GIST

I will admit that my post this week veers a little bit from what we looked at in class. However, I do feel that it is relevant to the course as a whole.

Some background info:
Today, I was sitting at my laptop in my room listening to my Pandora station. A friend came into the room wanting to talk so I switched my tabs, paused the song I was playing and then saw the name of the album that was currently playing. It was called "Women in Technology". My initial reaction was woah, this GIST course is taking over my life! And then (after freaking out at my geekiness) I decided to look more into why the album was named 'Women and Technology' and I thought it would be interesting to write about.

Class notes 3/14

(Sorry if I misspell people’s names!)

We began with course keeping, as usual.

Liz reminded us that: This course is constructed to try to find some interesting intersections. What are the big ideas that connect these four areas? What is the overall road map? What are the connecting ideas?

We divided into smaller groups to discuss the reading, "Moored Metamorphoses: A Retrospective Essay on Feminist Science Studies." By Banu Subramaniam

My group, the Poppies said:

We've had lots of different suggestions for what texts or films to schedule for our three open classes. Look through the possibilities others have mentioned (listed below, w/ details in individual postings). Then continue the conversation here: what intrigues you? What don't you know about that you'd like to explore together? What is already familiar to you, which might be worth re-interpreting through the lenses of this course? Do you have any preferences regarding the FORM--fiction? non-fiction? texts? films? other visual sources?

kgould: Jane McGonigle, Reality is Broken
preNic: Sherry Turkle, Together Alone
MissArcher2: Michael Chorost, World Wide Mind; Cinderella Ate My Daughter
leamirella: Jaron Lanier, You are not a Gadget;

Wednesday class panel featuring different (primarily) imaginary figures was extremely interesting and fun. It was amusing to see how we struggled categorizing each other, with the exception of analyzing one another on the basis on violence. I wonder if the entire class were to participate if this theme would have persisted. For my character personally (Wolverine) I found the following concepts challenging and intriguing:

Role of technology

What's working, and what needs working on, for you as an individual?

I think the amount of readings and other preparations that we have to do for the class are fair. Weekly posting seems to help to present organized thoughts that were not said during the class. I think the current system is working out fine.

What's working, and what needs working on, for us as a group (on-line, in class, in conversation and on the panels)?

It is hard to tell what is working or what is not working as a group, but I think that everyone seems to be participating fairly well and presenting thoughtful ideas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCPr0w5QaIA

So, at the beginning of this week I inteded to create a comic strip exploring the life of Stewie Griffin (the character I became during our discussions). A rough draft was made, but never made it to a presentable stage. I am glad to speak on the individual practices of the panelists involved this week. Monday was interesting because it seemed that students were less comfortable taking on the personas of historical characters. This may have been because they went first, but it happened more and more that people would slip out of character. Overall, looking at the historical figures' practices it seemed they were more theoretical. Yes, there were characters like grace hopper and amelia earhart who put their views into practice.

 I was reflecting on the Top Secret Rosies documentary we saw at the BMFI. It is rather surprising in a sad way how women have always been discriminated against throughout history and until this day, gender is something we, humans have not gotten to a unanimous agreement upon in regards to equality and fairness. It goes back to the categories we tend to make, everything is categorized and put under a label, jobs, clothing, appearance, colors, wages, and decision making in some places. Top Secret rosies showed how women have played an incredible role during the war, a role they still have not been fully recognized for. Before the war, during the  war, and throughout time, women have not been treated fairly, and the world have gotten away with it.

On the first day of the panel discussion with historical characters, it was noticeable that most of the figures are women and they come from 19 to 21st century. It is understandable that people have more knowledge about the recent figures that they chose to be them. Even though, all the students were advised to select a figure that could represent gender, science, and technology, I feel like most of them decided to represent a figure that is more focused on gender. The figures represented by some of the students are the ones who have tried intentionally or unintentionally break the gender binary and the stereotypes of women.