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graduation day
The graduation speaker at my brother’s college graduation at Ohio State University, gave a pandering and vacantly patriotic speech, while J.K. Rowling’s speech at Harvard, about failure and imagination was quite an inspiring read.
Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
NYT article about gentrification in Portland
Portland Journal – As Portland Changes, Blacks and Whites Talk It Over – NYTimes.com:
PORTLAND, Ore. — Not every neighborhood in this city is one of those Northwest destinations where passion for espresso, the environment and plenty of exercise define the cultural common ground. A few places are still described as frontiers, where pioneers move because prices are relatively reasonable, the location is convenient and, they say, they “want the diversity.â€
Yet one person’s frontier, it turns out, is often another’s front porch. It has been true across the country: gentrification, which increases housing prices and tension, sometimes has racial overtones and can seem like a dirty word. Now Portland is encouraging black and white residents to talk about it, but even here in Sincere City, the conversation has been difficult.
I thought this was pretty interesting, and aside from the population shifts could be as much about Bton as it is about PDX.
craft, code, gender, and computing
Embroidery is constructed (mostly by women) in hundreds of tiny stitches which are visible on the front of the fabric. The system of the stitches is revealed on the back of the material. Some embrioderers seal the back of the fabric, preventing others from seeing the underlying structure of the pattern. Others leave the back open for those who want to take a peek. A few integrate the backend process into the front of the fabric. The patterns are shared amongst friends in knitting and embroidery ‘ciricles’.
Software is constructed (mostly by men) in hundreds of tiny pieces of code, which form the hidden structure of the programme or interface. Open Source software allows you to look at the back of the fabric, and understand the structure of your software, modify it and distribute it. The code is shared amongst friends through online networks. However the stitches or code only make sense to those who are familiar with the language or patterns.
-Else Carpenter
I’ve been reading a book about gender and computing that looks to point to gender as a feature of the digital divide. What is more interesting is that the authors, psychologists, seem to look at how computers are presented in an educational setting as a contributing factor to why boys and girls have different levels of comfort with computers and end up using them differently.
So, it was interesting to come across the blog post Open Source Embroidery: an interview with Ele Carpenter today because it seems to talk about the idea of technology at a very meta-level, drawing parallels between disciplines (craft and engineering) and media (embroidery and code). I started knitting, and I guess part of the interest was that it was this gender-transgressive activity, but I also quickly saw the parallels to computer programming. You can build things from scratch or from patterns (even the language is paralleled with pattern in software engineering referring to an algorithm for a reusable approach to a commonly repeated task in code) or a combination of the two. Similarly, coming from an interest in FLOSS and the approaches that underly that kind of software and computing environments, I saw parallels in knitting in the multiple approaches that can be taken to reach a similar result. Though there are many more parallels that can be drawn, the final one that was apparent to me was the vast amount of online documentation that I found for knitting and how it ranged from educational howto sites, to sparser patterns designed for an audience of similarly advanced skill level, to sites showing off the knitter’s prowess.
For better and worse, I think that I approach knitting in a very gendered way as I have a bag full of half-finished knitting projects in my closet. This reminds me of the trainer who taught the secure programming class that I took earlier this week talking about his tendency to stop projects half-way through and how that had lead him to pursue consulting rather than development. He ended this anecdote by saying, “for the ladies in the audience, I’m sure that you know what I’m talking about”, referring to the idea that their husbands also frequently started projects that they wouldn’t finish (which assumed that the women in the class were both straight and married which is a a whole ‘nother deal).
Ultimately, I think that this discussion of software and craft is important because they show how similar skills, analysis, and culture has been constructed across a pretty vast gender divide. To me, this is evidence that technical (or craft) ability is not tied to a particular gender and that the overall absence of women from computing (and in particular FLOSS) or men from crafting has less to do with the way their brains work and more to do with social construction.
reading notes on radical equations and other recent readings
I’ve been reading Radical Equations, a book of stories of the civil rights movement during the 60s and of Bob Moses’ work with the Algebra Project and the threads that connect those movements. The stories of civil rights organizing in Mississippi is a history that I knew little about, so it was enlightening and hearing it told first-hand as a story of experience rather than removed history is pretty powerful. I also started reading a paper about stories, ownership, empowerment, and exploitation, The Story Economy that articulates the importance of the story for social justice movements nicely:
Storytelling is both simple and powerful, and these two characteristics make it a valuable tool in the struggle for social justice: everyone understands stories and everyone as a story. Indeed, there is a macabre inverse correlation between abject circumstances nd narrative. Absolute poverty, for example, can only be the result of a tragic narrative. Such stories have an undeniable quality that enables them to be persuasive arguments for change. The civil rights movement of the sixties proved that when narratives of injustice gain traction in the minds of policy makers, those stories can result in progress. A woman too tired to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger, a small group of black men who refused to leave a lunch counter – these and other actions were catalysts for change that ruptured the fabric of the status quo, and were turning points in the narrative of white privilege. Stories, therefore, can be a resource for people when other resources are scarce.
In the same article, the author quotes Castelloe and Gamble to provide a clear definition of popular education (I wish I would have had that when I was writing the press release for the I Want to Do This All Day tour stop in Bloomington):
[a] popular educator can be considered someone who helps groups of people in low-wealth and marginalized communities learn to use reflections on their daily experiences to analyze the social, political, and economic systems in which their communities are embedded. Popular educators also assume that the skills and knowledge that people have gained through their life experiences can provide the foundation for creating significant community change. (2005, p. 262)
digital divide and gender links
primary voting
Joanne (who has been working at the polls) says:
You can vote in your polling place on Tuesday from 6am-6pm or you can vote in the Curry Bldg. downtown (7th and Morton) Saturday from 8am-6pm, Sunday 12-4pm, Monday 8am-12pm. Bring an Indiana ID (driver’s license, state issued id from DMV or an IU id) or a Federal ID (military or passport.) And bring a book, lines are long now. Don’t complain about the long lines, early voting happens for 30 days prior to an election. You could have voted weeks ago and chatted
with me.
On a side note, if you’re interested in issues around the jail, some folks have published a voting guide showing the positions of various county candidates:
technology and activism
Here are two new instances of technology (both via boingboing) that seem to really aid social justice movements.
Cause Caller is a VOIP tool that lets you define a cause and contacts related to that cause (for instance, congressional representatives on a panel investigating a particular issue). Users can then enter their phone number and the application will call them back and connect them with the different contacts.
ICED (I Can End Deportation) is a video game made by the human rights group Breakthrough that, according to Breakthrough’s website:
puts you in the shoes of an immigrant to illustrate how unfair immigration laws deny due process and violate human rights. These laws affect all immigrants: legal residents, those fleeing persecution, students and undocumented people.
MED on Obama, Rev. Jeremiah Write
I’ve been interested in Michael Eric Dyson since seeing him speak at IU over the winter. An NPR news blog wrote this about a recent interview where MED linked Obama and his pastor with the different phases of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life:
Obama is the pre-1965 King. The one the holiday is named for, said Dyson. The King who spoke of brotherhood and non-violence. The one who doesn’t scare white people, who they could incorporate into their world view.
Wright is the post-’65 King. The one Americans know little about. The King who spoke out against the war in Vietnam. The King who said that most whites in America were racists. The King who spoke out against social and economic injustice in America. People remember that King was murdered in Memphis, Dyson says. But they often forget why he was there – not to promote equality, but to help lead a strike of garbage workers in the city.
Dyson said that people forget that when King gave his “seminal” anti-Vietnam speech on April 4, 1967 at New York’s Riverside Church, he was condemned by many white – and even black – pundits and church leaders for “going too far.”
Healthy Indiana Plan Update – Accepted!
I’ve been blogging about my experience applying for Indiana’s state subsidized health insurance for low-income folks.
Last week, I received a very formal letter that I had been accepted and a bill for the first month’s payment into my POWER (a medical expense) account.
Here are the letters so others know what to expect. Click on the images to see full size.
Approval Letter:
Bill
