Monthly Archives: February 2010

No, I am not Asian

I kept wanting to raise my hand during class because I felt my blood pressure going nuts due to the comments and looks that were going around during our discussions.

I felt that Hans really handled things better than I would, especially with the amount of astonishment that came around when he shared his story about his birth certificate and his ethnic background.  He seemed embarrassed but he didn’t come off as mad at all.  Unlike me who was inwardly cringing at all the stares and turnarounds he got.  The funny part is that I got so mad for him, even though really it wasn’t my place to get mad.

You can imagine how pissed I was when everyone turned around for me, and even more bitter at the people who caught themselves before they looked.  Yes, look at me.  I don’t fit your box, I’m not Asian.  Yeah I have squinty, small eyes, big whoop.  But I also have a sizeable cup size, and I have naturally curly hair.  What about those stereotypes now?  Would you consider those assets as strongly as eye shape?

Believe me, I do understand on one level.  It’s hard for me to tell the difference between one ethnicity and another, hell it’s hard for me to tell when a girl isn’t a girl.  But you wouldn’t go up to a transgendered person and ask them if they were a guy or a girl if they weren’t sure.  Very likely you would get your ass kicked.  I’d like to kick everyone’s ass that asks me that question, and then grind their face with my boot heel when they give me that astonished look and the, “Oh I thought you were Asian” speech.  Duh.  You think you are the first person to ask me that?  My opinion of your intelligence and social skills just went downhill.

And just so we are clear, no you can’t ask me that question, even if we are friends.  Cause we aren’t really friends if you treat me like that, especially when you see it makes me upset and angry.  You are satisfying your own curiosity and not caring about someone else, that’s not “friends”.

This chapter from from Nakamura hit me pretty hard because I live alllooksame, and it pisses me off, royally. I get so tired of people asking me about where I am from, and not believing me when I give them my answer.  But it’s more than that.  I don’t know what you are going to learn about me by knowing my ethnicity.  We had a discussion in class about how your culture (the traditions, habits, even food) has more of an influence (or lack of one) than where you are from.  A latina growing up in China…chinese or latina?  Depends on the context right?  Is her family bringing her up with Chinese traditions?  Can a family teach those things if it isn’t their native culture or ethnicity?

I have these questions and I have no answers.  I am what I am, my boyfriend is Indian.  But more than that, he primarily considers himself a Sikh or Punjabi.  That isn’t the same as being Hindu (religion) or being Bengali (a place in India).  From my point of view, who cares which part of India you are from…but from his perspective, it gives him insight into that person’s culture (and most likely their stereotypes).

Our children will be mixed, and it is up to me to teach them as much of the Punjabi culture as I can, and his family will teach me along the way.  I will teach them what I know of my culture, but it is diluted since my parents didn’t teach me all the cultural references because they wanted me to assimilate into white American culture.

It’s a little odd how all of these topics are coming up as real life issues come up in my life.  A few weeks ago when Julie mentioned the Nakamura chapter on race, I had a chat with her about how some guy at a bar was giving me a hard time.  He kept telling me he could tell what kind of Asian I was by looking into my eyes.  I’ll put it plainly, I was thinking fuck you but at the same time I was thinking, drunk guy, don’t get him started.  My usual game is to make people who guess, buy me a drink for each guess.  Usually that puts some people off, but some people are just dumb.  He made three guesses, all wrong.  Korean, Japanese and Chinese.  He tossed me 8 bucks, a little sore that he didn’t guess correctly and then asked me to tell him what I really was.  He was shocked at her answer, and kept asking me if it was true.  He kept coming back and asking me if I was really Asian and just messing with him, and it was just getting more and more awkward.

Finally, he came up to me and told me he had a “thing” for Asian girls, a fetish of sorts and that’s why he was asking.  I actually kinda felt bad that I mislead him in a weird sort of way, but at the same time….YUCK.  Not the first time that has happened either.  Had a friend’s boyfriend tell me he likes Asian chicks and what are you supposed to say to that? My friend is white, btw.

God this is turning into a book, but here’s one more thing.

Gus and I had a discussion about this last night, because he’s a comparative ethnic studies major and I’m…an angry ethnic girl. His thought was that it wasn’t rude to ask about ethnicity because he felt it wasn’t something to be ashamed or bothered about. Most of the time he handles it by telling him he’s from Kent, and if they ask where his family is from, he tells them from India. Most people are satisfied with that, and he feels that they are just curious.

Me, I think that kind of curiosity is rude. I wouldn’t ask anyone such a personal question. I would never ask you about your bra size or or what size underwear you wear.  I wouldn’t ask you why you got divorced or if that nasty habit of yours makes your significant other nuts.

I don’t think I should have to satisfy your curiosity, it’s not my job to entertain you or give you a reason to categorize me so you feel comfortable.  I want you to know me, the online me or the real life me, they are both parts of me, and if there is something important that you need to know about me, like if I was a vegetarian (so not), couldn’t eat something due to food allergies, or I don’t work on the Sabbath for religious reasons (not applicable to me either);

I will tell you.

DTC 375 Draft

Anyone want to work on it together, I need to get on it already. I picked a topic, now I need to get that draft dunzo now that I got back from Canada.

Hello, I am Eliza

I chose the article, “Authenticity in the age of digital companions” by Sherry Turkle as my article for this week’s blog assignment.   Her article discusses the issues of digital companions, basically computer software/hardware designed to interact with humans and provide some sort of companionship for them.  She also discusses whether these constructs can give a satisfactory human responses and whether people might choose to give their feelings to digital companions because they might be more satisfactory than a human.

Turkle discusses the use of Eliza, a computer program that basically repeats what you say in the form of a question, so it sounds much like a session with the psychologist.  Even though people knew that Eliza was a computer program, they ended up responding better to Eliza than to a human psychologist because they felt they could trust the program with their deepest secrets.  I think there are merits to talking to someone that is neutral to your situation, but as people, can we really be completely unbiased?  I assume that people who work with people in that capacity are trained to be unbiased, but I’m not sure how you could take every bit of bias out of your interactions.  I admit I’m not good at hiding my emotions, and even worse at lying (so I typically don’t bother), but I know there are people who are very good at hiding what they think. I don’t think even a computer program can be completely unbiased since it is created by a designer or a team of designers, but if you are just mirroring the subject’s output, then maybe that would work better.  I also think that talking to a computer gives the impression that your interactions are going into some sort of void, kind of like writing a letter then burning it, yelling at the screaming tree, or spilling your secrets to the water in a well.

Give Eliza a try.  Let me know what you think.

There was an example of where children were introduced to robots that could either mimic human behavior or show facial expressions that intrigued me because of the way the children interacted with the robots.  The children learned to work with the robots, teaching them new skills and playing with them over a period of time.  The children understood the difference between being robot-alive and a living thing like a pet or another person, but because the robots showed human-like behavior, they treated the robots like they were living beings, able to feel pain, and return their feelings.  The researchers also noticed similar behavior in the elderly who were left with simple robots like responsive dolls or more advanced caretaker robots.

In the end, it seems that if a human is asked to nurture a robot, or treat it as a companion, it will cause the person to have real feelings that bond that person to the robot.  Turkle mentions many examples of ways that people are bonded to robots, basically teaching people to care for objects that technically cannot emotionally care for them back.  She mentions Furbies, the animated pet/dolls that people can teach to talk and respond to them, and how children wouldn’t want to replace their Furby if it broke, much like they wouldn’t want another pet if it passed away.

We see similar situations online, where you can sign up to “raise” an online avatar to adulthood by clicking on a button to feed it or pet it.  I’ve also seen widgets that work with facebook and myspace and allow you to choose an animal, name it and place it on your personal space and allow your online friends to feed, and pet it.  Neopets was a popular online game that allowed a person to explore a world, playing games and earning game money to spend on their pet.  You could even go as far as to consider your in-game character as a similar construct, where you take time to level your character, improve it’s strength, buy it weapons and gear, upgrade the character with special modifiers to make it unique, and even buy it a house in some games.  I wonder what would happen if games included an Eliza-type NPC (non-person character) for companionship in online gaming worlds.  Most NPCs are pretty boring, they have a limited vocabulary and don’t really do anything interesting except to fight bad guys, provide mission information and look interesting.

Since artificial intelligence is becoming more sophisticated and hardware is starting to make these types of software/hardware robots feasible, Turkle asks if people will continue to separate the differences between human feelings and robotic responses.  I think that these robots can be useful, in particular for helping people dealing with severe emotional trauma, and for people who need extra help, such as the elderly, who are often left alone and don’t get enough companionship.  I don’t think that robots are the complete answer though, people need people in some form, and I believe that dealing with people on a face-to-face basis develops different skills than dealing with people virtually, and even different skills dealing with a humanized robot.

Check out the article, it isn’t dry and has some thought-provoking experiments in it.

Fishbowl Experiment

Being in the fishbowl was super-fun, and anxiety-increasing (like I need that, but that’s my own damn fault). I don’t know how many times I had to catch myself from hollering into the fishbowl.

I also realized that a) I am not a good representation of typical avatar-usage (which is semi-okay in my book), and b) kinda wished our whole group could have gotten a few words in (everyone is so interesting, even if I don’t agree with what you guys say).

I also realized that I come off as someone who doesn’t take things too seriously, which is true in some cases, but mostly not. Ideally I’d like to say that I take only what I consider is important as a serious matter, and the rest is good for a laugh. But I actually take a lot seriously, my work, my education, my relationships with people and of course, my virtual life. That’s definitely why I’m so tired lately, I’ve been pushing myself hard (for me anyway) and I love being like that, even though it isn’t good for me health-wise. Mentally though, I’m really enjoying all the creative and intellectual threads that are running in my brain. I finished my kickass Joan (from Mad Men) vector piece, completed my horrific typographic project (a lot of detailed work, which doesn’t always mean quality), and my photography project, which was dreadful at first, and ended up creating two amazing pieces of cyn-art that I actually would want to keep.

I also did one bad thing, which was watch the Dragonball movie (anime fan, not a fan of DB, it wasn’t that bad) instead of doing hw, posting here instead of doing hw, and lastly accidentally kicking my kitty’s food bowl and not cleaning it up because I was running late to my first class.

It was also nice to meet my fellow class bloggers, today I met a lot of people and I think I’m starting to get down some names, finally. It’s weird how there are so many similarities to the comp sci program personalities, but overall, the people seem a little more open (over time that is) to me and now that I have something to show them beyond my grouchy tired face, maybe I can learn even more amazing things from them (which is why I’m here).

I better go to bed, got my pre-engagement cleanup (and class) tomorrow. *big yawn*

A Better Play-Doh

I was very interested in the way the author decided to run an experiment on his students with the clay tablet writing.  The differences between the current era and when clay tablets were used is completely different.  Now, instead of clay we use manufactured paper, which is fairly inexpensive on the most part, and available for sale at the majority of the stores.  Some places give away in the form of notebooks, post-its, receipts, and advertising swag.

I wasn’t sure if the clay tablet writers also created their tablets, but it seems like there is a process that must occur before a person can write to a clay tablet.  First the creation of the clay mixture, preparing it for writing, getting the writing utensils, composing the written phrase beforehand, planning the phrase formatting, writing to the tablet, firing the tablet and then planning the storage method.  If a person was to write the same phrase, they usually have to find an appropriate size of paper, a pen or pencil (inexpensive), then the person is ready to write.  If a person writes to a computer, assuming you have electricity, a printer, paper and a computer, you can write as soon as the computer starts up because all computers come with a way to create a basic text file.

It’s becoming the point where people don’t make things from scratch unless they are a skilled tradesman,  if they are a hobbyist, or if they buy it at a specialty store.  There are tutorials on creating your own paper from scratch, and many hobbyist/craft stores sell machines for papermaking, as well as books on the subject.  I think this is one of the biggest differences because it stands for how normal it is to have these types of materials, and how many people can read and write now.  Many countries provide basic reading and writing education for free (ignoring taxes), so being able to read and write is almost a given in those areas. Paper is trivial, pencils are everywhere, and we also have special processed papers that are made to last a long time, as well as the cheap everyday paper that we use for writing papers, printing receipts, and jotting down a grocery list.

It almost means that the skills that were so tedious like tablet-writing are no longer tedious in the same way.  Pencils make me nuts because you always have to sharpen them, so I use mechanical pencils.  Mechanical pencils are irritating because I press down too hard and break the lead, plus there is always wasted lead when the pencil reaches a certain point.  However, from the author’s experiment, there were issues with clarity, the ability to fit long passages, and ensuring the integrity of the clay once finished.

There is also no need for slave labor, or skilled workers for writing purposes, so they say.  We don’t need dictation anymore, we have recordable, portable mikes for recording our thoughts if we choose the orality over the written word (or the typed word in many cases).

The last thing I found interested about Chapter 5 is how the students in the experiment were focusing on extra things that probably didn’t matter very much to the clay tablet writers.  Choosing a color of clay, forming the clay into a “page” shape, adding artistic or aesthetically pleasing additions to a student’s clay experiment is a reflection of what is important now rather than what probably happened back in the day.  People are more concerned about being original, and about expressing themselves through the clay medium (because it is now a toy for kids?), rather than considering the cost, and the utility of clay back in the day.  You don’t see us playing around with expensive materials any more than the clay writers of the time did.