Study Journal 5

11/5/2015

*Granted, equality != quotas. However, big companies such as Google or Microsoft cannot ensure that their hiring process is equal on all fronts; just with the huge mass of people that have to go through, and the amount of people that that have to interview them. Their quotas are a necessary implement when they don’t have the fine control over every situation to ensure “equality.”

*Our discussion makes me think about this point: how do we ensure that everyone has the opportunity and ability to pursue what they want? Opportunity - experience with everything to see what they would like. Ability - lack of pressure to choose something different than what they want. There are so many competing cultural and professional values that press people towards certain directions that it becomes impossible to have unlimited ability, which prematurely shuts down the opportunity.

*I find it interesting how much of a hot-button issue this (women in tech) is. Even though it (women in the workplace) has been in the public forum for decades, it's clearly still an issue, which is why we're still talking about it. I believe that it will continue to remain in the public discourse because it is such a personal issue. The rising generation learns about it from the old, and carries on the banner until the next generation.

11/10/2015
*Even though our conversation surrounds violent video games, I'm intrigued by the number of people commenting who immediately tie it to video games at all. Several people have already stated that they don't like playing video games.

*This issue seems to have become somewhat polarized, which I believe to be a latent reaction to the furor against video games. Enough people enjoy it that, when threatened, start to retaliate back against the anti-video gamers in order to protect what they love. Because of this, the anti- side is always going to be louder, because they have the original passion, where as the other side is just trying to protect a status quo.

*I love that this is still such an issue. Weren't video games first targeted back in the 1990s? You can point to all the 'evidence' in the world, but it's clear no one will listen once they have their mind made up about the morality of the thing. And that's what it comes down to; people have come to moral decisions regarding video games, which infuses the issue into their own perception of right and wrong.

11/12/2015

*How much of the problems we see in gender issues in technology are just because we don’t stop to think? That we don’t stop to question the cultural values we’ve grown up surrounded by?

*The interesting thing about this presentation is that it’s clear that Cydni has experienced a specific culture related to male-female relationships. I’ve never experienced the idea that I shouldn’t go to to lunch with a woman, until just this past summer, and it was such a strange idea to me. On a meta level, Cydni has grown up with these specific biases so strongly that she assumes we have all experienced those same issues.

*We’ve discussed how women’s lives in the tech industry are fundamentally different from men’s lives in the tech industry, because women are still the ones who drive the family (taken from Cydni’s own words). I value the time I get to spend with my family, and so I too dislike early morning or late night meetings.. yet I am not in a position to advocate for that change because I am a man in technology. I recognize that her presentation wasn't about equality in the workplace, but about women in the workplace. It strikes me that as long as there are differences between men and women (which there will be forever) then there can never truly be 'equality' in the way it is currently touted today.

Current Event 5

The event that springs to mind when talking about social issues in computing is not the most current, but it's a story that impacted me strongly. The twitter frat party hit the news during the summer and was spread around my office at the time. This party was an effort by a single team within the organization, and yet because it was a part of the company it caused the company to be on the receiving end of lots of retaliation. The current state of social issues in computing is really due to the industry. The fact that there are big companies that drive the industry is where the attention of the industry lies. This leads to there being a necessary connect between the individual/team level of the company and the company itself. This is why quotas are set, and a team is attacked in an implicit poor representation of their company. This unity of all levels of the company are to protect the company. Ideally, those measures are in place out of a good heart, but as is seen from the article they also result from external pressure. The current state of social awareness in the computer industry is as much based on good will as it is on the artificiality that comes from being a large and influential company.

Study Journal 4

10/27/2015

*What is the role that trust plays in financial interactions? If you know and trust someone, what about that makes you more likely to give them your money? Is it because you assume they are less likely to rip you off? Is it because you assume you have some ability to seek recompense if they do? In reality, there is no more guarantee (objectively) that a person you know will protect your money than that a person you don’t know will protect your money. I believe that trust only makes a difference because the allure of increase is so strong that people essentially use trust as an excuse to give their money out and hope it multiplies

*In a similar vein, it seems that when money is on the line it brings out the basest instincts of everyone involved. This whole video is seeming to point out certain groups as being at fault for the dot com burst. However, the reason those stocks had such meteoric rises and plummets was also due to normal investors betting their money against those stock fortunes. I would posit that both the success and failure (but especially failure) of one’s money in the stock market are as much a fault of the investor as they are of the “big money groups.” I’m sure I would feel differently if I were in that situation, but looking at it from the outside it seems clear to me that no one was thinking rationally about their decisions.

*In a sense, it’s not simply the fact that people lost money that ire was raised. That is to say, it’s not the simple act of losing personal property (or the symbolic representation of potential holdings, which is the function of money). Rather, it’s an issue of pride. People lost money and they reacted strongly because they had made a decision to invest in that particular company, and so were reacting in that way in order to not have to acknowledge that they made a mistake. The humble thing to do would be to learn from that experience and say “I won’t make that mistake again.” Clearly, those on wallstreet are not inclined to be humble.

10/29/2015

*”The human dilemma is as it has always been.” Here’s the funny thing about the past--it happened before we were born. I’m not saying I disagree with Postman, but it seems interesting to me that he hangs the introduction to his whole talk on this flimsy statement. It seems to me that the technology of today has in fact changed the human dilemma, or at least the way we approach the “human dilemma.” Centuries ago humankind struggled to find enough food to last until tomorrow. Today, we look much further ahead and on a much more abstract than mere subsistence. While there is some element of similarity here, I would argue that it is fundamentally different than the past, and it is technology which has effected that result.

*Postman talks about the tradeoffs of new technologies. He reminds us of the negative effects that technologies can have. However, these are almost always recognized in hindsight. The reason our culture keeps growing is that when new technologies are introduced, those technologies are pretty unanimously accepted. Our technological advance kind of depends on our inability to avoid thinking about any negative effects.

*”Every new technology benefits some and harms others.” I also take issue with this statement. The only true example of this pattern Postman gives are from the printing press. His example of the television doesn’t really hold up. I feel like this statement applies less to technology in specific, and more accurately to social/cultural events in general. It wasn’t really the printing press that created that dichotomy of benefit and harm. It was the preexisting differences between Catholicism and protestants that had been going on for years. Did the printing press help? Certainly. But the harm and benefits can’t be assigned to the domain of the technology only.

11/3/2015

*I would say that the philosophy inherent in computers persuades the “computer person” to discriminate less amongst kinds of information. When all information is equally available, then cat memes become as valuable as rocket science. The “computer person” values information by quantity, rather than applicability or usefulness. The utility of knowledge is increased y the more random a fact is.

*What Postman labels as “radical” is very different from the typical “radicality” that is held by the day-to-day society. Most people consider conservatism/radicalism as being ethically related -- conservatives hold to old traditions and values, radicals break out of the molds created by the old values. When Postman talks about radicals, what he means is someone who latches onto an emerging technology and whose influence ends up shaping the way culture forms around the new technology. His rhetoric is confusing and conflicting

*While I understand his cautions, I also look at the state of our culture, especially since the time which he gave that talk, and think that no one is really going to pay attention to his admonitions of viewing technology as a "strange intruder." I understand the points he makes, but if he really understands culture, he understands the you can't simply tell people to "think about whether the thing that everyone around you is doing might not have some negative effects." There is definitely a lemming-like aspect to technological adaptation, and that's going to be much stronger that a few people who dip their toe in the water and decide that it's too deep for them.