Remember or Forget

Some things are best forgotten and some things are not.  We do not always forget all that should be forgotten or remember all that should be remembered.  It seems like remembering and forgetting is something that we just do, and has no rhetorical significance.  However, we can communicate by remembering certain things and by forgetting others. 

The biggest rhetorical message forgetting can deliver is forgiveness.  We often choose to forget the mistakes people close to us have done in order to send the message that we do not want to focus on the wrongs of the past look forward to the future, together.  This is how I have used my memories rhetorically.  I choose not to think of many of the unpleasant, awkward of embarrassing things my friends have done and intentionally forget it. 

Forgetting has digital applications and should the norm far more than it is now on the Internet.  The Internet is the ultimate memory machine and needs more of an ability to forget.  Vitkor Mayer-Schonberger writer of the book "Delete" proposes his solution to this problem saying, "One possible way we can mimic human forgetting in the digital realm is by associating information we store in the digital memory with expiration dates users set" (p. 171).  This is a particularly good model because information about ourselves that we no longer want on the web can be removed easily and the web will be far less cluttered with absolutely irrelevant information. 

The problem with this model is that making the user choose the expiration date of data will be of inconvenience to him or her and will hamper and digital experience.  Imagine having to choose how long information about you will be available every time you come up against a cookie.  Because of this, I only support a limited and cautious use of user defined expiration dates. 

There are some things that I want "digitally forgotten."  I create many files which do not need to be around forever and definitely deserve an expiration data.  Information about my on myspace and facebook should also have an expiration data.  The records of my given by cookies are most deserving of this.  I also think that statements on websites and discussion forums should have a limited life expectancy.  This can happen by automatically deleting a discussion thread after it has not been used on a while.  Most of the information in discussion forums consist of pages and pages of posts in threads which have been inactive for years. 
It is important that we adopt the idea of expiration dates but I think that there can also be the possibility that they can be set without the user as in the case with discussion forums.  This can be a tool in curbing that unforgiving eternally remembering cyberspace.



bibliography:

"Delete." by Vitkor Mayer-Schonberger. 2009.

The Bicultural Paradigm

Bi-culturism is a unique paradigm brought up by Victor Villanueva and is the condition where two cultures coexist in a society where one culture usually has less political and socioeconomic strength then another.  This concept is not a practical reflection of American society because there are far more than two cultures in America and so the multicultural model is more appropriate.  The bi-cultural model is reasonable if I choose to look at only two cultures but it still misses the influences that ignored cultures have on these two.  Some people imagine a model where two cultures can coexist peacefully and can have an equal share of power.  I agree with Villanuela in his book "Bootstraps: From an American Academy of Color" where he argues that that there will be tensions between the cultures (p. 39).  I agree with him because cultures have different norms, and different ways of living public life, and so will clash in public life.

In the assignments coming up I will be analyzing different media content and organizations and see how they represent different sexes, genders, races, and people with disability.  The idea of bi-culturalism will help me analyze this information and will help me see how the dominant culture represents another. For example, many advertising companies are dominated by rich and middle class white males and so they will use their power to interpret less dominant cultures according to the norms of their own culture.

I will now be making up practice questions for ENG 475 in WSU Tri-Cities.  I found that the article "Race: The Power of an Illusion" was a very powerful source of information that attacks racism on every level.

 According to the PBS article "Race: The Power of an Illusion" what percent of the total human diversity exists in any local population? (C)

a.   5%
b.   95%
c.   55%
d.   85%

According to the PBS article "Race: The Power of an Illusion" the genes for skin color affect other genes in the body such as hair texture, eye shape, blood type, musical ability, or athletic ability. (F)

bibliography:

Villanueva, Victor.  Bootstraps: From an American Academy of Color. Urbana, IL: NCTE. 34-50.

Adelman, Larry. "RACE - The Power of an Illusion | PBS." Weblog post. PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. PBS. Web. 28 Oct. 2010. <http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm>.

PBS hosts a wonderful but flawed attack on racism called "RACE - The Power of an Illusion."  This site provides scientific ideas that debunk racism such as the fact that any ethnic group contains 85% of human diversity.  This shows that each ethnic group genetically overlaps and that instead of human diversity being between races, it is actually contained within each race.  This site explores the history of racism and how it developed over time.  It is found that dividing people by their physical characteristics is a relatively new idea.  Finally, it is shown that colored people are still discriminated against, and because of this discrimination their opportunities and wealth is far inferior in general to that of people of European descent. 

This website shows the ineptitude of categorizing people into dichotomized racial groups because people exist along a spectrum of races and a good number of people are biracial.  This is the same message as that of the essay "Menu-Driven Identities" written by Lisa Nakamura.  She finds that the racial dichotomizing that exists in the real world has been transferred to the virtual world of the Internet in the form of online menus that makes the user pick a race (p. 104).  These menus dichotomize race.  Nakamura finds that identity should be based on culture rather than race (p. 130). 


The interactive PBS article vaguely agrees with this because it sees race as a recent innovation and should be done away with.  It is mentions that Indian tribes should not be based on race but on ancestry.  The article does mention that dichotomizing skin color is wrong but it never really mentions that culture should  replace race.  The PBS article does miss the point a little because their alternatives to the modern dichotomization is the multiracial and bi-racial model, and a model based on ancestry.  These ideas are related the the idea of culture, but are not the same.

The debate over race is as confusing and complex is it is sensitive.  We should make sure to create rational alternatives to our current baneful model of race and avoid replacing one form of racism with another.  If we continue to think of people and divide them by their skin color we will be creating identities which don't matter and can be used to further injustice. 

Even the multi-racial and bi-racial models of categorizing people is wrong because it still creates identity around skin color.  Ancestry is very much related to culture but is also not the same.  Some people may be related to a certain culture but may contain completely different cultural norms.  The cultural model of identity should be used because culture is what really defines what people are and how they act. 




Bibliography:

Adelman, Larry. "RACE - The Power of an Illusion | PBS." Weblog post. PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. PBS. Web. 28 Oct. 2010. <http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm>.

Nakamura, Lisa.  Cybertypes: Race,  Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet.  New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Fighting in the Exotic

Some people seem to think that the Internet is going to break down barriers between different races because race is much more obvious when communicating in person than in online chat.  I think the web will break down many barriers but it will not completely destroy racism and some types of racism will be safe to breed on the Internet.  Stereotypes of different races still exist online and so racism will live on.  Lisa Nakamura writer of the article "Cybertyping and the Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction" calls online stereotypes cybertypes.  Cybertypes are ways that the web "propagates, disseminates, and commodities images of race and racism" (p. 3).  It is hoped that with the web, people will be able to visit and experience different cultures with their computers and gain a greater appreciation of them.  What is actually happening is that instead of being respected, different cultures are being reduced to online tourist attractions.

 

The game, Street Fighter 2, is a typical Internet game that demonstrates this online racism.  In this game a player can masquerade as different players and go to different place.  My favorite character is Dhalsim who is an Indian fighter.  He is extremely agile and can even float.  One notices that he has mystical powers and is very scary.  He is the scariest fighter in the game equipped with the ability to shoot mystical fireballs, wears skulls on his costume, is bald, and has no eyelids.  He portrays the mysticism of India as powerful and dangerous when India is actually a very peaceful place.  Places outside Europe and America are shown to be technologically primitive.  For example, in China, the fight takes place in a dirt road with Chinese people in traditional dress in their cheap shops.  There are only carts and no cars at all.  In America, you can see advanced technology including boats and cars. 

The cybertypes this game portrays is that colored people are technologically primitive and attached to their traditional ways and that Europeans are advanced and are culturally modern and progressive.  There is little trace of the amazing technological advances that the developing world has made.  Like a tourist, the user gets to fight in different areas in the world and explore older cultures.  This game perpetuates the stereotype of colored people being scary and primitive and constantly living the past.  This deceptive image of the developing world as primitive regardless of the fact that places like Japan and South Korea are about as rich as we are, and that nations such as Brazil, India and China are growing technologically and economically at a very fast pace.

Bibliography:

Nakamura, Lisa.  Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and

Identity on the internet.  New York Routledge,

 2002. Print.

 

Princess Peach: The Female Stereotype Fighter

Today, I spent a total of one hour of my life playing Super Mario 2.  This game is primitive and extremely difficult but it also lends a few statements on gender roles.  In this game there are several main characters a person can play named Princess Peach, Toad, Mario, and Luigi.  These characters attempt to avoid enemies and finish their quests.  Most of them have special abilities.  Mario is well rounded and does not seem to have any ability in particular, Luigi can jump very high right over impossible walls, Toad can move very fast, and Princess Peach can glide along while jumping.  Other than these specific differences each character is essentially the same in ability. 

I find that Princess Peach is the coolest character because of her awesome jumping ability and in this sense, this game does not discriminate against female characters.  She is similar to Lara Croft in that she is an able fighter.  She is what Anne-Marie Schleiner writer of the article "Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons?  Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games" would be considered a positive role model for women and girls.  This is how Scheiner sees Lara Croft stating that "Lara Croft is a positive role model for women and girls and a possible entry point for women into the male discourse domain of computer games" (Schleiner). 

Scheiner states that sometimes subjects in games gravitate to a certain position in relation to the user.  This is what she calls the "gender subject configuration" (Schleiner).  Unlike Croft, Princess Peach does not seem to play the role as a sex object because she is well clothed and the character is not displayed with enough resolution to have much fine detail.  She may actually roll back gender stereotypes because here is a princess who is just as strong as the guys.

The producers of Super Mario 2 seem to be quite enlightened except for the fact that most of the characters in the game are male and this may reduce the appeal of this game for females.  Princess Peach looks very young and weak, and wears pink which is stereotypically a girl color. On the contrary however, Princess Peach is an able character who conflicts with this stereotype of the princess being weak and in the end expresses exactly the opposite.  Princess Peach is an awesome character who is a stereotype fighter!

Bibligraphy:

Schleiner, Anne-Marie.  2001. “Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games.”  Leonardo.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576939

Avatar is a record-breaking film containing awesome 3D effects and made my eyes think they were really in a breathtaking tropical planet.  The story line is wonderful and the emotional content is superb but Avatar is just a typical Hollywood production in gender representation because Avatar dichotomizes it.  When viewing the movie, I couldn't help but notice that the people who were out exploring, running and fighting in Pandora were almost all men. 

This is almost forgivable because the military is mostly made up of men, however the movie shows the leadership positions among the humans and Na'vi occupied almost exclusively by males.  In the movie, men are adventurous and fun loving but women tend to passively experience the planet and do not have such a sense of fun and excitement.  This movie portrays men as cutters (adventurous and active learners) and idolizes this mind-set.  Women are seen as the non-cutters (non-adventurous and learn passively).  This is a stain on an otherwise good film and unrealistically dichotomizes the sexes.

The main character, Jake, is especially of interest because he has the opportunity to live a second life in an avatar.  Jake is an adventurous character who became a cripple because of an injury on earth.  He dreams of flying over jungle and forest in complete freedom however his crippled body harshly remind him of reality.  In his avatar he is able to experience the joy of swinging through the trees and have enormous agility and athletic freedom in real life. 

In real life, our bodies are a part of our identities and limit its free expression.  On our homepages we have to ability to choose what we want to be rather than having our identities given to us by others.  Jake's avatar is not a digital being but his situation is similar because his identity is what he desires it to be.  Jake's avatar allows him to express his true self and enables him to be physically adventurous rather than just mentally so. 

Charles Cheung argues that homepages allow people to more freely create and express their identities in his essay "Identity Construction and Self-Presentation" when he states:

The distinctive medium of characteristics of the personal homepage allow net users to become active-cultural producers, expressing their suppressed identities or exploring the significant question of ' who I am', often in ways which may not otherwise be possible in 'real' life.

 (Cheung, p. 274)

Cheung also observed that homepages are under the control of users and they actively construct their new online identities (Cheung, p. 275).  Jake did not choose the characteristics of his avatar and it was not even modeled after him, but after his dead brother.  It was just luck that his avatar allowed him to express his true self.  Even though, his avatar was not modeled after him, it allowed him to pursue a second life far better than any homepage will because his avatar itself is in real life and is not a fictitious construct.

Avatar is seen by most to be a classic, but it is not a classic in the sense in that it dichotomizes gender like most other movies.  The relationship between Jake and his avatar parallel that between the Internet user and her homepage because it allows him to express his true identity in another world, however his avatar or new identity was constructed by others.

Bibliography:

Cheung, Charles (2007). Identity Construction and Self-Presentation. In D. Bell and B. M. Kennedy (Ed.), The Cybercultures Reader (2nd Ed.). London and New York: Routeledge



We are not the Machine

The computer is a daunting and complex piece of technology which is very prone to seemingly unfixable errors.  This is not a message that Dell wants to send to users and like all companies gives a utopian view of their products.

This is a picture of a Dell computer, is made in the hope that people will buy their computers and is part of a website that is dedicated to selling their computers http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-mini1018/pd.  Deborah Lupton expresses this tactic when she asserted, "The overt reasons for portraying computers as humans is to reduce the anxieties of computer phobia that many people, particularly adults, experience" (p. 428).  Computers are seen by many to be scary and so computer people's humanizing of them relieves much fear.  Dell attempts to seel a brand of laptop called the New Inspiron Mini 10 Netbook by using such terms like "battery life," "the Inspiron™ Mini 10 lets you," and "perfect travel companion."  Dell boasts how "lightweight" this computer is (Dell). 

Lupton sees this sort of description as a sign of how much the borders between we humans and our computers are become blurred.  She thinks that because computers are treated almost as individuals, we are becoming a part of them and they are becoming part of us (p. 423).  Her view is exaggerated and in fact people have very little emotional connection with their computers.  This explains why people are constantly throwing out their old computers and getting newer more modern ones.  To most people, they are simply machines and nothing more. 

In chemistry, atoms are sometimes referred to as individuals so people can beome more comfortable with them and learn how they work.  This sort of simplification is preferable to attempting to explain atomic theory in all its complexity to users who know next to nothing about it.  We form emotional bonds with our computers like we form emotional bonds with our houses or cars, however our identities are hardly changed and our bonds are simply emotional.

This course helps me understand digital technology in a far deeper sense than just knowing how computers function and how to use and program them.  We as a nation must be aware of the directions technology can go and we must decide how we wish to use technology.  The way we understand technology is seen though the eyes of our culture.  I now see technology more objectively and outside the bounds of my culture.  For example I learned that Japanese people see the Internet more as a tool for accomplishing things in real life rather than something that disconnects us from real life (p. 759).  This concept was elaborated by Adriana Silva in the Cibercultural Reader.

I wish that this course was more about understanding computers rather than simply writing  and talking about them, however I absolutely cannot say that I have taken nothing away from it.

Bibliography:

Dell. Advertisement. Satisfies Even Your Most Avid Tweeter. Dell. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-mini1018/pd.

Silva, Adriana De Souza E. "From Cyber To Hybrid." The Cybercultures Reader. Ed. David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Print.

Lupton, Deborah. "The Embodied Computer/User." The Cybercultures Reader. Ed. David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Print.