Hi everyone!
Your responses have been so engaging, thank you! For anyone who might have missed a module so far, take a moment to check out your classmates responses, I think it will help situate you in the conversation.
I like to start the semester with Science Under the Scope, because I think it unveils the reality in how our environments (not just natural, think social systems too) shape our reality. There might be certain truths we think are irrefutable (tbh I even challenge 1+1 = 2 because doesn’t 2 also signify a third, new thing?) but there is no way to separate our humanness and biases from the science we do, no matter how hard we try. I’ll keep offering examples through the rest of the semester.
So, what if instead of proclaiming neutrality, we embraced our subjectivity and crafted a new world entirely? As Wang alludes to, capitalism and whiteness will always be extractive and create unbalanced hierarchies; that is their function. Is there a way for people to experience abundance outside of these systems? What if we put our energies into crafting that type of world? There are people already working towards a world outside these rotting constructs. We can look to Black women and femmes who have been sharing with us Afrofuturistic dreams forever.
In Octavia Butler’s science fiction, there is room for disabled Black femmes, they are often the heroines. This isn’t a literature course, but I highly recommend reading any of Butler’s post-apocalyptic work where the systems that were in place failed and it’s up to the true innovators to create something new.
Okay maybe that was a bit of a tangent from our text, but it’s all connected. I had a friend come over for dinner a few weeks ago, they’re a designer, and they challenged me to think about how much my life is impacted by other people’s decisions. They said “look at your phone, Steve Jobs and his team designed that, what would you have done it differently?” The School of Poetic Computation (link) states that “poetic computation is a relational practice organized around communal study” and lecturer Olivia McKayla Ross poses the question: “what if software was made by people who love us?”
For this week, let’s finish up Science Under the Scope sections nine, ten, and eleven. And please respond to any two of the questions I posed to you in this module (lol I posed a lot). I want to hear from you!
Next week we’ll change gears a bit and look at some writing in the field of engineering so that we can practice the form.
Thanks everyone!
Look at your phone, Steve Jobs and his team designed that, what would you have done it differently?: There isn’t much that I would do differently compared to what Steve Jobs and Apple have invented and pioneered. Phones are valuable devices that can help us communicate, navigate, research, and perform other tasks. The rise and excessive usage of some applications like social media, games, shopping is something I would have tried to reduce or prevent entirely.
What if software was made by people who love us?: If software was made by people who loved us, there wouldn’t be all these applications that keep you addicted to your device and extract data that is used to manipulate us and advertise products. The motive would be completely shifted and far less people would have multiple hours of screen time daily.
So, what if instead of proclaiming neutrality, we embraced our subjectivity and crafted a new world entirely?
Embracing our subjectivity will allow us to take a massive step toward a new world in which science and other objective fields can provide more accurate results. After all, I learned in chemistry that accounting for uncertainty and error in data is extremely important, and embracing our subjectivity will allow us to lower the level of uncertainty and error in science. If we treat subjectivity as an uncertainty, we can utilize it to make our data more specific. After making that data more specific, we can relate it to others who did the same experiment and draw correlations to create an overall theory. This new scientific method will create a new world where even old conclusions are revisited, and future conclusions are more objective.
what if software was made by people who love us?
If the software was made by people who love us, they would not take advantage of children to influence or make money off them. There are countless children’s websites that use ads to market to children so that they are influenced into asking their parents to buy them. When I was a kid watching kid channels, I would see ads for toys that explain the price and give a number to call immediately for a cheaper price. As a kid, there is no reason to show me this because I cannot buy it or call them, but they can use me to get to my mother. Everything about software nowadays is meant to be profitable before helpful.
What if the software was created by individuals who care about us? If the software is designed in this manner, there will be programs that will not keep you hooked on scrolling, but at the end of the day, it is completely reliant on the user’s moderation. However, if it was created by individuals who care about us, it would allow us our freedom while remaining private. We are now confined to the terms and conditions, allowing us a certain amount of flexibility. We are not given any privacy either. They capture and store exabytes of data from their millions and billions of users, spying on us through our personal technology, and forcing us to use proprietary software. In a world of “freedom,” we don’t have the simple right to use the internet, send emails, make phone calls, or send SMS messages without our metadata being harvested.
Take a look at your phone; Steve Jobs and his colleagues developed it; what would you do differently? Personally, I would not have done anything dramatically different. They develop their own operating system that runs on their own chip and provides yearly software upgrades and hardware advancements. Their phone performs fundamental functions that any reasonably current phone would, and the only thing they do is successfully promote their products as a status symbol, for which people pay thousands of dollars in an unjustified manner.
Module 4
“Look at your phone, Steve Jobs and his team designed that, what would you have done differently?”
I believe that Steve Jobs did a great job in the invention and constant innovation of the iPhone mobile. They have played a massive part in our daily convenience and kept many people more connected and able to use the phones they love. However, if I were to design the same product, I would use simplicity as my design point. I would create a product that allowed people to stay more connected without limitations of the type of phone one used or the price of the product. I find the iPhone mobile to be over-priced compared to the value it provides to the consumer. This aspect limits iPhone usage among low-income earners. I would have changed that element and designed a product that offered superior value but, at the same time less priced. Also, the iPhone restricts sharing of videos, music, and files from its OS to that of the android OS. I would have changed that barrier and designed a product that allowed constant communication between IOS and AOS users.
“What if software was made by people who love us?”
If software were designed by creators that loved us, they would have promoted our interests and wellness. They would not have stolen people’s personal information and used it to develop products that would harm them. Also, people that love would have designed software that resolves most of the challenges witnessed today and helps communities advance. For instance, they would help mitigate healthcare challenges, racial discrimination, unemployment, education, and other needs and challenges. Ultimately, they would have encouraged people to have better lives instead of causing problems.
“what if software was made by people who love us?”
– people create software and the creator of the software has no impact on its use, it is primarily the people who use it. But if the people who created soft took measures so it won’t be used for wasting time or something bad then it would’ve been better. But at the same time, we can’t just blame them. For example, the software can be used for good or bad. some people use software and gain a lot from it while other people using the same devices get addicted to wasting time and just scrolling through it. If the software was made by people who liked us it might have been different but at the same, it might have not been. Because the end of the day it depends on people if you want to use software for good or bad.
What if the software was created by individuals who care about us?
It is a very complex question to answer because although the way in which the software is designed to make some profit from it, and apart from keeping these software running, you need them to generate some income, otherwise they would be unsustainable and as much as people They love us, they will have to make this software at least maintainable by itself, and currently there are many examples of these in which the different platforms use their apps to generate money, either through advertisements or in a fairly common way, and that we do not It benefits us in most cases, unless you are a content creator that generates income from these, or either by selling our data to other companies, without respecting our privacy, which a person who does not love us would do, the applications that try to keep people hooked as long as possible, to generate another kind of income from this, already mentioned, the point is that users Actually the software applications that we currently use are very useful, great work tools and enormous means to keep us entertained, but to what extent are they good, there is no limiting line of what is the best software that you can create being self-sustaining and useful, and that in turn generates adverse effects in today’s society. It is very complex to create software that is one hundred percent useful, self-sufficient, and that can grow and improve, without generating many of the adverse effects that our current software has. I think that if the creators of this type of software loved us, they would have to create good software in all aspects and for this, they would have to invest an absurd amount of resources so that in the end they would not get anything at all, except satisfaction. to please us that this impolitic case loves us.
“Look at your phone, Steve Jobs and his team designed that, what would you have done differently?”
Well it’s hard to say that experts in their field such as steve jobs and his team could have done better, but I can say that the development of the iphone was to do something revolutionary in its time and to give a certain amount of prestige to the people who had it and it is totally well implemented if this smartphone from its beginning had been designed to be totally effective and useful in its maximum splendor, part of the aesthetics of the smartphone itself would have had to be sacrificed and this would have made people buy it less and simply not be as popular and prestigious as it is now, I must say that I am not a fan of iphones, in fact I use an android cell phone, and I have noticed in my workplace that sometimes my colleagues exclude me from adding me to chat groups for the fact that my messages would be seen in a different color, that would be something that I would change so that the point of having another cell phone brand does not exclude them, but in turn this is also another It’s a strategy for people to prefer the iPhone over other cell phones, but even so, that would be something that I would change.
I can’t agree with the statement “what if software was made by people who love us” and my reasoning for that is at the end of they its business. Profit has to be made for progression and even with the outrageous prices Apple and other software engineers have put on their products people are drawn to them. In a Hypothetical situation lets say it was made by people who love us, then what. Are we going to get that same software for free? Will they be understanding for everyone that can’t afford it? If they were to give exceptions to one person others would most likely coerce that play that business for fools. It’s very difficult to progress without funding and the technology wouldn’t be so state of the art. What about the people who work their. Are we just supposed to not pay for their services after the amount of work they put into that phone that you are using? Even non-profit organizations need funding to keep going and if your going to build devices for huIt takes androids of millions of people non-profit isn’t going to cut it even with the advertisements. lot of brain power to make smartphones, tablets, computers, etc. As for what I would do differently, nothing. Apple is what it is now because I haven’t done anything to it. I wish the phones they made were more affordable but my perspective is of those who know nothing about the software industry. It would be easier to understand if I was the person who created it but im not so its difficult to perceive that of those who created it. Saying what I would have done differently in the past is easy, Apple has been here for a while. I could easily use the tactics they use today to explain what they should have done back then because thats after the fact. It’s difficult to say now because I have no Idea what they should do that they aren’t doing now. It isn’t my expertise to say.