Today, at least O’Malley didn’t say the N-word. But we talked about what is legally considered ‘white’ and why it’s not related to skin tone. I think about this a lot being mixed race. I’m half Korean, and I look pretty white. I don’t really consider myself ‘white’ because culturally, I grew up really involved with Korean traditions and culture and grew up in a neighborhood with a lot of Korean neighbors so I was constantly surrounded by other people that I related to. My dad is the white parent, and he isn’t a part of my life. I am sure most people would consider me ‘white’ because of the way I look, but I don’t know. I don’t think that I’d legally be considered white. It’s a messy area.

Blackface is something that we all agree is racist and derogatory today (even though some people still do it and get flamed on social media for it). It’s one of those parts of American History that reminds us that maybe America wasn’t always that ‘great’, or maybe it was, but only for wealthy white men.

It makes sense that minstrel shows had a deep impact on American music. It’s just something no one ever thinks about, or wants to think about. Minstrel shows are weird. Why were they popular? What was the attraction? I will never understand, but I have a greater historical perspective than the people had back then.

An interesting question he asked was ‘how did the Irish, Germans, English people and others all become white?”. They hated each other in Europe, but in America, they were just white. They were, in their view, better than black people.

White people still kind of steal black culture and make it their own. That’s something that never ended.

I honestly think that this class was really just a lot of hot air. O’Malley sometimes goes on long rants and stretches ideas really far, to the point where they almost don’t connect with the ideas he’s trying to get across. I kind of get what he was trying to say about black people doing ‘black face’ but I just don’t think it’s true. It doesn’t seem possible to me for someone to dress up as their own culture.

I think it was really interesting to see how much computers have evolved in the short amount of time that they have existed. I can’t even imagine using punch cards…It seems so wasteful. And learning code would be impossible for me. I am really grateful to have been born after all of this progression so that I can basically just enjoy the easy parts of computers that cater to non-tech savvy people like me. This lesson reminded me again just how much Bell Labs has changed technology and society as well with their inventions.

I don’t even want to think of the inventions that will exist when I am old. I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up with it all.

the whole concept of signal v. noise was very interesting to me, because it applies to things that aren’t even sounds, like communication, or messaging. I tend to prefer a lot of noise; I like background sounds humming along so that the room is never silent, and I even like noise in the music I listen to.

I thought that the whole thing with the mouse that was developed to ‘learn’ a path was really cool, because the kids I work with have a similar toy that is meant to teach them the basics of coding. Instead of the mouse ‘learning’ the path, they code it for the mouse. This probably is to pay homage to the original mouse Theseus.

I honestly don’t have a good working concept of how bits work, but I do understand how important they are and how 1’s and 0’s are yes and no.

I Hated the idea that information is related to uncertainty. While I understand its premise, I really don’t like it. Relating information to uncertainty kind of goes against what feels natural.

The book was all about how Technology doesn’t only do things for us, but it does things to us as well. I am a product of the technological age, so I don’t realize how it has affected my brain. To me, this is just the way that I am. I have no previous life from before the internet and smartphones and computers to compare myself to. I am, however, able to see how the internet could be viewed as a “crutch” that could make our brains ‘weaker’. Being a biology major, the parts of the book that talked about neuroplasticity and the brain made a lot of sense to me.

One of the more interesting things I got from this specific class period was the notion of a historical self that transcends history. Thinking about it, I basically agree that humans are probably the same throughout history. We are driven by the same forces and motivations no matter what the time period is. As we evolved and became more comfortable and had to worry less about survival, we were able to focus more time on civility and culture and other things that our ancestors may not have had time to prioritize, but in the end we are more similar to them than we may think.

Today the professor kept asking us the question: “Why can’t we choose to sell ourselves into slavery?” and I honestly could not answer. I don’t know why it’s wrong. I just know that it is. Indentured servitude is dehumanizing and I can’t imagine it every being ‘voluntary’ because even just saying ‘voluntary indentured servitude’ is an oxymoron, but he kept asking us ‘what if?’ questions that were hard to answer.

We also talked about how technology could potentially be undermining people’s divided sense of self. There is a private self, and a public self. I honestly am having a hard time conceptualizing the whole ‘sense of self’ thing that he keeps talking about in class, but I feel like every time he starts to rant about it I start to understand a little more. I’m waiting for the day I’m sitting in class and it all of a sudden clicks for me and I finally understand it. It’s just really hard for me to think about myself and the way I think, it is kind of mind boggling. Things have become instinctual to me that I know aren’t natural; walking on the right side of the sidewalk, crossing my legs when I sit, going to the bathroom sitting down on a toilet- these are all things that people have to be trained to do. I literally never think about them because it’s second nature to me to behave the way I do, which means that technology has affected the way that I think, behave, and live my life in more ways than I had previously thought about.