Q: Raised in class: What does computer technology do for you ? 

Computer technology allows me to post this blog post. It allows me to get my homework done, keep track of my everyday life and feel like I have it together even If I may not. Computer technology provides a sense stability for people in today’s society. When we think about everything we have access to on  computer Ex: a Calendar, When we clock in and out of work, ordering food from our hands, shopping online, keeping yourself organized, emails, ideas, videos, books online, music apps on computers , the ability to share your computer screen to your tv screen. It’s instant, its effective, it’s efficient. It allows our lives to run a lot smoother. 

I focused my oral history project on a transcript interview with a young lady named Brittney Maya. Brittney discussed the struggles of being a young woman with disabilities and being a relationship with a partner with disabilities. Brittney also talked about her future with her boyfriend.  Translating the transcript at times was a bit hard. Due to the fact some of the phrases or words were incomplete. I wasn’t sure in which direction the conversation was going. There were moments I had to read the rest of the conversation to make sure I was interpreting what was being said accordingly enough to re-phrase it. There were times where it felt as if during the conversation they couldn’t finish there thoughts. Even at times where they were cutting each other’s sentences off. Verifying was easier for me. Due to the fact, I could just simply pick which options I felt would sound best in certain sentences. Also Some things indivisuals already transcribed, I felt as if the other person didn’t make sense. I wanted to go back in and edit it but I was unable too. The process felt easy at first and became a little difficult because If I transcribed something or even verified it, I thought about how someone else might come and interpret the sentence or what if they were to get confused. 

The Reading I decided to go For was Cyborg Manifesto By Donna Haraway. I found it interesting the points this article touched  Post gender in a Feministic world, and transgression in the boundaries between human and animal connection. Between humans and living creatures in the worlds. Haraway gets more depth the boundary between physical and non physical and how electronics devices are everywhere. I enjoyed how the cyborg embraces technology and tries not to Categorize it by exploring different boarders between the two non physical and physical. A Question that I raise though is How do we decide that her theory creates open mind to what it means to be human and machine ?

For this week’s blog post, I am choosing to respond to Ana María Ochoa Gautier’s “Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia”. In the reading, Ana María Ochoa Gautier shows how listening, writing, speech, and music were important to the constitution of modern individuality in the nineteenth century. Using Colombia as her central point because she is Colombian and talks about the many artists that are from Colombia. Ochoa states “listening appears as the nomadic sense par excellence and the voice as highly flexible, an instrument that can be manipulated to position the relation between the body and the world in multiple ways,” (Ochoa, 1). This made me think about the study of anthropology listening to other people culture. Listening is a product of ethnographic encounters; it involves layers of interpretation and observation. Anthropologists use ethnography to better understand as much as possible about a culture. You have individual methods which helps ethnographers which includes participants, observation, interviews and surveys. All of these ethnographic methods play a major role in gaining a deeper understanding of different cultures. I think it’s importance to study other people culture and learn something new.

Work Cited
Ochoa Gautier, Ana María. Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia. Duke University Press, 2014.

The story I chose to focus on, was Winston’s “Wireless and Radio”. Why reading the first couple of pages, all I kept thinking to myself was “wow, a lot of people have ‘invented’ the radio.” But then as I continued to read, I couldn’t help but think to myself how far we’ve come with technology; more specifically wireless products. On page 70, Winston writes “Wires attached to kites would probably allow for messages to be sent transoceanically.” Although headphones don’t send messages transoceanically, it still does the job. I, along with many many people, have thought to myself so many times how it is that with just a little wire on our headphones, sound from the digital source its connected to circulates. Or for anyone who now has airpods. We connect it to bluetooth, but how is it exactly we’ve been able to create this kind of stuff? Cellphones can be thought about in the same context as well. Growing up, of course people had cell phones (like my mom did) but I was always used to seeing those home phones that connect to the wall and the wire to the phone part itself. As time progresses we see constant changes and never sit back and think about how exactly these type of things happened; we just kinda go with the flow and let it be.

1. For this week’s blog post I decided to write about “The Capture of Sound” by Brian Winston. In this article,  Winston gets into the detail of how the capture of sound and radio began. On page 33 of the article, Winston states that “The first electromagnetic device which converted electrical waves into sound is credited to a Dr C.G.Page of Massachusetts in 1837.” This quote highlights the origin of electrical waves that create sounds, which started way back in 1837. If we fast forward to current day society, the advancements we have made shows that there are so many different devices that capture and project sounds. To the music that plays from the bottom of our phones to the surround sound system that is a normality for movie theaters, we continue to evolve. Instead of talking on the phone, we are able to send voice notes, or talk on facetime, this is a new way to project sounds with a more easier approach than ever before. The only issue with the advancement of technology is how we are casting out face to face interactions. The rise of the smartphones changed the way we project sounds, there is a whole possible way to have a voice conversation with another without calling their phone. Dr. C.G Page was credited for the first electromagnetic device that created sound from electrical waves back in 1837, and all the technological advancements we made wouldn’t be a thing without this breakthrough.  

Brian Winston. “The Capture of Sound.” Media Technology and Society: A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet. Routledge, 199

For this week’s response, I will talk about Brian Winston’s article “The Capture of Sound”. In this article, Winston talks about the invention of the telephone. He starts the article with “it is unlikely that Philip Reiss, researcher into Helmholtz’s wave theory, was particularly looking for a system to transmit the human voice”(Winston, 1998). I find this interesting because, from the time when the telephone was invented to modern technology now, society has advanced very far. The invention of the telephone led to many things. We went from the telegraph to wireless and portable phones.  Not only new technology but new ways of communicating with each other. However, this is a good and bad thing. Back when the telephone was invented, people used that and communicated face to face. Nowadays, we have more than the telephone to rely on for communicating with other people. The boom of the telephone ultimately influenced this change in how we communicate with others. The only bad aspect is that we rely a lot on technology to communicate with others which I will guess was not the idea back when the telephone was first invented. It was made to use for communication and to expand on that, however, in today’s society it has expanded at an alarming rate.

Brian Winston. “The Capture of Sound.” Media Technology and Society: A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet. Routledge, 1998.