Music and Information

Last night, Frank Warren--the founder of Post Secret--spoke at Bryn Mawr. The Post Secret campaign was started in 2005 when Frank had the idea to ask people to write down their secrets on a blank card.  He had two rules: (1) that the secret be truthful and (2) that the secret had never been told to anyone before.  Now Frank receives over 1,000 postcards each week from people all across the country and around the world.  I found his presentation incredibly moving and it reminded me a lot of what was discussed at Haverford's In/Visible Disability conference in relation to visual art and its ability to both empower and disempower.

“Humans are themselves natural phenomena” (Barad 336)

In one of the panel discussions in gender and technology class at Bryn Mawr College, each student represented a group whose lives or work circumstances shaped, or were impacted by, an interesting intra-action of gender, information, science, and/or technology. Among the represented groups, there were several students who represented group of people existing in cyberspace. Cyberspace, which is also known as virtual world, is defined by Wikipedia as a “genre of online community that often takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment through which users can interact with one another and use and create objects.”

 Tits or GTFO: Why Everyone, Girls Included, Should Play Video Games

            The Women & Gaming Study done in 2010 by the Lifetime network, and AETN Digital Media showed that women play online more than men (55% vs 45%), women play more frequently during the day (whereas men play for a longer duration and typically at the end of the day), and most women like to play solo (83%) [1]. Girls are gaming and their numbers are ever increasing in their use of browser games, social games (like those found on Facebook), and MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games).

Planes, Trains, and Internet Blogs

            Looking back on the panel discussions and the questions asked, one stood out in particular to me. This was perhaps due to the question was asked directly to the group I was representing, the Wampanoags of southern New England in the 1620s. The question asked pertained to different means of communication and how they effected the overall interactions of three groups. I found it interesting because it is not really a topic that we have touched on since the beginning of the course.

In a characteristically styled entry, urbandictionary.com defines an internet meme as,

“A short phrase, picture, or combination of the two that gets repeated in message boards… for far, far longer than anything ever ought to be. Imagine a small child being surprised by a jack-in-the-box every single time the toy springs out and you'll have a fairly good idea of what the collective internet considers witty.”

 For my project I was really interested in the quote by a youtuber Tyler Oakley: “Just because I make videos doesn’t mean that I have to make the same kind of video every time…people that make videos are not just one dimensional who produce one thing for one type of person every single time.” (Tyler Oakley, Save the Drama Fo’ Yo’ Mama). For my project, I wanted to experience representing myself on youtube.