Author: hcarp

Speak has been an interesting novel to read, especially through the third part. I felt like the first two parts really served to immerse us and give us a backdrop for what has happened in the third part and what is about to happen in parts four and five, when shit really starts to hit the fan in the five stories we are following.

I am frustrated with this book, but I’m only really frustrated with the people I feel are too attached to memory. I’m frustrated with Alan for his inability to let Chris go and move on from his unhealthy obsession with Chris so that he can start to live like he wants to (he’s convinced only Chris possesses the power to let him do this, but he’s wrong). I’m frustrated with Mary for convincing herself that her connection with her babybot is better than her connection with her family. I’m frustrated with Ruth for her inability to move on from the past and recognize that. I’m frustrated with people who have an unhealthy relationship with the past in real life, today (and I hope that they can one day find a healthy balance between remembering and moving on).

I firmly believe that growing up with technology has given me a truly unique perspective on its effects. As I grew up and obtained my new iPhone, Macbook, updated and modernized Polaroid camera, Google Docs account, and many other technologies that allow me to document life I found that documenting everything about everything is so exhausting. I have grown fond of the process of things getting old and slowly fading away, of letting go of the hard copy because as you get older, there is only so much room for tangible items that correlate to one’s memory. This is only a natural process of life, one that is bittersweet in the best way by allowing one to remember only their best, more important memories. Even those, though, eventually fade away. I can’t exactly remember the last thing my summer swim league coach said to me before he passed away, but I remember the feeling of true joy I felt standing under the lifeguard chair he sat in at my neighborhood pool the last time we spoke. I can’t remember exactly what the random boy I met and played with at the beach in third grade looked like, but I can remember how much fun we had and the fuzzy feeling of the crush I developed for him in my gut.

My point is that machine memory can nowhere even begin to compare to the memory of human capacity. Like Stephen Chinn describes (and Karl warned Ruth against), computers remember but lack the ability to give memories weight. In terms of the technology we have today, yes we can take a ton of pictures and save them to camera rolls and Snapchat memories, but nothing stops the tech company from turning around and programming a look back on past memories that someone really doesn’t want to be reminded of.

Gaby thought that her babybot was more authentic than MARY3, but both pick and choose the voices that they use in a certain situation. Even today, mankind’s tendency to ignore the lack of authenticity technologies have is alarming. Is this because we enjoy the ease with which we can interact with something programmed to ensure we have a pleasant experience?

I knew there was an issue with how gender and technology interact, but I wasn’t aware of how deeply-rooted it is into seemingly every technological aspect of our lives. I feel like I shouldn’t be, but I am shocked at how blatant video games are at sexualizing women. Like Anita states in her “Women as Background Decoration” video, a sex object is still a sex object no matter how or to what extent a player is supposed to interact with it. A sex object is indeed player directed, but by putting it into a game, creators are implicitly encouraging a player to experiment with it, something I didn’t think about. This makes me wonder whose fault the objectification of women in video games is. Is it the developers for even thinking to put that kind of stuff out there? Or is it the consumers who buy the games even though they see the objectification of women while playing?

Throughout our studies of killjoys, it is curious to me how feminists equate being a killjoy to being a feminist. In her survival kit, Ahmed writes that “feminism needs feminists to survive”, claims that statement to be a feminist statement, and also claims that her killjoy survival guide is written around that statement. In her manifesto, Ahmed writes that “it is because of what she reveals that a killjoy becomes a killjoy in the first place”. This sentence seems to explain to me why being a killjoy is so closely linked to being a feminist. Like Ahmed describes, being a killjoy is when “the negative feeling that is not revealed when the family is working becomes deposited in the one who reveals the family is not working”. Like being a killjoy, being a feminist is, to put it metaphorically, calling out how horribly wrong the family has been working for almost all of time; people are bound to have trouble with this notion and believe feminists to have killed their happiness by disturbing the false sense of happiness they have created for themselves. By putting the “hap back into happiness”, feminists can begin to destigmatize the notion that happiness is universal. Instead, happiness is conditional and can, in fact, coexist with feminism.

Why should feminists take it upon themselves to be killjoys? Is a feminist calling oneself a killjoy some kind of way to reclaim the word and thus their narrative? What does this say about people who aren’t feminists? About anti-feminists? Is being a feminist in and of itself being a killjoy?

The “profit motive” of companies Roberts writes about when censoring content on websites has always interested me, although not always from a monetary standpoint.

In the fall of 2018, two of YouTuber Cody Ko’s videos had been taken down by YouTube, one due to copyright infringement and another due to having broken YouTube’s code of conduct. A few days after Cody had posted a video protesting the takedown of his two videos, however, the video that had violated the code of conduct (pretty blatantly, might I add) was back up on Cody’s channel. I was puzzled. No matter how much I enjoyed the video, I couldn’t understand how YouTube could justify leaving a video up after it had previously been taken down for violating a code of conduct; the basic threshold for how to properly behave on and engage with the website. I wondered if the video’s skyrocketed popularity right before the video was taken down as well as the sharply negative reaction the fans had to the takedown had anything to do with its reappearance. Although I think I was right, it never occurred to me just how much money probably played a part in the video’s reinstatement. By losing the millions of views the video would receive, YouTube was missing out on precious income from the video being played. Instead of choosing to reinforce their morals, YouTube chose to make a pretty penny by turning a blind eye once Cody reposted his video.

Roberts also discusses the effects of managing content on a person. Are the emotional stakes of their job still high, or are content managers enabled to desensitize themselves to harsh videos due to repetitive exposure to content of the sort? How much control do the content managers have over what they chose to keep or delete? If a video rightfully advocating for the marginalized and abused or a video showcasing something illegal or morally wrong falls into the wrong judgment, how will that content’s availability or lack thereof affect the general public gobbling up billions of YouTube videos each day? Is there a way to stop money from involving itself in the content managing process?