So yesterday we talked about race and technology and someone asked why we were focusing on that for a specific session and not any number of other issues. I like to consider these two issues as my proverbial “wheelhouse” as an academic so I thought I should probably speak up to this community about the issue. Here is a short list of reasons and part of a larger post I just can't seem to get published. Stupid series of tubes.
1) The stakes are higher for people of color dealing with technology in front of other people.
2) New media, like literacy, can be used as a form of violence.
3) Scholars can learn from semiotic systems other than print based that are closer to the rhetoric structure of new media.
4) Identity is information and behaves like information in digital systems.
5) New Media doesn’t do us any good if it just replicates unjust power structures and is continued to be used to dehumanize folks.
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A more elaborate explanation of those points:
1) The stakes are higher for people of color dealing with technology in front of other people: Technology is not associated with people of color in our culture, or women for that matter, so using it or failing to use it “properly” has higher social risks both in the classroom and outside it sometimes to the point where failure, even productive failure, is not an option. That risk has to be accounted for by you as an instructor. I think Scott's excellent example, while not representative (not everyone wants to go to film school), proved this point well. What can you do to be aware of this issue without reducing your students to all being the same?
2) New media, like literacy, can be used as a form of violence: Literacy has had a long, complicated, and sorted history as a tool that has been used to perform social gate-keeping and cultural imperialism. Teachers and scholars should be aware enough about that history so as not to collapse semiotic forms with cultural values i.e. the affordances that you may see in a media are drawn from the value, or use, that your cultural perspective allows for. How do we make the acquiring of literacy not threat filled? How do we deal with this legacy in our classrooms?
3) Scholars can learn from semiotic systems other than print based that are closer to the rhetoric structure of new media: For example, pre-Columbian and contact era Aztec codexes are visual semiotic forms that predate the western concept of “new media” by almost 600 years. Codexes did rhetorical/semiotic work with pictures and then with pictures and text long before the internet. Dr. Moss brought up Angela Hass’ work in the area of Native American information and transmission systems as well. What about these semiotic systems like the codex and wampum can inform new media and information design? What are we missing because we are looking in the wrong place and thinking everything is “new”?
4) Identity is information and behaves like information in digital systems: Information, like ethnicity/race, is contingent in relevance to other bits of information. Folks are categorized, labeled, placed into groups, associated through language, media, and informatics in complex ways therefore to understand how information and media does work is to understand how identity and point of view is constructed. What are the ways that we convey, or others convey to us, identity? How is that the same or not the same in digital spaces? What about our own systems of meaning making (information schematics, linguistic orientations, cultural understandings, sensory input, etc., institutionally sponsored student information).
5) New Media doesn’t do us any good if it just replicates unjust power structures and is continued to be used to dehumanize folks: I’ll let my final project elaborate on this point but there is no point to having a new way of knowing if it just goes and fossilize into static forms that can, once again, be used to shut people out from power.
Sorry for the long post. Hope this might be of some help.
dw
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