Nonobvious Observations

The articles that we read on non-obvious observation yield a more nuanced view of the initial part of the ethnography project that we have begun. Essentially, to truly differentiate between people walking along different routes we must look into the more subtle details. We will not have access to the audio or any kind of visual that would make it extremely obvious to discern who the person is recording at the time, so the challenge remains in how we can make observations about people without getting any of the clues that we’d naturally look for.

The articles that we read provide such an insight. The articles state that it’s not about the content of the actual words that we can use to differentiate between people, their natural writing styles, and their current state of mind, but rather the way in which we use them. More importantly, the way in which we use even the most common words can make it extremely obvious who is who to the trained eye. Simple, seemingly meaningless words such as “the”, “of”, “it”, etc., can all be analyzed and depending on how often we use the words and in what way, we can make meaningful observations about the writer and particular psychological attributes.

What I interpreted as the most important point made is that people express the vast majority of their feeling and “style” by barely using any meaningful words. With the camera recording experiment that we are about to observe we’re asking, can we tell people apart without using any words at all?

Subtle differences that we’re observing include whether people look down when they’re walking, when they seem to make eye contact with other passerby pedestrians, whether their mannerisms are of a particular manner, how often they nod, shake their head, look the other way, etc., how fast or slow they walk, which routes they take, how they engage in people, and perhaps most importantly, how other people engage them in return.

The last point is of particular importance because it introduces a certain “human” element to the observation. It’s intriguing to note whether the particular person takes a certain route or looks in different ways, but what I believe is most important is the interaction with others, especially in light of the first article that we read that deals partly in “mimicry” between people.

This concept of “mimicry” was derived from the perceived pattern that people tend to “mimic” the other person’s mannerisms in such a way as to make conversation with them easier. Assuming that the people who we engage in the recording manage to make this “mimicry” happen when they engage in the person recording, it can actually serve as a mirror far more interesting than actual physical one. If the recorder engages other people in conversation and those people mimic the recorder’s mannerisms, it’s possible that we could see a “reflection” of the recorder in the person who they’re talking to, and thus be able to discern much more easily who the recorder is.

That is, of course, not the only thing that we’re setting out to observe. All the other listed observations are planning to be made, but for me personally, I’ll be observing the interactions with other people and whether I can see a distinct difference in how the other person in turn interact with the recorder. It will be even better if we can get a recording of the same person talking to each of the different recorders, and perhaps note if the person who they’re talking to engages each in a different manner.