Category Archives: Announcements

Announcements, Reflections

Event of Interest (Extra Credit)

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Infrastructures of Labor

December 8

| 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
20 Cooper Square | 5th Floor Conference Room
Infrastructures of Labor explores how infrastructures are not just technical artifacts but are comprised of human labor. From networked infrastructures in the global North to do-it-yourself “people as infrastructure” systems in the global South, the panelists will present research considering how human bodies and communities are interwoven with the built environment and its technological systems.
Panelists
Kafui Attoh – Assistant Professor of Urban Studies, The Murphy Institute, CUNY
Catherine Fennell – Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University
Malini Ranganathan – Assistant Professor, School of International Service, American University
Rosalind Fredericks – Assistant Professor, Gallatin School of Individualized Study, NYU
 
Moderator:
Penny Lewis – Associate Professor of Labor Studies, The Murphy Institute, CUNY
If you attend and post a short description relating this event to our course you can ear 5 points extra credit.
Announcements, Reflections

Privacy as a Human Right

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To follow-up on our discussion of privacy and data-surveillance, here is an interesting article that looks at this issue from the angle of policy-makers worldwide:
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/23/privacy-human-rights-frontier/
“We need a more powerful moral narrative, more powerful technical narrative… Here’s where this issue is different from many other issues, the knowledge level is very low, amongst people more widely, because it is very technical, because it’s very complex, so although it’s the new frontier of human rights it’s a very complicated frontier of human rights… It’s very different from other human rights issues — it’s one where we have to educate others because they will not always see the importance of it.”
I also strongly suggest reading The Circle by Dave Eggers, which is a utopian/dystopian near-future novel addressing these concerns.

And in case you missed it, here is the documentary I suggested (and some students used in their midterms): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084953/

You can watch a trailer here: http://tacma.net/tacma.php

 

Announcements

Railroads and Clocks

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To follow-up on our discussion of the connection between time keeping devices and the railway system, please check out this brief summary:

http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/d.html

“The railways cared most about the inconsistencies of local mean time, and they forced a uniform time on the country.”

And this fun site puts it into perspective: http://railroad.lindahall.org/essays/time-standardization.html

More to come…

Announcements, Assignments, Resources

Reverse Outlining

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Reverse Outlining

Whether you are reading published scholarship or another student’s paper, reverse outlining can help you process information by distilling the main ideas of a text into short, clear statements. Put simply, when reverse outlining the reader tries to summarize each paragraph of a text in two sentences. This process will not only help you analyze the material you are reading, it will also allow you to organize your response. You may use reverse outlining to revise your own work, revise the work of others, or to annotate a text.

Reverse outlining follows a two-step, repeatable process:

  1. In the left-hand margin, write down the topic of each paragraph. Try to use as few words as possible.
  • When reading, these notes should work as quick references for future study or in-class discussion.
  • When revising your own work or the work of your peers, these notes should tell you if each paragraph is focused and clear.
  1. In the right-hand margin, write down how the paragraph topic advances the overall argument of the text. Again, be brief.
  • When reading, these notes allow you to follow the logic of the essay, making it easier for you to analyze or discuss later.
  • When revising your own work, these notes should tell you if each paragraph fits in the overall organization of your paper. You may also notice that paragraphs should be shifted after completing this step.

Remember to be brief. You should try to complete each step in 5-10 words. When reading a published text, you should be able to summarize the topic and the manner of support quickly; if you can’t, you should consult a dictionary, an encyclopedia, or other resources to help you understand the content. When reading your own work or the work of a peer, you should consider revising any section that does not have a clear point that is easy to re-articulate.

When reading a potential source, you should consider which points you agree or disagree with and make notes that help you formulate your opinion. However, when reading work with the goal of revision, the objective is to communicate an understanding of the writer’s main ideas, not to critique or correct these points. When reading your own work or the work of a peer, if the paragraph does contain an easily identifiable point, but it does not relate to the thesis or topic of the paper, it may be appropriate to remove this section entirely.

This exercise can be expanded by rewriting/typing your outline with comments or further suggestions, but writing in the margin might be sufficient.

 

This exercise is adapted from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/689/1/ by The OWL at Purdue

Announcements, Readings

Optional Reading: Internet Mods

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WARNING: this article contains explicit language.

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/

This article directly relates to our discussion on Internet censorship – especially the case we discussed in relation to child pornography. It is written by Adrian Chen, the same journalist we spoke about “doxx-ing” Reddit moderator ViolentAcrez (article here, )(rebuttal here). This is the story of Internet moderators:

“…companies like Facebook and Twitter rely on an army of workers employed to soak up the worst of humanity in order to protect the rest of us. And there are legions of them—a vast, invisible pool of human labor. Hemanshu Nigam, the former chief security officer of MySpace who now runs online safety consultancy SSP Blue, estimates that the number of content moderators scrubbing the world’s social media sites, mobile apps, and cloud storage services runs to “well over 100,000”—that is, about twice the total head count of Google and nearly 14 times that of Facebook.” (Chen)

I think this is very interesting, and important for you to be aware of, but again I warn that it does contain sexual and violent language.

Announcements

Articles of Interest

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FYI: Here are two articles making the rounds on social media this week that directly relate to our discussion on Monday. Please share your reactions in the comments below.
(These can also be found in our Zotero folder)
Cox, Susan. “Facebook Has Totally Reinvented Human Identity: Why It’s Even Worse than You Think.” N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.
McGahan, Jason. “She Tweeted Against the Mexican Cartels. They Tweeted Her Murder.” The Daily Beast. N.p., 21 Oct. 2014. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.
Announcements, Reflections, Resources

#nyufyws #OryxandCrake

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Here is a data visualization of our #nyufyws tweets:

http://hawksey.info/tagsexplorer/?key=0Aou5cvR4jhODdFEwWFNMRFNudTUyMzhRSW9ZaE0tdXc&sheet=oaw&mentions=true

Check out the top tweets and tweeters. Click on any node and it will show you a summary of their tweets. Click on “Replay” and it will recreate the conversation. Pretty neat right?

It is run from an archive of our tweets I have created, and automatically updates every hour. You must include #nyufyws to have your tweets included.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Aou5cvR4jhODdFEwWFNMRFNudTUyMzhRSW9ZaE0tdXc&single=true&gid=82&output=html

Announcements

#WeNeedDiverseBooks

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As a follow up to our Fahrenheit 451 in class debate, check out this campaign to increase diversity in children’s books:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/we-need-diverse-books

What is We Need Diverse Books™?

Reading is the ultimate form of empathy.

Though more than half of schoolchildren are minorities–people of color, LGBTQIA, and/or people with disabilities–the fact remains that too few of these children see reflections of themselves in the books they read. Books are more than mirrors– they’re windows as well. The more kids read, the more they understand not just themselves, but the Story of Us All.We Need Diverse Books™ (WNDB) is a grassroots organization dedicated to advocating and supporting non-majority narratives.

Announcements, Assignments

Oryx and Crake Assignment

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Since Margaret Atwood is a prolific tweeter (https://twitter.com/MargaretAtwood), and many people tweet about this text using #OrxyandCrake, I would like to use the opportunity to experiment with communicating our ideas through social media. The goal of this assignment is to chronicle your thoughts as you read,  and share them with your peers and a public audience. You must live tweet your reading by using #OryxandCrake and #nyufyws so we can capture and follow the conversation.

If you tweet direct quotes, or specific questions for the author, you should include her handle @MargaretAtwood. Tweet whatever you find interesting and provocative. Standard grammar rules are not the objective here – use the language of social media – including abbreviations, emoticons, etc. However, your message must be readable to a wide audience, so think carefully about how you compose each tweet. You may also tweet me direct questions @amandalicastro.

Here is an example:

Screen Shot 2014-10-23 at 1.27.33 PM

If you do not have a twitter account, you may set up a temporary account for this course and then delete it after this assignment. If you are not comfortable with this, please email me as soon as possible, and we will discuss alternative assignments.

On Monday, we will have a fishbowl just like we did for Kelly’s book. The first group will post their short provocations by Sunday night. Post your provocations under “Reflections” and use the tag “Atwood.”

Group 1  (provocations by 10/26, fishbowl 10/27):

Choi,Ryan D
Agarwal,Sakshi
Posner,Marissa
Sanchez,Nicolas
Stine,James

 

Group 2 (provocations by 10/28, fishbowl 10/29):

Valentine,Carly
Melnick,Joshua B
Prem,Varsha
O’Brien,Francesco H
Hanson,Alexandria D

 

Group 3 (provocations by 11/2, fishbowl 11/3):

Curtis,Scarlett
Ghobadi,Kasrah Shane
Kandelman,Karen
Schulz,Adam
Baruch,Mikaela Sarah

 

If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions please let me know.