How do these essays take you, the reader, beyond yourself into the world around you? Look at bell hooks’s introduction when she tells us about the moment in Barneys when she, dressed like the well to do white woman next to her, holding a handbag and talking to a friend, is STILL mistaken for a store worker. Why? Optics? I would love to see an excellent paper on optics this summer, for I’ve not yet seen one. Optics. We live in an age wild with optics. Some are self-created, some out of our control. Aren’t we, today, sizing up one another in ways that we never have before? Why? Social media? This woman looks like a this, this man looks like a this, this one like a this…is there potentially a proposal here?
We are a "rating society". A "gig" society, and thus as a byproduct, a review/rating society. This action is pervasive, across many spectrums, food, UBER (which can rate you back, right?). One of the ongoing questions in this course that will be asked rhetorically (with the hope that you will answer passionately) is whether this opinion based society, that is a society which ALLOWS opinion to flow so easily via Twitter etc., is healthy for human relationships. Or is it creating difficulty? Creating a society that is at once more judgmental? Opinion has always been part of the human condition, sure, but if we take opinion and add value to it, that is platforms where one can display opinion, what is the product?
That is basically what I am looking for, how you should be thinking. Right now, simply try to come up with a line that goes, "I propose…" What moves you, impacts you, makes you angry or happy? Use the readings in this group to motivate and inspire your thinking. What improvements do you feel our society needs? Is your proposal going to be an addition or a removal?
Steve Jobs
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/opinion/sunday/steve-jobs-never-wanted-us-to-use-our-iphones-like-this.html (Links to an external site.)
"A Modest Proposal"
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm (Links to an external site.)
"Facebook in a Crowd"
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/magazine/26lives-t.html (Links to an external site.)
