Chapter 3 Post

            Fouche describes the fourth era as the most recent one technology and race. He describes it as nostalgic within the digital devices that we use today. The first reference that he uses is within the digital cameras that are used today the sound effects mirror the old cameras giving them a nostalgic sort of feeling when being used like one is using an old camera. Another main example is the One Laptop Per Child program that happened. This fits into his theory of “nostalgia of in-need others to be saved” (Fouche 62) Nicholas Negroponte is the founder of OLPC. Some would say the ignorance of his wealthy upbringing in America could have caused the digital divide in his this corporation. America has a hard time getting away from biological race, and looks past what is important within cultures and communities.

            OLPC was seen to be the beginning of this fourth era making it the “rebirth of race”. The problem with this corporation is the way it was utilized and promoted. The idea could have done great things. Yet the founder thought giving “poor kids” a laptop will help all their worries and save them somehow. Yes they might have learned and taught themselves the technology because we live in a technological era and according to Negroponte everyone should know technology. This is kind of a blinded thought to saving others with nostalgia. In the sense of nostalgic thoughts, the children receiving the laptops probably did not get that sense of feeling. Instead with round two of OLPC and it’s fixes people of America giving the money to support the corporation could be feeling it.

            At the same time the Human Genome Project started up and this causes a digital divide in race again though science. Studying different races and the genes of people causes a divide as well. If I was under the project and so was my best friend would they find different gene sequences because she is Sri Lankan and I am American? This happens as soon as you walk into the doctor’s office and fill out a form. One of the first questions is what is your ethnicity. I never really thought about why they need to know that, wondering to myself why would it matter my race if I am sick and the person next to me has the same cold but of a different race. I still do not fully understand, but with this new era the divide in race is cause by the digital world.

            Focus’s on OLPC and programs like the Human Genome Project are forms that teach us what to fix in these situations. People are aware of the digital divide in race that is caused through this era of “saving people”. Questions arise and problems are caused and arise. Since we live in such a highly digital world that is soon and pretty much already taken over digitally the thoughts of spreading it around the world to everyone is seen as helpful. Yet still causes problems.

Post #3

            I never realized how metaphors and concepts impact my everyday life. Until I read the first two paragraphs in “Metaphors We Live By” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. The way Lakoff and Johnson portrayed metaphors to be “poetic” and “extraordinary language” I always connected them to writings or movies. Yet they structure our language and even what we see everyday. So far they have helped me connect with what we have learned so far by the discussion of how metaphors impact our everyday language. I look back to the topics on race in the digital world, and the examples I have used before to learn that metaphors correspond with those topics as well. I hae talked about how on twitter there are racial twitter accounts and they use references in metaphorical terms saying that “so and so is like a…” Metaphors are all around us.

            The main point that stuck out to me was the concept of war and arguments. In my other English 360 class this same topic came up in our reasoning with rhetoric. The discussion was arguments are also an everyday concept. You reason from knowledge by gaining more or using what you know. This connects with chapter one of Metaphors We Live By, by the interaction metaphors take place in arguments. You make metaphors with what knowledge you have already consumed to connect to reality. “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” Lakoff and Johnson state. This works perfectly with an argument or dance as the metaphor, you can create on thing and connect it to something else and still know what is being said.

            Even as I am writing this blog post right now I am starting to notice all the metaphors in the songs I am listening too. For example in Every Rose Has it’s Thorn, (Yes I am listening to Poison) the whole chorus is a metaphor that as beautiful or wonderful a girl can be she has an evil side. Now as I am listening to all my songs I am trying to pick out all the metaphors that are being used.

            Then there are all the different types of metaphors, and what each are used for depending on the situation, I remember learning about that in high school in one of my English classes but I never really connected with it. After reading through Lakoff and Johnson, the connection between this weeks reading and the past two chapters we have read from Nakamura and Chow-White is a bit clearer. “Though the polar oppositions up-down, in-out, etc., are physical in nature, the orientational metaphors based on them can vary from culture to culture.” (Lakoff and Johnson) Even as digitally race is surfaced, metaphors are even different from culture to culture not only physically. I would have never made that connected that through different groups of people orientations of metaphors are different. This concept was very interesting to me and helped me connect with the past readings.

Chapter 1 Post #2

            When I started to read this I had to go back and re read the intro and the two fragments. The first time was to soak up the information and the second time was to see which one I could relate to on a race count more. I could not catch a connection besides the years. Then when I think about in class and everyday life pretty much, even when technology was barely anything and less viral, it has always had a racial impact on societies from day one. “In fact they co-constitute on another, comprising not independent slices of history but, instead, related and useful lenses into the shifting epistemological registers driving U.S. and global culture in the 1960’s and after”( Tara Mcpherson). Finding out the origins of knowledge correlating these two fragments seems difficult. The racial representation in the digital world is seen differently to one as it may to another.

            Wen Omi and Winant hint on the small and big picture of what the world sees compared to I am not sure exactly. Because I do not think as the world in a whole would every see people as equal. With the obvious wars and treaties against others. Then they go onto to discuss how it is the more of the backstairs term of “separate but equal”. McPherson talks about how this is a way of organizing the world using lenticular after the Civil Rights in the United States, but the world is not all on the same page when being separate but equal. To the United States this constitutes, whether it is actually utilized to the full power or not. For the world to be organized by such a vision is difficult and that is where the first section of the chapter comes into play, and the rules that go along with it according to Eric Raymond on the UNIX.

            After reading through chapter one I find a more difficult, complex form of what I already knew. I have always had the thought that race correlates with digital space. There were racial problems before cyber technology and I find having the software systems that bring social and wide spread connection with the world just gives people more of a possibility to spread race. Accounts on social media it is seen as comic to have race jokes. Yet that just makes the window for race on the Internet wider, and gives people more room to think it is okay to keep race on the Internet so pronounced.

            So after World War II and the Civil Rights movement is when the UNIX took a turn in the world of race and its operating system that causes race to emerge in the digital world as well as the real world. There are all those rules and i have been on the internet my whoe life and feel like those rules do not really play a big role. For example the “rule of diversity” works because most software systems have all languages and ways to make it your own. Then I think about how diverse is it to people who are not fully tech knowledgeable. Some of the systems are hard to move about even for someone who grew up with technology.

            All in all I think that the “Moving Beyond Our Boxes” section gives a good understanding on what an individual needs to do to slow down the race problems amongst the digital world. I believe that it does have to do with the individual and not a certain group of people looking at the big picture.