Christy

October 21, 2017

Google Black Girls Now

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Before I start talking, take a look at this google search taken from the article “Google Search: Hyper-Visibility as a Means of Rendering Black Women and Girls Invisible”.

Using key words “Black girls,” google search provides these top choices.

Wow. I mean I’m shocked. I never had to do a google search like this, but you can just tell from this picture that Black women are sexualized and used as a marketing tactic by the porn industry. Do we blame the porn industry for being smart and tackling these fetishes of men who surf pornographic sites? They do their job well, but in turn, perpetuate the sexualized and objectified view of Black women on the web. Like the reading said, these views of Black women as “sexually insatiable and gratuitous,” are rooted in slavery and how masters took advantage of these women being considered property and therefore, could not be victims of rape.

Google has a large influence as they’re viewed as somewhat not needing to commercialize/market/advertise companies on their search queries. This leads to people believing that the top search results are popular and reflects everyone’s interests — which they may, I can’t agree or refute anything. This was my thinking. However, I do think these results reflect society at that time, but things have changed, and when you google “Black girls,” there are no sexualized results, but rather, are more empowering results. A great movement towards black girl positivity.

Posted from Digital 101 by Christy

October 14, 2017

Digital 101 2017-10-14 16:51:22

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The article, “Fidget Spinners: How Buffer Icons Have Shaped Our Sense Of Time“, gave me a perspective that I knew was true but I didn’t think about. I think it’s funny to think that these eclipses and these symbols for loading times prove to be important to us — that the time that it takes for things to buffer or load give us meaning.

Which, anecdotally, I think is accurate. We text people a paragraph long message and expect a message that took them a long time to think about. The time it takes for them to interpret the message and respond offers us an inkling of how much the person took to respond and whether or not they cared about how they formatted their response. I wonder if Apple built this with the same intention as Facebook’s pause in security profiles.

I do believe that the eclipses serve as a way to quell our anxiety over the person we are communicating with. The added feature of read receipts, an indicator of when the message was read by the receiving person, gives us exact timing of our wait. The article emphasizes that this wait gives meaning to our relationship and our message. It gives way for people to understand their place in your life. If a person chooses to read the message but refuses to reply until hours later, then both you and the person you’re communicating with gets to decide what that means. Did they not respond due to obligations? Or did they needed time to respond? Or did they just chose to ignore it completely?

Posted from Digital 101 by Christy

October 3, 2017

Caption this!

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The reading brings up a topic that I, certainly, don’t have any expertise on. Thus, these are all my semi-knowledgeable opinions that derive from emotion, experiences, and anecdotes. Though I cannot speak like I know the world, I do agree that this reading is right in claiming Africans are targeted and meme-ified in American society where much of the racial tensions surround Africans. I don’t know why that is the case and why other minorities are not as frequently targeted as Africans. It may be due to their racial and social prevalence vs other minorities.

I have not found pictures that are to the extent of the ones shown in the reading, but I do recognize that there are website that entertain themselves with captioning or creating memes of racial, sexist, or offensive “jokes”. There are jokes in which can be in the middle such as this:

Though the meme serves no explicit racial joke, the use of a picture from a video meant to advocate for charities in Africa turns it into a racial joke. Did the person choose this picture for a reason? Did the person have that joke but was looking for that child’s expression? Was his intent malicious? I don’t answer for any of these as I don’t know the person’s true intent but what I see and perceive through this meme comes off as a racial joke.

I do disagree with some of those jokes, they come from ignorance and are meant to hurt people. However, there is a line in which these racial, sexist, or offensive jokes have no intent to “hurt” people but are for laughs — how do you separate those apart? Do we censor everything that seems offensive or that could be offensive to a group, person, or thing? I can’t honestly tell you what a good answer is. There will always exist a group of people whose humor basks in offensive and dark humor.

Posted from Digital 101 by Christy

October 1, 2017

GIF Lab Report

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Category: Fandom GIF

Example: Doctor Who Fandom GIF

Counter Example: Parody of Doctor Who Fandom GIF

Analysis:

We took the parody of Doctor Who with the same “Police Box” prop that is used in the original Doctor Who show. I think it’s counter the Fandom GIF as it is a parody of the actual show. Most Fandom GIF from Doctor Who emphasize the main character and don’t really show much action between any other characters. This one shows a girl and a whole ton of people dancing around.

Category: Reaction GIF

Example:

Counter Example:

Analysis: I decided to do a reaction to the famous reaction GIF using the same original video. There are two ways to look at this. One, it seems like there’s no reaction, it’s just zooming in to the person: therefore, not even a reaction GIF because there is no reaction… therefore, a counter-reaction GIF. Or two, his face can be interpreted to show a reaction where it seems like the original content (prime example of reaction GIF) is not even original and bores him. That is exactly how I feel when I see the same reaction GIFs every time.

Category: Sports GIF

Example:

Counter Example:

Analysis:

The prime example of the tennis sport GIF is Roger Federer, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, hitting with perfect form. I chose a counter example of a music video where tennis is a part of the music video; however, none of them can actually play. It is so popular for music videos to include tennis outfits, gears, and plays but never used in the right way and I just thought that would be the prime example of a counter-sport GIF.

Posted from Digital 101 by Christy

September 24, 2017

Freeze! Give me the passcode to your phone

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Recently, there was an article titled “The new electronic police state” that spoke about a person’s encounter with the customs and border patrol agent. He was asked for the passcode to his phone and within minutes, it was scanned for “deraogatory” information. This is related to the section of our reading in which the study explains how users defined ownership of a file. When I thought of “owning” a file, I thought privacy. The “files” on my phone should stay private as they are my thoughts, ideas, and words that I do not feel the need to share. Just like our own subconscious thoughts, they should not be subject to searches at the airport.

As the article states, current policies allow travelers to be “coerced into allowing access to their private information without any suspicion of violating any immigration laws.” If our phones are easy targets for searches and information to our private life, then soon, when technology allows, our brains will become public information. When the time comes that our subconscious and conscious thoughts are interpreted in to “files” and data — a literal perspective seen in this picture of Spongebob

An episode of Spongebob in which his brain is depicted into an office full of files as memories.

— then who is to stop them from doing these immoral searches. If our conscious, written thoughts are allowed to be accessed, will we come to a point where we ask: Do we even own our “subconscious” files?

Posted from Digital 101 by Christy

September 12, 2017

The Future of War… and Humans.

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Before I begin this, I have a disclaimer. I am a lover of technology. I appreciate the good uses of technology but I acknowledge that there may be some alternative uses.

The chapter “Wizards, Bureaucrats, Warriors, and Hackers: Writing the History of the Internet” by Roy Rosenzweig strikes up a conversation about the use of technology and the department of defense… The US government has been looking to weaponize artificial intelligence with human-robot strike teams, autonomous land mines, robotic spies, and drones. The US Department of Defense has been putting research into weaponizing artificial intelligence (AI) armies which, I personally, believe is much too dangerous. Though, I admit there ARE pros and cons…

The pro that I believe should be taken in to account: real human lives are not in danger on the field. BUT, a con: real human lives ARE in danger. Elon Musk is one of the main voices that disagrees with the way things are headed in that direction — he even retweeted this yesterday:

Though we already have robotic systems that are remotely-piloted by real humans, we may soon be headed towards using artificial intelligence (AI) that are mostly autonomous. That is a conversation that needs to be picked apart. The AI future already seems inevitable. It WILL happen. The only question is whether or not there will be government regulation. How do we regulate AI if we’re aiming to have autonomous AI? Is that even possible? Do we ban machine learning? There are too many questions that need to be addressed but we continuously overlook it because we seem to think that people have got it, the agencies will take care of it… after all, they’re the one’s building AI to protect us, right? There’s no way that the AI itself will be the cause of our doom. Some will argue that we’re too far from that future — we don’t even have flying cars. It’s up to us to advocate the dangers of AI.

Posted from Digital 101 by Christy

September 5, 2017

Kaleidoscopes to Phones to Google Glasses

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When I was reading this article, it lit a lightbulb in me as I connected Kaleidoscopes to Google Glasses, both having something to do with optics and the outside. When Google Glasses first came out, many were against it, many still are. However, it was revolutionary for wearable technology. Already, products like FitBit or Apple Watches are on people’s wrists acting pretty much like our mobile devices. These wearable technology becomes more personalized as it takes into account our own heartbeats, steps, and location 24/7. We’re becoming more intimate and personal in these wearable technology that, soon, these cellular devices like the iPhone will become obsolete. We’re soon to leave our more chunky phones as home decorations like the kaleidoscopes.

We take a look at how revolutionary this technology is in this video:

Google Glasses Project by Youtube user Huzaifah Bhutto. Shows the versatility of the google glasses in every day life.

This technology allows for higher efficiency in daily tasks that incorporates what the phone currently does. Though it may seem redundant at this point, every technology starts by incorporating old technology and revamping it. These google glasses have the new ability to “see” and adapt. A phone can use location services and let you know traffic, but it can’t tell you that the train station you’re currently standing at is unavailable as you look at it.

As Jason Farman implied about the kaleidoscope consumer phases and with all new technologies, we are currently at the “early adoption stage” where the rich and those that are invested in these technologies are the only ones that are using the device… after all, the device came out at a whopping $1,500. Many people still continue to disagree with the technology like how they disagreed with the kaleidoscopes back in the 1800s, you can see it just through the comments in the video. However, as the article implies, it will soon be at the mass adoption stage and will become essential to every day social life.

Farman, Jason. “When Kaleidoscopes Were as Distracting as Smartphones.” Atlas Obscura, 9 Nov. 2015, www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-forgotten-kaleidoscope-craze-in-victorian-england. Accessed 5 Sept. 2017.

Posted from Digital 101 by Christy

August 27, 2017

How CLOSE are we to the Neuromancer world?

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Neuromancer speaks about SimStim — a simulated stimulation — in which you experience all five senses through another person. I’d like to say that we’re a little too far from that one, currently. We are, though, closer to achieving a virtual reality (VR) world that could potentially stimulate your senses. VR technology now currently is used in clinical trials as a pain reliever, whether it’s emotional or physical, and has been applied to medical treatments. I’ve included a video that visually explains how it’s applied.

As a biology/pre-med student and neuroscience enthusiast, I feel like we’re so close to making VR an actual stimulation-filled world. Neuroscientists who are interested in VR, and vise-versa, would be able to combine the two ideas to find out how to stimulate a person’s senses via electrodes connected to their brain in a VR headset. I mean it seems like a far-off idea, but we’ve got the foundations laid out already. Neuroscientists can play with basic sensations and incorporate it to the exponentially-growing VR world. Though the VR world seems more cartoon-like than what I’d imagine a finished VR world would look, we can only assume that VR will integrate higher graphics processing units in their headsets.

Electrodes are not necessarily the ones that involve opening your head and deep stimulating your brain, but we COULD get there. Health implications do arise in that case, but the possibilities of SimStim would be much more feasible. Logistically, it seems like there’s a lot to talk about and a lot of ideas that need to be refined, but theoretically — we’re close. Far closer than I had initially thought we were.

childrenshospitalOAK. “Virtual Reality (VR) Pain Relief UCSF Benioff Childrens Hospital Oakland.” YouTube, YouTube, 23 Aug. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfLDTfONkMQ.

Posted from Digital 101 by Christy