Hi everyone, it was difficult for me to focus during this past week, so I only managed to write my reflection on the readings and discussion in a series of not very well-connected paragraphs. I apologize and thank you for your understanding.
In the first session of the seminar, we discussed how content on the Internet, although accessible from all over the world, is created in a specific place. The same consideration could be extended to online platforms. People around the globe use online social media or service platforms where they create their own culture-specific content, but these platforms were also designed in a particular cultural and temporal context. We know that platforms constantly evolve and readapt as a response to multiple factors, but I wonder if the original way and place where they were designed can contribute to transforming into global culture certain elements that before were only specific of a given culture. I have in mind the concept of a school yearbook and its derivative form as Facebook. But I also think on how the now normalized use of emojis and gifs has replaced the verbalization of ideas and feelings, a phenomenon that decades ago was associated mostly with technology users in East Asia.
The video lecture “Algorithmic Cruelty and the hidden costs of ghost work” brought feelings of empathy towards those workers trapped on the mechanism of on-demand online platforms 🙁 Not only because I can imagine their precarious situation, but also because many of the traits of these jobs are common to other productive activities, one of them being graduate life, and perhaps academic life, more generally. Not having a 9 to 5 shift nor being able to finish your workday is the most evident connection. Grant writing and competition can be seen as task-based work, in which we are also required to be hunting for grants and calls for papers constantly on our own. Most of the time, our chances to receive a grant depend on who else applied for it, but institutions would never reveal this information to the applicants. We are kept in a state of isolation and ignorance about this process, not knowing who exactly gets to choose/hire us and why.
A recent Pittwire email on Zoom protocols reminded me of the flagging system in social media, and how the role of the moderator has to be better defined, as well as the expected behavior of participants. I was disappointed not to find among the protocols a suggestion to avoid having in their background any direct source of light, such as a lamp, which could be replaced it with an interesting but not too distracting object to which other zoomers could direct their gaze when they get tired of looking at people’s faces; or to encourage attendants to change to a more appropriate attire even if it is only for the Zoom session, or from the waist up.
Temporarily, virtual technology mediates and shapes all our social and work interactions, but this process will impact the more permanent life and work of the future. Just like Alison, I want to be optimistic and believe that we will develop an aversion to this type of communication that will push us to avoid it, but it is hard not to consider another scenario. In a virtual conversation with my father about this possible future where more and more activities are transferred into the virtual world, his deepest hope was that “church could be one of them.” As graduate students, should we start developing our online pedagogical skills and portfolio more seriously?
