Be Interested?

A few weeks ago, at the SUNY Council on Writing Conference, I heard Richard E. Miller give a fascinating keynote called “Who’s this for?: Audience in the Classroom without Walls.” What I found most exciting about his remarks was his description of an assignment he gave a creative nonfiction class: Be Interested. My understanding of what this means is that Miller  asked his students to “produce a research project that others would read willingly.” My first reaction was of the “I want to steal that assignment” variety.  But as I thought more about the prompt, I began to wonder if a student would be as excited as I was. Miller mentioned that he had students who grappled with questions like “How do you become interested in anything?” and struggled with finding a way to experience curiosity in a moment when information is “superabundant.”

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The more I toyed with this kind of assignment, the more I found myself wondering more about what I’d actually be asking students to do, what it actually means to genuinely be interested in something, and what that might look like in writing. A cursory glance at the OED shows that the word “interest” is defined using terms like “concern,” “curiosity,” and “sympathy.” But, interestingly, one definition also lists “to share in something.”

The idea of “sharing” seems central to composing, at least to me. But, often, I think it is this component–that of engaging and collaborating with an audience outside of the “teacher”–that I think might be lacking for many students (and here I’m thinking specifically of the freshmen I work with). To return to Miller’s prompt–I suppose the “assignment” is really to be interested and to be interesting. And, I also suppose that in an environment where students are perpetually in some kind of rubric quest, this probably feels very very scary.

But, on the flip side, this kind of opportunity is one that we should hope students encounter more and more. As Gardner Campbell points out:

We might begin with a curriculum that brings students into creative, challenging contact with the history and dreams of the digital age, perhaps in a first-year experience that asks them to reflect critically on their own digital lives as well as begin to shape and share their own digital creations, both intramurally and publicly. Research into the neurobiology of learning, building on decades of educational research, has shown that students learn deeply when they are asked to narrate their learning, curate their creations within the learning environment, and share what they have curated with a wide and, when appropriate, a public audience. As students understand that they are not simply completing an assignment at a professor’s behest, but in fact beginning their life’s work, they will necessarily become more engaged and produce more authentic work reflective of their own growing interests.

This excerpt is from part 4 of Gardner Campbell’s excellent series of posts on “The Road to Digital Citizenship,” this one subtitled, “Fluency, Curriculum, Development.” Campbell connects student investment in their own work with developing a pedagogy that allows for rigorous reflection on what it means to live a digital life. Campbell also makes the important connection between “sharing” and “publicness,” an important link where the truly interesting might occur through the kinds of conversation digital compositions enable.

Asking students to approach this kind of inquiry marks an important shift in the definition of what it means to write an “academic essay.” I wonder if what is actually happening is a return to Montaigne’s sense of the essay as a “series of attempts,” or Francis Bacon’s “dispersed meditations.” By encouraging students to “be interested” and “curate their creations,” the usual chore of the “paper” becomes more of an experiment in invention or “making.”

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It is no coincidence that “Composition as Explanation,” Gertrude Stein’s sonic exploration of what it means to “create a composition,” employs the verb “to make” as one of its central repeated words. For example: “This makes the thing we are looking at very different and this makes what those who describe it make of it, it makes a composition, it confuses, it shows, it is, it looks, it likes it as it is, and this makes what is seen as it is seen.” This work is also the first time that Stein refers to her sense of a “continuous present” which was crucial to how she thought of her own process.

steintokEducation writer Audrey Watters lists “The Maker Movement” as one of the “Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012″ and describes the importance of this kind of pedagogical approach as, “we need more learning by making, through projects and inquiry and hands-on experimentation.” When we actually ask students to physically invent something, to take objects and turn them into something that did not exist ten minutes earlier, this is a very different kind of learning from writing a 3-5 page paper. It marks a return to the kind of “learning by doing” that John Dewey advocated for–“Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.” In other words, when we are engaged in the act of “making” or “doing,” that is when real learning occurs, and that is also when I think the sensation of “being interested” is rediscovered.

In many ways this post feels like its own experiment in what Stein might describe as “beginning again and again is a natural thing…”–I wanted to think about this idea of “being interested,” which consequently was so interesting to me that only now have I realized what the connection is to my own recent experiences in the classroom. Meechal recently wrote about one of my latest forays into technology in the classroom, one that I am still processing. When given the chance to use the MaKey MaKey with my 2 composition 2 sections (thanks to Mikhail & BLSCI), I jumped at the chance, trusting a gut feeling that “making” something physically might teach us something about what happens when we “make” academic essays.

Picture1In small groups, the students were given MaKey MaKeys, a number of different materials that conducted electricity, and access to a laptop and told to “make” and “invent.” As a teacher, what was interesting to me was to watch the groups’ progress–many began by seeming a little confused, admittedly not knowing what to “invent,” and feeling at a loss for ideas (or “interest”). But, I also got to watch each group work collaboratively and experientially and ultimate discover the spectrum of things they  might do.

And, after the class session, students blogged about what they experienced through “making.” A few sample responses:

  • “If we just looked at the surface of today’s session, we would see that we were just playing around with the Makey Makey and doing things that are totally unrelated to our English class. However, if we think more deeply, we will see many similarities, especially with the process of writing. At first, we need some ideas to invent something amazing with Makey Makey; if not, we will just be playing and there will not be any creation. It is like writing our essays; we need a specific thesis to write a good essay based on the thesis.”
  • “Making something with the Makey Makeys very musch resembled the writing process. In class on Monday we were supposed to “outline” our plans and ideas for what we wanted to make today in class. An outline plays an important role in essay writing so that the writer has their thoughts and ideas organized and ready to be written down and explained. Each invention also required several “revisions” and “rewrites” in order for it to reach its “final draft” stage. I know that my group changed plans, inventions, and strategies a few times throughout the class period.”
  • “For a good portion of our time we were bouncing back and forth between these questions and sitting there thinking about what we should do. I felt frustrated at the fact that with all these tools we were just stuck, it was like our creativity was at a standstill. However after revisiting the objectives of using the Makey Makey and playing around with it, things made a turn for the better. With developing a greater understanding and applying that understanding to ideas we had, we were able to center on one idea and go with it…Relating to writing, when have that moment where you know the message you want to communicate and gather all your information; everything comes together and flows. Centralizing your idea and making attempts towards it can assist in your creativity. Whether is be the next groundbreaking IT program or your final paper, the initial beginning may prove to be the most difficult; but after you overcome that, you will have your masterpiece.”

Impolite Thank Yous

The New York Times published an article the other day (“Disruptions: Digital Era Redefining Etiquette”) about changes in acceptable communication in the digital age. The article discusses changes in appropriate communication and standards of etiquette due to the enormous quantity of digital communications, like emails and text messages, which people receive nowadays.

The author, Nick Bilton, expressed his disdain for receiving emails with the sole purpose of a “thank you” and calls the senders of such impolite. Saying thank you is impolite?

No thank you

Has communication evolved to a point in which it is considered improper to express appreciation, because the email itself might be considered bothersome to the person you are thanking? Now, I’ve certainly been guilty of sending an email for the sole purpose of saying “thank you.” I always felt that this was a necessary kindness and my mama raised me right! Or did she? Bilton would think me discourteous for expressing my sentiments via email with no other purpose. Granted, I’ve never expected a response from a “thank you” email, but I never considered not sending it. I’m also guilty of another offense: saying “Hello” in my emails. Am I the only one? Am I unknowingly part of an “older” generation that is no longer tech savvy? (Please say no, as I am currently on the cusp of turning 30 and in the midst of an existential crisis about the significance of my age. It’s just a number right? Right?).

Bilton also mentions other newly unacceptable forms of communication, the voicemail. Here is a point that Bilton and I agree on. Voicemail, I ain’t got time for that (insert meme here). How about asking about the weather, calling a business to ask their location or store hours, all unacceptable! In an age of “Google It,” is it truly considered impolite and uncivilized to ask someone these questions? Apparently so! This are all questions that waste the time of the person you are asking because we can easily find out the answers ourselves using our iPhones and Blackberries. Is this the general consensus? Should I just Google it instead of posing the question here?

It seems to me that these standards for communication are very stark and don’t foster relationships between people. If I receive an email without a “hello” I often think the person was in a rush or didn’t feel it necessary to express common courtesies. However, it seems they may have been trying to save me time and dropping the unnecessary social niceties to engage in this new, proper and polite “cut to the chase” philosophy of communication.

I wonder if the next generation will just communicate in binary code… why bother with all these letters and full sentences?

Sincerely,

Whoops, guess I’ll never learn.

Personal Branding

One of the most viewed articles in the Wall Street Journal last week, Must-Have Job Skills in 2013, discusses the most valuable job skills to have next year. The article summarizes four major skills that employers will appreciate the most: 1.Clear communications, 2. Personal branding, 3. Flexibility, and 4. Productivity improvement. Most people will agree that these skills are important and probably so in any year not just 2013. Clear communications being number one in importance is not surprising to anyone; as we know, effective communications is key in any interaction or relationship, be it between employer and employee, between colleagues, friends, or partners. The fact that personal branding is mentioned as the second most important “skill” is rather interesting.

Employers apparently pay much attention to how employees present themselves online: on Twitter, LinkedIn and even Facebook. So companies’ tracking of employees’ behavior online is not limited to professional sites and networks but also stretches to personal ones as well. In other words, everything you post online and all information about you that is accessible online becomes part of your “personal brand”. But what’s really intriguing is that your “personal brand” is no longer personal, it’s now part of your professional profile as well. Not only that, but “workers also should make sure their personal brand is attractive and reflects well on employers”, advise workplace training experts.

Upon careful thinking, there is some logic to this: you cannot fully separate the person from the profession. In essence, you are what you do; therefore, consistency and sync between the personal and the professional parts of your persona should come naturally. In addition, once you are publicly connected to your company online (e.g., you state in your professional or personal social network profile that you work for that company), you become part of the face of the company (along with all others who work for it). So any information in your personal brand that is not consistent with your company’s brand could hurt its image and you will be to blame for it.

Of course, not everything about you that you post online is strictly relevant to your job, let alone to your company. But your personal brand is a gestalt of all the information about you. And when there is ample and detailed personal information accessible online, the information gets considered even when it might not be that relevant. Simply because it’s there and it’s available.

So what are employees supposed to do? Build their personal brands to be consistent with their company’s image? That might gradually “dilute” their personal brands every time they change jobs and have to adjust their online profile accordingly. It might also confuse their friends and family. Or should employees focus on spending time and effort on restricting their privacy settings as much as possible? But this task will be difficult given that often times fellow employees are also friends or even family. There is always a third option of not having a personal brand online at all. But again, that might be considered outdated and also hurt your job. Because as it turns out both companies and people like publicity.

Prolegomena to failure

We used to read liner notes like they were Bible verses.  I am prone to lamenting that texts like these are gone in the virtual space from which we fish for mp3’s these days.  Long before we could wikipedia our favorite bands to find out what their deal was, we appealed to what was available to us. Yes, long before my life was ruled by incessant url’s, I relied on the majesty of toner to know what culture was:

Most of what we knew we learned from each other.   Mainly it was stupid.  We argued over the correct pronunciation of Ian MacKaye’s last name; we informed each other that Op Ivy was essentially reforming under a new name and scrambled to buy tickets to their first show; there was a new split 7” coming out on colored vinyl of such and such band; Greg Graffin was actually a college professor.

 

What we didn’t spend on cigarettes—the greatest joy of our evenings spent loitering endlessly in parking lots outside of a diner that was central to all of us who attended three different high schools respectively—was spent at record shops or mail-ordering away for vinyl to the far reaches of Olympia or the sprawling East Bay.  When they finally arrived in the mail, we would carefully slide the record out and try to discern what was etched on the inner rim of the record, were we lucky enough to receive such a secret message.  Placing the record on the turntable, we would turn our attention to those elaborate liner notes. We couldn’t post this stuff anywhere, you know, with no facebook pages or twitter feeds, so we photocopied those hand-lettered lyrics sheets and witnessed by pasting them to telephone poles and street signs, to the front of newspaper stands and the backs of bus benches.  Chock it up to teen angst but we were the faithful.

Yeah, some of it was stupid, and sure, we reveled in those short soundtracks of our constantly breaking hearts, singing along: “I believe in desperate acts, the kind that made you look stupid, look like a fool,” and using it as a directive.  I don’t believe in desperate acts anymore but I still love this album.

And some of it seems smarter than I would even want to give my 15-year-old self credit for.  We listened pretty closely for that quick 1:27 on Bad Religion’s Suffer when we heard:

Tell me can the hateful chain be broken?
Production and consumption define our hollow lives.
Avarice has led us ‘cross the ocean,
Toward a land that’s better, much more bountiful and wide.
When will mankind finally come to realize
His surfeit has become his demise?
How much is enough to kill yourself?

We listened to Fifteen and agreed:

I’ve been having a hard time trying to justify
The clouds arising from the cars we drive
And a little too easy seems just a little too hard today
And I’m afraid my children are going to have to watch the world waste away
Been having a hard time trying to accept the fact
That paying money for four walls leaves the slavery intact
And a little too easy seems just a little too hard today
And I’m afraid my children are going to have to watch the world slip away
I know, I know, I know, life has become slavery
Costs two dollars a minute and additional charges to pray to god today
See I’ve been looking for some guidance but the voice on the phone ain’t got a damn thing to say
And a little too easy seems just a little too hard today
And I’m afraid my children are going to have to watch the world fade away
I was born a little too late to see the dream that they called America
See I only want to be a Free man but it’s against the law to sleep on the ground in Gods land
And a little too easy seems just a little bit insane
And I’m afraid I’m going to have to run for my life one of these days
I know, I know, I know, life has become slavery

(the cursor follows me now and asks if I want to post this to facebook.)

And to Screeching Weasel:

We don’t believe in god or jesus christ anymore
We don’t need colleges to validate our lives anymore
We don’t need twelve steps to show us how weak we’ve become anymore
We don’t need to buy into a system that offers empty promises anymore
We don’t need protection against anything anybody might say
We know that government can’t improve our lives anyway
We don’t need to drug ourselves anymore to keep the boredom away
We don’t anything except relying on ourselves for a change
I can see a new tomorrow
Now

What we felt was a failure all around us, one that we did not want to inherit.

But we have. There was no revolution.  Little has changed and I am surely more complicit than I would like to admit.

Like Saul became Paul, the biggest sinners become the most zealous believers.  But does it also work the other way around?  I marched for Occupy Wall Street but I never once slept at Zuccotti Park.  I worried that it felt fascist to be one of the echoer’s of the People’s microphone, atomatonically repeating things I had not thought about before they came from my own mouth. I am as skeptical as they come.  What of these actions do we perform just to make ourselves feel better seeing everything that is wrong with the world?  I agree with Žižek that we contribute to the Children’s Fund to forget about hunger: we buy organic produce and think we have done a small part to save Mother Earth.  But radical change, the necessary changes, are frightening.  We congratulate the courage of Pussy Riot for saying f you to the state and Putin but would everyone still like them if they found out about how their leftist politics also include demonstrating by having public orgies while pregnant as Nadezhda Tolokonnikova did in a Moscow Museum in 2008?  I doubt it.

 

I fucking hate blogs, but I’m obliged to do this 5 times for reasons I’ll explain later. So, for my first one, I thought I’d just introduce some questions.  No one’s watching, so if you’re bothering to read this, you might as well be honest with yourself (though seriously, don’t bother).

We’ve heard a lot of nonsense here and elsewhere about who’s to determine taste, who’s to say Mozart’s better than a McDonald’s jingle, blah blah blah. Typical, but let’s leave that off till next time. For the time being, let’s just talk internet:

We say it’s good that everyone has a chance to express himself. Why? Think about it for a minute. Why is a democracy of expression good? Why is everybody having the right to talk and feeling perfectly comfortable talking necessarily good? Might blogs be harmful?

Is it a good thing for everyone to speak his mind at all times?

Now suppose you heard two melodies, one from a great symphony, one from a commercial jingle. You then were asked to name whether the first was Beethoven, Schubert, or Brahms, and whether the second was McDonald’s, Modell’s, or Verizon. Which do you think you would have a better shot of identifying?

That is you. That is what you are.

Same thing with two sentences. Is the first by Milton or Keats or Wallace Stevens. Is the second the motto for sprite or pepsi.

That is you. And yet you write.

            Or, would you be more capable of explaining the ideas of Kant, or Schopenhauer, or Heidegger, or describing Modern Family, or American Idol, or Lost? And are you more familiar with those shows or our political system? our economy? I think you get the idea.

            Two questions now: What percentage of the population is like you? And, do you think you arrived at your sterling identification skills freely? I.e. did you choose to know what you know?

But hey everyone, express yourself, right? Everyone does. Who can sift through all this shit? How much shit there is! And who can sift through it all?

Why is this a problem? Well, suppose there’s something really good out there.  Who can sift through all the stupid shit and find the good things?

Oh, you’ll find it! But will you? Maybe you couldn’t even spot it if you saw it. Remember what you’re like, from the questions above.

And what happens when generations of people like you express themselves, and other generations listen? When whole generations are drowned in the flood of your slavish inanities? Won’t they become more like you, but even worse? How will those people identify anything? How will they make anything? How will those who make exist among them?

Doesn’t it just all turn into white noise, billions screaming stupid shit at once?

Does anything get through the white noise? Does a melody sail over it? Does the white noise accompany a melody?

If it does, do you think that melody will be Mozart, or the McDonald’s jingle?

I repeat, did you choose to know what you know, to like what you like, to think the things you write about?

Do you think your incessant talking makes you free?

Now I only did this because it’s mandatory for me in order to get my fellowship check—believe me or don’t, I don’t care. Why do most other people write blogs? Here, I’ll answer my own question; I think it’s generally a safe rule that people with the least to say cannot stop talking.

Later tools,

F. Scott FitzStalin

A Glimpse of Themselves

Some years ago I learned of the existence of a “public editor” at The New York Times — someone charged with sifting through and consolidating the feedback and concerns of readers — an advocate or representative of sorts. I was delighted to imagine this direct line of access to the top of The Times tower, to someone actually desirous of productive feedback, and immediately conjured the concise, bullet-pointed letter I’d pen — one that would be received with deep gratitude (and likely produce an invitation to come on as a paid consultant). In straightforward language I’d point the editor to a variety of egregious oversights and mistakes he hadn’t yet noticed (including, but not limited to, The Times’ apparent understanding that the passive receipt and regurgitation of press releases from the agents of those who have recently produced corporate-sponsored art forms constitutes art and literary coverage). The fantasy withered, however, as I soon saw that a) The Times is fully cognizant of its inner logics and b) the office of the public editor blunts real critique by providing readers with an aggression-welcoming punching bag.

Defeated, I channeled my concerns into a private transcription of undeniable, mundane error, keeping a running record of grammatical mistakes and patterns. For instance (the comma seems to cause particular trouble):

  • Four of Mitt Romney’s sons get out the message, as well as, offer a glimpse of themselves.
  • In “A Singular Woman,” the author Janny Scott goes beyond what we know about Barack Obama’s mother — a “white woman from Kansas” — to portray a woman who took a more difficult path than her peers’.
  • Chrissie Miller of Sophomore, is still a social force, with a new store, 143.
  • Ms. Rowley poses with Leigh Lezark of the Misshapes, while Mr. Powers, chats with James Frey.
  • In that last montage, some months after East Dillon has done the inconceivable and won the State championship, they are shown as the East Coast people, Eric thought they could never be.
  • Wardrobe diplomacy: Tips on the perfect closet and, more importantly, how to share it your husband!
  • Chuck Close, wearing a colorful suit by the avant-garde fashion label, threeASFOUR.

This last line was published on the same day a thoughtful editorial on comma confusion appeared. Indeed, the newspaper excels in simultaneous grammar meta-commentary and error. An online column is dedicated to tracking the grammatical errors readers have found, and “grammar and usage” is an online “Times Topic,” introduced this way: “Why are people so obsessed with grammar, and so offended by real or imagined lapses? They argue over split infinitives and sentences that end in prepositions, almost to the point of blows…sticklers see proper grammar and usage as a baseline for a civilized society, or at least for a respectable publication. If writers don’t know the difference between “rack” and “wrack,” or between a gerund and a participle, why should we trust them on anything else?”

Once again they’ve beat me to it, anticipating my attacks by providing a column with which to contain them. But I remain undeterred. Perhaps it’s time to write to the public editor, explaining that grammatical outrage might be compensatory, might stem from sources other than grammar itself. In my case, it’s simply a stand-in for the fatigued irritation I feel each time I read about the varieties of fruit that fill Upper West Side blenders in the weekly “Sunday Routines” column.

 

 

FATNESS, BODIES, AND HEALTH

I’m not astonished by the hatred of fatness currently present in our culture, or by the extent to which it has intensified over the past few decades. Cultures go through phases and cycles, and there are always scapegoats and victims of shame and blame. What shocks me is how fully this hatred has been adopted into public discourse.

I’m not going to rehearse the critique of anti-fat discourse in any depth here. Suffice it to say that statistical correlations between fatness and illness have nothing to say about the causes of such illness or how about how to avoid it. It is impossible to isolate the health effects of fatness in a context of rampant dieting, since dieting itself seems to be very unhealthy. Even if fatness were shown to be a predictor of certain kinds of illness, losing weight wouldn’t necessarily be a solution. And even if it were, a predisposition to illness is the last thing in the world that ought to provoke anger or scorn.

[Read more...]

Re-imagining Africa in the Digital Age

How is Africa imagined in the 21stcentury?  What notions does Africa conjure in the minds of a casual observer? As a continent constantly mired in crisis, the site of humanitarian disasters, prone to conflict or home to starving millions? These notions along with many others are the prism through which western observers view Africa.  For many people around the world, Africa evokes images of war, destitution, extreme poverty.

Source: bryna-ethiopianhunger.blogspot.com

The noted Nigerian novelist and prolific writer, Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi, has an excellent quip about the dangers of misconceptions across cultures.  As she states,” the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story…. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity…. “ (Also see Binyavana Wainaina’s pieces here and here.

The rise of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and You tube has invariably connected millions of people across the globe.  In an unprecedented digital age, we no longer live in geographic isolation. Armed with our smartphones and ipads we are walking receptacles of instant information and connectivity.  In a culture where sound bites are king, how does one make sense of current events in African politics when the sum of all phenomenon is viewed through a prism of perpetual conflict, dysfunctional institutions, repressive government and the myths of a “single story.”

More specifically how does one effectively navigate a new information culture that is often replete with attention grabbing details that can obscure the larger context?  To what extent do news stories in general  invite us to delve deeper or inspire further inquiry on our part? Such pursuits are  simply too time consuming and costly. The irony is that globalization has flattened our world, widened and deepened worldwide interconnectedness.  Yet we know so little of Africa, that faraway, exotic place. Somehow in our rapidly evolving technological environment  rising awareness through the power of social media has not managed to produce careful dissemination of knowledge or events in far flung corners of the world. Take the Kony 2012 hullabaloo for example.

The meteoric attention and rapid attention that the thirty minute video managed to garner was unprecedented.  From blog entries, to Facebook, twitter, and classroom discussion, the sheer fire and debate  it ignited speaks to an enormous transformation of knowledge production and dissemination.  It also highlighted to some extent a surprising shift in consciousness.  This is because far from simply jumping on the bandwagon of the normal pity party that Africa’s conundrums frequently inspire, the you tube video inspired considerable critiques.  It seemed that far less people bought into what many deemed a brilliant advertising or marketing strategy and instead questioned the motives, the messianic overtones and seeming paternalism . Admittedly, Invisible Children’s plea  for assistance in hunting down Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony for his horrific use of child soldiers to carry out a reign of terror is certainly noble for it spurred United Nations action and renewed  US attention. But many in the academic, policymaking and blogging communities questioned the short shrift to complicated circumstances in Uganda, misinformation in the video and the nature of Invisible’s Children’s agenda.  In short, many viewed co-founder Jason Russell’s pleas as symbiotic of a continuing polemic of paternalistic western engagement.

I vividly remember the response of my students to the video which I showed in my Africa in World Affairs class.  Much to my surprise the bulk of my students were not convinced and pointed to misleading facts in varying shape and form.  Others expressed disdain for the seeming “patronizing’ tone, one-sided view and absent voices of Ugandans themselves.  What of the voices of Ugandans they wondered?  Some of my students bristled at the call for charity and how the images presented seemed to reify the “White Man’s Burden.”

How do we re-imagine Africa in the digital age or illuminate the wider historical, post-colonial realities of the continent without resorting to reductionism? Better yet, how do we move beyond stark and troubling stereotypes of Africa as the “dark continent’ waiting for the light of the west, waiting to be saved?  How far have we moved beyond prevailing images of the starving child, jutted bones, and swollen bellies?  Just like those late night infomercials, but perhaps more gripping, the power of YouTube ‘s ability to convey and transform the way we perceive and react to social phenomenon is undeniable.  The most interesting or newsworthy bits are not stories that seriously consider the political historical contexts. Instead broadcast journalism is most concerned with shock worthy sensationalism that is ephemeral at best.  In the 21st century, this is simply unacceptable.  Despite the continent’s quagmires, there is hope and promise.

African initiated efforts to bolster economic growth, technological innovation, increase indigenous capital and investment is evident as are a growing number of emerging economies, reverses in brain drain among a plethora of other developments.  As the Economist notes, “in the past decade, six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies are African.  In eight of the past ten years, Africa has grown faster than East Asia, including Japan. Even allowing for the knock-on effect of the northern hemisphere’s slowdown, the IMF expects Africa to grow by 6% this year and nearly 6% in 2012, about the same as Asia.

Re-imagining the continent requires rebranding-using the very (powerful) instruments of technology and communication to showcase a diverse peoples whose futures will not hinge on the goodwill of the west or its aid.  Indeed, the efforts of Ghanaian software pioneer, Herman Chinery-Hesse, and architect of a technological revolution is noteworthy. The third annual symposium Africa 2.0 is also testament to a new narrative of empowerment, amid efforts to transform the continent’s image.   According to Jessica Ellis of CNN, not only is Chinery-Hesse considered the “Bill Gates of Africa” he is a founder of one of Ghana’s biggest software companies and has been “has been spawning innovations for two decades, helping to break down tech barriers between the continent and the rest of the world.”

Source

However, ordinary Africans must also do their part. By harnessing the power of social media, taking ineffectual and corrupt governments to task and ultimately ushering the much awaited “African Spring” these actions can remake, reshape and reconfigure Africa’s image and upstage prevailing stereotypes of what Africa is and is not. North Africans in Egypt used social media forums to harness support and boost activism against a repressive regime.  The western world, African continent and states elsewhere can smartly, sensitively and effectively use social media in constructive ways that channel the capacity for cross cultural understanding while avoiding the dangers of a “single story”.

The Internet as Infinite Interview

At a recent brainstorming session at the Schwartz Institute, we discussed how to promote student participation in Blogs@Baruch by pitching the site as a place to develop a more professional online identity than one might express on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.  Of the proposed slogans for this campaign, one in particular struck me as both incredibly clever and potentially troubling.  It stated (I’m paraphrasing):  ”When you post something online, you’re also filling out a job application.”

I find this slogan to be so resonant because it captures some of the stark contradictions of the continued digitization of life on Earth.  On the one hand, it’s more than realistic to assume that your online activities are not only heavily monitored, but will in fact be acted upon by future and/or current employers, various organs of the State, and (gasp!) your parents.  In short, your digital identity is a growing part of your total self, and thus must be consciously cultivated to meet the same social, cultural, ethical, and economic standards that constitute your actual (meaty) self.  This perspective holds that, to be safe, you shouldn’t post anything online that you wouldn’t want your boss (or the Department of Homeland Security) to read.  This recent article describes how U.S. employers are increasingly requesting Facebook passwords from prospective employees, while obliging them to sign “non-disparagement agreements” that promise to never speak negatively about the company on social media, lest they face termination.  At companies like this, Facebook statuses literally function as lines on future job applications.

But is this the direction we want the internet to go?  If our online identities are essentially extensions of our “professional” lives, then we never leave the workspace; our digital ghosts will necessarily conform to the values of our employers, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  I think this is a dangerous way of looking at social media and the internet in general, since it robs digital communication of its most potent properties by severely limiting the kinds of conversations that can be created.  While promoting responsible online behavior is important, our students shouldn’t be made to feel, at this ripe moment in their intellectual development, that they need to make sure their ideas meet the standards of corporate America.

As many of us know, a job interview is often the last place where creative thinking takes place.  The room in which a job interview transpires is perhaps the most restrictive rhetorical environment on the planet.  Interviewers ask questions intended to elicit responses that fit within an incredibly narrow range of imaginative possibilities, and nervous job seekers reply in ways that (they hope) will please the interviewers and prove their (the applicant’s) total internal alignment with the goals of the organization.  By invoking the metaphor of the job-acquirement process as a model for online behavior, we (inadvertently or otherwise) export that grey institutional atmosphere to our whole internet lives, and continue the process of boxing the digital frontier into an endless vista of chain stores and HR offices.  In my mind, I’m already sitting in one of those offices, and the words of this blog post are being read back to me aloud by an accusatory management figure.  I’ll try to think of a good response now.

 

 

The prize versus the wage

David Graeber’s phrase “the alienated right to do good,” captures for me the inequality of opportunity to choose meaningful, socially and ethically engaged work.[1] Two recent talks have made me think about this alienation in a new way. Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Scholarly Communication at MLA  gave a talk at BLSCI on March 29 called “Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy.” Given the change in academic publishing—companies accept fewer manuscripts these days, but academic jobs require more publications than before—Fitzpatrick suggests that scholars use the internet to circulate their ideas. Not only do blogging and other forms of web communication help connect a scholarly community, she argues, but they also draw attention to the scholar’s ideas, thus making a book more marketable.

This reminded me of a rueful little joke I told myself when I was on the job market this spring and odds were looking very long. I decided that if I did not find an academic job I’d tell my family that I had decided on a new career and was moving to LA to write screenplays. What I thought was funny about this, if it isn’t obvious, was that a teaching job was not something I expected to have as long odds, and require as many years of no-wage (research) and low-wage (adjunct) labor. And I didn’t think that choosing to work towards a career as a professor meant I had the same kind of ego and tenacity it takes to make it in Hollywood. Now I’m not so sure. Fitzpatrick’s outline of the new career path for academics predicts that this ratio will grow, and her prescription for academics is that we adapt and, I guess in turn, continue to support this work structure. In her speech on “Communicative Capitalism,” political scientist Jodi Dean claims that currently we’re working less for a wage and more for a prize—we work not to be paid but for the opportunity to compete, and the chance to win, pay. While I disagree with many of the points Dean makes in this talk, this particular point seemed to hit the mark.

In a recent conversation with a few colleagues, though, we all agreed to nix high salaries for full professors, decrease top salaries to 70 thousand or so, and pay graduate teachers about 30 grand to start. This would mean much less grad student debt. It has been remarked before that any incentive to change the university labor system dies once one reaches tenure. We’ve got our eyes on the prize. 

Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” seemed worn and wan when I first read it—it was a play that seemed very relevant to my father, though. But, with the current Broadway revival, and Dean’s speech, I saw a new resonance in the line “I am not a dime a dozen. I am Willy Loman!” Has my choice of career with such long odds, that demands unpaid work, been the result of a privileged sense of what my opportunities should be? Am I doing this because I think I’m special, and deserve a special, rare career? In this case, do I “pay” for the privilege of this special job through unpaid labor? Or, is my job choice situated in a context in which the wish to “do good,” to use my labor not only to provide for myself, but also to be part of a collaborative, ethically engaged project alienated?

To put it more simply, it is harder to find this kind of work, and I have come to take that fact as a given. But, I wonder if academics’ sense of the privilege of this kind of work is part of what allows this exploitation to happen. If so, are we right? Are we paying for a privilege? Do long odds come with the nature of the reward? Or are we being exploited?


[1] David Graeber, “An Army of Altruists: on the alienated right to do good,” Harpers Magazine (January 2007): 31-38.