6 posts tagged “culture”

I just blogged about my new mobile laptop, a Lenovo Ideapad s10.  Buying the notebook as part of my desire to become more mobile for the year of 2009 has got me thinking about this relationship of mobility and the technologies that make a mobile lifestyle possible. 

This will the first entry of a series of three posts on Mobility and Tools.  This entry is about our mobile tools as a modern reinterpretation of the purse or hand-clutch.  The next post in this series will be about how mobile tools can enrich the consumer experience of clothing shopping and finally the final post will be about the relationship between the size of mobile tools and gender norms. 

This series will also be the first entries on my new blog, Cultural Bytes, that I am launching in 2009.  Cultural Bytes is where I will comment on the cultural aspects of technology use from a theoretical and practical point of view, highlight research that values cultural knowledge and practice in technology research, and use my research and work experience as case studies. So stay tuned!  For now I will but these posts on mobility right here on hi tricia!


Post 1 of 3 on Mobility Series: Why Lenovo s10 is a modern reinterpretation of the purse-clutch

There's something culturally innovative about the new stylish netbooks on the market.    If you don't know what I am referring to, check out  hp's collaboration with fashion designer, Vivenne Tam (the photos below of the woman in a black dress carrying the clutch is actually an hp laptop that tam designed) , or the Lenovo s10 that I just bought.  These netbooks embody the notion that objects should become deeply integrated into the socio-cultural context in which the object is actually used.
 

The beauty of the Lenovo s10 or tam's hp  is that it  is examplerary of how a popular technological object can balance the symbolic and pragmatic demands of an everyday tool.  This is the exact innovation behind Post-its  - and the same can be argued for netbooks.  Post-it's took the idea of writing, noting, jotting to a whole new level by integrating its innovative design and technology (3M stickiness what what!) into the everyday.

When I started carrying around my Lenovo s10 this past weekend, I realized that i so badly wanted to put a chain on it and carry it around like my hand clutch!  If you know me well, you know that I am obsesed with purses, in particular small, mobile, fashionable purses - the exact words I would use to describe the new Lenovo s10 - small, mobile, and fashionable.     A balance of symbolic status and pragmaticism are the qualities of the modern purse - seems like the Lenovo s10 could be a play on this idea!

Symbolic boundary
The purse is a symbolic boundary between the person and the world, much like the laptop.  And technically, you can only connect to the world through a laptop (email, skype, internet and etc).  The things inside your purse (or wallet) connect you to the world, your driver's licence, passport, cash, credit cards, photos, cellphone, and keys to your car.  If you think about it,  all the things in our purses/wallets are reproduced on our laptops in some shape!    You access your online back account through your laptop with a password key - this isn't too far from the your house key that gives you access to all the things you own.  The photos in your wallet are in your iphoto/flickr or picasa album.  The levels of comparison are endless!  

Value
We are making a statement about what we find to be valuable when we decide to put something in our wallet or purse.  We are saying that these possessions are so important to me that these things need to be close to my body and within arms reach.  In a world of mobility and virtuality the body doesn't lose its importance - if anything it gains importance in new ways. Ultimately it is still mediating all the communication and doing so in a very physical way.  The cross-over quality of netbooks is that they can be held against the body comfortably - comfortable is the key here.  You can hold a heavy 4.5-6lbs apple laptop that looks beautiful - but with it being so heavy it's really not mobile!   At the end of the day, a useful purse is a mobile purse - it goes with the owner and is an extension of her/his body.  It's a utiliarian statement that says "these things need to be with me constantly when I am outside of the house."

Status
The purse symbolizes the carrier's status - it is a public statement that one is taking the things they own, putting them into a purse, and carrying all of in this external, untransparent shell outside the private home.  The purse is signals to potential things inside - expensive purses signal to expensive things - same thing with our tech tools.   Laptops symbolize who you are, what you own, and where you are going.  When used in public, one can extrapolate a lot of information about a person from the way they use their laptop, from the case they carry it in, to icons to documets on their desktop to the decorations on the laptop and to the additional accessories for the laptop and etc.

 "What you put in your bag is very important to you. That makes a bag very personal because in it you have a secret. A secret gives you some sort of power," says Farid Chenounne of  Carried Away: All About Bags.  A purse carries financial capital and also points to the social and cultural capital of the carrier - and again the laptop does the same.  The laptop itself speaks to the finances of the owner and indicates the owner's social and cultural capital.  How many times have you noticed someone's laptop in public, such as at the airport or at a coffee shop?  Did you see stickers on their laptop cover?  Did they have a special case?  A special mouse?  All these things speak to the public display of status in the tools we use.  It's the same thing as in suburbia when neighbors check out each other lawn mowers (I think this is what people do in suburbia) - whenever we  have bring somthing into the public, it takes on a voice of its own and symbolizes parts of "you."

Design Catch Up
Netbook and Purse-Clutch-Wristelet designers have some major catching up to do with each other.  Netbook designers need to pay more attention to the design of clutches as mobile purses, and purse designers need to design more fashionable clutches that accomodate a netbook along with a tube of lipstick,  business cards, and cellphone.   

What I see my Lenovo s10 being most akin to, is the wristlet.  I LOVE wristlets!  In nyc, wristlets make the perfect wallet to put inside a bigger purse so that for your night parties you check your day purse and carry your wristlet around as you schmooze.  

So I conducted a little experiment and took out some of my favorite wristelets and did a visual comparison with my Lenovo s10.   As you can see from these pictures, none of the wristlets I tried to put on the Lenovo worked out.  And it only barley fit in my doggy purse and it was definitely contorting the dog's body - I know a doggy purse doesn't count as a wristlet but I just had to try it out!

 So the next phase of netbooks can further explore the balance in symbolic status and pragmatics of the equipment, while at the same time considering how the object can more closely mirror the clutch/wristlet.  With a netboook, carrying around a laptop without a backpack becomes a possibility.  Well and really who wants to carry around a backpack - it's so ugly - but even I've resorted to using backpacks after backpain of carrying around a heavy macbook - well surely a backpack is one of the most unsexy and unfashionable carrying devices ever!  Not digging the external hump on my back..   

The design and use properties of a successful mobile tools must be integradable into the specific socio-cultural context of usage.  The culture of purse carrying (value, status, fashion, symbolic boundary) is a critical factor to understand for anyone developing mobile tools.   

I just watched Epic Fu's great episode, which included a piece on The Face Transfomer.  Beyond thinking that the Face Transfomer is cool, I started thinking about the social meaning behind this exercise.

Here I am pretending to be an “Afro-Carriabean” - wtf?  I mean cool yes, sure,  I want to see what I look like as a manga character and am curious to see what I look like as a black person,  but there was something odd about trying on different races.  Literally. 

What does it mean for race relations and conceptions when we feel that we can freely try on different races?  Have we become so comfortable with race that we can play around with it like shopping for clothing? 

I am always really sensitive when people say that a person acts like a certain race or culture.  It’s almost akin to imaginatively being another race  - kinda like what we are doing with Face Transfomer.   And you know I actually hear this verbal exchange most often among my white and black or latino friends.   I’ve heard a black person say to a white person, “you know so much about black culture that you are black or at least must have been black in a past life.”  Now I find that on one end to be a compliment, that the white person is accepted as part of the black community, but on the other end I find it difficult to swallow as a form of compliment because most often it is white people who have the most latitude to be absorbed into another race or cultural group.   You don’t usually hear the reverse, that a white person will say to a black person, “wow you know so much about black culture that you are actually white!”  It's like you hear in the movies where they say to white people, you can always come into our part of town, but we will never be allowed to come into yours. 

For dominant groups, like Caucasians in the US,  race can be an after thought so it’s almost like a novelty to pretend for a moment that one is another race or ethnicity.  For people who look anything other than white in Western countries, there isn’t as much freedom to forget one’s skin color because they are reminded of it (usually negatively) in their daily interactions with institutions and people. 

In particular, for non-whites, being a certain race or ethnicity can be a complicated process of accepting ones skin color and coming to terms with the popular (mis)conceptions of one’s race or ethnic group.  A lot of times, this entails the imagination of being white before a full embracement of one’s race or heritage.   For a time period when I was a teenager raised in an all white upper-class  community, I wished I was white so badly so that I wouldn't  have to deal with the racist jaunts by my classmates.  And so here I am, trying on a "West-Indian" face.  Kinda surreal.  Now do I really want to imagine what it is like to look like an Indian female, let's say in the US? or in India? and from what class? what is my migration history? or was I born here?  My point is that being another race is more than just trying it on for a few seconds digitally, but some how we've reduced it down to just that and I wonder if this novelty is an indicator of that we're comfortable with race or that we're just dealing with race in a more post-modern removed and techno-mediated way. 

And you know it's  usually people who are more affluent who have the opportunity become the "other,"  to learn about another culture and to transplant themselves into another ethnic group’s cultural world.  So jokes made to white people like “wow you know so much about my culture, you must be Mexican” just make me uncomfortable because there’s a certain level of privilege that comes with learning about another “culture.”  The fact that I make time and spend money to learn Spanish because I find the language beautiful and useful for my academic interests in Mexican migration is a  privilege.  Now it is a privilege that I embrace and am not embarrassed of and make no apologies for, but at the same time I am quite aware of my social position to even be able to learn another language more out of interest and less out of need.

So back to Face Transformer - does this mean America is comfortable with race (and manga, chimps and euro painters j/k) if we can freely try on different races?  And what does this say about race when we can collapse large groups of people together into general categories?  In Face Transformers all the blacks, Caribbeans and Africans are grouped into the afro-caribbean category, and all Asians are collapsed into the East-Asian category and I think the West Indian group is not referring to people from the West Indies but Indians and Middle-Easterners.   This is an odd form of racial reductionism.  And where are the Latinos – where do they fit in this? And Inuits? 

I’ve always kept a tab on these Face Transformer-like sites  and I  think the fun in trying these online sites out is an expression of an underlying desire to temporarily imagine another physical body without fully committing to that body/face.  And the kinds of changes  rendered by these online sites point to a greater cultural obsession or let’s say anxiety with that rendering.  So for Face Transfomers we could say this is an obsession with race and euro paintings:)   Oh and with age also – you can chose to be a young adult, baby, teenager and old person.

One of the predecessors to Face Transformers was My Heritage and I wrote about the social meaning behind that too 2 years ago when it launched.  So instead of transforming into a race or chimp, like Face Transformer, you can transform yourself into a celebrity and see which one you most closely resemble.  So this points to an obsession with celebrities.

Well after my social diagnosis I think I will upload another picture on Face Transformer and see what I look like as a Male. Hmmm perhaps I have an underlying anxiety with switching genders?  Well did anyone have these thoughts when they uploaded a face on Face Transfomer? 

oh and one thing that I definitely learned is that I don't like good as a Caucasian! Good thing that I embrace my Chinese face!  

Adriene had this silver necklace made for my birthday.  She appreciates my attempts to reclaim this word.  When I was in college, I became sick and infuriated when hearing men call other men "pussys" for not being a "real man." But even more untolerable was hearing other women call other men "pussys" for failing at "manhood."

Whenever I heard "pussy" used in such a condescending way, I would always say "excuse me?  those are my genitals you are referring to and my Pussy is POWERFUL, not weak.  So if you are going to de-masculinize a man, you can de-phallasize him, you can call him an ass asshole, you can call him a dick,  a bastard, but never give him the power of your pussy."

After giving that speech once every week I decided something had to be done, women needed to reclaim the word "pussy" and in effect reclaim their own pussies. So I coined the term "pussy power kunt control."  Pussy Power stuck while kunt control fell to the wayside.  I made buttons with the word "Pussy Power" and I passed it out to women who honored their pussies by referring to it as celebratory word, not a hurtful word. 

Adriene has known me for about 10 years now and I think she has heard me give that speech so many times.  Finally  I have a beautiful necklace for my birthday from one of my best friends!  thank you Adriene!  you TOO have the power of the Pussy!

We will reclaim an identity that we allowed to be taken away from  and reclaim the responsibilities that comes along with it.  If YOU have Pussy Power, NEVER let a man or boy and most importantly another woman call another male a pussy in a hurtful or denigrating way.  Those are YOUR genitals.  PUSSY POWER!

Now on a separate note - Several friends commented on how they were so amazed I could post these photos about Adriene's pussy power necklace gift for me openly on flickr. My birthday was back in April - and those few comments made me pause before posting this on my blog.  So here are my thoughts on this matter.

so when my friends told me that I was brave to openly post these- I ask them why exactly should I have been embarrassed or afraid?  They would say well you know you get google searched for jobs and grants and people might think that you are a liability or they may judge you before they get to meet you.  Academic colleagues have said well your students are going to find it and you're never going to get tenured for posting this or what happens if your professor sees this online?  Well duh - I always googled people before I would interview, hire or even meet someone.  I would like to remind everyone that I was openly doing internet searches on potential dates and hirings back in the late 1900's and early 2000's before Google even existed ok? 

So of COURSE I understand that this public internet posting will be potentially seen by my past, current and future colleagues and/or students.  But I don't think I am doing anything wrong or embarrassing when I insist that women not allow the word "pussy" to be used in a derogatory way.   I am not using it in a nasty way - so how is that a liability? What I find offensive is when people remain quiet when something offensive is said.   And worse off I find it offensive when people judge others for unsubstantiated reasons.  To be anymore hush-hush with pussy feeds into larger schemas of patriarchy and misogyny. 

I stand behind my attempts to un-dirty the word in a fashionable way.  For too long (not in all communities) women's reproductive organs have been considered to be profane and unworthy of equal respect to the phallus.  The sexuality associated with vaginas have been seen as a threat to male power and rituals are created to take away the power from their vaginas.  The menstrual cycles that women go through are seen as filthy - requiring physical separation of women from the community. 

I find it problematic that although we have formal gender equality,  this is not always reflected in our vernacular.  The heavy association of the word "pussy" is too weighted on the side of the "nasty" or as lacking a cock which means lacking power.  So powerful and normalized is the cock that we celebrate and laugh at the word.  Even when a male is called a "cock" - like "he's such a cock," he's a cock precisely because of his unwarranted use of power.   We laugh at jokes about "dicks' - such as Justin Timberlake's Dick in a Box - but the word pussy is so nasty and weak that it can't even be intellectualized or comedized (I made this word up)  in popular culture.  My point is that the verbal representitive use of genitals reflects underlying real world inequalities and tensions between males and females.

I simply will not be embarassed by the names of female genitals  - And if this prevents me from being hired - then I certainly don't belong at that organization, institution or company.  And if students can't take me seriously after reading this, then they need to grow up.  Really.  and if Professors find this and are horrified then I am sure glad that they aren't working with me.

When we make a claim to an identity, it's not just about claiming rights or something abstract like belonging - but it's about claiming responsibility to that identity.  So in claims that I make - like I claim I am Chinese-American or I claim that I am from the U.S. or that I live in Brooklyn or that I a female- then I take a responsibility in those claims to act and to practice what I claim. 

And hopefully future colleagues who do come upon this will see that this is a sign of character - that I am not afraid to stand behind someone or something.  Now I am not some militant gender freak - so I feel no need to parade my thoughts or beat up people for calling men pussies.  Nor do I lack the sense to wear this necklace when I interview someone or when I am being interviewed - or at some funding meeting or my dissertation defense or even at any professional meetings.  I don't believe in drawing unnecessary attention to myself and detracting from the larger goals  in professional situations because I do understand wearing this necklace entails the burden of explaining the message - which I embrace in moments when I want to teach people about pussy power. 

BUT I will wear it when I find see fit and fashionable!   And if after reading this explanation and you still find my pussy power offensive, horrific or distasteful then it's time to bring in some humor into your life and chillll out! Go turn on Prince and Mozart and watch some South Park.

Good writing is a like a drug  - it just makes you keep reading - paragraphs are not opportunities for breaks, but present a moment to soak in the words and immerse yourself in more amazing insights that are hinged on a beatiful bagel like cloud.

Adriana's post on Singy Kids, "From Karachi to Cannes: A Review of "A Mighty Heart",  truly shows off her ability to be a perceptive social commentator.  She has the capabiliy to weave together multiple strands of social issues into a one cohesive and penetrative essay.   The best social commentators have to be seamlessly multi-disiplinary in their knowledge, and I personally believe Adriana is one of the best I have read.   

For example, her review is the first and only piece of writing on Mighty Heart that successfully addresses the  uncomfortable yet difficult to articulate fact that Angelina Jolie is a white woman portraying a mixed woman, Marianne Pearl.   Adriana addresses this topic in logically and convincingly.   Here is an excerpt below on this issues, but by no way this is an excuse to read her essay in full,   

Both Jolie and Mariane Pearl wish for us to believe that the casting of Jolie as a biracial woman is not problematic.  "Aren't we past this?" Mariane retorted when asked to discuss the issue.  "I am Cuban, but I'm also Dutch. Should a Dutch person play me? It's not about skin color, it's about how a person behaves that matters."  If this was indeed the position of Pearl, Jolie and the filmmakers, then I wonder why they bothered with the considerable make up job they performed on Jolie.  Why not simply cast her as she is, without alteration, if indeed, only the person "within" matters?  In fact, why not cast the entire film without regard to ethnicity, race, culture and religion?

So you see, what I love most about her writing is that she writes about so many heavy topics so clearly!   She never loses her audeince -  her review grapples with race and ethnicity relations, literary interpretation, translation authenticity, film analysis, popular culture, and celebrity culture - but never does she belittle her audience with heavy academic jargon.  She gives one of the best summaries of the film,  it "had the opportunity to offer an inquiry and/or critique on this tension, present in Mariane's narration. Instead, it just reproduces it. "

Please write more stuff like this Adriana!!!!

I always walk down E. 3rd st. and this is the first time I've seen any Hells Angels outside.
I was wondering if they were good neighbors, and someone wrote on NYC's City Noise, "Safe neighborhood, courteous meth dealers, what more could a New Yorker want?"

Well I wish they were my neighbors - regardless if they are a combo of charitable fuzzy thug meth-dealers soft bears protectors-of-neighborhoods archivers-of-motocycle-culture lovers drinkers.

I love that on their website it says "HELLS ANGELS and the DEATHHHEAD LOGO ® are trademarks owned by Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation, registered in the United States and various other countries. Should we find you using any of these we will hunt you down and hurt you."

This post is for you katie!  congrats on your openingin nevato!