Class Notes 2/28, Day 12

 Panelist Day 1!

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Similar panelists sitting next to each other

Name cards (“tent”)

 

Midnight Friday, second web event is due

·      Theorize about the life that you have performed as a panelist

·      Engaging the Digital Humanities

o   Photographs

o   HTML coding

o   Film

Should also have 5 postings and 2 papers by Friday (or 6 postings and 1 paper)

Mid-semester evaluation; what’s working and what isn’t?

Suggest a book or film

 

Historical figures:

Michelle Obama: first lady

Corazon Aquino: president of the Phillipines

Christa McAuliffe: astronaut

Amelia Earhart: first female pilot to cross the Atlantic

Mary Shelley: author of Frankenstein

Simone De Beauvoir: existentialist philosopher

Emily Balch: Nobel prize winner, sociologist, economist

Margaret Sanger: birth control activist

Grace Hopper: computer scientist

Grace Hopper: “

Mike Ruiz: digital/altered photographer

Sam Agha: Middle Eastern father educated in UK

Ibn Sina: Islamic scholar

 

·      Grouped together in time (1925-2011) and space (US), for the most part

·      Largely female (except for Mike Ruiz)

·      Following the data stream:

o   Where we are and what we’re doing

o   The technologies that value and attend to

 

HilaryB's idea: I think what people usually do is create some meaning for a text and then look for proof of that meaning they created rather than just looking at and playing around with raw data first.

 

Clustered based on how they might affiliate, but is that categorization trivial?...

 

Field: Natural Science to Humanities

Politics: Public to Private

·      M. Obama: Humanities/ Public

·      C. Aquino: Humanities/ Public

·      C. McAuliffe: Middle/ Middle

·      Earhart: Middle/Public

·      Mary Shelley: Humanities/ Public and Private

·      S. De Beauvoir: Humanities/ Middle

·      E. Balch: Middle/ Public

·      Margaret Sanger: Science/ Social Sciences

·      Grace Hopper: Natural Sciences/ Public and Private

·      Mike Ruiz: Humanities/ Middle

·      Sam Agha: Middle/ Private

·      Idn Sina: Middle/ More Public

 

Life Story:

·      Was gender an obstacle or agent for you?

o   Corazon: obstacle; never had proper training in politics, a housewife, seen as just a woman who didn’t belong in the political arena

o   Emily Balch: agent; first graduating class of Bryn Mawr College, after working with women for so long, drove me to pursue social sciences; went to work with Nuclear National League for Peace and Freedom; fight for what I believe in

o   Margaret Sanger: agent, felt for other women because of my own gender

·      Critique or creation?

o   Earhart: created records, but didn’t create something tangible; wasn’t critiquing, wasn’t insisting on superiority; adventure, narcissistic; opened up fields for women aviators; advocacy

o   Christa: two jobs contrast a lot so it’s hard to define one or the other

o   Simone: both a creator and a critique, but can’t separate them; they overlap

o   Mike Ruiz: as a photographer, representation of something that already exists; critique by the frame of the piece… merges both critique and creation

·      jebouvier on the film: Both main females were very strong in their relationships with men, yet often controlled by the women in their lives (generally their mothers).  They were a bit too strong ... over confident of their abilities... too cocky.

o   Mary Shelley: positive influence from her late mother, who was a feminist, started at a young age; expanded my horizons, criticisms of my work and my relationships: having that confidence kept me working

o   Grace Hopper: strong personality, “a ship in port is always safe but that’s not what ships are for,” always trying new things; people didn’t think I could create a computer that could translate from English to code, but I did it anyway

§  Challenged by boss to do work, did it, won my place as a woman

o   Ibn Sina: majority of scholars were male, not female…

·      Sex and sexuality?

o   Earhart: was proposed to by husband six times, partnership rather than a marriage, very cautious

o   Simone: lifelong relationship with philosopher, partners; polygamists, sexually very open, involving some students; never married, didn’t want to become dependent

§  2 panelists lived singly all through lives (Ibn and Simone… and kind of Grace)

o   Corazon: worked with husband, forced into running because of his death; relationship made me a public figure

o   Mary: in theory, free love; shouldn’t marry because that puts restrictions on how and who you should love, but married to Percy; who had dalliances, made me upset, a source of hardship, made me write better

§  6 panelists had children

·      Opening scene to your life?

o   Sam Agha: a balanced life, struggle to balance the continuous improvements of technologies and keeping of religion and culture; a happy family eating dinner

o   Mike Ruiz: focus on photography, some of my personal life; collection of photographs and about process

o   Michelle Obama: life became public because of marriage to Barrack; acknowledged as gifted at 6 years old, woman of color; began to center around education in a working class family, go to college, etc

·      Hilary G: When I think of historical and contemporary examples of technology that have significantly impacted the human race... I noticed an interesting pattern. Most of these “pieces” of technology somehow directly relate to the idea of communication. Human beings are social creatures, and ...improving communication, in its various forms, seems to be one of the most important motivations behind developing new technologies (true or false for your life??

o   Simone: technology, to me, means industrialization and has more to do with money—status over communication; taking a stand against repressive technology

o   Earhart: a lot more than communication; the air doesn’t care what gender you are; adventure and freedom; communication is important because then… maybe I… wouldn’t have died; in my own life, it wasn’t about communication, it was more about making equality

o   Corazon: politics, communication is extremely important; upheavals and distinct links to technology; the Xerox machine, getting what I was saying out to the public

o   Margaret Sanger: technology is more about communication, it was available, and women needed to know; and, later, the Pill

o   Ibn Sina: all of the research I was doing was to help people communicate, astronomer, using them as a means of time and for direction, navigation

o   Michelle: communication can negatively affect life; I’m fiercely private but I’m always in the public eye, always critiqued; accused of being cold; even though we are a public family we have the right to privacy; played a role in husband’s campaign… now it prevents us from living a normal life

o   Sam: updated with technology, improves communication system; reaching out for more information, expanding our knowledge, my wife would disagree because technology makes us depend on machines; feels left out because she doesn’t use laptops/computers/etc; separates us in the house, makes us more introverted

·      Technology as an extension of you?

o   Grace: computers were separated from humans, ballistics calculating; I was able to link humans to computers more…

§  I wanted people to be able to use computers more intuitively

o   Christa: technology became a part of me only when I got noticed for taking part in space travel

o   Earhart: immense joy but… it killed me and Christa…

o   Mike Ruiz: an extension of me, as an identity, to an extent, it isn’t an extension of me because seeing through a viewfinder is different from seeing through my eyes, it’s a different version of myself

o   Ibn Sina: it is an extension of me, sun and moon system…

o   Corazon: separate from machines that I have used; while I have had to give speeches, Xeroxing — I didn’t do that, the people did that, I really did have a distinction; very Catholic, distinguished between my spiritual life and politics

·      Religion:

o   Sam: I think that religion has a strong opinion towards gender – has a lot to say about technology since they’re linked; in the Middle East, extremists would not allow their kids to have access to Internet, afraid that they would be too open-minded and would start to doubt culture and religion; my daughter might be going through, because when I studied in the UK, I realized how different the West and the Middle East are… not exposed completely to technology…

o   Ibn Sina: religion as motivation for my movement into medicine, philosophy, astronomy, technology

·      Role of technology as gender expression?

o   Emily: without technology I never would have been able to get my ideals out in the open, because I was a woman, on paper your gender isn’t inherent

o   Mike Ruiz: wasn’t an obstacle (gender), but when you see a photograph you don’t see the photographer, you see the subject…

o   Earhart: gender helped me, because as the first woman to cross the Atlantic, I became more distinct in the public eye; got more money to buy better planes

·      Silence from the imaginary panel…

·      Christa: how did you die, your status?

o   Christa: supposed to go into space on the Challenger, the space shuttle broke apart after it launched and I died (1986)

o   Earhart: I attempted to be the first woman to fly around the world solo, I disappeared during island hopping… US govt spent 14 days and 4 million dollars looking for me (1937)

o   Corazon: (2009) I got sick, campaigning for only son to become president…

o   Ibn Sina: (1021), 80+ years old, no children or wife… died of old age

o   Grace: died of old age (1992, at 86), died highest ranking woman in the Navy… oldest person in the Navy, buried in Arlington

o   Margaret: died at 81 of old age, year after contraceptives were Constitutional right

o   Emily: died in 1961 at 94, generic old age, single and unmarried

o   Simone: died 1986 at 78 years old, wasn’t really known until after death

o   Mary: I died in 1851… died of illness, three of four children died during childhood, best known for being Percy Shelley’s wife at death…

·      Grace Hopper: It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission

·      Ibn: It is easier to learn medicine than it is to learn philosophy