Learning v2.0

I’ll say it: I am NOT tech savvy... at all!
Somehow the technological craze that shook my generation skipped me. Here I am, in my mid 20s (won't say how old because a lady should never say her age), and I can barely do word count on Word. However I am willing to accept my ignorance and - more importantly - do something about it.

"What is web 2.0?"

I first came across the term during my time in the UC Washington Program. I was an intern at the Association of American Universities (AAU) and part of my duties included attending meetings for the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation.

The Task Force consisted of educational and industry representatives working together for a common goal: increase funding in basic sciences. Last year was particularly hard because of budget cuts. Places like SLAC and Fermilab were facing serious reductions in services, project suspensions, and furloughs. One of my jobs was to gather information about a Senator and maintain a wiki about him.

Given: it was only a wiki so I didn’t need to learn code. But considering I am still amazed by first generation iPods, updating a wiki was a huge deal. They described the wiki as more “web 2.0” and I nodded in agreement, but made a note of the term in my notepad.

I wanted to know exactly what the term meant, but as Will (former economics TA) put it "Everyone has their own definition." It’s hard to understand what something is when it keeps being redefined.

Why do I want to understand this? I’m applying to Graduate School in the near future, and am interested in the way media and technologies interact with society. I can study “society” and “media,” but technologies … I’m no closer to understanding technology than I am to knowing the mathematical models explaining Higgs boson.

Fortunately for me, I’m not trying to pursue a career in theoretical physics. Instead I’m trying to learn more about technology and how to (for a lack of a better description) create stuff.

I emailed Will the other day with the intention of getting a definition of web 2.0. As always he did a good job of simplifying a huge ethereal concept into something that made sense. He even asked if I was asking because I wanted to start a hobby.
I might just do that, thank you very much for the suggestion.

So with that said, I’ve decided to hop on the technology train! First stop: source code and html code (whatever those mean).

Nervous Conditions

I just finished reading a book called Nervous Conditions. The actual story focuses on two girls (cousins) from Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) who are coming to terms with being women and obtaining an education in a male dominated society. However this book has two other underlying themes: being black in the colonial state, and revolting against colonial control. In a way, the main characters' struggles within their homes, towns, and schools are a microcosm of what was occurring in the society under colonial rule.
What struck me the most about this book is the fact that in the end you're not sure whether either of the girls - Tambu and Nyasha - overcome their issues. As I continued to read the book, I could feel the excitement that Tambu felt when she arrived at the mission (it reminded me of when I first arrived in UC Davis), and the frustrations Tambu and Nyasha felt as they fought male domination and assimilation.
The book is written in a way that - if you're following the story line closely and playing out the book in your mind - you also begin to feel "nervous." The end leaves you hanging; longing for closure, a happy ending.
You get a sense that Tambu succeeded NOT because she became emancipated, but because she adopted the colonial paradigm, and based on that paradigm she was a success.
One of my favorite books used to be Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Reason: Edna "awakens" and finds a whole new way of living. She goes through a well laid-out and clear change. Things follow a natural progression, and even if Edna reverts back to her old life, she is still a changed woman. However, in real life things hardly progress in such a linear manner.
The ambiguity in Tsitsi Dangaremba's novel is more realistic. Life doesn't usually have a clear plot, one climax, and a conclusion. It takes more than one awakening to change, and who's to say that moments of "awakening" will always result in paradigm shifts?
Dangaremba's characters demonstrate how many of the things a formal education teaches us to value can conflict with what our family and community expects us to value - and how societal expectations can also conflict with what we expect of ourselves.
The struggles of Tambu and Nyasha do not appear to have a conclusion because such struggles and "burdens" (as Tambu calls them) can rarely be narrated with a sense of closure.

Crossing The Line?

I recently had a conversation with a friend about crossing professional lines. Like the time her TA gave her his cell phone number and said "Call me at any time if you need help with anything."
Not that long ago I started getting coffee with one of my TAs and didn't think much about it until someone said it was "cool" and asked me if I was trying to get an A. I laughed at the comment and said no, that I genuinely find him to have interesting views. Then one time I introduced him to a friend and when my friend asked him what he was studying, he hesitantly said "I'm a graduate student."
In the past I've had difficulties seeing these "invisible lines" of professionalism when it comes to interacting with people who are "above" me. It's not like I walk in saying "Yo, what's up!" - I treat them the same way I would treat a friend: with courtesy, amiability, and respect.
Since I can remember I've always felt at ease speaking with my mentors and teachers - especially now at Davis. In most of my classes my peers are younger than me; sometimes even by 6 years.
Should I change I how interact with my "superiors"? Is it time for me to acknowledge the hierarchical academic structure and only go to office hours when I'm thoroughly confused by the subject?