The concept of The Golden Record feels so uniquely human; we want to share the story of our planet and convey our existence through music (NASA). The Golden Record is a time capsule that was added to the voyager, a rocket that is indefinitely shooting through space in the hopes of coming into contact with extraterrestrial life (NASA). The NASA team selected a record that is plated in gold as their vessel for storing the music because most of the current digital methods of storing information would not last thousands, if not, millions of years. The data and information stored on our digital devices face many obstacles to preservation, such as the physical integrity of our products, as well as ensuring our programming infrastructure can continue to support old files (Smith, 1999). 

The NASA team was sure to include a broad selection that covers a range of cultures, musical frequencies, languages, and narratives. The two pioneers behind The Golden Record, Tim Ferris, and Linda Salzman Sagan, aimed to select pieces that could be interpreted from several facets (Twenty Thousand Hertz, 2019). 

Among the 27-seven pieces of music chosen on the record, I selected 10 that I found captured the diversity and creativity of human life. 

1. “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05

I selected this song because I am a fan of Louise Armstrong, and I like that they added music that had a variety of instruments. Armstrong was well known for being a soulful trumpet player, and this song in particular really demonstrates an emphasis on the trumpet because there are no vocals. Further, this song captures African-American subculture, which birthed blues and jazz music during the 1920s.

2. “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry. 2:38

This song is a quintessential rock song that represents American identity with its upbeat fast-paced rhythm and romanticization of the American dream. The Rolling Stone (2011) claimed “‘Johnny B. Goode’ was the first rock & roll hit about rock & roll stardom”. The song is autobiographical and accounts for Berry’s rise to success, by playing in the big cities until he became famous.

3. Bulgaria, “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin,” sung by Valya Balkanska. 4:59

I liked this song purely for the auditory experience it provides. Despite not knowing the language or the meaning behind the words, I felt entranced by the vocals that have long soulful notes. Balkanska’s voice is complimented by bagpipes, harmonizing together to create a very unique sound. 

4. Mexico, “El Cascabel,” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14

“El Cascabel” is a Spanish song that has many Mexican music elements, including the Spanish picking guitar. The fast-paced song has the kind of rhythm that makes listeners want to get up and dance. Further, this song would generally be performed by a mariachi band and a performer singing the vocals. I think this piece adds another unique cultural element to the song selection. 

5. Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51

This Japanese song is about cranes nesting; cranes were considered spiritual birds in Japan and this piece is an homage to the appreciation of these animals (The International Shakuhachi Society). The song is played using a traditional Japanese instrument called a Shakuhachi, which is a wind instrument that resembles a flute. The Shakuhachi is made of Bamboo and is a representation of ancient practices and spirituality (The International Shakuhachi Society). 

6. China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu. 7:37

This song is played using a guqin, which is a “seven-string Chinese musical instrument” (Wikipedia). The player, Kuan P’ing-hu, is picking a few strings and strumming others, causing a contrast between higher and lower notes. The song is exclusively a recording of the instrument being played, and nothing else. 

7. Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57

“Night Chant” is a recording from the Navajo Nation. This song was used during healing ceremonies and “in endeavors to ameliorate strained relations between Man and the Universe, thereby restoring order, balance, harmony, and health (Hillerman). The song has a spiritual purpose for the Navajo community and is one of the few songs in the record that clearly has several singers. 

8. New Guinea, men’s house song, recorded by Robert MacLennan. 1:20

This song came from a small village in Oroha, Malaita where only a few hundred people speak the Oroha language. This type of music is generally “reserved for traditional special occasions, like feats” (ABC Pacific, 2018). The vocals, which can only be understood by less than a thousand people on Earth, will now be shared with Space – which in an interesting concept to appreciate. 

9. Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima. 0:52

This song is particularly interesting because it is played with panpipes and flutes. These instruments are among some of the earliest recorded instruments in human history (World History Encyclopedia). Therefore, this song really captures the evolution and development of human life, culture, and identity. 

10. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40

Tim Ferris opened the record with this song from Bach because he wanted to “represent some music with a strong mathematical foundation because we might be communicating with creatures who don’t have hearing or who don’t have hearing in the range” (Twenty Thousand Hertz, 2019). I think it’s so creative to think of music beyond the phenomenological experience, but rather through other methods of analysis. This demonstrates that they were deeply considering how the music could be interpreted and the limitations that might impact the aliens’ ability to perceive and understand music.

References 

Cartwright, M. (2011, June 17). Pan Flute. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.worldhistory.org/Panpipes/

Murray-Atfield, Y. (2018, December 27). Pacific: How songs from villages in PNG and Solomon Islands are now floating in Outer Space. ABC Pacific. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.abc.net.au/pacific/programs/pacificbeat/how-songs-from-the-pacific-ended-up-in-outer-space/10671290

NASA. (n.d.). Voyager – what’s on the Golden Record. NASA. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/

Nelson, R. (2023). Tsuru no Sugomori (Dokyoku). The International Shakuhachi Society. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.komuso.com/pieces/pieces.pl?piece=2218

Rolling Stone Magazine. (2011, April 7). 500 greatest songs of all time. Rolling Stone. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20170312024059/http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/the-500-greatest-songs-of-all-time-20110407/chuck-berry-johnny-b-goode-20110516

Smith, A. (1999). Why digitize? Microform & Imaging Review, 28(4). https://doi.org/10.1515/mfir.1999.28.4.110

University of New Mexico. (n.d.). Night way. Night Way | The Tony Hillerman Portal. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://ehillerman.unm.edu/node/1705#sthash.a1h5XsO0.57CagfKa.dpbs

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, March 10). Guqin. Wikipedia. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guqin 

Invasive technology is overtaking our homes and lives. Even though we may welcome technology, like phones, computers, smart watches etc… into our spaces and daily routine – that doesn’t change the fact that they can present major risks. Right now, there is a new form of digital literacy that is increasingly more challenging to tackle: consent and privacy of personal data. Partly, because surveillance technology is intended to be deceptive and the issues are complex and challenging for even the best researchers to comprehend. Further, The London Group notes the need to educate individuals on these changing digital landscapes, particularly focusing on the following realms of our existence, “our working lives, public lives (citizenship), and our private lives (lifeworld)” (New London Group, 1996, p.65). As the boundaries between these landscapes blur with integrations of advanced technology, our digital citizenship overlays our private world. So, while one might have a generally high level of digital literacy, one may still not know the relationship between technology and privacy. Modern digital literacy requires far more knowledge than knowing how to physically maneuver devices and their applications, it requires some level of understanding of broader socio-politic conditions. 

The London Group identifies “the term ‘multiliteracies’ as a way to focus on the realities of increasing local diversity and global connectedness” (1996, p.64). These large tech companies have found their way into the corners of the home, of millions of users across the globe. The use of speech recognition technology is used as a method of creating audio scene analysis. Essentially, companies are using our at-home speech recognition devices (ex Alexa and Google Play) to collect auditory data and scrape for sounds beyond our device-directed speech (Turow, 2023). The collection of audio data can reveal intimate details about our identity and the dynamics of our closest relationships. Joseph Turow says in The Voice Catchers, “few of us realize that we are turning over biometric data to companies when we give voice commands to our smartphones and smart speakers, or when we call contact center representatives, but that’s exactly what is happening” (2023, p. 227). However, data is almost an inescapable byproduct of device usage and it’s deeply embedded into our social practices. Clearly, there is a need for users to learn about the collection of their personal data and how to protect their personal information. 

In the following video, I perform an experiment with my viewers. The purpose of this exercise is to reimagine what’s in my bag and to understand how a soundscape without any speech, is still very revealing of a person’s space (or bag, as we see in this example).

I ask the listeners to listen to an audio clip of me riffling through my bag and perform an audio scene analysis. I subsequently share the audio with the video and ask them to assess if they were correct in guessing what the objects were.

Can my viewers tell what the contents of my bag are based on the sounds of the objects? 

 Some sounds are very telling of the object. Whereas, other sounds are more ambiguous and harder to pinpoint. The sound of a pill bottle is very distinct. You can hear me shake a pill bottle, followed by clicking sounds as I open the child safety lock on the cap. Then, a slurping sound. At this point, the listener is likely able to discern that I am drinking. One would likely assume that I am taking a pill and swallowing it down with some kind of drink. This sound could signify that I am not feeling well, or I’m taking some kind of medication. This pill bottle came out of my handbag, which I carry with me everywhere, so one could make the assumption that I take those pills often enough to warrant having them on hand. Through this analysis, one could make some assumptions about my health and well-being. Our health is an intimate topic we assume is only shared with those we entrust, but an audio clip of my bag reveals that that information is far more accessible than we might assume. 

 Hopefully, this exercise demonstrates that an integral part of digital literacy is knowing the risks of technology. We need to develop our education about technology to include a sense of self-awareness of how our technology collects our data and who has access to that data. 

References

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–93. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.66.1.17370n67v22j160u

Turow, J. (2023). The voice catchers: How marketers listen in to exploit your feelings, your privacy, and your wallet. Yale University Press. 

Task 6: An Emoji Story

What’s interesting about emojis, is that they can provide a recreation of emotion through symbols (a capturing of semantic value). For instance, if you add a smiling emoji to a text, you’re adding a facial expression that would otherwise not be captured or perhaps a hidden emotion that is not readily exemplified through language. Beyond that, emojis have developed into a language of their own, “emojis don’t replace words; no one says ‘sunglasses fire 100’ out loud. Instead they indicate gestures (thumbs up, facepalm) or context (laughing, crying, crying laughing) or mood” (Shirky, 2019). Dr. Gretchen McCulloh, a linguist who studies how the internet has shaped language, points out that each emoji is an emblem and “the key feature of emblems is that they’re nameable gestures” (2019, p.154). Therefore, the idea behind the emoji is that we could embed gestures into our written language. In the image below, I try to recreate a story using sequences of emojis – any guess as to what story I’m trying to recreate? *Hint it’s on Netflix*

Recreating a Story through Emojis 

Reflection

I relied on the imagery displayed within the story. Partly, because the images are integral to the actual story itself, and they are very easily connected to the theme and narrative. I leaned into the idea of “competition” and “money” in hopes that that would steer the reader into thinking about a particular genre. I found it challenging to incorporate more elaborate ideas, mostly because the text itself is very one-dimensional, and lacks change or development that would signify a unique plot. Therefore, I felt limited by the repetitive nature of the story itself and found that there was not enough diversity in emojis for me to adequately address the subtle changes to the plot. I started with the title because I think that incorporating the “camera” and “tv” emoji at the top would help guide the reader to the type of medium I had chosen. My chosen story is only in one medium and not across several, so these emojis immensely limit the scope of my selected narrative. I did not choose the work based on how easy it would be to visualize – though retrospectively maybe I should have. I selected the work because it’s what I have been binging off Netflix over the past few weeks.

References

McCulloch, G. (2019). Emoji and Other Internet Gestures. In Because internet: Understanding the new rules of language. essay, Riverhead Books.

Shirky, C. (2019, August 16). Emojis are language too: A linguist says internet-speak isn’t such a bad thing. The New York Times. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/16/books/review/because-internet-gretchen-mcculloch.html

For this task, I have chosen to use Google docs as my voice-to-text. Full disclosure though, I am a huge fan of voice-to-text, and generally, whenever I need to brainstorm ideas or write a long paper, I use the voice-to-text feature to write my rough draft. Truthfully, I think I have actually gotten to a point where I am pretty good at using speech-to-text because I feel comfortable saying things like “comma” and “period” when talking out loud. I prefer using speech-to-text because when I use it, I also turn off my spell check, and that prevents me from going back and trying to fix all the underlined words. Also, it allows me to capture my honest and uninterrupted stream of consciousness, which can be very fruitful when trying to articulate a challenging topic. However, for the purpose of this assignment, I will abstain from my habitual practices and use the feature like it’s my first time. 

Here is my five-minute story that I said through Google text to speech:

When covid happened all of the restaurants near me and coffee shops near me shut down and I really missed my Starbucks when I you know was in school I was having Starbucks all the time every day you know between like classes I grabbed a coffee how to pick me up in the evening and it was strange when everything shut down and then I no longer was able to get my coffee so why I ended up deciding to do is you know buy a espresso machine and where the nicest espresso machines but they were all super expensive so I had to find one on Facebook Marketplace that was a little less expensive and I did and I did I was able to find one for only $100 and the woman was so sweet the woman who sold it to me she said you know here’s this coffee machine it’s served me well let me know if you have any problems and she gave me her being grinder for free as well and we actually hugged it was very sweet and I was super super excited to come home and try on my new espresso machine because I could finally have espresso on ice with coconut milk like I love to get at the coffee shop and I told my roommates Hey listen I finally got this coffee maker it’s an espresso machine it actually dropped Frost milk and you can use it and everyone was super excited we were all you know looking forward to having espresso in the morning to finally having good coffee in the morning my roommates and I all three of us we went to Shoppers Drug Mart one of the few places open during the early part of the pandemic and we found some beans and they were ungrinded beans cuz we wanted to grind our own beans and so we found these no really expensive like $25 a bag beans and we grinded a little bit up and had some espresso together and my roommate Frost their milk and it was all very very exciting for the whole of a pandemic all I had was this espresso every morning and every afternoon it was addicting I used all the time and I’m I was so happy I got it it was well worth the money the only Annoying Thing about the coffee or like the espresso make espresso maker was that my roommates would grind the beans so early in the morning before their classes so they would put in the beans at like 7:00 in the morning when I’m sleeping and it would just the whole morning and I couldn’t stand it and it would just you know make so much noise I literally couldn’t I couldn’t deal with it however once things open up I started getting my coffee again and I stopped using the espresso machine as much but you know what it was so good I definitely think I should pull it back out again give it another go because I save so much money just grinding my own beans and like pressing my own espresso so definitely something I highly recommend to everybody if they ask I’m always looking forward to trying you know new kinds of coffee and it was really fun just being able to like make my own concoctions as well. 

Speech-to-text analysis

The most obvious grammatical error is that there is no punctuation in this paragraph and there is only one period at the end. It’s clear this is a free-flowing story and the microphone captures some of my speech fillers as well, such as “like” and “you know” – which I occasionally say when I am chatting with somebody. There are random letters that are also capitalized when there is no reason for them to be capitalized. Also, some of the words are misspelled and there are a few verbs that do not have the right conjugations. A reader would likely be able to put together the story and know what is being said, but it certainly would not be an easy read. I think if I had scripted the story, it probably would have made it slightly more clear and more concise. The scripted story would likely not have all my filler words or any word repetitions. When using speech to text though, there are several tips and tricks to using it effectively, like saying the punctuation out loud. I did not use any of the tips and tricks, but if I had it planned out I would probably know when my idea is done and I could incorporate punctuation. 

Oral storytelling is very similar to written storytelling in that it has tone and emotion, but oral storytelling is not held to grammatical standards. Oftentimes, in oral storytelling, particularly when it’s anecdotally to a friend, it’s raw thoughts. Oral storytelling relies on the speaker to add contextual elements such as body movements and facial expressions; ultimately, adding layers of meaning behind the language. In writing there is the opportunity to revise, reflect, rewrite, and so on and so forth so that the words we use are perfect and express exactly what we want. As Walter Ong (1982) says “Written words are residue. Oral tradition has no such residue or deposit. When an of ten-toldoral story is not actually being told, all that exists of it is the potential in certain human beings to tell it”. With writing, there is the opportunity to leave the writing and come back to it long afterward, but oral storytelling has an immediacy and is constrained by time.

References

Ong, W. J. (2002). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. Routledge.

In Borditsky’s SAR lecture from May 2017, she addresses how language can change the way we think. She initially premises that language does not change one’s ability to think, but rather what key pieces of information each culture identifies and connects to. This video really resonates with me as somebody who speaks several languages and has always lived in a very multicultural city. I grew up in an English-speaking household but went to a French school where we were only allowed to speak French. I also made French friends, who also only spoke French, and for a period of about a year, my thoughts and dreams were also in French. For that year, I found it incredibly strange that the reflection in my own head was a different language than the one I shared with my parents. The rest of my family, parents, and siblings, are monolingual and it was weird to feel like I was a bit “slower” in my native language. Now, I can hardly speak French and I feel extremely estranged from the language as I haven’t used it in years and really have no place to exercise my skills. As a bilingual speaker, I experienced firsthand the malleability of language. Language is not pre-determined and its existence shifts through time and place, both on a cultural and personal level. 

In the subsequent points, I outline six ideas Borditsky brings up and I relate them back to my own experience with language.

1. [3:13] –  Borditsky opens her lecture with an example of how a verb in different languages will change the meaning of a sentence and what is being communicated. After I graduated from my undergrad (well after I stopped speaking French), I spent about 6 months intensively learning Spanish. And knowing French really helped my listening and vocabulary skills but made it unbelievably hard to properly pronounce Spanish vowels, specifically the sound of “e”. Because in French the sound of “e” changes depending on the letters surrounding it, so the sound of “e” can actually have dozens of phonetic sounds, whereas, in Spanish, “e” is always one sound. My only English-speaking classmates found the pronunciation aspect much easier than me but often struggled with the speed of the language because English is a very wordy language. In Spanish, the verb inherently tells the who, and speakers generally drop the pronoun before the verb, making the sentence more direct and requiring fewer words to describe a situation.
2. [6:40] – Borditsky shows a chart that looks at several Navajo verb stems that describe different endings to the verb for eating. The different stems then change the what or the how of what the person was eating. In English, we need to use additional words to provide context, whereas, in the Navajo language, the content is inherently described in the word (Borditsky, 2017). In situational descriptions, finding alternatives to expression is much easier because we can name the physical thing that would otherwise be embedded into the term; however, it’s much more challenging to use appropriately translate or describe a feeling that is explicit in one language but not in another. As a philosophy student, I needed to read a lot of German translations of philosophical texts and an issue I always ran into was that there are no true translations for many of the words that describe feelings. The German language has a far more expansive vocabulary than English for describing the way one feels. Perhaps if the English language had more words for describing how we feel, then we would be more attuned to our emotional needs!
3. [19:15] – Borditsky shares the fact that Russians have different words for light and dark blue, which is interesting considering how many cultures still don’t have a word for the color blue (Borditsky, 2017). When reading “The Oddesy”, Homer described the sea as a “wine-dark” because many ancient civilizations didn’t have a word for blue, but rather saw colors in shades, (dark vs light). Her point also reminds me of a study conducted that compared western conceptions of blue to the Himba tribe which does not have a word for blue because in their language blue is considered a shade of green (Lindsey et al., 2015).
4. [22:00] – Borditsky asks the audience if they speak another language that uses gendered endings, and she shares that the gendered words also change the way the culture perceives masculine and feminine (Borditsky, 2017). As a french student, when I was in elementary school, my second-grade teacher would ask us to line up against the wall before we would enter the classroom and she would individually say a word to each student before entering, in french, and the student needed to tell her if it was masculine or feminine. When repeating the word back to her the student also needed to do the action of either putting their index finger over their top lip (to create a faux mustache) to signify masculine or they needed to bow and pretend to lift their imaginary skirt to signify feminine. So instead of verbally saying if the word is masculine or feminine, we needed to show a feminine or masculine mannerism.
5. [29:18] – Borditsky puts up an example of several different headlines that selectively use different language to describe the situation of Cheney shooting Wittington. And she uses a very comical example of how language can change how information is received by the reader, by pulling a headline from “The Onion” that satirizes the situation (Borditsky, 2017). I think this is a really interesting approach to assessing language because it demonstrates how the words we use, or don’t use, can change how a situation is perceived. I think the example of a new article is really smart because it shows how bias or motive can be interwoven into political writing to change what the reader is encouraged to believe.
6. [36:05] – Borditsky also points out how different cultures count and how different cultures also have different textual methods of documenting counting (Borditsky, 2017). While growing up, my best friend was Chinese and she moved to Canada when she was 12. She was also very good at math, and she told me that one of the reasons why doing math in Chinese was much easier, was because of how phonetically simple numbers were. The phonetic consistency and predictability of numbers in Chinese actually made it easier to do multiplication and division.
7. [40:00] – In one of Borditsky’s concluding thoughts she notes how certain individuals within the Nicaraguan deaf community never learned the signs for numbers, so they struggle to understand how numbers work (Borditsky, 2017). This example reminded me of the history of written language, and that initially, language started as hieroglyphics on rocks in Mesopotamia and for centuries most cultures used oral language to communicate. Math and written communication are very much a learned technology and not inherent in the human identity, despite how dependent modern societies are on written and mathematical concepts. In fact, our familiarity with written language and math is a fairly recent development in human history; during the early Victorian century, many folks did not know how to do complex math or how to read and write.

References

Lindsey, D. T., Brown, A. M., Brainard, D. H., & Apicella, C. L. (2015). Hunter-gatherer color naming provides new insight into the evolution of color terms. Current Biology, 25(18), 2441–2446. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.08.006

Borditsky, Lera. (2017). Lera Boroditsky, How the Languages We Speak Shape the Ways We Think. YouTube. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGuuHwbuQOg.

Task 1: What’s in my bag?

My green lululemon fanny pack is among the largest ones that Lululemon sells. Prior to purchasing this larger bag, I was using a smaller fanny pack but found that it was not large enough for my passport and most of my items. I carry quite a bit in my bag, including travel Tylenol, lipglosses, gum, and glasses. Everything in my bag is a necessity, (at least in my opinion) and they are items that I use frequently, but not every item I use on a daily basis.

I use my AirPods daily because I love music and if I have the chance, I am always playing tunes. I also am always using my cardholder, with my ID and credit cards. I also always use the spooly to comb out my eyelashes, and vaseline for my skin if it gets very dry. Another item that I consistently use if not every day, but every hour, is the lip balm and if it’s an extra dry Canadian day – my vaseline tube. To the outside observer, it might seem like overkill to have four different types of lip balm, but each one has a different occasion and need (for example, some are pigmented and others are extra thick). 

The products in my bag demonstrate that I have enough money to buy apple products and luxury brands like Lululemon, meaning I am likely to be middle class or higher. The AirPods demonstrate that I like music and listen to music frequently, while the earplugs demonstrate that I am probably in loud places, like clubs, pretty often. I also have different currencies in my bag, which indicates that I am a frequent traveler. I have Euros, American dollars, and more recently Costa Rica colones in the back pocket of the fanny pack (that I forgot to take out and display for the photo). 

Clipped to my bag is a pair of earplugs because I frequently go to house and techno shows where the music is really loud and damaging to the ears. I also have an Airtag on both my wallet and my bag itself, which demonstrates that I am concerned about losing my items. The AirTags combined with the AirPods likely would lead an Archeologist to believe that I was a religious Apple user (which is true I have the iPhone, IPad, and MacBook). I also have far more bank cards now than I did even 5 years ago, with credit cards like American Express the Visa passport infinite (demonstrating familiarity with different credit cards). Both the passport visa and Amex, along with my various currencies, would likely lead an archeologist to believe that I was a high flyer. 

I think the contents of my bag accurately reflect my vanity and desire to look polished, the various lip glosses and spooly for my eyelashes demonstrate that I am concerned with my appearance. My bag looked very different even a few years before; I would be far less concerned about cleanliness and likely not to be carrying baby wipes, hand sanitizer, and tissues. I also now carry around lotion for how frequently my hands get dry from washing and sanitizing them.