and therefore the active contour will not move toward the edge when initialized far away from the edge. Gradient vector flow (GVF) is the process that spatially extends the edge map gradient vectors, yielding a new vector field that contains information about the location of object edges throughout the entire image domain. GVF is defined as a diffusion process operating on the components of the input vector field. It is designed to balance the fidelity of the original vector field, so it is not changed too much, with a regularization that is intended to produce a smooth field on its output. Although GVF was designed originally for the purpose of segmenting objects using active contours attracted to edges, it has been since adapted and used for many alternative purposes. Some newer purposes including defining a continuous medial axis representation, regularizing image anisotropic diffusion algorithms, finding the centers of ribbon-like objects, constructing graphs for optimal surface segmentations, creating a shape prior, and much more. == Theory == The theory of GVF was originally described by Xu and Prince. Let f ( x , y ) {\displaystyle \textstyle f(x,y)} be an edge map defined on the image domain. For uniformity of results, it is important to restrict the edge map intensities to lie between 0 and 1, and by convention f ( x , y ) {\displaystyle \textstyle f(x,y)} takes on larger values (close to 1) on the object edges. The gradient vector flow (GVF) field is given by the vector field v ( x , y ) = [ u ( x , y ) , v ( x , y ) ] {\displaystyle \textstyle \mathbf {v} (x,y)=[u(x,y),v(x,y)]} that minimizes the energy functional In this equation, subscripts denote partial derivatives and the gradient of the edge map is given by the vector field ∇ f = ( f x , f y ) {\displaystyle \textstyle \nabla f=(f_{x},f_{y})} . Figure 1 shows an edge map, the gradient of the (slightly blurred) edge map, and the GVF field generated by minimizing E {\displaystyle \textstyle {\mathcal {E}}} . Equation 1 is a variational formulation that has both a data term and a regularization term. The first term in the integrand is the data term. It encourages the solution v {\displaystyle \textstyle \mathbf {v} } to closely agree with the gradients of the edge map since that will make v − ∇ f {\displaystyle \textstyle \mathbf {v} -\nabla f} small. However, this only needs to happen when the edge map gradients are large since v − ∇ f {\displaystyle \textstyle \mathbf {v} -\nabla f} is multiplied by the square of the length of these gradients. The second term in the integrand is a regularization term. It encourages the spatial variations in the components of the solution to be small by penalizing the sum of all the partial derivatives of v {\displaystyle \textstyle \mathbf {v} } . As is customary in these types of variational formulations, there is a regularization parameter μ > 0 {\displaystyle \textstyle \mu >0} that must be specified by the user in order to trade off the influence of each of the two terms. If μ {\displaystyle \textstyle \mu } is large, for example, then the resulting field will be very smooth and may not agree as well with the underlying edge gradients. Theoretical Solution. Finding v ( x , y ) {\displaystyle \textstyle \mathbf {v} (x,y)} to minimize Equation 1 requires the use of calculus of variations since v ( x , y ) {\displaystyle \textstyle \mathbf {v} (x,y)} is a function, not a variable. Accordingly, the Euler equations, which provide the necessary conditions for v {\displaystyle \textstyle \mathbf {v} } to be a solution can be found by calculus of variations, yielding where ∇ 2 {\displaystyle \textstyle \nabla ^{2}} is the Laplacian operator. It is instructive to examine the form of the equations in (2). Each is a partial differential equation that the components u {\displaystyle u} and v {\displaystyle v} of v {\displaystyle \mathbf {v} } must satisfy. If the magnitude of the edge gradient is small, then the solution of each equation is guided entirely by Laplace's equation, for example ∇ 2 u = 0 {\displaystyle \textstyle \nabla ^{2}u=0} , which will produce a smooth scalar field entirely dependent on its boundary conditions. The boundary conditions are effectively provided by the locations in the image where the magnitude of the edge gradient is large, where the solution is driven to agree more with the edge gradients. Computational Solutions. There are two fundamental ways to compute GVF. First, the energy function E {\displaystyle {\mathcal {E}}} itself (1) can be directly discretized and minimized, for example, by gradient descent. Second, the partial differential equations in (2) can be discretized and solved iteratively. The original GVF paper used an iterative approach, while later papers introduced considerably faster implementations such as an octree-based method, a multi-grid method, and an augmented Lagrangian method. In addition, very fast GPU implementations have been developed in Extensions and Advances. GVF is easily extended to higher dimensions. The energy function is readily written in a vector form as which can be solved by gradient descent or by finding and solving its Euler equation. Figure 2 shows an illustration of a three-dimensional GVF field on the edge map of a simple object (see ). The data and regularization terms in the integrand of the GVF functional can also be modified. A modification described in , called generalized gradient vector flow (GGVF) defines two scalar functions and reformulates the energy as While the choices g ( ∇ f | ) = μ {\displaystyle \textstyle g(\nabla f|)=\mu } and h ( | ∇ f | ) = | ∇ f | 2 {\displaystyle \textstyle h(|\nabla f|)=|\nabla f|^{2}} reduce GGVF to GVF, the alternative choices g ( | ∇ f | ) = exp ⁡ { − | ∇ f | / K } {\displaystyle \textstyle g(|\nabla f|)=\exp\{-|\nabla f|/K\}} and h ( ∇ f | ) = 1 − g ( | ∇ f | ) {\displaystyle \textstyle h(\nabla f|)=1-g(|\nabla f|)} , for K {\displaystyle K} a user-selected constant, can improve the tradeoff between the data term and its regularization in some applications. The GVF formulation has been further extended to vector-valued images in where a weighted structure tensor of a vector-valued image is used. A learning based probabilistic weighted GVF extension was proposed in to further improve the segmentation for images with severely cluttered textures or high levels of noise. The variational formulation of GVF has also been modified in motion GVF (MGVF) to incorporate object motion in an image sequence. Whereas the diffusion of GVF vectors from a conventional edge map acts in an isotropic manner, the formulation of MGVF incorporates the expected object motion between image frames. An alternative to GVF called vector field convolution (VFC) provides many of the advantages of GVF, has superior noise robustness, and can be computed very fast. The VFC field v V F C {\displaystyle \textstyle \mathbf {v} _{\mathrm {VFC} }} is defined as the convolution of the edge map f {\displaystyle f} with a vector field kernel k {\displaystyle \mathbf {k} } where The vector field kernel k {\displaystyle \textstyle \mathbf {k} } has vectors that always point toward the origin but their magnitudes, determined in detail by the function m {\displaystyle m} , decrease to zero with increasing distance from the origin. The beauty of VFC is that it can be computed very rapidly using a fast Fourier tra

Ambient awareness

Ambient awareness (AmA) is a term used by social scientists to describe a form of peripheral social awareness through social media. This awareness is propagated from relatively constant contact with one's friends and colleagues via social networking platforms on the Internet. The term essentially defines the sort of omnipresent knowledge one experiences by being a regular user of these media outlets that allow a constant connection with one's social circle. According to Clive Thompson of The New York Times, ambient awareness is "very much like being physically near someone and picking up on mood through the little things; body language, sighs, stray comments". Academic Andreas Kaplan defines ambient awareness as "awareness created through regular and constant reception, and/or exchange of information fragments through social media". Two friends who regularly follow one another's digital information can already be aware of each other's lives without actually being physically present to have had a conversation. == Social == Socially speaking, ambient awareness and social media are products of the new generations who are being born or growing up in the digital age, starting circa 1998 and running to current times. Social media is personal media (what you're doing in the moment, how you feel, a picture of where you are) combined with social communication. Social media is the lattice work for ambient awareness. Without social media the state of ambient awareness cannot exist. Artificial Social Networking Intelligence (ASNI) refers to the application of artificial intelligence within social networking services and social media platforms. It encompasses various technologies and techniques used to automate, personalize, enhance, improve, and synchronize user's interactions and experiences within social networks. ASNI is expected to evolve rapidly, influencing how we interact online and shaping their digital experiences. Transparency, ethical considerations, media influence bias, and user control over data will be crucial to ensure responsible development and positive impact. A significant feature of social media is that it is created by those who also consume it. Mostly, those participating in this phenomenon are adolescents, college age, or young adult professionals. According to Dr. Mimi Ito, a cultural anthropologist and Professor in Residence at the University of California at Irvine, the mobile device is the greatest proxy device used to create and distribute Social Media. She reportedly states that "teenagers capture and produce their own media, and stay in constant ambient contact with each other..." using mobile devices. Usually while doing this they are consuming other forms of media such as music or video content via their smart phones, tablets, or other similar devices. Effectively this has led social scientists to believe that learning and multitasking will have a new face as the products of the digital generation enter the work force and begin to integrate their learning methods into the standard preexisting business models of today. Professors Kaplan and Haenlein see ambient awareness as one of the major reasons for the success of such microblogging sites as Twitter. == Origins == The earliest available technology that could be used for constant social contact is the cell phone. For the first time, people could be contacted readily and at will beyond the confines of their work or homes. Then later, with the additional service of texting, one can see the somewhat primitive form of the status update. Since the text message only allows for 160 characters to transmit pertinent information it paved the way for the status update as we know it today. The transition from only having a few points of regular long distance contact, to being constantly available via cell phone, is what primed society for social networking websites. Perhaps the first instance where these websites created the possibility of larger scale ambient awareness was when Facebook installed the news feed. The news feed automatically sends compiled information on all of a users contacts activities directly to them so that they can access all of the happenings in their world from one location. For the first time, becoming someone's Facebook friend was the equivalent of subscribing to a feed of their daily minutiae. Since this innovation, a new wave of micro-blogging services have emerged, such as Twitter or Tumblr. Although these services have often been criticized as containing seemingly meaningless snippets of information, when a follower gathers a certain amount of information, they begin to obtain an ambient understanding of who they are following. This has led to the mass usage of social media as not only a social tool but also as a marketing and business tool. == Uses in marketing == Websites such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Myspace, among many others, have been used by people in all forms of business to create a closer digital/ambient bond with their clientele base. This is most notably seen in the music industry where social media networking has become the mainstay of all advertising for independent and major artists. The effect of this type of ambient marketing is that the consumer begins to get a sense of the artist's life style and personality. In this way social media outlets and ambient awareness have managed to tighten the gap between consumers and producers in all areas of business. == Uses in business processes == As web-based collaboration tools and social project management suites proliferate, the addition of activity streams to those products help to create business context-specific ambient awareness, and produce a new class of products, such as social project management platforms.

New media

New media are communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users, as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for the influx of interactive CD-ROMs for entertainment and education. The new media technologies, sometimes known as Web 2.0, include a wide range of web-related communication tools such as blogs, wikis, online social networking, virtual worlds, and other social media platforms. The phrase "new media" refers to computational media that share material online and through computers. New media inspire new ways of thinking about older media. Media do not replace one another in a clear, linear succession, instead evolving in a more complicated network of interconnected feedback loops . What is different about new media is how they specifically refashion traditional media and how older media refashion themselves to meet the challenges of new media. Unless they contain technologies that enable digital generative or interactive processes, broadcast television programs, non-interactive news websites, feature films, magazines, and books are not considered to be new media. The term "new media" stands in contrast to old media, which dominated the media landscape as a form of mass media for many years. == History == In the 1950s, connections between computing and radical art began to grow stronger. It was not until the 1980s that Alan Kay and his co-workers at Xerox PARC began to give the computability of a personal computer to the individual, rather than have a big organization be in charge of this. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, we seem to witness a different kind of parallel relationship between social changes and computer design. Although causally unrelated, conceptually, it makes sense that the Cold War and the design of the Web took place at exactly the same time. Writers and philosophers such as Marshall McLuhan were instrumental in the development of media theory during this period which is now famous declaration in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, that "the medium is the message" drew attention to the too often ignored influence media and technology themselves, rather than their "content," have on humans' experience of the world and on society broadly. Until the 1980s, media relied primarily upon print and analog broadcast models such as television and radio. The last twenty-five years have seen the rapid transformation into media which are predicated upon the use of digital technologies such as the Internet and video games. However, these examples are only a small representation of new media. The use of digital computers has transformed the remaining 'old' media, as suggested by the advent of digital television and online publications. Even traditional media forms such as the printing press have been transformed through the application of technologies by using of image manipulation software like Adobe Photoshop and desktop publishing tools. Andrew L. Shapiro argues that the "emergence of new, digital technologies signals a potentially radical shift of who is in control of information, experience and resources". W. Russell Neuman suggests that whilst the "new media" have technical capabilities to pull in one direction, economic and social forces pull back in the opposite direction. According to Neuman, "We are witnessing the evolution of a universal interconnected network of audio, video, and electronic text communications that will blur the distinction between interpersonal and mass communication; and between public and private communication". Neuman argues that new media will: Alter the meaning of geographic distance. Allow for a huge increase in the volume of communication. Provide the possibility of increasing the speed of communication. Provide opportunities for interactive communication. Allow forms of communication that were previously separate to overlap and interconnect. Consequently, it has been the contention of scholars such as Douglas Kellner and James Bohman that new media and particularly the Internet will provide the potential for a democratic postmodern public sphere, in which citizens can participate in well informed, non-hierarchical debate pertaining to their social structures. Contradicting these positive appraisals of the potential social impacts of new media are scholars such as Edward S. Herman and Robert McChesney who have suggested that the transition to new media has seen a handful of powerful transnational telecommunications corporations who achieve a level of global influence which was hitherto unimaginable. Scholars have highlighted both the positive and negative potential and actual implications of new media technologies, suggesting that some of the early work in new media studies was guilty of technologicaldeterminism – whereby the effects of media were determined by the technologies themselves, rather than by tracing the complex social networks that governed the development, funding, implementation, and future evolution of any technology. Based on the argument that people have a limited amount of time to spend on the consumption of different media, displacement theory argue that the viewership or readership of one particular outlet leads to the reduction in the amount of time spent by the individual on another. The introduction of new media, such as the internet, therefore reduces the amount of time individuals would spend on existing "old" media, which could ultimately lead to the end of such traditional media. == Definition == Although, there are several ways that new media may be described, Lev Manovich, in an introduction to The New Media Reader, defines new media by using eight propositions: New media versus cyberculture – Cyberculture is the various social phenomena that are associated with the Internet and network communications (blogs, online multi-player gaming), whereas new media is concerned more with cultural objects and paradigms (digital to analog television, smartphones). New media as computer technology used as a distribution platform – New media are the cultural objects which use digital computer technology for distribution and exhibition. e.g. (at least for now) Internet, Web sites, computer multimedia, Blu-ray disks etc. The problem with this is that the definition must be revised every few years. The term "new media" will not be "new" anymore, as most forms of culture will be distributed through computers. New media as digital data controlled by software – The language of new media is based on the assumption that, in fact, all cultural objects that rely on digital representation and computer-based delivery do share a number of common qualities. New media is reduced to digital data that can be manipulated by software as any other data. Now media operations can create several versions of the same object. An example is an image stored as matrix data which can be manipulated and altered according to the additional algorithms implemented, such as color inversion, gray-scaling, sharpening, rasterizing, etc. New media as the mix between existing cultural conventions and the conventions of software – New media today can be understood as the mix between older cultural conventions for data representation, access, and manipulation and newer conventions of data representation, access, and manipulation. The "old" data are representations of visual reality and human experience, and the "new" data is numerical data. The computer is kept out of the key "creative" decisions, and is delegated to the position of a technician. e.g. In film, software is used in some areas of production, in others are created using computer animation. New media as the aesthetics that accompanies the early stage of every new modern media and communication technology – While ideological tropes indeed seem to be reappearing rather regularly, many aesthetic strategies may reappear two or three times ... In order for this approach to be truly useful it would be insufficient to simply name the strategies and tropes and to record the moments of their appearance; instead, we would have to develop a much more comprehensive analysis which would correlate the history of technology with social, political, and economical histories or the modern period. New media as faster execution of algorithms previously executed manually or through other technologies – Computers are a huge speed-up of what were previously manual techniques. e.g. calculators. Dramatically speeding up the execution makes possible previously non-existent representational technique. This also makes possible of many new forms of media art such as interactive multimedia and video games. On one level, a modern digital computer is just a faster calculator, we should not ignore its other identity: that of a cybernetic control device. New media as the encoding of modernist avant-garde; new media as metamedia – Manovi

Amplified conference

An amplified conference is a conference or similar event in which the talks and discussions at the conference are 'amplified' through use of networked technologies in order to extend the reach of the conference deliberations. The term was originally coined by Lorcan Dempsey in a blog post. The term is now widely used within the academic and research community with Wankel proposing the following definition: The extension of a physical event (or a series of events) through the use of social media tools for expanding access to (aspects of) the event beyond physical and temporal bounds. Such amplification takes place in the context of intent to make the most of the intellectual content, discussion, networking, and discovery initiated by the event through the process of sharing with co-attendees, colleagues, friends and wider informed publics. A paper by Haider and others illustrates how amplified conferences are becoming mainstream in a discussion on "how social media have been employed as part of the project, particularly around event amplification". As described by Guy in the Ariadne ejournal the term is not a prescriptive one, but rather describes a pattern of behaviors which initially took place at IT and Web-oriented conferences once WiFi networks started to become available at conference venues and delegates started to bring with them networked devices such as laptops and, more recently, PDAs and mobile phones. == Different Approaches to 'Amplification' of Conferences == There are a number of ways in which conferences can be amplified through use of networked technologies: Amplification of the audiences' voice: Prior to the availability of real time chat technologies at events (whether use of IRC, Twitter, instant messaging clients, etc.) it was only feasible to discuss talks with immediate neighbours, and even then this may be considered rude. Amplification of the speaker's talk: The availability of video and audio-conferencing technologies make it possible for a speaker to be heard by an audience which isn't physically present at the conference. Although use of video technologies has been available to support conferences for some time, this has normally been expensive and require use of dedicated video-conferencing technologies. However the availability of lightweight desktop tools make it much easier to deploy such technologies, without even, requiring the involvement of conference organisers. Amplification across time: Video and audio technologies can also be used to allow a speaker's talk to be made available after the event, with use of podcasting or videocasting technologies allowing the talks to be easily syndicated to mobile devices as well as accessed on desktop computers. Amplification of the speaker's slides: The popularity of global repository services for slides, such as SlideShare, enable the slides used by a speaker to be more easily found, embedded on other Web sites and commented upon, in ways that were not possible when the slides, if made available at all, were only available on a conference Web site. Amplification of feedback to the speaker: Micro-blogging technologies, such as Twitter, are being used not only as a discussion channel for conference participants but also as a way of providing real-time feedback to a speaker during a talk. We are also now seeing dedicated microblogging technologies, such as Coveritlive and Scribblelive, being developed which aim to provide more sophisticated 'back channels' for use at conferences. Amplification of a conference's collective memory: The popularity of digital cameras and the photographic capabilities of many mobile phones is leading to many photographs being taken at conferences. With such photographs often being uploaded to popular photographic sharing services, such as Flickr, and such collections being made more easy to discover through agreed use of tags, we are seeing amplification of the memories of an event though the sharing of such resources. The ability of such photographic resources to be 'mashed up' with, say, accompanying music, can similarly help to enrich such collective experiences. Amplification of the learning: The ability to be able to follow links to resources and discuss the points made by a speaker during a talk can enrich the learning which takes place at an event, as described by Shabajee's article on "'Hot' or Not? Welcome to real-time peer review" published in the Times Higher Education Supplement in May 2003. Long term amplification of conference outputs: The availability in a digital format of conference resources, including 'official' resources such as slides, video and audio recordings, etc. which have been made by the conference organisers with the approval of speakers, together with more nebulous resources such as archives of conference back channels, and photographs and unofficial recordings taken at the event may help to provide a more authentic record of an event, which could potentially provide a valuable historical record. The amplification of conferences can be viewed as an example of how new technologies are altering standard practice. By using these techniques a different type of interaction is created at the conference itself, but also the boundaries around the conference can be seen as permeable, with remote participants engaging in discussion. An amplified conference also provides a considerably altered archive compared with a 'traditional' one. For the latter, the printed proceedings will be the main record, but for an amplified event this record is distributed across many media and takes in a wider range of content types, including the papers, videos of the presentations (for example on YouTube), the slides (e.g. on Slideshare), photos of the event (Flickr), interaction between participants (Twitter), reflections and comments (blogs), etc. The amplified conference represents an example of changing practice in digital scholarship.

Graphics software

In computer graphics, graphics software refers to a program or collection of programs that enable a person to manipulate images or models visually on a computer. Computer graphics can be classified into two distinct categories: raster graphics and vector graphics, with further 2D and 3D variants. Many graphics programs focus exclusively on either vector or raster graphics, but there are a few that operate on both. It is simple to convert from vector graphics to raster graphics, but going the other way is harder. Some software attempts to do this. In addition to static graphics, there are animation and video editing software. Different types of software are often designed to edit different types of graphics such as video, photos, and vector-based drawings. The exact sources of graphics may vary for different tasks, but most can read and write files. Most graphics programs have the ability to import and export one or more graphics file formats, including those formats written for a particular computer graphics program. Such programs include, but are not limited to: GIMP, Adobe Photoshop, CorelDRAW, Microsoft Publisher, Picasa, etc. The use of a swatch is a palette of active colours that are selected and rearranged by the preference of the user. A swatch may be used in a program or be part of the universal palette on an operating system. It is used to change the colour of a text or image and in video editing. Vector graphics animation can be described as a series of mathematical transformations that are applied in sequence to one or more shapes in a scene. Raster graphics animation works in a similar fashion to film-based animation, where a series of still images produces the illusion of continuous movement. == History == SuperPaint was one of the earliest graphics software applications, first conceptualized in 1972 and achieving its first stable image in 1973 Fauve Matisse (later Macromedia xRes) was a pioneering program of the early 1990s, notably introducing layers in customer software. Currently Adobe Photoshop is one of the most used and best-known graphics programs in the Americas, having created more custom hardware solutions in the early 1990s, but was initially subject to various litigation. GIMP is a popular open-source alternative to Adobe Photoshop.

IAmAnas

#IAmAnas (I Am Anas) is a Twitter hashtag and social media campaign that started in 2015. Users tweeted to express support for the undercover investigative works of Ghanaian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas. The campaign restarted in 2018 when the Ghanaian MP and financier of the New Patriotic Party, Kennedy Agyapong, announced his intention to reveal the identity of Anas following the journalist's exposé of corruption at the Ghana Football Association. Anas maintains that "being anonymous has always been his secret weapon." Pictures purported to be of Anas were first released by a TV station owned by Agyapong, and were quickly picked up by other media houses. At least one person, a Dutch-Brazilian model, has claimed ownership of one picture that was released, and has threatened legal action against Agyapong for possibly putting his life in danger. In response to Agyapong, social media users retweeted photos of themselves, random people, or even comic images of entities that resemble the trademark covered face of Anas. When the hashtag first began in 2015, along with other popular uses of the journalist's name, Elizabeth Ohene wrote an article about Ghanaians use of humour in response to dealing with the expose of government corruption. "I do not know when these words will make it into Wikipedia or the Oxford English Dictionary but for the moment you can take it from me that: To go undercover is to anas, to make secret recordings is to anas-anas, to wear disguises is to do an anas, to be caught in the act is to be anased. To have someone exposed taking bribes is to have that person being given the full Anas Aremeyaw Anas."