Utopia Perspectives

I believe the definition of a utopia or a dystopia is in the eye of the beholder. Some will view anything less than complete freedom without consequences as a dystopia while others cannot view a world without complete safety as a utopia. A utopia of universal income for one is a dystopia for others that feel unrewarded. This is easy to see in Brave New World where the price for “happiness” is near universal drug use and damaging unborn infants (Huxley, 2010). I feel like a true utopia for all will never exist and Utopian Perspectives echos this with two perspectives (Dana the utopian one and Mary the dystopian) about the same world.

Technology has already and will continue to shape our world. Jaco Hamman quotes Melvin Kranzberg “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral” and indicates that “digital literacy is an ethical project” (Bruff, 2019, 7:30). The first quote reinforces the second and stressing the importance of understanding the potential uses and influences of a given technology such as AI, machine learning, and algorithms (as discussed last module) and the need for users of this technology to engage an ethical framework when planning and using these technologies. Dana in the speculative narrative realizes that algorithms may have unintended consequences and require human supervision but does not fully understand her own role and impacts in her designed use of the employment algorithm. The speculative narrative also shows the gap in educational affordances based on socio-economic factors that is likely to remain in thirty years due to individualistic thinking by many who hold influence or power in the world.

References

Bruff, D. (Host). (2019, May 20). Future Of Digital Literacies Faculty Panel (60) [Audio podcast episode]. In Leading Lines. Vanderbilt Center for Teaching. https://leadinglinespod.com/episodes/episode-60future-of-digital-literacies-faculty-panel/

Huxley, A. (2010). Brave new world (11th ed.). Vintage.

I laughed at this “User Inyerface” as my husband works in eCommerce with a company that makes those annoying pop-ups and “suggestions” for retail sites. This site demonstrates deceptive design and design that is frustrating to the user. Examples of deceptive design included buttons to close a pop-up were hidden and examples of frustrating design included the age slider bar and date of birth drop downs that were difficult to manipulate. These frustrating items also lead to a lack of accessibility in design (a person with Parkinson’s is unlikely to be able to accurately use the slider bar).The “not a robot section” had unintuitive design where the clinking boxes were above instead of below the boxes. The “how can I help” bar and hurry pop up were stressful and caused some cursing the 5th or 6th time they showed up (example below). The deceptive design website provided a good example of how the hurry messages on booking.com increase sales through manipulation of FOMO (fear of missing out), which I have definitely fallen prey to on that site before (Puschak, 2018).

Both TED talks this week emphasized the need for company accountability to prevent or limit manipulation online through social media and ads (Harris, 2017; Tufekci, 2017). Tufekci (2017) specifically notes the ability of dark posts to target specific users with messages and how YouTube AI push viewers to extreme content which leads to her question of how public debate is possible when the two sides lack equal information. We have struggled with this in Alberta through the pandemic with the “alt-right” insulating themselves further by using limited media sources like AI curated Facebook and Rebel news. Timothy Caulfield is another speaker and author who has been working recently on health misinformation and manipulation online similar to the TEDTalks in the readings.

References:

Harris, T. (2017). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day. Retrieved from: https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention?language=en 

Puschak, E. [Nerdwriter1]. (2018, March 28). How Dark Patterns Trick You Online [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxkrdLI6e6M&t=210s

Tufekci, Z. (2017). We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads. Retrieved from: https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads?language=en

I was surprised to see myself in a smaller community. I chose the top three most popular songs and seven of the top ten songs. It seems that community four is more based on the unique songs we chose compared to the larger group. We all chose track 15: Bagpipes (Azerbaijan) which is outside of the top ten (and only one person outside our community chose it) and track three: Percussion (Senegal), which is number nine for the whole class. It is interesting that I chose based on diversity and Emily Wu (2022) chose based on “Exploring and Adventure” and we still chose 5 songs in common. I also found it interesting that in the class graph my dot is not adjacent to those in my community (maybe due to graph best fit).  Below are screenshots of the class top eight songs, my dot within a part of the class graph and my community graph.

Visualization can allow us to see what songs are in common and assume potential rationale but cannot allow us to know the rationale behind the links as this requires an explanation of the rationale from the person who made the choice (which we handily have from task 8). This assignment also reminded me of an article where they created a similar graph of teen romantic and sexual relationships in a rural high school and found 52% of the students were interconnected (Bearman et al, 2004). Similarly we might infer things from the graph but unless we got further information from the students we cannot determine the true rationale. I wonder if we all picked songs based on the same criteria, it would lead to more interesting discussion on whether or not a song was included.

Null choices could be visualized in a closed data set like this one but not in an open data set where choices are limitless and rationale could be assumed or inquired about if we chose to focus on it. I was surprised that only one song was chosen by only one person (Pygmy Girl’s Initiation Song). I could infer that this was due to the short length, the lack of instruments or simply that other songs were preferred. For myself I was trying to get a song per continent and preferred track three from Senegal as it had instruments and I had already selected other chants.

Using Palladio to visualize data was helpful and I liked the ability to filter and switch between graph and table formats. I think connections would be more insightful if we did this on the “what is in your bag” assignment as the items are more personal or chose the music solely based on what we personally liked.

References

Bearman, P. S., Moody, J., & Stovel, K. (2004). Chains of affection: The structure of adolescent romantic and sexual Networks1. The American Journal of Sociology, 110(1), 44-91. https://doi.org/10.1086/386272

Wu, E. (2022, July 7). Task 8 – Golden Record Curation. Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing. https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540emilywu/2022/07/07/task-8-golden-record-curation/

To condense the Golden Record down to 10 songs I tried to get a blend of sung and instrumental songs, from various times and cultures. I think music is highly cultural and personal making it very difficult to curate an album like this (so maybe the extra-terrestrials wouldn’t even appreciate the golden record). I felt like classical European music was over represented so cut it down to two songs (one instrumental and one opera). I tried to pick at least one song from each inhabited continent as well. I feel like recorded poems or oral stories from around the world would have fit well on the record as a sample of what earth has to offer in addition to the music.

10 songs

1. Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor.
2. Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14. Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor.
3. “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry.
4. “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven.
5. Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle.
6. Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen.
7. Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes.
8. Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow.
9. Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird,” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes.
10. Java, court gamelan, “Kinds of Flowers,” recorded by Robert Brown.

For my task seven, I struggled to decode the assignment and took a look at what some of my fellow students did  to complete the task. After watching Erin’s and Marie’s I decided to do a fake TikTok Challenge format. Since I chose the alternative assignment in task one and went through my digital bag I wanted to bring it closer to the original task by trying to replace my phone apps with physical objects. However the objects I found were not able to fit into a bag.

I think its important to challenge students to engage in mode-changing to expand their creativity occasionally.  Though it is important to encourage students to engage in mode-changing, I like the idea of allowing students multiple options to engage in the subject matter in a way that fits their learning style best rather than insisting on an even mix when their learning preferences don’t align. Group work can also be a good way to allow students make a whole product while being able to showcase their speciality in a particular modality, such as the more artistic student doing the diagrams for a lab report. Another challenge with engaging in mode-changing can be ensuring feeling of safety while experimenting though low stakes assignments (i.e. the task worth 6% rather than a final assignment worth 50%) and allowing students options within the mode-changing.. This follows Powers and Moore’s 2021 research on failure within game-based learning where they found if the penalty is too high it will demotivate students and discourage protective failure (failure being more likely when experimenting with mode-bending initially). I think there has already been significant shifts in the last 30 years to encourage multimodal texts through the expanding availability of technology and realization by educators of the need to focus on more than just the “3 Rs.”

References

Powers, F. E., & Moore, R. L. (2021). When failure is an option: A scoping review of failure states in game-based learning. Techtrends, 65(4), 615-625. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00606-8

Click here to view the emoji story.

I used https://emojityper.com to complete this assignment after finding it difficult find specific emojis or quickly realize if they exist on https://emojikeyboard.io/ . I think this was at least partially due to my unfamiliarity with emojis available as I rarely use them preferring just to use text in texts, emails or IMs, though I do enjoy the “verbal-visual pun” of memes (Bolter, 2001, p.53). I did start with the title as it was a small chunk of the story (start with a small success for motivation). I chose the work as it was one that is fairly well known of the media I am currently consuming, had a plot that was fairly “school appropriate,” and I thought I would be able to visualize it. I started the movie Encanto but couldn’t decide how I wanted to represent the title (as a magic house, as singing notes, or as a family) or the various characters. I did not use any syllables but did one sound alike representation in my story. Mostly I chose emojis to convey ideas using some punctuation to help particularly to make an idea using more than one emoji using parentheses. I struggled with the preset nature of the emojis and having to find the best emoji to fit especially when large ideas like protests were not available. In this it is similar to the typesetter changing words as he doesn’t have sufficient “g”‘s for a specific text. Images alone constrain the ability to transmit ideas to their fullest the same way text alone can also constrain ideas. Bolter (2001) echos this by indicating that adding images to printed text was a great achievement while moving this forward to indicate that “breaking the rules” of traditional printing in digital media by amateurs allows for “typographic freedom” (p. 49).

References:

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110

I decided to create a game that we could use to give public health practicum students an overview of the processes around investigating and managing provincially notifiable enteric illnesses. At first I started to make one focusing on the monk story for task 4 but quickly decided to instead do something I could practically use. If I had more time I would try to add more images, videos and some audio elements to make it more engaging.

The last time I did Twine for a group project we made a script and then plugged it into twine but this time I just worked in Twine directly. This method likely resulted in more grammar and spelling errors due to the lack of spell check in Twine. Overall I am still not convinced that Twine offers substantial affordances over use of Google Slides for “choose your own adventure” based games. Twine does provide a graphic overview (story map) and cannot be “cheated” by simply viewing the slides instead of playing the game as is possible in Google slides. However, Google Slides allows for easy collaboration, use on mobile devices, and does not require coding script to insert pictures or external links as Twine does. Twine, in some ways, is similar to the Vannevar Bush’s Memex in that pages are added by hyperlink and seamless collaboration on the device is not possible (Bush, 1945). I used many external as well as internal hyperlinks in the game to provide additional information and reference material. These external links create a bit of a “concept package” as described by Englebart (1963, p. 60) of Alberta enteric disease public health practices . I think I could also make a simplified version of the game for lay people or high school students for use in career exploration or health class.

Play the Game: Disease Detective (4).html

References:

Bush, V. (1945). As we may think. The Atlantic Monthly, 176(1), 101-108.

Englebart, Douglas. (1963). “A conceptual framework for the augmentation of man’s intellect.” In Hawerton, P.W. and Weeks, D.C. (Eds.), Vistas in information handling, Volume I: The augmentation of man’s intellect by machine. Washington, DC: Spartan Books. Available (as “Augmentation of human intellect: A conceptual framework”)

Below is a hand-written text entitled “A Monk’s Dream Unfulfilled.” It is a story of a young monk who receives a vision about the printing press and starts to think about how he can fulfill this vision from God. Inspired by this week’s assigned podcasts from Stuff To Blow Your Mind and the video on the Medieval Help desk.

I normally write by typing at a laptop computer. I very rarely produce text for others by hand, however I will write by hand when making notes for myself. Mobility and efficiency are typically my greatest considerations when deciding to write by hand or by type. I have always disliked doing homework at a desk and using a laptop allows for more options like writing with the laptop on my chest outside or on a bed. Mobility is also the reason I choose to write by hand during inspections- I find it easier and lighter to move a clipboard and pen around then a laptop in a busy, cramped kitchen. Efficiency is the other consideration. If I can enter something directly in a program in real time I try to do that as it is more efficient than doing it first by hand and then again by type. When doing inspections, the mobility overrides the efficiency but if we had lighter tablets instead of laptops then that consideration may shift in favour of efficiency.

I found this task difficult for a number of reasons. The biggest was the need to write linearly. The greatest advantage of typing on a computer is the ability to move text around easily. When writing an essay, I like to free write, then organize paragraphs, while doing introductions and conclusions last or when I am stuck in the middle of the assignment. I chose to write a story in the hopes it would help me to write more linearly however it was still difficult. Many teachers and professors realize this recursive nature of writing such as Stetson University (n.d.) yet few articles talk about the affordances of computer typing for recursive, non-linear writing. I chose to write in pencil so I could erase my work but the eraser marks are very noticeable. I would imagine it was the same when the scribe would scrape a mistake from the vellum media. I found I had to ignore my desire to change my writing as I would have needed to start on a new page and redo previous work (that desire for efficiency was riding me). Sometimes I would also just write over the letter, this was typically when I misformed part of the letter (particularly an issue with u, b and d today). If I had chosen to work in pen I would have needed to scribble out mistakes instead which would have effected my average words per line and broken up the story flow. Spelling is also difficult for me and I found myself using the computer for some words or switching my word choice to something I could spell without help. Likely spelling mistakes remain in the text. It made me really appreciate the easy of editing in a computer typed document (a typewriter is similar to writing by hand due to the difficultly in editing).

The inability to edit without redoing work or making the text look unclean was one of the most significant differences between writing by hand and using a computer. I vastly prefer a computer for this reason as it allows me to produce professional looking texts more easily and allows for quick edits throughout the text. Starting over on a new sheet of paper to recopy existing work hurts my efficient soul. However if we are thinking about writing by hand compared to the typewriter speed or uniformity of the text would be the most significant difference while writing by hand and the printing press would have speed and uniformity between copies be its greatest difference. Thus mechanized writing as a whole cannot be easily compared to writing by hand as there are many forms of mechanized writing.

References

Stetson University. (n.d.). Writing Program. Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://www.stetson.edu/other/writing-center/media/G_Part_3.pdf

Resources for Story:

Cleveland Clinic. (2021, June 17). Bubonic plague (black death): What is it, symptoms, treatment. Cleveland Clinic. Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21590-bubonic-plague

Mepkin Abbey. (2021, February 12). Liturgy of the hours. Mepkin Abbey. Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://mepkinabbey.org/liturgyofthehours/

Lamb, R. & McCormick, J. (Hosts). (2021, May 8). From the vault: Invention of the book, part 1 [Audio podcast episode]. In Stuff to blow your mind. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuff-to-blow-your-mind-21123915/episode/from-the-vault-invention-of-the-82316952/

Lamb, R. & McCormick, J. (Hosts). (2021, May 15). From the vault: Invention of the book, part 2 [Audio podcast episode]. In Stuff to blow your mind. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuff-to-blow-your-mind-21123915/episode/from-the-vault-invention-of-the-82564254/

Hello, my name is Jennifer and I am completing this exercise from Leduc, Alberta.

I am not a purse person so I chose my digital bag and took a screening shot of my phone. Some interesting things in my digital bag include:

Libby is an app I use to listen to audiobooks and is hooked to an Edmonton library card. TRAC is for the Leduc and regional library that I use to get physical books through interlibrary loan. I have been going through the Outlander series on audiobook for the last six months and now reading in paper the Lord John associated novels (as I can’t get them on audiobook). My audiobook listening has switched to the Irish Country series and A Song of Fire and Ice series. Audiobooks force me to slow down and helps me consider the text as it follows the slower pace of the narrator. The narrator can also help to add to the text through character voices and helps the listener to immerse in the story. However a poor narrator can make a great text unbearable to consume. The class module indicates that a looser definition of text may also include oral forms (Pena, 2022). Thus audiobooks could be seen as a text created through technology (recording software). Libraries are traditionally full of texts but modern libraries have also become a place where individuals with no other means of access can access technology like computers, internet, and 3D printers.

Spotify is a music app where I like to make my own playlists, some based on genres but others on broad themes like drudgery (a mix of songs about work and/or otherwise has the steady beat of a working song). The app also uses AI technologies in its recommendation algorithms. Recently the app has added real time lyrics to the songs which adds more text and helps to reflect on the message of the song.

Reddit is the app I spend the most time on. I love the variety of information and exposure to different things it provides. I also use it to keep abreast of things happening in my province, the world or just in my favourite shows. Reddit comments can be considered an interactive or collaborative part of the post (text) built by users around the world joined by common interest using technology.

Our Groceries like reddit creates a collaborative text possible through internet technologies however in Our Groceries it is between known users and used for a particular purpose (grocery shopping). I use this app often with my husband as it is easy to maintain and easily brought to the store.

Find my Friends is used regularly in my family and is used to start oral or text conversations as we snoop on each other or to help plan the day. For example my grandma might text me and ask how my day was at the zoo or I might check if my husband has left work. In this case the app is a technology that encourages text creation at times.

My screen background is typically a darker mountain scenery as I am sensitive to the amount of light on screens due to frequent headaches/migraines (always have my phone on dark mode for example).

What does my bag say about me? The text on the various apps and folders shows I am an English speaker, the LG app says that I have at least 1 LG appliance (a washer and dryer that notify me when they are done), the library apps indicate I like to engage with texts, and the screenshot being from the 20th (calendar app) and me finishing this assignment on the 28th indicates I am a procrastinator who struggles to motivate herself to stay ahead in class. The prominence of certain apps (not within a folder) indicate they are more commonly used or important to me.

Literacies evident in the bag include:

1. Health literacy (health folder, health records app)
2. Digital literacy (digital bag indicates use of phone, diverse apps installed, use of technology for everyday tasks evident)
3. Reading and Writing literacy (variety of text based apps that require writing, library apps)

Bag Narratives. This digital bag represents me relatively holistically compared to other bags I could use (my swim bag, my inspection bag, or my work laptop bag). When I normally introduce myself I typically talk about my career as well but that does not come into play in my digital bag as I have a separate work phone. I also typically over emphasize non digital activities like baking, board games or aqua-fit, when the reality is my screen time (or actually just my reddit time) is much higher than those activities.

Looking backwards and forwards. Back 20 years ago this bag would have needed to be much larger and included a computer, a watch, a recipe book, radio, bookshelf, notepad, filing cabinet, and camera. The ease of use and transport would be much more difficult as well. In the future, they may be surprised at having to access a device outside of the body for these functionalities as we become cyborg like or may be unable to open an ancient technology given mass destruction of technology and texts through world disasters (depends on how your glass is filled).

References

Pena, E. (2022). Thinking about Text and Technology [Lecture Notes]. https://canvas.ubc.ca/courses/96890/pages/1-dot-5-thinking-about-text-and-technology?module_item_id=4377770