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Boundary transgressing animals allow the sight of intense social interest or fascination. A boundary transgressing animal attracts interest and is considered either a monster or sacred because they don’t fit into a predetermined category. More specifically, this type of animal is mostly considered an monster when they can fit into multiple categories. Society tends to have no place for a mix or middle ground. Society prefers for people to fit in a specific circle or category. Boundary transgressions are inevitable. These transgressions are potentially used to exploit people, regardless of race. Despite people being educated on the various dangers of boundary transgressions, it is the people themselves that determines the acceptance of them. There will always be some people that choose to use these transgressions to exploit people for their own gain and others who decided against doing that for the betterment of society.

It was said that racial divisions are leaky and unstable. Are the divisions really leaky and unstable or do we just want another way to further classify and fit people in boxes that no longer work for our society? If we are saying that that are leaky/ unstable, we can see that today by the reclassification of how many boxes we are allowed to check on forms. But why are there even still boxes? Life does not match the categories that the United States has chosen to represent the world. I don’t think the U.S really cares about what you think you are. If they really did then they wouldn’t have categories for people to be placed in. The whole systems is meant to track and make data to talk about how great they think they are doing. Categories are justifications and pats on the back for programs and endeavors for appearing that we are engaging in inclusion. There is a simultaneous desire for fixity and a desire for flexibility and transgression of boundaries. This desire stems from society as a whole wanting to maintain the status quo to a certain extent. The fixity of boundaries is the manner in which society has always work while the transgression of boundaries challenges the status quo in order to promote progress into a potentially better society. Society will allow for some transgression, but once it progresses to a point where it becomes too unknown, the transgression is then slowed or steadied. Therefore, the boundaries become fixed again. To these members of society, they are not being perverse to the idea of progression, but instead ensuring that society doesn’t progress too much too quickly to the point that there is chaos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The music of the United States is different from other countries because of African influence. White people tend to notoriously clap on the wrong beat. If you think about the people that settled here, they were looking for religious freedom. Music and beats is not something that they were exposed to. Notoriously clapping on the wrong beat is just a systemic issue of trying to belong and appreciate a culture that they spent years trying to quell. I believe it’s hard to come back to know how to appreciate embedded African beats in music when years was spent ignoring it.

Minstrel shows began in the 1830s. White people would blacken their face with burnt cork or greasepaint. In picture advertisements, they made the minstrel characters look like grotesque cartoonish characters. The figures would have to be cartoonish because white people had already spent years dehumanizing Africans as their slaves. Years seeing them as less than human and at the end of the day they needed to make sure that people would pay money to come see this show. It was essentially a show that played on the humanization of blacks for the amusement of white people.

The question of if the state song of Texas was weird was asked. The appeal of this song is just singing of an innate desire. There is an appreciation for the skin color of a mixed woman and it’s easily resolvable than potentially singing about a black woman. Also, the concept of blackface too just explains how enamored they were with the people but dare not admit that since they enslaved and abused them for so long.

Why was minstrel shows as a form of American music was so popular? It was popular because it was an art-form they appreciated but dare not to admit. Also, it was a stolen art-form as well. You take something not created by you and perpetuate it as your own. People would enjoy this because deep down they have been taking from the black man only to turn it around into something profitable for the white man to make money. At that time, you can admit that blacks had talent to be able to perform in the show which they couldn’t because this had become a business that they couldn’t quite give up to blacks just yet.

Culture appropriation continues today. Minstrel shows is one form of the cultural appropriations. However, we see it every day. Look at recently how hijabs were used in a fashion show by a white designer and so were turbans like these were new items on the market to make a look complete when people have been debating the use and wearing of them and how it causes oppression to the women and men who wear them. But as a fashion statement all of a sudden it’s okay to utilize them? Goes to show that cultural appropriation comes in use when it is deemed fashionable then it becomes ok. The United States casts things in binary terms. Life does not always fit into binary terms and I’m not sure that our nation will ever move away from this mindset.

 

 

 

I never really knew much about the history behind the internet.  A huge part of the Cold war research involved targeting. Computers became central to this research. First, we started with analog computers but then we upgraded to electrical computers. Electronic computers were made up of vacuum tubes. Tubes allowed amplification. ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was developed to compute missile trajectories and run simulations for atomic bombs. It’s crazy to think that researchers would have to use stacks of punch-cards to give instructions to ENIAC. After tubes, came transistors which were much smaller and more efficient.  DARPA and the ARPANET was birth out of the fact that scientists wanted to create a communication network that had no “hub.” The ARPANET allowed messages to be divided up into packets which took varied paths. The internet allowed free and easy distribution of information. Hypertext undermines authority and elite-ness. Before the internet, access to knowledge was restricted by how much money you had.  The internet owes its origin to the ARPANET. Without it, the internet probably wouldn’t conduct itself in the way it does today or even exist. The ARPANET helped to establish the protocols that are used today throughout the Internet. Finally, the ARPANET developed a way to make the internet a larger and regional network, making it accessible to everyone. Even with access to free information, there are still “sinister authorities” that are trying to control access to information. Media outlets are being trumpeted as “fake news” and it seems our governing authority is trying to have a dictatorship over the information citizens receive.

Signal is what you want to hear and noise is the stuff that is not the signal. Sound is disaggregated from the natural world. We want to hear what we want to hear. I think this is a metaphor for how we think about life. Sound has meaning and the natural world has its own sound. We can’t find meaning in the natural world unless we have a need for it. The disaggregation of sound then is needed because it’s the only way for us to delineate what we want out of it. We encounter things every day but not everything we encounter has specific meaning.

Information and meaning are two different things which is a central part of Shannon’s argument. We have created a culture in which information is divorced from meaning. As a society, we encouraged and applauded inventions like the Macbook and the internet and IBM. We believed that this was the information we needed. But if you think about how these inventions were created, they were essentially just a series of binary codes and “u and qs”. These items, devoid of meaning, created meaning. So, is information divorced from meaning or have we not really just put the ideas together to create meaning from it? For instance, when you type a question into a search engine there are ways to make sure that your search entry is more defined. For example, using “and” and quotation marks can help your search information be conveyed in the way you want it. But ultimately, the uncertainty cannot be changed unless we stop perpetuating the cycle in which information is given.

Today was a real history day. During the Cold War the U.S adopted a policy of containment. The goal of the policy was to “contain” communism and Soviet influence. The U.S fights proxy wars aimed at stopping communism from spreading. An interesting notion is that of mutually assured destruction keeps peace in the world(MAD). I understand why some believed that standing armies are a menace to freedom and democracy. The United States as such a young nation felt it was their duty to spread these ideas and not let socialist thinking corrupt fledgling post colonialist states. And after seeing what a toll isolationism had taken on not engaging in foreign affairs, it begs to reason that we would not have gotten involved in the Vietnam War and Korean War. Had we not suffered the effects of isolationism thinking, then we would not have suffered such grave losses in Vietnam or Korea. The act of containment then was a reactive response because we did not proactively engage with foreign leaders before it escalated. I believe that Meigs and the investment in the military industrial complex connects to even what we see in the military today. Being a soldier doesn’t just encompass only being a soldier, but also being smart in sense of bombs, detonations, and other tactical elements.

Vannevar Bush says the human mind does not work the way libraries work, it works by making spontaneous connections between things which don’t seem similar. We move from one thing to another putting together a chain of meaning. We need machines that reflect the way we fundamentally think. Carr wants us to learn the discipline of the book and silent working. I agree with both Carr and Vannevar Bush. It might be hard to believe but we need the little bit of each world. I believe that the government continues to meddle in the way states provided education based on the views of Carr. Common Core Standards and Race to the top is returning the principles of what Carr is stating in his ideas, in that their needs to be discipline in the book work and silent thinking to create innovative ideas from suggested problems. But at the same time, you have countries like Finland and Iceland which follow an organization educational structure similar to Vannevar’s idea of the internet and yet students are able to flourish and maintain high standards. As a whole, the system we live in now needs to tailor learning and thinking not only through distraction but also through a series of spontaneous connections.

Technology alters perception. Carr argues that technology alters self and does so in powerful ways.  I do believe that technology creates different selves. Sometimes the self that we project through technology is not the same as our self that we show in real life. Marshall McLuhan said, “the medium is the message.” Technology has different selves and alters self; therefore, it affects people in society in different ways. Thus, the medium is the message refers to technology being the medium. Technology is in the message itself, creating a one-sided symbiotic relationship between people/society and technology, with technology influencing how the message is discerned.

In the public sphere, you are not supposed to speak with passion or anger. A proper citizen speaks in the language of the public sphere. One critique of this way of thinking is that it potentially favors consensus over plurality and difference. By not speaking with passion, it can lead to nothing decisive or encompassing resulting from the conversation. It prevents discussions where two people may not agree, but still have productive/beneficial conversations.

“The personal is the political” – People have the nature to be appropriate but we assume because of rights to free speech, we have the right to behave and act the way our rights allow us to. But if you think about the societal hierarchy, you must act a certain way to get what you want. As a society, we have unofficially adopted the upper echelon way of thinking in this polite and respectful sphere that has then trickled down and we are expected to keep the personal political. If that is not done, then that’s where labels start to get put on people.

Who do you admire more, the person that has internalized the knowledge or the person who has simply purchased access to the knowledge? I admire the person that has internalized the knowledge more than the person who has simply purchased access to the knowledge. Someone that has internalized knowledge is able to fit new knowledge into their existing categories or create new categories. This is a person who not only receives the knowledge but finds a way to organize the knowledge within themselves so it is available for them for a lifetime. I associate internalization with true learning. Purchasing knowledge is like cramming for an exam. I would be lying if I said that in every class I internalized information. In classes that I don’t find interesting or that I feel will benefit me in the future, I tend to be the person that “buys the book to consult when needed.”

In Carr’s epilogue he said “How I wondered, would the Edexcel discern those rare students who break from the conventions or writing not because they’re incompetent but because they have a special spark of brilliance? I knew the answer: it wouldn’t. Computers, as Joseph Weizenbaum pointed out, follows rules; they don’t make judgements.”  I never really thought about computers grading tests in that way. Today, it seems like computers are taking over the roles human beings in almost everything. You don’t even have to call someone to make an appointment with a company anymore. If something is wrong with your cable, a computer system talks you through troubleshooting. The first line of customer service for companies is no longer a human being answering the phone. We need to heed Weizenbaum’s warning of entrusting everything we do to computers.

Technology changes mentalities. Some people don’t watch TV. In some instances, movies and television influences our look and what we consume. I believe we learn to think from movies and television. The goal of entertainment is how to make consumers enjoy the experience. TV is all aesthetics now. We subconsciously apply what we see from the movies and TV shows we like to others. We use the same lens from what we like on what we don’t like. When it doesn’t fit, we de don’t watch the show. We choose not to appreciate certain movies based on what we’ve seen before. This idea forces media people to create the same old stuff repeatedly because they realize it’s the one thing they can get us to respond to. Before technology, you could cultivate the inner self with books and reading. Self- reflection was common. Most of society consider their technological self as an extension of their own self. For example, some people believe that how they are through their Instagram and Facebook is really them, but that’s not really their true self. If you spend the time to cultivate a self that can be projected to be accepted by others in mass consumption, then you’re not really working to cultivate your inner self. You’re just working to maintain a self you created. It is not original and it’s not authentic. As a result, your inner-self erodes because you don’t really know who are or why you choose to do certain things. Your life is just run by the technology or the response around you.

Technology does create new kinds of thinking. The meaning of time differs for different people in different cultures. Some cultures place an emphasis on using your time wisely i.e. maximizing your time so that it isn’t wasted. Other cultures believe time spent with loved ones should be more important than time spent at your job. Work will always be there. Some cultures place an emphasis on finding a balance between both those things. One must make time for the people in their life while also making sure that work gets done. In terms of technology being dislocating and changing thought, it is no longer important to find a balance anymore because I could be working while being on Facetime. By the same token, I could be working and have my earbud in and be on a phone call simultaneously. I feel like technology assisted in adjusting time. Since technology has created time zones, work can continue in other parts of the world where work has stopped in other parts. I feel like it’s like a cog in a machine kind of metaphor. The world itself is now operating like cog in a giant wheel of time. Each cog in the wheel is each time zone. At some point in time, that cog in the wheel that’s rotating is the world, some part of that cog needs to rest so that when the wheel comes back around it’s smooth, it’s rotatable, and it’s easy to adjust to help the wheel move forward. If we didn’t have technology and only went by the basis of the sun, then we wouldn’t be able to progress. The dislocation of time is not so much on the work itself but its affect and meaning. Hard-work doesn’t really have the same meaning it had in the past. It seems all that we are interested today is the monetary gains. Technology has changed the priorities that govern work-life.

In class we discussed the loudness war. Previous to reading the article I never noticed or realized  that the trend of increasing audio levels in music was an movement.  Music trends change over generations because the trends depend on how invested people are in the music of the time. Our music preferences are also influenced by the elders in our lives that share and pass down the music they listened to when they were growing up. In any art there is always a push for innovation and modernization. Compression was used to make music more modern and to allow musicians to set themselves apart from the music in the past and get noticed by producers and record labels. As time passed more and more artist started to compress their music because it became the formula for success. Just as architecture styles prevail during certain times, the same can be said for music. I do agree that dynamic range is important. The dynamic range of older music makes it much more interesting than some of the music today. I can say that when I listen to older music the lyrics and dynamic range is what captures my attention. When I listen to music of today, the musical ingenuity of the song anchors my attention moreso than the lyrics. Music back in the day was entertainment which is why dynamic range was so important. A musician would not be able to maintain audience attention if they were not dynamic. Today, music is more of a filler. It is in the background which is why my generation doesn’t find extreme fault in the over- compression of music. It’s hard to believe that less compressed music will be produced in future because children of today haven’t had access to less compressed music. They most likely won’t be willing to create a change in the music that is popular now. Even contemporary gospel music is becoming compressed. I find myself listening to traditional gospel music to truly be moved. An interesting topic that was also brought up was the idea of French bread vs. wonder bread. French bread and wonder bread is analogous to our society’s blatant acceptance of mediocrity.  We continue to perpetuate this mediocrity in not only our music but our food, leadership and sometimes our lives.

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