GIST Class Notes from Wednesday, February 9, 2011 by Hillary Godwin: Self-Shaping Technologies
We began by acknowledging that Monday would end the first section of our class, “The Science and Technology of Gender: Making and Re-making Ourselves.” Most of the class was centered on asking provocative questions, rather than necessarily finding definitive answers.

We then began discussing categories:

-       Many students in class agreed that we as human beings are biologically inclined to make and use categories as a way to make sense of the world.

 This is a test post.

GIST class notes for Monday, February 7

Go around the room, introduce your neighbor, say what portion of your body would you be willing to “put under the knife?”

- most of us say no surgery, specifically no cosmetic
- a few people willing to have LASIK eye surgery
- would only have surgery if medically necessary

“showcasing our diversity” - new avatars

Chance is defined as  the unknown and unpredictable element in happenings that seems to have no assignable cause. In the Origin of Species, Darwin's view on this topic is that those occurrences that we recognize as chance are in fact a pattern and our ignorance which makes it impossible for us to acknowledge its existence. To think that stories of evolution that exist today (in my years of education and schooling) incorporate the aspects of chance within them makes me think about the way in which science and literature are very much connected.