Author: rennert

Final Reflection

I came into this course with no expectations.  I was vaguely interested in how American mass culture worked, but primarily the labor aspect rather than the gender or race aspects.  My experience before this class has been that race especially and gender to some degree as well are stereotypes that apply until better information is gathered.  Basically, that a person is that person, race and gender are people in a crowd.  I also didn’t really follow the news or any major social media sites besides Facebook.  Now, after having finished the course, I’ve been exposed to new social issues that I wasn’t really aware of before.

In Unit 1, we explored different games and how different gaming cultures reflected different aspects of our collective culture as well as individual subcultures.  I was somewhat surprised to see how aggressively mainstream gamer culture attacked women in the industry, though after some reflection, I had already seen all the component parts.  From the incredible anger most players show in most multiplayer games to the generally misogynistic content in most mainstream video games.  I had actually had some experience with indie game development, though I hadn’t thought about all the applications for different game design platforms, especially the more simplistic ones.  The project was interesting, though it didn’t really relate to the unit in a direct fashion.  Because Twine is a story based system, to write a good twine game, you need to invest yourself into the story.  To some degree there is a relation in that you are experiencing what other game developers feel and it definitely relates to DCC as a tool of self-expression, but it relates to gender, race, and labor only so far as the person’s individual story is defined by gender, race, or labor.

Unit 2 looked at social media and mobile technology from both labor and limitations standpoints.  I was already more or less aware of the labor issues in mobile technology, though the filtering workers were a surprise.  Most of the surprise, however, was when we looked at how social media filtering works, how the system decides what you care about and what you don’t.  I didn’t expect twitter to be so much more evenhanded than Facebook.  I knew Facebook filtered by prior preference but I didn’t realize the degree to which it did so.  I was also surprised, when making my twitter, that despite trying to keep my non-class friends and network away from the class account, Twitter repeatedly demanded information and when I denied it, seems to have found a way to get it anyway, based on some of the people it recommended to me.  The project was interesting to me but felt somewhat like a proof of what we learned in class rather than pushing any limits.

Unit 3 was definitely my least favorite unit, primarily because I am not a fan of twitter.  While it would have been interesting to learn about how Twitter is used to affect change, we looked at what it does.  We looked at Twitter as cultural observers, a perspective that the project pretty much forced onto us without even explaining what it was trying to do.  It felt more like looking at how a car is made rather than learning to drive it.

Unit 4 was probably my favorite unit, both because it let me exercise my creativity and because I just happen to be a sci-fi fan.  Unit 4 unfortunately also happened to be my biggest crunch time for all my other classes and clubs.  While I loved the readings and was intrigued by the project’s idea, the project ended up getting scrambled during the first all-nighter of Baja week(the week of competition, also the week before finals week) so the execution wasn’t quite as in-depth as I was hoping to make it.

All in all, the class exposed me to some new perspectives and showed me points of view from groups I never even really considered before.

Armored Exoskeletons

Throughout history, man has always strived to design a better and more effective means of killing others and himself surviving the process.  From the phalanx to the armored knight to the musket to the machine gun and the tank, weapons and armor technology have evolved with consistent dedication.  The next step in this progression is the powered, armored combat suit.  By providing the user with augmented strength, electrically powered exoskeletons will allow users to wear significantly heavier full body armor and carry heavier weaponry and equipment than has previously been available to soldiers.  No longer will machine guns and rocket launchers be weapons of specialists, but will be carried by every soldier according to mission requirements or individual preference.  Soldiers will be protected against most if not all small arms fire that unarmored enemies, such as insurgents or rebels will be equipped with.  This armor will be the death of insurgency.

Realistically, this last paragraph is more or less propaganda or a sales pitch from whatever military contractor acquires the contract to mass produce these suits; as armor advances, so do ways of breaking through it, but the advance does highlight a trend: military equipment is passing far beyond what civilian militias could ever hope to match.  As weapons get increasingly more advanced and expensive, governments will be the only groups capable of maintaining these high-tech forces, with unfortunate effects of their peoples.

An axiom whose cynicism is matched only by its accuracy is this: violence makes the world go ‘round.  The power of governments is derived, at its core, at least partially from violence.  It’s behavior restricted by the ability of the people to rise up and remove them from power, something made more difficult every time the combat effectiveness of the soldier increases against that of the civilian.  Minorities; ethnic, religious, or otherwise will be most targeted because their ability to make their positions and opinions heard will be crushed under a ceramic-coated, servo actuated, armored boot.  As we see now with the #blacklivesmatter movement, societies don’t like it when ethnic minorities express discontent with their role in society, but what happens to society when those minorities no longer can object?  When protesters in Baltimore stop fearing being arrested or shot by police officers and start fearing being ripped apart by a faceless, unstoppable suit of armor?

This technology is not in the far future but will probably start getting phased in within the decade.  Within another, some of the technology will spread to the civilian sector, but what does that mean?  Likely, the medical field will see the benefits of this, in the form of more advanced support for people with damaged limbs that can no longer function at full capacity as well as for physical therapy.  Certain manual labor applications would benefit from this technology but likely won’t be seeing too much of it, simply because manual laborers are cheaper and easier to maintain and replace than giant robo-suits.  There would also likely be some adoption in the field of extreme sports, though the expense and weight would likely limit the utility.

Those on the civilian side of this technology will not be a random sample of the population, however.  The expense will limit the target market to middle to upper class families who can afford the suits.  That said though, these suits on the civilian side would likely end up in a similar psychological association as cars, though with somewhat more of a niche application.  Civilian ownership of these suits would be a status symbol, similar to owning a Hummer.

Demographically, the civilian users would likely be primarily white, reflecting the current and likely near future distribution of middle class America.  Military users on the other hand would be much more egalitarian.  The modern military, while definitely not known for being a tolerant organization, integrates it’s recruits well enough that they would likely side with their new family rather than their ethnicity, meaning that in the aspect of distribution of suits, the military would be its own separate entity.  While limiting freedom of expression and adding to the fear of the government, the suits would keep the bullets, explosions, and shrapnel of war farther from the soldiers inside the suits, and for that the soldiers would love them.

These suits seem to be a harbinger of doom, but being the byproduct of the inevitable arms race between nations, the US government will be, and already is compelled to interest in these suits to maintain our technological advantage on the battlefield and our preeminence in the global community.  These suits may, however end up looked upon in the same way as drones, restricted, in the US, at least, to the military and foreign engagements rather than spilling over to law enforcement.

Arduino Design Camp

Earlier this semester, I went to the design camp on Arduino which refers either a circuit board or the programming language for the circuit board.  The idea behind Arduino is that a simple, cheap circuit board can be used with other simple, cheap components to create anything that the designer wants.  Some examples are window blinds that automatically adjust with the brightness outside and automated light switches, as well as the robots normally associated with the name Arduino.  Because of the open source nature of Arduino, learning how to use it is fairly simple and most of the informaiton you need to know is on their website.

I have already had some experience with Arduino before the design camp, but I still gain some new understanding of some of the more complex aspects of Arduino coding and wiring.  Since I already had some experience with Arduino, I have several potential projects in the works that could use an Arduino, as well as the classes and other educational activities I’ve seen and been involved with.

The idea behind Arduino reminds me of the Hacking the Label article we read where they debate whether hacking is political or not.  However you consider that, though, hacking does strive to be egalitarian, something that Arduino encourages.  All you need to do an Arduino project is a computer, internet access(useful but not necessary once you have the software), and about a hundred bucks, making the automation that raises the standard of living in scifi movies available to the general public right now, if we care enough to use it.

Deep End response

Deep end is a science fiction short story about a prison ship in the far future.  The prisoners are uploaded onto the ship’s system and then downloaded into bodies.  The bodies, however, are of the whites who the prisoners tried to rebel against, not the bodies of the prisoners.  The story addresses race and gender as mental constructs, since bodies are now exchangeable.  The author is trying to show what people are without their bodies to define their identities, or possibly how bodies try to define identities.

I really liked the science fiction aspect of this story.  By using space age technology, the author created a new world, but the isolation of deep space and the feeling of being trapped in a system or by your own body are universal.  I also liked the ending, the hope that the new place, the change will mean something better, but the knowledge that your body, your experiences are still there; it gave a sense of optimism mixed with dread that people feel when a change happens in their lives, as well as when they are being blasted from orbit in a water-filled metal coffin.  The most obvious question after reading this story is: “What happens next?” but I don’t think it’s a very good one.  This chapter of the characters’ lives has ended, what happens next is a different story.  The question I would ask is about the past, not the future.  The story leaves me wondering how the characters got there.  What happened to Doe to make her so distrustful?  Why does Thad not want a body?  Is that simply anger at wearing someone else’s or does he have a reason to want to abandon reality?

Hashtag activism response

This article seems to be written by twitter users for twitter users.  Being just a preface followed by what is effectively a screenshot of a twitter conversation, anyone who dislikes reading twitter posts will end up ignoring most of the article.  The discussion being on twitter also provided a specific perspective from the respondents.  Being a Q&A session more than an article, the article lacked a definite thesis but the respondents’ general opinion was towards the idea that hashtag activism encourages awareness which can be beneficial to its cause.  The objective of this piece was to create a more exact representation of what twitter activists think about their efforts and what they think those efforts can achieve.

I enjoyed the method of asking questions about twitter on twitter, polling the people trying to create change on what they think they are accomplishing.  The deliberate inclusion of twitter activist Stacia Brown was a simple way to ensure that activists’ opinions were heard.  Some of the hashtags mentioned in the article I remember being popular, the #Kony2012 and #BringBackOurGirls being subjects, if not hashtags I remember.  Many of the participants say that those that don’t see the tangible effects of hashtag activism don’t understand the idea, but then those people fail to elaborate on what the idea is.  Considering the conversation is on twitter, I can understand their brevity, but what is their interpretation of the idea of hashtag activism?

Filter bubble response

Eli Pariser’s idea, that we are being isolated by our computer search filters is designed for maximum impact.  Since he is addressing a newly risen resurgence of a societal issue, it relates to the audience; everyone he is addressing is experiencing their own filter bubble, whether or not they know about it.  Pariser’s choice to present his ideas in a TED talk is important in that the TED series is focused on contemporary issues and looking at all sides of any issue.  In presenting the idea of informational isolation to a group like TED viewers, Pariser creates a stronger emotional reaction, one that is more likely to become a call to action.

Pariser wants human input in the filtering system.  His talk had the objective of shedding light onto the issue and calling for a more diverse set of information displayed to the user.  By showing both information we want right now and information we actually need, the system satisfies our curiosity and entertainment as well as providing us with information that we need as human beings and citizens of a democracy.

Pariser’s idea is not a new one, though he does do a very good job of simply stating the problem. The debate on how to prioritize massive amounts of information has been going back a log time.  His assessment that editors used to serve as gatekeepers and as a quality control system have general support by those in the industry.  He does fail to address how we should create filters that do as he suggests.  Current filters are designed to prioritize using previous data on what the user actually cares about, so how do we change that without simply diluting relevant information with useless data?

Imposter Syndrome/Depression Quest Response

The games Imposter Syndrome and Depression quest are both text based games designed to put the player in the position of someone who’s problems they haven’t thought about before.  They were both made relatively recently, though neither seem to see a need to give exact dates of publication, they both address topics that don’t have a date on them. Imposter Syndrome, being set int the near future argues that it’s subject, gender discrimination, will be a problem for some time.  Depression Quest doesn’t need to argue that depression will be around, it is a result of pain, frustration, and fear, and those will not be going away any time soon.  Both games tries to express the pain, frustration and anguish that the creators feel or felt and translate it into something someone who doesn’t face their problem can hopefully understand.

Both games were interesting and definitely showcased their problems fairly well.  I can’t really speak to the validity of Imposter Syndrome since I’ve never really been in that kind of environment, from either side of Georgianna’s podium, though I can that Depression Quest fits my understanding of depression fairly accurately.  It didn’t emphasize certain specifics in the way that I have understood depression but the general experience was definitely accurate.  As a note, I describe an understanding of depression that was based on someone’s personal experience but I cannot and will not identify that person.  One thing Depression quest described accurately is the fear and embarrassment of being or having been severely depressed.

There were a couple things in the games, though, that I thought  weren’t quite explained well enough.  In Imposter Quest, I was wondering throughout why Georgianna was so filled with doubt, so lacking in self-confidence.  I suspect that the creators wanted to imply that prior experience made her doubt herself, but it is somewhat ambiguous how she came to doubt herself as much as she appears to in the game.  Which brings me directly to the other thing that seems off:  these are not games.  I have been referring to them that way because the creators were but these a walkthroughs of painful personal experience.  I don’t know what they should be called but they are not games, at least by my definition.  I personally think of games as something fun, possibly something children do.  To call these games,  I think, risks trivializing the subject matter.  The creators do counter that fairly well, but I do wonder why they call these games in the first place.