Mid-Semester Evaluation: Looking Backwards and Forward

Like many others, I wasn't sure what I was expecting from this class. It is cross-listed as two very different subjects so that contributed to some confusion. I was looking for a CS class (the selections were really limited this semester) and I had heard good things about it from someone in my English 250 class. 

I think a lot of the discussion methods in this class have been effective in different ways. Talking to everyone in class seemed effective to some people, while small groups and blog posting are effective for people who don't feel comfortable talking in front of large groups. It might be beneficial to encourage more replies for our blog posts so we respond to others' ideas.

There have been several main ideas that we have looked that seem to be useful, but not addressed directly by any ideologies or methods in the humanities (I think?) such as the blurring of boundaries, communication being essential to information and more extensive peer review. I think this highlights well the issues and benefits that arise out of trying to combine technology with the humanities.

But whenever we more or less focus on gender, things get frustrating. Discussions about nice moral ways to push gender reform are the only times where I feel the discussion goes nowhere. It does a good job at showing all the problems of current and potential systems, but it's all negative. It's an important issue, but I still think all ideas are too easy to shoot down, especially for people who are not experts in the field. 

I'm a little late to add the course materials but I do like a lot of things that the previous posters said, though, especially the dystopia novels suggested by Hillary G, kelliot and Franklin20.

After I took Anthropology of Gender last semester I was left wondering about dynamics between gender and science, biology specifically. The beginning of this course was a fascinating next step of learning for me and I found our readings and discussions to exactly what I wanted to read and discuss. Apart from the topics of the class, the structure has been different than any other classes that I have taken. I like having the opportunity to share my thoughts online and to be able to read what other people have to say. Because it is hard to read everyone’s posts I like that certain reoccurring or challenging ideas that have appeared in the posts are grouped together and read out loud in class.  It is also convenient having all the course notes and discussion notes online to refer to.   

 I have never had a course that was so publically online but I think it is a great idea and I think more courses should have their learning process be as open as this one. It has definitely made re consider how I write papers and I would like to be more creative in other classes and see the reaction of those professors. What I have learned so far from this course is to keep an open mind and to constantly challenge what you take for granted. How I think of myself and my relationship to the world around me has also changed and I am much more interested in finding the similarities in life rather than concentrating on differences.

For the future I would be nice if we could break into smaller groups for discussion and then report back to the whole group because it is hard with such a large group to have everyone speak and it would be nice to hear what other people have to say in a setting that might not be as intimidating as the whole class. I think it is sometimes hard to talk in class because I need some time to digest these new ideas and ways of thinking. It can also be frustrating when we are constantly collectively defining, and redefining ideas ( I am thinking of our definition of information for example) and I don’t feel like we have come to an agreement we have just complicated the idea.

A film that I think would be great to watch in this course is called Daisies and is the most well known film by the director that I was for the panel discussion, Vera Chytilova. This film challenges our idea of narrative and of movie watching. It has and can be read in different ways tying into our discussion of information. I would be interested to discuss how much of this film is data and how much is information. It also ties together our discussions of the portrayal of gender and how it can be constructed/ deconstructed. This film could be used to discuss any of the topics we have discusses already and lead us in new directions by bringing them all together.

Looking Backwards

The structure of the class works very well in aiding my learning process. By formatting the class so that we always begin reviewing the process concepts, it allows me to consistently build on my perspective using those of my peers. I also enjoy the incorporation of technology into our academics.  Serendip usage is also very helpful in comparison to BlackBoard. It is more visually pleasing and allows us to keep track of our conversations, syllabi, and course notes.

Although we are incorporating technology into our class, it would be helpful if we as a class could brainstorm together at different stages of the semester to share our relationship with technology and ways we can write less academic papers and use different formats more.

Per our group discussions, I enjoy how we question ourselves and each other, however sometimes it feels like the discussion can get too philosophical and abstract and there was a time when I felt we sidetracked from the topic a little too much.

Individually, I have learned how to use technology more (ex: incorporating media such as youtube videos onto my blog posts). I am also learning more about the relationship between gender, information, science and technology. Since that is not direct, over the course of my learning at Bryn Mawr I have taken many gender and sexuality courses. I have been able to build upon that knowledge in this course in addition to applying it to technology. Every day I use technology different ways but I have never consistently thought about its relationship to the theme of identity and of how online we can assume different identities. I also enjoy the discussing how we learn as individuals and the impact that evolving technologies allowing us to multi-task may disrupt our critical thinking.

Collectively, we are learning about our individual and group identity through our relationship with gender, sexuality, education (through how we process information,), online virtual personalities, and through our continuously re-defining technology. Sometimes I take it for granted that communication can be a form of technology.

Looking Forwards

The edge of my learning right now is to continue questioning how information is processed. The dimension of gender, information, science and / or technology that have we not yet explored yet is perhaps the connection between mind, body, spirituality and technology. My fiancé recently purchased Gary Zukav’s book The Seat of the Soul. According to an amazon.com review “ Zukav questions the Western model of the soul, alleging that the human species is in the midst of a great transformation, evolving from a species that pursues power based upon the perceptions of the five senses--"external power"--to one that pursues power based upon perceptions of the soul--"authentic power." He believes that humans are immortal souls first, physical beings second, and that once we become conscious of this transformation--once we align our personalities with our soul--we will stimulate our spiritual growth and become better people in the process. This insightful, lucid synthesis of modern psychology and new-age principles has been described as the "physics of the soul."

At the start of the semester, I was a bit worried about taking this class since I hadn't taken an English class before. The large class size was especially intimidating. I'm not used to having classes where we are encouraged to participate, so I found the online postings to be very helpful. It's nice to have time to think about my response to a reading or class conversation without needing to come up with what to say on the spot. Though I like the online aspect of this class, it was stressful at first to know that everyone could read my work, especially my web events. This is something I am still getting used to, and I find it helpful to read others' postings and web events to learn about their ideas. As a group, I think this online forum is a good way to get our thoughts out. For the people who don't always talk in class (including myself), I think it's interesting to read their online postings. Towards the beginning of the semester, I think we were encouraged to make comments on each others' posts, so I think we can all do a better job with that.

Individually, I am learning new and exciting ways to convey information. I've demonstrated this through my web events, where I am learning that there are non-traditional ways to do a paper. I've stayed away from English classes because I find it difficult to express my ideas in the tradition paper format, so exploring new formats allowed me to get my ideas across while learning from the process of writing itself. I think this is also true for us collectively because I've seen some very interesting web events that are also in a non-traditional format. From watching "Conceiving Ada," I noticed that a lot of the science, especially computer science, was non-realistic. For the future of our class, I think it would be interesting to explore what makes science realistic or not. I would like to see the difference between true computer science and how people perceive what it is. A new movie that explores this topic is "Source Code." This movie suggests that being inside a computer program (the source code) can enable a person to cross over into another person's identity. This movie seems to be a good example of non-realistic science, and I think it would be interesting to learn more about this.

Overall, I have enjoyed class so far this semester.  I really enjoy the tensions created by the readings.  I like the way that they push off of each other and force the class to further our thinking on a particular topic.  I particularly liked this last unit on information, especially at the start when we read Paul Grobestein and Katherine Rowe and tried to define what is information/ what is noise.  I did, however, find Katherine Hayles to be frustrating because I thought that her arguments in her papers, especially in "How We Read," were poorly constructed and inefficiently argued.  With that said, I wish would could delve into the text more.  In Katherine Hayles' case, I feel like it would have been easier to challenge or appreciate her arguments if we really teased out her arguments rather than skim over her main points.  By that I mean, instead of just bring up Katherine Hayles' distinctions of reading (close, hyper, machine) and discuss it in relation to the rest of the class and its readings, I would have liked to explore how Katherine Hayles comes to these new forms of reading and using this as grounding to explore whether we can even accept Hayles' opinion on reading based on how she ushers for her new distinctions and how they interact with how what we have learned so far.  As one who primarily close reads, I personally find it difficult to value the tensions and make connections between readings if we skim of the intricacies and movements made within the texts that we read.  And while I think that our discussions are extremely useful, I think that at times the discussions become a bit slow and anecdotal because they aren't as grounded in the text (which function as a shared experience for our discussion) as they could be.  I thought that our discussion of the film Conceiving Ada was really fruitful and I think that it is because all of our discussion tied directly back to the film which grounded our discussion in something that we all experienced.  With all of that said, I feel that my challenge in this class is to explore other types of reading other than close reading.  But overall, I really enjoy the class.  I like how everybody comes from such diverse backgrounds (some English majors, some computer science majors, some with a history in film studies, etc) and I like how each of these disciplines are invoked in class to develop a better understanding on the topic at hand.

For a book, I would suggest that we read Brave New World by Aldus Huxley, Farhrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury or 1984 by Gerog Orwell.  One of the questions that interested me the most was "what happens if somebody rejects technological advancement? Are they not a cyborg?  Does the rejection of technology make that person unnatural?"  All of these books examine a technologically advanced, distopic society (distopic according to the protagonist.  A majority of characters sink happily into the way of life depicted into these other book) and explores what happens when one person resists.  I feel that these books would be a good way to examine not only the rejection of technology but also the skewing of information (as the societies in all of these books seems to only be able to function by severely altering the information available to its citizens.)

            This class has personally been one of the most challenging, and rewarding classes I have taken so far at Bryn Mawr. Granted, I am only a freshman, but I thoroughly enjoy how the texts thoroughly confuse me, and clarified so well by the professors in class. I also feel like this class has really pushed me to not only do well, but to do things I am not really comfortable with. While I may have screamed at my computer for half an hour during the second web project, I enjoyed that project so much more than any paper I have ever written. As much as this class has made me develop, I also feel like there are things I need to work on, especially considering the online aspect of this class. I am not accustomed to a class where a large portion of the participation is online, and I think I have not taken advantage of the online interactions I could be having as much as I could be. However, I know a lot of people have been very active on the Serendip website, so I think that is a personal issue, not related to the class as a whole.

 I really enjoy how independently the class runs. I enjoyed the panels, as well as the class discussion. I think the discussions have taken us great places that we would not go to if the class was more monitored, such as the creation of that chart that charted how public or private character’s lives were, as well as whether their lives were humanities of natural scientifically based. I think people also fee self-motivated to participate in class as well.

As for a text I think we should read, I would really enjoy reading Uglies by Scott Westerfield. Uglies is a young adult novel set in a future U.S. in which at age 16, everyone receives body modification surgery to appear beautiful. This is done to make every one feel equal and avoid conflict due to unequal beauty. As an Ugly, someone who has not received the surgery, you are given much less liberty and resources as a Pretty, someone who has received the surgery. Every young person awaits eagerly for their 16^th birthday to be able to enjoy life as a beautiful Pretty. The biggest question the novel asks, though, is if the body-changing technology is creating better lives for people, or if the technology is causing people to imagine they have better lives. It is an enjoyable, easy read that asks a lot of questions.  

I think the amount of readings we have is reasonable and the timing for papers and postings fit my schedule perfectly. I wish that we read more novels, however, I have enjoyed the articles we've been assigned. Considering the amount of discussion that goes on, I feel like the class size is kind of large. However, I'm glad that we've figured out how to work together with such a large group. I feel like everyone contributes evenly and there is open discussion both during class and on Serendip, which is possibly my favorite part of class. I like that if a discussion is left unfinished in class, it can continue online. 

I wish that there was more commenting amongst each other's work. We've posted 2 web papers so far and several comments on the discussion thread. I would like to see the discussion thread be more of a discussion.

I learned a good amount by thinking about things I haven't before. I feel like I knew most of everything we learned about concerning gender, but hadn't put enough thought into it and it's relation to technology. Overall, I've really enjoyed the topics we've discussed and I look forward to furthering what we've discussed so far. 

Finally, a book that I would like to suggest for the end of our course is Feed by Matthew Tobin Anderson. The book is of the cyberpunk genre and takes place in the future. It's a dark satire about corporate power, consumerism, and data mining in society. The lives of everyone in this world revolves around advertising. The internet has evolved into the "Feednet", which is a computer network. The brains of American citizens are directly connected to this network with a chip called "Feed", which is often inserted at birth. You can have advertisements show up in your head just like pop-ups in a computer......but yeah, it sounded like it could be an interesting read. 

One topic I would like to explore more in class is language as a technology and how it shapes the way we think, and more specific to this class, how we construct gender. I've kept my eye out for a book that discusses this topic, and one I found called "Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages" by Guy Deutscher seemed like it could offer some interesting insights. However from reviews I've read, it seems that it focuses more on the idea of color, with gender only occupying a small part of the book. Another interesting option I found is called "What's Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science" by Max Brockman. This book is composed of several essays that focus on various issues related to ethics and the human mind, and while none of them explicitly mention gender, I think we could easily apply it to gender in our class discussions and postings. Some particularly interesting essays include:
    "How Does Language Shape the Way We Think?"
Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step classier to understanding the very nature of humanity.

    "How to Enhance Human Beings"
Given our rudimentary understanding of the human organism, particularly the brain, how can we hope to enhance such a system? It would amount to outdoing evolution…

    "Watching Minds Interact"
Perhaps the least anticipated contribution of brain imagine to psychological science has been a sudden appreciation for the centrality of social thought to the human mental repertoire.

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I like that in this class we are able to have discussions both in class, and online. I think the postings, and the fact that our projects are also on the web really enhance our discussions. The online postings really help me to gather my thoughts after a week of in-class discussions. In this class, I think the topic that has really challenged my previous mode of thinking the most is the idea of redefining the self as having more ambiguous boundaries, and the inclusion of various technologies into this self.

Previous discussions I've heard/read that relate to our increased reliance on technologies have always involved an element of negativity, and it was really interesting to challenge that.

As a group I think we are all learning to listen to other's perspectives and to allow them some validity. Despite the cognitive dissonance that these different ideas may initially cause.