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For my final project, I want to do option #2, and focus on the theme of memory in digital culture and the Water Dancer. The Selfie reading resonated with me, and I just think it's so crazy how everything we post of our lives and person on social media is immortalized. One of my favorite aspects of the Water Dancer is how Hiram's memory is described and drives most of his actions in the book. I am thinking of making a Pinterest or Instagram page (not sure yet) with pictures of Hiram's life and memories. I think I am leaning towards Pinterest though because in my opinion, it is less corporate driven than Instagram and is considered more "aesthetic" than Instagram, which aligns with how Hiram's memories are described.

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In the beginning of the semester, I asked you to visualize a character from the book. Return to that post and think about how, if at all, your visual might have changed now that you're further in the book. If your image has changed, post what you think your character seems like now.

In my entry from the beginning of the semester, I visualized young Hiram as Chiron from "Moonlight." I picked a still from him from the movie that had dark and blue tones throughout because there was lots of blue imagery in the beginning of the book.
Even though there is an older Chiron in "Moonlight," I don't picture Hiram as Trevante Rhodes. I picture Hiram more as Alonzo from "If Beale Street Could Talk." Along with this, I really picture Sophia as Tish. In the movie, she has a soft personality but is fiercely caring for  her family/loved ones. She's passionate about getting justice for Alonzo, and I think Sophia has all the same traits and relates to Hiram in the same way. Alonzo has the same gumption and passion as Hiram does, but like Sophia/Tish, he's quieter than the average Underground worker. Together, Tish and Alonzo perfectly encapsulate Hiram and Sophia to me. And even though we haven't seen Sophia in the book in a while, the way Hiram describes her makes me think of Tish.
Also, there isn't as much blue imagery in the book as there was in the beginning, which may be partly why I don't picture Moonlight characters anymore.

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If you had to visualize the ideological work that I'm trying to argue is happening through Black women and live tweeting, what would you visually add and why?

Black women live tweeting in response to the OWN films shows how they both use the platform and are being used by the platform.
One way I would add to the article to better visualize the argument would be adding screenshots of Tweets that you found both by scrolling through the hashtags and that you saw OWN/Twitter featured. Like in "Black Memes Matter," seeing screenshots of memes or tweets that you are describing in your writing helps to picture what you're talking about. It helps the brain map the argument with significant image details.
I think another very useful thing may be to add a data visualization of how popular the tweets that Twitter/OWN promoted got (# of retweets and favorites) versus tweets that were just being live tweeted on the hashtags with no feature. It could show how the tweets that OWN/Twitter featured garnered more attention for the Black women tweeting about an issue while also further exploiting them through the public display and marketing of their content.

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Thinking about your sphere of influence (work, family, school, clubs, volunteer, etc.), where might research like the "Black Memes Matter" article be applied? In other words, how you would apply some part of the argument from the article into a place in your life that you have influence? Be as specific as you can when referencing the article.

For my future career/work, I want to work in social media. In one of the clubs here that I participate in, I'm the social media coordinator and I get to share posts for the clubs and manage how they are seen on social media. One of the main parts of the argument from "Black Memes Matter" is that sharing these [i.e., BBQ Becky type memes) resists against White supremacist notions of normalcy and  surveillance of Black people, and "restore agency to Black communities by allowing them to exert a form of justice on perpetrators." (11). It calls for consequences against White supremacy, and sharing these memes in social circles is a large component of how these memes function. In my future work, doing even the simplest thing like sharing these memes from whatever company account I manage or bringing them up in conversation to my coworkers could help resist White supremacy. I could also make a meme including the BBQ Becky image, for example, relating to a current event issue of the company (like how people did with Megan Markle or Colin Kaepernick).

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There were a lot of great moments in the chapters we read for today (chapters 13-15). What was your favorite and why?

Okay I bet a bunch of people are going to choose this part but I genuinely loved when Hiram "conducted" to the memory of what I assume to be his mom. It's after he arrives in Philadelphia and goes to the bakery across the street, and the man Mars gives him a ginger snap. Hiram wrote very descriptively throughout these three chapters, and he had wrote about Philadelphia being bustling with people and smelling very bad. When he stepped into the bakery, it's the opposite, where he describes a "sweet smell" (192), attaching a positive feeling to the bakery and to the ginger snap. It's not often we get positivity in this book, so that was really nice to read. And then after, when he follows the river and eats the ginger snap, he's conducted back to a kitchen in Lockless with his mom. She was making ginger snaps, and the interaction with Mars (family) prompted him to associate the two places. Hiram found family (!!!!!) in an unfamiliar place, and it was so comforting (and kind of sad) to see him find things he's been on the search for (his mom, the power of conduction, peace, freedom).

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After finishing the Coded Bias documentary, post a meme or GIF that shows your vision for the future of AI. Add one sentence that explains your image.

I chose this image because my view of AI is that it might become so powerful that we won't be able to control it, since it's math and technology-based. Like the meme demonstrates, it could overpower our society (represented by Elmo) and become so chaotic that we will just panic and have trouble fixing it (the dominating fire in the background). I'm not in the computer-science field but I know that once you develop an algorithm, it has a mind of it's own and it's hard to tell it what to do. As Joy said, artificial intelligence is a "weapon of math destruction", and we can't control math.

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Free write: what do you think of the book so far?

I have really enjoyed reading Water Dancer. The writing is so poetic and descriptive, which makes the story captivating and more realistic. Since it’s in Hiram’s first person perspective, you learn more about the individualized experience of slavery, which isn’t often told in books about slavery. I took a history class last semester where I learned a lot of new things about slavery, so I’m noticing many of those elements / making connections while I read.
Since our last group discussion about the book, I’m noticing more connections to digital culture (like eyes - surveillance, in-group/out-group dynamics) which is cool. Even though we’ve already read 12 chapters, it seems like we’re still in the middle of the juicy part. This last chapter in particular (13) was really interesting when they talked about freedom, because he’s clearly not free even though Corrine and Hawkins are saying he is. He might be part of The Underground now, but there are still a lot of dehumanizing restrictions that come with that.
This book is just such an interesting tale of slavery, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest.

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What is a meme/GIF that best describes you?

There are so, so many I could choose but I picked this meme of Nick Young/Swaggy P to describe me. I am questioning everything all the time and I'm an overthinker. I'm inquisitive, observant, curious, sometimes judgmental, and I'm always questioning why people say and do the things they do. My mind is ALWAYS running and I'm often like ??? at the things people say to me, squinting my eyes in another direction.

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1. What worries you most from the film?

2. If our humanity is the secret to structural change in regulating big tech, what can you do in your personal/political/activist sphere to influence change?

1. From recent events that happened in our country, I am most worried that people's social media usage and algorithms will divide our country so much that people won't be able to come together and make positive change. In the film, they cover the spread of fake news in our day and age,  and it's scary to think that this could lead to civil war in our country. I don't want another Jan. 6th event to happen, let alone multiple times.

2. In my personal sphere, one of the things I can do is vote for legislation that better protects us from data mining. The tech companies don’t mine our data for the sake of the data - instead, it’s for the sake of controlling us. It’s our attention and usage of social media that gives data, so they use it to predict and control our future usage. Honestly, it’s difficult to think of ways to influence change in my current personal sphere because I am so young and I don’t hold power in the technology industry. In the future though, when old white men in politics are no longer in office and my generation has qualifications to run for office positions, I can take part in change surrounding regulating big tech. There will be more conversations around this subject when my generation is older and we have political power.
Another way might be to write letters to tech executives about my/our individual experiences on social media. This may cause them to think more about the real people that are being negatively affected by the technology they’re creating.

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Part of Noble's argument in this chapter is that, "we need experts in the social sciences and digital humanities to engage in dialogue with activists and organizers, engineers, designers, information technologists, and public-policy makers before blunt artificial-intelligence decision making trumps nuanced human decision making" (p. 13).

Imagine that you are an editor of an incredibly successful media outlet. Write a headline for a story that imagines a result of this kind of collaboration that Noble is talking about.

"Artificial Intelligence Becoming Genuine: Real Humans Collaborating to Create New Algorithms."
In my headline, I played on the word "artificial" in "artificial intelligence", because the reading focused on bringing the humanity back into creating algorithms. When inserting humans, substantial conversations surrounding social inequality can happen and make the algorithm more genuine.

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In the readings this week, we're seeing some serious betrayal. If cancel culture existed in Hiram's time, who do you think the public (19th century Virginians) would cancel and why?

Okay, first off, wow. I really wanted to keep reading after chapter 9 but I can't look at spoilers ahead of the class.

If the Tasked (who yearn for freedom) had a say in public opinion and who got canceled, I think Georgie would be cancelled. Georgie gave Hiram a glimmer of hope and then lured him into a trap of institutional power, severely betraying him as a fellow Tasked. Slaves (who fear life in slavery more than escaping) would cancel Georgie because they think he should help Hiram escape. They would think he should have empathy for Hiram and provide him a way out, instead of worsening his societal status and consequence of being a black man.

But, if the dominant group of white Virginians held power over black people, I think the public would cancel Hiram. Hiram has a target on his back because he is an intelligent slave from a prominent family. He goes against the norm and does something that a slave isn't supposed to do, making people mad (e.g., Georgie, Thena).

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What was the most interesting part of the Sutherland reading for you?

The most interesting part of the Sutherland reading to me was the part in "Memorialization and Commodification" where she talked about Henrietta Lacks and the right to be forgotten. This was interesting to me because it tied the concept of (re)membering a past spectacle (the lynching of a black person) into an object of the present, to a "scientific", real life consequence. I feel like I don't see many authors make cases that directly connect to STEM, so making a direct connection between the humanities and stem was cool. I hadn't thought about online DNA code as part of the digital sphere.
The HeLa case embodies what I think Sutherland's point is, which is that Lack's family doesn't get to enjoy the agency over her body or her right to be forgotten, therefore reinscribing trauma and white supremacist ideologies upon them.
What is also interesting is when she then goes into the consequences of memorial sites (which I had never heard of) and how "there is money to be made on death and dying in the digital economy", again perpetuating the violation of the right to be forgotten and racist ideologies.

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What broader, cultural effects do you think come about from the "serial, cumulative" nature of how we present ourselves online (Rettberg reading)?

I think that having a cumulative collection of our identity through our online posts causes a facade of perfectionism in the broader cultural context of our lives. People are going to post what they feel like they can and should share to their followers, so posts are curated for a specific purpose. Posts generating over time eventually show an overarching/theme of someone's life, so the follower/end-user will see a cumulative project of works that they perceive as true. But, like Rettberg talks about, different cumulations can show people a wide variety of stories or messages (e.g., a mental health journey, weight loss, the life of a factory worker). People curating their social feeds with a series of themed posts creates an appearance of perfectionism in our culture because of our inability to know if the posts are genuine, true, and portray the person's real life. The line between public and private is blurred because we can choose to upload what we want on public, social platforms, therefore our vision of public realness is weakened.

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In part 2 of the podcast, guest and freelance political reporter of "What's Left", Zeeshan Aleem mentions that digital culture produces a kind of behavior today (tech determinism!) that reduces issues into a "good" vs. "bad" binary-- "casting people out or exiling them by the sort of larger culture online to be somebody who is no longer...with it, or moral, or an upstanding citizen of Twitter culture."
Using your expertise in digital media culture so far, what specific affordance about digital culture leads to this kind of binary and/or 'moral highground'?

I think that one affordance of digital culture that can possibly lead to a binary/moral highground is the ability to screenshot. This function exists across all platforms (e.g., a retweet on Twitter, a repost on Instagram, a reblog on Tumblr, a republish on VSCO) whether it's built into the program software or the individual action of screenshotting by a person. Screenshotting lends anyone full agency to share someone else's post because every tech device that you can access social platforms on has a screenshot function. Screenshotting another user's content can give you leverage in an argument, because it grabs specific, limited content from another person's online network without providing context. This is an example of context collapse where a simple screenshot can eliminate any background on someone's position, and a binary is created from the leveraging of "proof" by a screenshot. A screenshot (e.g. a quote tweet) can stack two different opinions by each other and display a binary.