MEDIA MAKE CHANGE Remembers Joshua C. Watson
It is with a heavy heart that we share the devastating news about the passing of Joshua C. Watson. Josh was an inaugural fellow of the 2012 Community Producers Program that MEDIA MAKE CHANGE co-authored with the Beyond the Bricks Project. He was known as one of the most brightest fellows in his Atlanta cohort. Josh is shown in the video below speaking proudly about his work and his hopes for the future. We learned yesterday that Josh was victim of an apparent robbery while walking home from work. He was murdered on Christmas Eve.
From the Beyond the Bricks producers, Derek Koen and Ouida Washington:
18 year old Joshua C. Watson, one of the young men that graduated this past June from the first cohort of Beyond The Bricks Community Producers Program, was murdered in Atlanta, GA December 24, 2012, robbed on his way home from work. I had the pleasure of meeting Josh in person once, I spoke with him a few times over Skype and we awarded him with a certificate for his dedication to the program. The entire BTBP team was horrified to hear the news that yet another young person with so much promise and potential was taken away forever. Josh was the result of hard work, sacrifice and love by a community of people; evident by the way he presented himself to the world. We here at Beyond The Bricks Project struggle to make the message clear, we ALL have a role and duty to give ALL our children brighter futures and the chance to live their life the best way possible. Senseless violence that we see almost daily in news headlines, in our communities and in our schools is destroying this country. In the life of Josh, lest we forget that too much has already been lost.
If the person who took Joshua from this earth can some how come across this message, I would like you to know that this is not acceptable you deserve to be punished and you are redeemable. To you all, we would like to introduce you to Joshua C. Watson.
We share the sentiments expressed by the BTBP team. The news of Josh's death only strengthens our desire to ensure the work that we do at MEDIA MAKE CHANGE benefits young people like Joshua Watson. He was an inspiration, shining light, and a gift to us all. We would like to send condolences to the Watson family and express our deepest sympathies to anyone who had the pleasure of befriending Joshua during his short eighteen years on earth.
You can pay tribute to Josh's memory on RIP Joshua C. Watson Facebeook page made in his honor.
The Need to Educate the Rich Kids of Instagram
From My MEDIAted Life
There is a new Tumblr page that has been getting quite a bit of attention in the last few weeks. It's got an unoriginal, yet strangely catchy title that would cause almost anyone to click on the link: Rich Kids of Instagram. Your finger might hover over the mousepad for a moment--sure that it could not possibly be what the straight-forward label is seeming to describe, yet weary that it most likely is--you wonder if this is what you should be doing with your time? Should you throw a load of laundry in before you make this time commitment for something you might later regret, or worse, that you might absolutely love (but not be able to tell anybody about)? But like so many other viral videos and Internet memes, in which a mere click stands between you andknowing what everyone else is talking about, this site wins over any rational thought, and just like that you feel the pad of your index finger make contact with the cool sensory surface beneath it.
As soon as the URL loads and the site opens, you dive face-first into a scrolling cluster of photographs and hashtags. The images have all presumably been taken by smartphones (most likely iPhones) and have been enhanced through an application called Instagram, which adds different filters to digital pictures and allows them to be uploaded to various social networking platforms (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) instantly and seamlessly. The subtitle of the site is "They have more than you and this is what they do," and the hashtag is #rkoi. The images are first uploaded by the young people who snapped the shots to the RKOI's Twitter account and are then fed onto the Tumblr page for easy viewing.
The pictures are displayed in gold frames, suggesting that they are pieces of fine art and conveying an obvious and assumed air of wealth, high culture, and importance. Below each image we find numerous hashtags that the artists have used to 'describe' their masterpieces: #mansion, #wealth, #yacht, #personalchef, #cartier, #NBD (no big deal). The seemingly endless collection of photographs are obnoxious, yet every time I visit the site I find myself clicking from page to page, thirsty for more, even if I've seen the same images four or fives times at this point. What is going on?!As hard as I try to maintain that I am fascinated by this warped website solely for critically analytical and research-related purposes (I'm making a very serious face while saying this), the reality is that I have been 'trained'--socialized and normalized--for decades now to associate the types of images and messages depicted on this site with notions of what "happiness", "success", "popularity", etc. look like; what they mean. If I am having these reactions as a 28-year-old, we must seriously consider how teens might be viewing this site and think about the kinds of conversations that we as educators, adults, parents, can have with the young adults in our lives.
1. The subtle effects and implications of the gold-frame template:
While viewers might feel as if they've become numb to composition after streaming through dozens of images, there is an undeniable novelty and uniqueness in seeing photographs, not oil paintings, housed in these garish golden frames. Instead of invoking a simulated feeling that we are strolling through the quiet rooms of art gallery or museum--observing these masterpieces interspersed on stark white walls--the juxtaposition of the bold, saturated, filtered photographs with the chunky golden frames instead creates a feeling of voyeurism among viewers. We are outsiders being granted access to certain snapshots, postage-stamp views, of what life in the 1% is like.
What might this voyeurism mean for both the creators and consumers of these images? There is an extreme sense of excitement on both ends: for the creators of these media images and messages--they are sharing their lived experiences and material possessions with their peers (and now with wider audiences). Hell, at 14-, 17-, even at 25-years-old (especially in the age of social media and social networking sites), there is a certain undeniable, almost unavoidable [I said almost] narcissism that runs rampant in users' status updates, photos, etc. It's the nature of the beast, but it doesn't make it ok, or mean that we simply and passively accept that this is just how people can and should act as a result. We still must consider, now more than ever, what effects these displays of wealth, materialism, lifestyle and activities might have on the "99%" who have been socialized to perhaps think this representation is 'covetable', on the "1%" who think this representation is "normal." And what it really comes down to is that we should really be taking into account the possible effects that these representations are having on100% of today's youth. Virtually almost (again, almost) every young person in the US is exposed to and interacts with some sort of media on a daily basis--using a cell phone, playing a video game, surfing the Web, or watching television. Today's youth are growing up in an increasingly media-saturated culture and we have a responsibility to help them learn how to successfully navigate their lives through the unprecedented products, behaviors, and activities now being "the norm" in the 21st century.
2. Understanding digital footprints & increasing awareness about digital citizenship:
On August 10, 2012, an article was published on the Bloomberg Businessweek website entitled, "The Very Real Perils of Rich Kids on Social Networks". The article provides an account of how some recent online activities of Alexa and Zachary Dell, daughter and son of Michael Dell (of Dell computers), got them their 15 minutes of Internet fame as well as a terminated Twitter account after Alexa posted a photo of her brother in their private jet, heading to Fiji on RKOI. It was later discovered that this was just one of numerous photographs and statuses containing personal information about her family's whereabouts and activities that she'd posted over the last few months. Mr. Dell pays almost $3 million a year for security protection of his family, so needless to say, this breach of security from an insider was probably both alarming and upsetting. This article provides a powerful illustration and example not only of how quickly information spreads via new media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, but more importantly how easily this information can directly challenge others' efforts of enforcing tangible security measures. In addition, and most importantly, this article serves as an excellent example of the lack of awareness and/or regard that young people tend to have for the often permanent digital footprints that they create as a result of their online activities, particularly on social networking sites. And while some may argue that there are greater implications when the rich (and not necessarily famous) upload pictures of everything from party invitations with the date, time, and location to license plate numbers (all of which can easily and automatically be geo-tagged) to the Twittersphere, the reality is that this online behavior/activity of constantly over-sharing details about their lives can have very real consequences, regardless of one's social class. In a recent New York Times article on the recent upsurge of 20-somethings sharing TMI (too much information) in the workplace, Peggy Klaus, an author and executive coach of corporate training programs explains,
Social media have made it the norm to tell everybody everything...MANY people blame narcissistic baby-boomer parents for raising children with an overblown sense of worth, who believe that everything they say or think should be shared. When I told a British colleague that many Americans were starting to realize that they reveal way too much about themselves, he gave a full-throated laugh and said, “Finally!”
While our first instinct may be to want to protect youth, the takeaway here is not that we need to shield young people from the media tools and content that might cause them to engage in risky activities and behaviors. Instead, we should regard the situation with the Dell children and the realities of the millennial generation outlined by Klaus as important illustrative examples of the fast-forward-moving trajectory that our society and culture is travelling on. As educators, parents, and adults in the 21st century, we have an opportunity and obligation to use these examples to engage the youth in our lives in conversations about digital citizenship, which can include topics of online safety and privacy, cyberbullying, and copyright fair use of online information; media literacy, understanding how and why media messages are constructed and how they can influence beliefs and behaviors; and digital literacy, how to read and evaluate information online.
Use the images on RKOI to ask youth about who they think the image is intended for, what attracts their attention, what lifestyles and behaviors are represented, how different people might interpret the images and messages differently, and what they think may have been left out of the image and why? A conversation about the composition of both the photographs and the website itself—having students think critically about representation, communication, and production—could be integrated into an English lesson on writing about and showing one’s lived experiences through words and images; a social studies lesson on the powerful images and messages from the Civil Rights Movement, juxtaposing them with the very different content displayed on RKOI (in which case, it would also be crucial and a unique way to address issues of race, gender, and class as they relate to both sets of images and messages); or a computers and technology lesson focusing on the dos and don’ts of web-design.
The bottom line is that we must have conversations, many multi-layered conversations, with each other and with youth about sites like RKOI: about the activities and lifestyles represented, as well as the online and offline behaviors fueling the creation of and participation in such sites. It is ok and very normal to want to protect our youth from the unknown, but we’re doing ourselves and them a disservice if we think that leaving these unprecedented realities unaddressed is better than sinking our teeth into them in order to proactively figure all of this out, and we need to do it together--parents and children, teachers and students, peers to peers, or else we're never going to get anywhere.
Emily Bailin is a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University. She's also an an educator, consultant, and public speaker motivated by a passion and determination to collaborate, create, and sustain culturally relevant and socially just pedagogy with other educators to better serve increasingly diverse 21st century learners. You can follow her on Twitter at @emilybailin
Event Raises New Questions About Code as Literacy, Code as Culture
On Friday I attended Kitchen Table Coders Presents: Learn to Code from an Artist at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. The panel discussion was the first of a two-part series/workshop that featured artists and educators in the fields of programming and design. Panelists included, Amit Pitaru (co-founder of Kitchen Table Coders), Sonali Sridhar (co-founder of Hacker School), Vanessa Hurst (co-founder of Girl Develop It), Jer Thorp (artist and lecturer), and award-winning author and documentarian Douglas Rushkoff.
The panel was unlike most talks I've attended about computer science and technology namely because the panelists were artists and educators speaking about coding and programming as expression. The discussion consisted less of tech jargon, and more so included insights about how coding can be a creative process with which many people, not just computer engineers and master programmers, could engage. Being that all of the panelists were educators, the conversation also focused on how we can best teach code to novice and master programmers. Jer Thorp, in particular, was less concerned about producing the next generation of workers, but more so interested in helping to create a code literate generation.
"What we’re seeing now is that code is being taught to produce workers, not to necessarily produce expressive authors of code and art. It's like we're producing technical writers as opposed to producing novelists."
Douglas Rushkoff began the discussion by asking the panelists several thought-provoking questions about code literacy---the ability to read, write, and think critically using computer programming languages. Among the questions Rushkoff asked included:
- How do we make people aware of this space?
- Is learning how to code what we should be teaching the world?
- What are the biases of digital space?
- What do we need to communicate about code to the public?
- What’s the difference between a user and a programmer?
- Do we have to know how to code in order to participate meaningfully in a digital world?
Concerning the last question, the panelists all agreed that learning code does allow for more meaningful participation in a digital world. Amit Pitaru stated that "we should at least be able to read code, maybe not write it at first." Similarly, Sonali Sridhar noted that learning code "opens up the black box" of knowledge. She spoke about how learning code changed her perspective about everything around her, from the way buildings are structured to how gadgets work. Vanessa Hurst echoed her colleagues' sentiments and added that learning code is not simply about solving problems that have already been solved, but about being able to tackled unsolved and complex problems.
"I'm not comfortable with solving problems that are already solved," said Hurst.
The panelists also discussed how learning code can be both a social and solitary experience. They mentioned that most master coders have put in 10,000+ lonely hours tinkering around, mostly failing, but constructing new and innovative projects as a result. Sridhar's Hacker School operates mainly as a self-learning model, but also functions in a collaborative space of newbie and master programmers. Pitaru noted that Kitchen Table Coders is an open source model available to anyone willing to adopt its structure as means of learning code.
"At Kitchen Table, you wouldn’t know who’s teaching and who’s the student because everyone is sitting around a table learning from each other," said Pitaru.
I was particularly interested in Sridhar and Hurst's experiences as women coders and educators. Sridhar mentioned that for women, "there's an immense amount of fear in this space." Hurst, who works with women at Girl Develop It, agreed that even though women are just as capable as men to program, they're less likely to have a sustained interest in computer science in the long term, with girls tending to disengage in the field once they reach middle school.
Toward the end of the session, I asked the panelists to talk more about code as culture and code as art. Specifically, I asked:
- Where is the culture in code? Is code gendered, raced, classed? If not, do we want it to be?
- Is there emotion in code? If so where is it?
To the second question, Pitaru responded saying that “emotion is not in the code, it’s in coding (the action of code)." I can attest that learning how to code, and the act of doing code, can be both a frustrating and satisfying endeavor. Technologist, Ann Daramola would likely agree.
Hurst told the audience that code shouldn't be gendered, raced, or classed, although the reality is that computer science is largely a white male industry.
Both Sridhar and Hurst cited the book Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing as a useful primer source on the topic of gender and computer science. Rushkoff chimed in stating that the cultural perceptions we have about computer science is problematic. He mentioned research studies that prove girls are just as good as boys at mathematics, but our cultural perceptions skew this reality.
But even if we all agree that cultural perceptions influence the ways in which traditionally marginalized groups participate in computer science and STEM fields, we also have to acknowledge the structural forces at play that impact the participation gap between white middle class males and girls, people of color, and immigrants.
Gender stereotypes, racial discrimination, socio-economic status, and citizenship all influence the pipeline to higher education and STEM careers. Even time to tinker and play with a computer is a privilege for a large number of gendered, raced, and classed communities.
I would have liked to hear the panelists speak more about how race and class dynamics, not simply gender, impact code literacy, but perhaps that's another panel discussion entirely, and one that I hope will feature more programmers, educators, and researchers of color.
After the panel discussion I had a chance to briefly chat with Hurst about what I'd like to accomplish with my research regarding girls, youth of color, and immigrant coders. She noted that one of the reasons why the Unlocking the Clubhouse is always cited by women in tech is because the field is desperate for new research in computer science at the intersection of gender, race, and class.
Lack of research in this area may present challenges for those curious about the cultural aspects of computing. However, this shortage of knowledge presents a great opportunity for researchers like myself who are intent on exploring the interplay between culture and computing, especially given that gender, race, class, sexuality, and citizenship all matter in this digital moment.
Related resources
Amit Pitaru @pitaru
Sonali Sridhar @jollysonali
Vanessa Hurst @DBNess
Jer Thorp @blprnt
Douglas Rushkoff @rushkoff
Kitchen Table Coders @ktcoders
Part II To Queer Code: Ann Daramola on Learning and Teaching Computer Programming
(Read Part I)
In the second half of our conversation, Daramola and I chat about learning code as a bilingual experience, youth programmers in a digital era, the relationship between breaking the code and coming from broken circumstances, and the work non-profit organizations like Black Girls Code, Code Now, and Girls Who Code are doing to help young people prepare for college and careers in STEM. Daramola calls on educators and community organizers to continue to provide these young people with the same STEM resources and mentorship throughout out college, otherwise "young women of color will most certainly fall through the cracks." Check out Part II of our conversation below.
Tara: I love the idea of queering code! I also like the idea of different cultures fusing their own languages and worldviews into standard programming languages. I recently come across a software development platform Live Code, which allows novice-to-advanced programmers to create applications and execute computing processes using basic English grammar syntax. Kevin Miller, Live Code’s CEO, says in a promotional video that “Live Code is a very high level language, [which means] you write code in a language that’s as close to English as possible. It’s less [about] code . . . so it makes it very very quick to develop applications.” Even though Live Code is making coding and programming more accessible, the platform still privileges English as the high level language over other languages. So here’s a good example of how culture particularly the English language embeds itself in code and is packaged as a more mainstream and accessible way of knowing. In your experience as a coder, and as you develop curriculum for youth coders, can you speak about how, or in what ways, young girls and coders of color understand what it means to code? How do they think about the process of coding, and perhaps even the future of coding? Along these same lines, what is your opinion about the best ways to teach, instruct, engage so-called ‘marginalized’ youth coders?
Ann: When I'm teaching code, I tend to start with a lot of examples to help ground the discussion and lesson in experience. If you’ve ever seen a page of code, you know it’s intimidating. Letters are in the wrong place and the spacing seems off. Even the high level languages that are supposed to be like English are still intimidating because they don’t read like straight English. I also teach bilingual classes. Because the code is written in English, for immigrant coders, not only is this code foreign, but it’s foriegn in a foreign language. So there are multiple layers that we, as educators teaching code and programming, have to fight through. But remember also, it’s about instruction, you’re simply instructing a computer on what to do. I find that the young girls I teach come from a Myspace culture, where they like to design their own pages. Essentially you’re just copying and pasting code. It’s again about tinkering, or playing around with code in ways that make sense to and satisfy the user’s sensibilities.
For young people, it’s almost natural for them to deal with digital things because they've grown up in a digital world.
Digital is all around them, it’s part of their world. It’s not too foreign for young people to tinker because certain aspects of computing are not entirely closed off from them yet. I say closed off because if you have an iPhone, you can’t really open up the phone and tinker with it. The iPhone is closed off to modification. However, with an Android or other phone, you can modify them. But this is really where a lot of the learning comes from, the tinkering.
One of the reasons why white males have traditionally dominated the field of computer science and technology is because they’ve had more time to tinker, to break, and to fix things.
So another way I approach and teach coding is to say that nothing you or I can do will break the computer. So go wild! Everything is possible. You have to tinker. You have to keep going through the code and move things around. It’s like play. You’re learning but you’re also playing, and so playing is a type of learning. As you play with the computer, you’re also learning how to talk like a computer.
When young women and men color come into the classroom, I try to make it as comfortable as possible for them to make mistakes because that’s where the learning happens. They know where to go, to push things around, and to tinker.
Teaching, instructing, and engaging is about validating an affirming young people's life experiences and bringing these experiences into the classroom. It’s saying, ‘OK. this is your experience, how can we construct a program around your experience?’ So when these young people go back into the world, they’re not looking at a street light the same way, they’re thinking about all the different connections that make that street light turn from green to yellow to red. They’re not looking at the world the same way they did before.
We want to present problems and say let’s figure out how to break it so we can fix it. Let’s figure out where it’s broken. Let’s keep breaking things and making mistakes until it works. It doesn’t even have to look good.
Just knowing that it’s okay to break things is one of the best ways to teach young people especially in a world where a lot of things around these young people are broken already.
They’re powerless, or they’re not necessarily aware of how the structures around render them powerless, and that’s when we become disenfranchised. These kids can’t necessarily just wake up and fix their school systems. But they can compose program that models their lives, and they can manipulate the program, which can in turn give them a sense of control, empowerment, and affirmation.
They can create something of their own in a world of chaos.
Tara: I like that you mention the idea of play, which has been theorized a lot recently, especially in the technology and education fields. I also like the idea of tinkering and telling our students that it’s okay to break the code. It’s profound to think about how the process of breaking code relates to our experiences of being broken, as if these two variables are necessary in order to create something new, empowering, and affirming. As an adult in graduate school who is learning how code, I always feel like there’s something missing in the instruction. There’s a step that’s not being taught. I’ve found that in order to get to one step you have to accomplish another step that most likely the instructor didn’t inform you about. So I have to figure out the solution on my own and translate the process according to what I know, how I understand the world, how I, like the code, have been broken.
Ann: I understand that the purpose of these non-profits is to get our kids ready for college. As someone who went through computer science after-school and community-based programs before, I remember getting to college and saying to myself, ‘OK, now what?’ In my experience I didn’t really have the know-how about moving within and among the institution once I arrive to college. So I certainly see these non-profits doing a great job and addressing an important concern as it relates to college readiness.
As more young people of color work and study within STEM fields, it will bring a diversity of solutions to the future. The reason we need these multiple bodies and experiences is so we can come up with creative and innovative solutions. The more people from different worldviews participating in STEM, the more varied and creative the solutions. I definitely see more creative solutions in our future having more youth of color learning code and programming. However, I also see a lot of scared and frustrated college students once they finally arrive to college because a lot of higher education institutions aren’t moving as fast as these nonprofits.
There are very few women of color professors in STEM fields.
In terms of professorship and mentorship at higher education institutions, we aren’t quite where we need to be. It would have been amazing for me to have a woman of color mentor while I was working on my undergraduate degree in computer science. That would’ve transformed my entire trajectory. I don’t regret my experience, but I can clearly see how I was negatively affected by not having that kind of mentorship throughout college.
Also, going to college does not necessarily guarantee that we’ll have the same opportunities as we had in the past. When I teach the curriculum, I also emphasize social entrepreneurship. Not everyone can get into college, not everyone can afford college, and not everyone can attend college as an undocumented citizen. These are different kinds of barriers unique to our communities. So in one sense it’s great that all of these resources are being put into making sure women of color are well-represented. But at the same time, we need make sure that the system grows as they grow.
When they get to college we still need to ensure that those same resources are available to our young women throughout college. Otherwise, these young women of color will most certainly fall through the cracks.
People at universities, no matter race, socioeconomic status, or level of intelligence, can always get lost. We want to make sure our women of color are supported so that the next generation of professors are more diverse and can support the next generation of coders and programmers.
Tara: You’re saying so many great things here! When these young kids reach college there is likely no guarantee that they'll have the resources and mentorship that got them there in the first place. Certainly there’s a dearth of professors of color and women professors in STEM fields. I hope this is changing, but it make take several years or maybe even a generation for it to really fix itself.
Tara: Finally, what’s next for you? What should MMC’s readers know about your future work and projects?
Ann: Looking towards the future, I want Afrolicious to be huge! I want Afrolicious to be a resource for many ideas and stories related to the African Diaspora.
Other projects I’m working on include Black Women Said, a multimedia platform for Black women, and The Kindred Magazine, a magazine about Black women talking to Black women about what it means to be a Black woman. These projects are in response to the ways in which media (mis)represents Black women. I want to create a space where we can build and distribute our own networks and media channels. With my work, and also by way teaching computer programming and code, I want to continue to build a tribe of like-minded people who will champion and create their own content.
Tara: Dope.
Transcribed by Tara L. Conley
Image courtesy of Ann Daramola
To Queer Code: Ann Daramola on Learning and Teaching Computer Programming Part I
In Conversation is a Media Speaks! summer blog series where we chat with fascinating folks in the field of technology, media, and education. For our current feature, we’re highlighting women of color mediamakers, techies, content producers, and programmers.
“I've been coding for the web for about 10 years now. Over the past two years I've been developing coding curriculum that I hope will help bridge the gap between curiosity and careers for disenfranchised youth. In the meantime, I'm working as a professional web developer until I find another institution interested in radical, project-based curriculum.”
Ann Daramola is a web developer, technologist, mediamaker, educator, and computer programmer from Los Angeles, California. She’s responsible for creating and developing Afrolicious, an online network for people to create and champion their own stories. I chat with Daramola about her experiences learning and studying computer programming as an immigrant to the U.S. Daramola also shares her insights about what it means to understand, teach, and “queer” code by asking “What would a computer look like if it was coded by Haitian women?”. Check out our interview with Ann Daramola below.
Tara: Before we get into more a in-depth conversation about computer programing, can you talk about your platform Afrolicious, what is it and how it come about?
Ann: Afrolicious is a lifestyle, it’s a movement! [Laughing]. Afroicious came about around the time I discovered Twitter back in 2007. At the time, I was tweeting primarily under @simplyann, but I wanted to create something different, and that’s how Afrolicious, the Twitter handle came about. Then I bought the Afrolicious domain and started blogging about natural hair. I realized natural hair is a great movement, but it doesn’t always get to the root of our issues. In general, the natural hair movement has been about how we see ourselves or about how we present ourselves to others. So I became really excited about the idea of representation. A few years back Wale, the rapper, started a hashtag on Twitter called #thatsAfrican, which was sort of a tongue and cheek way of talking about being raised and living in Black culture. Then, Twitter ended up censoring the #thatsAfrican trend. I was so upset! The #thatsAfrican hashtag enabled some of us to tell our stories across the Diaspora. It’s a distinct experience we celebrated through Twitter until the platform censored it. Then I realized this is what Afrolicious should be about, that is, it’s about the stories from the African Diaspora. I find and curate art, music, design, books in the Diaspora and highlight them on the website.
Tara: How did you get into computer programming and coding?
Ann: I started writing stories and self publishing on my dad’s old school Apple Macintosh, the really boxy one, which was around 1994-1995. Then from around 1997-1999 I was desktop publishing, like writing stories, formatting, and printing. I got into making brochures for my church and ever since then I’ve been attached to the computer. I also wrote a lot of stories as a kid, so writing was natural for me. Then I started to tinker on the computer quite frequently. During the summers while I was in high school I had a chance to go to an aerospace engineering camp in California. Then I attended UCLA’s summer program for about four years all throughout highschool. That’s really where I was exposed to what we now call STEM education. Back then I was just making telescopes and spin dials. Then I discovered the Internet in 2002. I made my first HTML website in 2003 when I was in college. While in college, I majored in computer science and literature.
Tara: My entrance into media and technology also came from writing and telling stories as a little girl. My family bought our first computer in 1995. I was on America Online in 1996. Like you, I took to the computer immediately; using word processing to write stories, songs, and create images. I also played online in the chat room; talking to my friends who were literally down the street. The idea that I was someplace online talking and, as you say, “tinkering” was fascinating. When I arrive to college in 1999 I was taking rhetoric courses where I learned more about online chatrooms. I wrote a paper about Internet speak, or what we know as “LOL”, “BRB”, and so on.
What would you consider to have been your gateway medium into computer science, or more specifically coding and programming?
Ann: Definitely having access to a computer at home and at school helped. I would arrive to school really early and sit on the computer and Internet just playing and tinkering. I don’t how I discovered an online community forum for artists but I did, and I ended up being one of the writers on the forum. I posted my litte teenage poetry, and I’d get feedback on my poetry from people all over the world. Those connections I made online and through my poetry kept me coming back to the computer and to the Internet. I was also encouraged by my parents to use the computer to create projects for church. By the time I graduated high school it was just assumed that I would go on to pursue computer science in college, and so I did.
Tara: What languages do you know and use?
Ann: I know Java, which is the first language they teach you in college. I currently use Javascript for projects involving [Internet] browsers. I also know PHP, which is the primary computer programming language of Wordpress, and I use this language almost everyday. I also use Ruby, though I’m not as versed as I’d like to be. When I start a project where I need to build it from scratch I use Ruby. I use Java for teaching because that’s the first language I learned. I start with teaching Java since most young people will be exposed to this language when they first enter college, so this will give them a leg up. I know C, but I rarely use it because it’s just a headache (and it’s not as friendly as the other languages).
Tara: Are you self-taught?
Ann: Yes, all of the technology I use now is because I'm self-taught. In college you learn about algorithms and theories, usually based on the concept of object-oriented programming. I learned the algorithms and theories in college, but the actual tinkering, and the ability to crash a computer because you’re hacking into it is all self-taught.
Tara: Can you tell me a little bit more about the curriculum your developing and about the youth populations you hope to reach?
Ann: The curriculum is called Radical Project-Based Curriculum. I call the curriculum radical because it doesn’t depend on boring and outdated examples to address problems. We look at our community and ask what problems need to be addressed, and then look towards technology as means of solving these problems, specifically through programming. The curriculum isn’t about creating a blog. Granted learning how to create a blog is great but building this medium is not crucial for the future. Instead we want to teach youth how to create other, more complex applications; for example, an application that can tell us when the fruit in our refrigerator is going bad. The curriculum is less about how to program than it is about how to think as a programmer. When we do the exercises we slowly integrate the object-oriented syntax and so on. But the idea is to get students to think like a programmer, which is really critical thinking.
The curriculum is designed as a way to build a support system of critical thinkers who can make life decisions and solve everyday problems.
The populations I work with are teenages who are either in school or trying to finish school in a non-traditional way, or young adults (16 to 25-years-old). The curriculum asks youth to focus on the details and to ask questions that can translate processes to a programming language. The reason why the curriculum is crucial is because in between high school and college there’s a huge gap of learning. So if a student goes straight to college from high school s/he may find it difficult to grasp certain concepts in a computer programming course because the student was never really exposed to these concepts before and/or because these concepts really have nothing to do with the student’s everyday life--especially a person of color living in so-called “urban areas”. In my research I’ve looked at trade schools and universities, and I found that it’s really difficult for our young people to bridge the gap between what is taught and our lived experiences.
I believe that your lived experience can be programmed.
Tara: Bridging the gap between computer programming knowledge and lived experience is important. As a researcher looking at this gap, and as someone who doesn’t know how to code fluently, I’m very curious about how youth come to know and understand the process of coding and programming. For me, it’s still very difficult to wrap my head around coding and programming, particularly the logic of it. So on one hand I’m coming into this research from a deficit standpoint in that I don’t know a helluva lot about programming theory or application. However, on the other hand, as a media maker and communications scholar I bring with me a different way to approach studying computer programming in that I am deliberately centering the stories of youth coders and programmers in order to 1) learn more about coding and programming, and 2) to explore through ethnography what I believe will be the future of computing. Even though I’m not trained to think like a programmer or computer just yet, I'm motivated to learn from youth coders and programmers coming up now.
Can you talk more about what you think it means to think like a computer programmer?
Ann: To think like a computer programmer means to be very clear about your objectives. I used to manage a technology lab of a LA-based non-profit. I was managing over twenty computers, desktops, and laptops. I also taught web development courses at the local middle school and at an high school after-school program. I had all of these different technology things going on simultaneously and every time people would come to me frustrated saying, ‘something’s wrong with the computer, it’s not doing what I want it to do!’ I’d tell them that the computer is doing exactly what you’re telling it to do. People would get very frustrated because they felt as if the computer wasn’t understanding them. It’s like if you or I were speaking a foreign language and no one could understand what we were saying, surely then communication would break down. Understanding how computers work and understanding the basic physical architecture of a computer will help you understand how to manipulate the higher languages that are built on top of the computer.
Everything that has a computer is programmable; toothbrushes and refrigerators are programmable.
When you understand those basic building blocks of a computer, you’ll realize the process of programming applies to any computer, it’s just scaled down to a tiny toothbrush, or scaled up to a gigantic satellite. It’s just about being able to understand that there are different ways to talk to a computer.
There are languages that are developed everyday, and these languages can be more and more abstract. For example, HTML (hypertext markup language) is an abstract way of constructing the images, texts, sounds of what we call a website. It’s abstract but when you look all the way down, it’s basically zeros and ones put in patterns. You and I can’t speak zeros and ones so we come up with a way to translate those zeros and ones. There’s all sorts of jargon that goes into teaching this sort of translation but the most important thing to understand is that you’re learning a new language. You have to give yourself time to learn the grammar, syntax, vocabulary. All of the same kind of rigorous study that you would put into learning Chinese, you put into learning programming. But instead of talking to another human, you’re trying to talk to a computer.
Tara: It’s interesting that your curriculum is not about creating a blog. Though a lot of people are creating and developing blogs and by doing so they’re also teaching themselves how to code and program. I love that because it gets to the core of what’s happening behind the computer screen. That said, I also appreciate you looking beyond the blog platform and on toward more complex processes and applications. I’m interested in the how-of-the-how-of-the-how, in other words, how the image appears on the screen. Some of the questions I keep asking myself concern how computer languages get developed, how they’re understood, what’s in a code, and how might computers encode culture. I believe there’s a link between all of these things but I’m not quite sure how to articulate it just yet.
So my question to you as a coder, particularly as a women of color, how do you understand code and computer languages? What is in a code? What does it mean to code, and can the act of coding somehow speak to our ways of understanding culture?
Ann: One of my favorite questions to ask myself is, what would a computer look like if it was coded by Haitian women? What would a computer look like if it was coded by a Nigerian herbalist? How would I code this program differently if I was coding in French or from a Nigerian worldview? All of the computer languages we have now were written by a majority of white men. So their way of thinking can be considered very binary; an on and off, which is the very basic level of a computer’s architecture and processor. The central processing unit of a computer is very simply zero and one.
But take for instance Yoruba cosmology, ideas and concepts are much more fluid--it can be zero and one at the same time! These are my favorite questions to ask myself as I’m coding.
For me, coding is a very lonely experience. It’s just you, the code, and the computer, which is why I love the Internet. I can connect with large representations of people through avatars, Twitter, online forum, and talk to them while I’m going through the lonely process of coding. Coding is very lonely especially considering that I come from a huge family, where everyone is always in each other’s business, and always on top of each other. But you can’t code when people are running around distracting you. The programmer needs to concentrate. This, of course, is not to say that other professions, like carpentry, do not require some level of solitude and isolation from the world. But there’s really no human interaction in the coding process or in that mode of production.
Coming into this very Western way of computer science, especially as an immigrant, and coming into the coding culture, I’m always trying to queer it; trying to construct new ways of thinking about coding and programming. I do this in the way I teach. I use real life examples to teach the architecture and the infrastructure of processes. I use these examples in order to make ideas more accessible to students who didn’t grow up with a computer in the home. In teaching, I’m able to bring my worldview into this already established and very Westernized culture of coding and programming.
Also, a lot about programming is the idea of crashing and burning, which is another reason why I really enjoy coding.
There’s so many different ways to come up with ideas. I get excited when I see computer languages built in different human languages. We're superimposing these understandings on to a computer. Some things will match up and some things will fall off the edges. Some computer languages are limited because they don’t have the multiplicity of human languages to account for it, but we can always change the way we process, program, and present code. Certainly there are standardized rules that people have to learn. But we can always build different ways of understanding the world through computer programming and coding.
Part II of our interview continues tomorrow.
Transcribed by Tara L. Conley
Image courtesy of Ann Daramola