Author Archives: Hamad Sindhi

Academic freedom under government spying

Both Tim Wu and Nick Bilton make good points in their pieces on digital snooping. Wu points to the structure of the information industry, and the consequences of a centralized and monopolized industry on the ease with which governments can spy on the communications between it’s citizens. Wu also points out that it may not matter whether a monopoly like Google does or does not want to cooperate with the state; such monopolies do not have a choice because current laws are designed to make such organizations complicit in state actions. Bilton’s argument is very similar, but instead of focusing on the structure of the industry, it foregrounds the everyday practices of sharing data online, and highlights the one big truth about the Internet: nothing you do on the Internet can be completely erased from it. Contradicting Wu a little bit, Bilton seems to argue that it may not matter if there are one or multiple companies to track since a proliferation of web-services and types of data does not preclude government spying.

Both Wu and Bilton are very good at stating the problem, but their stated solutions seem to be inadequate. Wu indicates that breaking up monopolies (the government’s job) should do the trick; but following his own argument, there would be no incentive for the national-security state to enforce antitrust regulations. Wu also suggests that, at the personal level, we start using multiple search engines, social media and other web-services in order to scatter the data and make it harder for the government to watch us, and given what we know about how the government currently collects information from the Internet, this may be a good strategy. But Bilton contradicts this – and a quick understanding of the infrastructure of the Internet shows that data can be ‘wiretapped’ from any number of points on the Internet’s infrastructure. Bilton, offering some solutions as well, suggests that there are ways that technologists can out-innovate the government, but he does not provide any examples of this.

I’m not trying to be overly-critical of Wu and Bilton here; I understand that they have thought about this much more and for much longer than I have. Which makes my point even starker – are there even adequate solutions for this problem if people like Wu and Bilton cannot provide any? Bilton says that there are ways to out-innovate the government, but would that look like closing up all sorts of OSS codes, or encrypting our data to the point where it is not publicly shareable? If one of the design principles behind the Internet is ‘openness’ and if we are not quite ready to sacrifice that principle, should we even change anything about the Internet or how we act on it? Or, should we change the source of the problem – the government spying/the spying government.

This also brings up the question of academic (and pedagogical) freedom – in an era of heightened government (and non-government) watching, how do we maintain the integrity of academic freedom? When we put our names on things we say on Twitter and Facebook, we are also putting the weight of our intellectual training and institutional affiliation behind those arguments. At the same time, we are risking unwarranted scrutiny by the government or potential employers. And this can also get particularly dicey with teaching. How can we successfully teach our students to be openly critical of the government and its policies in hybrid or online courses? This question reminds me of Mark D. Pepper’s Teaching Fail article on JITP, where he describes the reaction of other students when a student, in response to an assignment prompt, posted a picture of the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers with the word ‘Deserved’ on the class blog. Pepper does not mention this in his article (since his point is something else), but one could imagine such a posting being picked up by the snooping agents of the government. I offer this example to make a subtler point though – given that we now have a deeper understanding of how and what the government spies on, do we, in small ways, filter our online pedagogy, become less critical or radical, or even change our way of thinking? When we write nowadays, we almost always do it online, and so I wonder whether writing online, given the context of a digital panopticon, changes what and how much we write? In other words, do we subconsciously censor ourselves (or change our thinking altogether) when we write online in a way we would not if we wrote on paper?

To me, it seems that if we follow Wu and Bilton’s suggestions on how to out-maneuvour the government, we may end up going down a spiral of self-censorship, privacy, closed-up coding and a clamp-down on sharing that is so central to the structure of Web 2.0 technologies and the democratic ideologies and practices that they seem to encourage right now. Confronting the government’s spying policies may be a longer and harder fight, but it also may be more fruitful at the end.

Incentivizing failure

There is no magic in innovation and good design. That seems to be the one big lesson of both Scott Berkun’s lecture on the myth of innovation, and Richard Gabriel’s push for the adoption of ‘worse-is-better’ philosophy in the Lisp programming language community. Both Berkun and Gabriel stress the importance of sheer hard work and strategy – yes, you have to simply start to make/do/build, but you also have to sometimes pull back and look at what is the simplest design you can put out there from the complex structure you are designing.

This (as well as Allison Carr’s piece) reminded me a lot of Howard Becker’s Writing for Social Scientists, where Becker reminds us that writing (a paper, book, or some scholarly production) is not a magical activity, but something that requires a lot of work. We usually have an image of some brilliant academic or writer sitting on her computer with finalized thoughts pouring out of her fingers and onto the word processor. This, Becker reminds us, is not the case – in fact, the very first thoughts put on paper (or screen) usually need a lot of simplifying, massaging, and editing to get them to a coherent argument, brilliant academic or not. (On a related note – Becker, as a sociologist, studies how art is made and constructed socially, and he applies the same theory to his ‘art worlds’.)

As scholars, we constantly write, or are expected to anyway. As teachers, we also constantly engage with students’ writings. Hence, I want to connect Berkun and Gabriel’s pieces to both how we do our scholarship and how we teach. I think that the ‘worse-is-better’ philosophy makes a lot of sense when we apply it to our written work – re-writing drafts of papers to get to the basic idea and make it as clear as possible (getting rid of jargon and unnecessary, duplicate, or confusing language). But how can we teach this to our students? How can we encourage them to consider failure when it is precisely what they are socialized to avoid at all costs? More specifically, how can we get them to see their written work as works-in-progress rather than one-time all-nighters? (Yes, scaffolding and peer-review are important here, but what else?)

I think this also has a lot to do with the system of incentives we live in. We not only incentivize success, but also incentivize hiding all our failures that led to that very success (another great point in Berkun’s talk). This is where spaces like Teaching Fails on JITP are useful – the failures are out in the open to be learned from. So can this be replicated for innovators? Should we set up a blog or other kind of space to document and share our failures as we progress with our ITP projects?

PS – I failed to get this posted on time because I was at a location where I thought I would have wifi over the weekend; bad foresight on my part. My apologies for getting this in later than expected.

Cultural production in the classroom

The theme for this week’s readings was ‘applied free culture’, but also, I think, culture in general, and who has the license to play with it. Here, I want to start thinking about what we mean by and how we participate in culture in the context of copyright laws. I’m also responding specifically to the ‘A Fair(y) Use Tale‘ video by Eric Faden, and the ‘Let’s Go Crazy‘ assignment by xtine burrough. Both of these pieces highlight the limitations of copyright laws (i.e., fair use), and try to push those limits further.

These readings really got me thinking seriously about culture and how it’s produced. They brought to mind a lot of ‘old-school’ Marxist sociology about how the economic structure informs culture, and about how culture is (in industrial and postindustrial societies) a construction of industrial and legal relations. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s ‘culture industry’ thesis came to mind as well – the theory that the production of popular culture mirrors the production of industrial goods, that popular culture is an industrial good, cheap, reproducible and lacking in critique, because it is closely controlled by a small number of companies. But of course, Adorno and Horkheimer imagined a passive audience, and today we mostly don’t. And even though Lessig’s read/write culture is definitely a far cry from the culture industry and its reproducible (but never re-writable) pop culture, the lesson from many of the readings is that we have not come very far in removing the stranglehold of industrial-capitalism from culture and how it’s produced.

A remix of the FBI copyright warning

A remix of the FBI copyright warning

Given this stranglehold of culture by the Walt Disneys of the world, what can we do in our roles as both culture-makers (or critics) and as teachers? How can we promote the accessibility of cultural products to ourselves and our students without necessarily putting them in the trenches of Jack Valenti’s copyright wars? Class is of course a part of this – poor students are not expected to be actively engaged with culture-creation, which is not unconnected to the debate around copyright. And just like cultural-production, culture-hacking can be a largely male, white, upper/middle-class phenomenon.  So, how can we encourage our students to think about culture as something they can play with and hack, or even create? I think that both Eric Faden and xtine burrough do just this type of work (while also exemplifying the class distinctions that make the work possible) – Faden uses clips from Disney movies to explain copyright laws and fair use (where the video itself is an example of fair use because it is both educational and a parody of Disney), and xtine burrough creates a class assignment that makes use of a court ruling in favor of the fair use of Prince’s ‘Let’s Get Crazy’ song as background music in personal YouTube videos.

But is this enough? Does fair use have to be limited to “purposes of criticism, news reporting, teaching and parody” only? What about cultural production – i.e., building on previous work and making new cultural goods? Could this be the reason the humanities (and the social sciences, to a certain extent) have put most of their energies toward critique (and parody sometimes), but not so much toward creation? How would learning (and teaching) be different if students were allowed to build on current cultural products and make them publicly available?

Hamad’s Mid-term Proposals

Project 1: Sociology Inter-textbook/Create-Your-Own-Textbook

Intro: In an effort to diminish the power of heavy, pricy, and boring textbooks in an intro class, I propose an online ‘inter-textbook’. Students will use the Internet’s many ‘texts’ (written, pictures, videos, audio, games) to create their own chapters on a very large online cork board-type space (similar to padlet.com). As the professor, I would provide lots of structure, like taking the main concepts found in one textbook chapter and setting them up on the board in a logical manner, and guiding the students to figure out what is a good source and what is an unreliable source of information. The students will then post (under their assigned concept) any relevant texts (online articles, blogs, videos, pictures) that provide the definition of the concept, examples of the concept, people associated with the concept, etc. Students will also be required to comment upon and question the postings of other students and thereby engage in a dialogue about their interpretation of the concepts. To make this as close to a traditional textbook as possible, the questions on any quizzes or tests will relate directly back to the boards they create. In short, I envision this as a space for students to create their own chapters, still working with the concepts that any traditional textbook would contain, but making it their own by posting texts that make sense of the ideas to them and engaging with other students about the validity of their sources and the level of understanding they have about the concepts. Class time would be used to go over the board the students have created during the week and fill in any gaps or correct any inaccurate information.

Personas:

The Always-Onliner: This person is always online, using his/her cell-phone in class to either check Facebook or fact-check things said in class.

The Never-Onliner: This person is only online if required to be for either work or school.

The Google-master: This person will google anything and everything, and is very adept at searching online to verify an opinion or a fact.

The Left-field thrower: This person talks about things that are usually irrelevant to the ongoing discussion, with lots of colorful personal anecdotes.

The Minimalist: This person always questions the purpose of any school-work, only does what is required and does not care about the learning process.

Use case scenario: The ‘inter-textbook’ would be found by entering a link on a web-browser. Ideally, log-in will not be necessary. If a log-in is necessary, that information will be provided to the students along with the link.

The Always-Onliner: This person would easily find the site, perhaps by clicking on a link provided by the instructor in an email. S/he would not have any difficulty logging in, if needed. S/he would have a short learning curve, mostly involving getting used to the controls on the site. S/he would most likely be a prolific linker – comfortable with linking to many types of online media.

The Never-Onliner: This person may have some difficulty understanding the mechanics of the project. S/he may be able to easily find the website by copying and pasting the link provided by the instructor in an email. S/he may have a long learning curve when trying to get used to the controls on the site, and s/he may not be very comfortable posting things like videos and pictures. S/he may also not be (at first) comfortable clicking through links provided by other students.

The Google-master: This person would be able to find the site easily by clicking through the link provided in an email by the instructor. S/he may have a somewhat longer learning curve (but not as long as the Never-Onliner) when trying to use the controls on the website. S/he would most likely be a prolific linker – comfortable with linking to many types of online media.

The Minimalist: This person would be one of the last students to open-up the link or log onto the website (if that is the case). S/he would most likely lose their log-in information or the web-address multiple times – sometimes using this as an excuse to not do work. S/he would have a long learning curve when using the controls on the site, and when trying to find and post relevant links on the site. Unless given a high incentive to, this person would most likely never click through links provided by other students.

The Left-field thrower: This person may be able to access the website without any problems. S/he may have a somewhat longer learning curve, but mostly due to not following instructions well. When engaged in doing work on the site, this person will most likely post links, videos or pictures that are only tangentially relevant to the concepts. The links this person posts may confuse other students trying to get a good grasp on the concepts.

Full-Fledged version: For a full-fledged version of this website, I will want to create a web-application using a development framework like Ruby on Rails. Since Rails is an open-source framework, I would simply download it for free. Creating something from scratch would give me a lot of control to build a user-interface that would balance intuitive use with the major requirements for the project (posting, sourcing, linking, commenting, editing). There would be a log-in process, with just one username and password for the entire class. Creating and managing multiple ‘boards’ or ‘walls’ for all the chapters would be easier, and I could set up an intuitive linking system across chapters, with a table of contents. Having control over the back-end of the site would also make it possible for me to tweak it further as the project rolls out over the semester.

Time assessment (full version): Implementing the full-fledged version will most likely take 6 months. This will involve learning Ruby on Rails, experimenting with simple designs on Rails, building a prototype of the inter-textbook (one chapter), implementing the prototype (as a class assignment with a current class), working out any problems that would arise, and completing the final version (with all chapters).

Stripped-down version: For a stripped-down version, I would use web applications that are already out there, for example, Padlet. Padlet is free to use, and it automatically gives the user a unique wall-space that can be shared with any number of collaborators. The user-interface is easy and intuitive, and walls can be made ‘private’ for use by a specific class. Since this web application is modeled as a ‘one wall/one project’ system, it may be difficult to create and manage separate walls for each chapter of the textbook, as each chapter may require a separate wall and therefore a different web-address.

Time assessment (stripped version): Implementing the stripped-down version will most likely take 3 months. This will involve learning and experimenting on Padlet, building a prototype wall (one chapter), implementing the prototype (as a class assignment with a current class), working out any problems that would arise and completing the final version (with all chapters).

Project 2: Culture-Jamming/Meme-Building

Intro: Applying sociological concepts to everyday activities and messages is one of the hardest skills to instill in intro level students. I’ve been thinking about how students can use the everyday material that is presented to them online and remix it to create sociologically relevant messages. ‘Culture-jamming’ is a technique used by activists who engage with mainstream messages (especially advertisements), point out the fallacies inherent in those messages, and sometimes change the script of those messages to relay the truth about a specific product or service. ‘Memes’ are continuously reproduced cultural messages, usually visual in nature with some changeable text, that are often found on social media sites. Memes are also a highly effective way of learning and reproducing the transient cultural norms of the time. Students in an intro level sociology class will learn how to build memes, and produce sociologically relevant memes to spread on social media sites. Each week, students (working in teams) will look for memes relevant to the topic of the week and culture-jam it to convey a sociological message instead.

Personas:

The Reddit-Obsessed: This person is obsessed with both looking at and perhaps even tweaking memes. They get all of their entertainment, socialization and even news from Reddit or Tumblr, sometimes even forgetting to eat because of an online flame-war.

The IRL-Centric: This person is only online if required to be for either work or school. S/he makes it a point to not create any online social-media accounts for fear of privacy violations, becoming addicted to social-media or discomfort with online technology in general.

The Activist: This person is always highlighting and critiquing the social-economic-corporate conspiracies in society. S/he is frustrated by the social construction of race, gender, class, social institutions and society in general.

The Culture-is-Natural-ist: This person thinks that the cultural norms prevalent in society today are just the way things have always been, and a reflection of natural laws. S/he is unable to see the social script at work when they come across cultural memes.

The Minimalist: This person only does what is minimally required, his/her only goal is to pass the class, and s/he does not care about the learning process.

Use case scenario:

The Reddit-Obsessed: This person will be the most prolific meme-maker, or at least understand the concept and the mechanics behind meme-building more easily than the rest. S/he will have the shortest learning curve, but may still struggle with making the memes sociologically relevant.

The IRL-Centric: This person will most likely be the most hesitant to participate in the project. It will require a lot of hand-holding to get this person on board to at least look for and put forth ideas for tweaking memes. Even so, s/he may be very uncomfortable promoting the meme that his/her team creates on social media.

The Activist: This person will be readily convinced to culture-jam popular memes, and may even suggest ideas about how to change the messages of the memes to reflect sociological perspectives.

The Culture-is-Natural-ist: This person may be the most hesitant to critique or think about changing the messages that are conveyed in popular memes. S/he may even buy into the cultural script the meme promotes, and if s/he tweaks any memes, s/he will tweak to reflect the same cultural script as the original meme.

The Minimalist: This person would never look for current memes, initiate any ideas about changing memes, or try to do any technical work in tweaking the memes. S/he will depend on the work of more engaged students.

Full-Fledged version: For a full-fledged version of this project, I will want to provide the students with a few workshops on using advanced meme-building tools like Photoshop (proprietary software) or Editor by pixlr.com (free web application). To ensure that students are ready to engage in meme-building I would also set aside some time for them to practice in class (in a computer lab) and assess their final products for a grade. Although Photoshop and Editor can be used to tweak existing memes, they are more geared toward building memes from scratch.

Time assessment (full version): Implementing the full-fledged version will most likely take 3 months. This will involve learning Photoshop or Editor, experimenting with simple designs on either application, building a prototype assignment as a team-project, implementing the prototype (as a class assignment with a current class), working out any problems that would arise, and completing the final project design.

Stripped-down version: For a stripped-down version, I would use simpler meme-building web applications, like, the Imgur meme-generator. Imgur is free to use, where a user is able to either borrow background images from current popular memes, or upload their own images. The user-interface is easy and intuitive. Although Imgur can be used to build new memes, it is more geared toward tweaking existing memes.

Time assessment (stripped version): Implementing the stripped-down version will most likely take 2 months. This will involve learning and experimenting on Imgur, building a prototype assignment as a team-project, implementing the prototype (as a class assignment with a current class), working out any problems that would arise, and completing the final project design.

Hamad’s 3 Project Abstracts

  1. Sociology Inter-textbook: In an effort to diminish the power of heavy and pricy textbooks in an intro class, I propose an online ‘inter-textbook’. Students will use the Internet’s many ‘texts’ (written, pictures, videos, audio, games) to create their own chapters on a very large online cork board-type space (pinterest?). As the professor, I would provide lots of structure, like taking the main concepts found in one textbook chapter and setting them up on the board in a logical manner, and guiding the students to figure out what is a good source and what is an unreliable source of information. The students will then post (under their assigned concept) any relevant texts that provide the definition of the concept, examples of the concept, people associated with the concept, etc, with a brief explanation of what the post is and how it relates to the concept. Students will also be required to comment upon and question the postings of other students and thereby engage in a dialogue about their interpretation of the concepts. To make this as close to a traditional textbook as possible, the questions on any quizzes or tests will relate directly back to the boards they create. In short, I envision this as a space for students to create their own chapters, still working with the concepts that any traditional textbook would contain, but making it their own by posting texts that make sense of the ideas to them and engaging with other students about the validity of their sources and the level of understanding they have about the concepts. Class time would be used to go over the board the students have created during the week and fill in any gaps or correct any inaccurate information.
  2. Culture-jamming/Meme-building: Applying sociological concepts to everyday activities and messages is one of the hardest skills to instill in intro level students. I’ve been thinking about how students can use the everyday material that is presented to them online and remix it to create sociologically relevant messages. ‘Culture-jamming’ is a a technique used by activists who engage with mainstream messages (especially advertisements), point out the fallacies inherent in those messages, and sometimes change the script of those messages to relay the truth about a specific product or service – a popular example is when Adbusters took existing tobacco and alcohol ads and remixed them to convey messages about the deleterious health consequences of using those products. ‘Memes’ are continuously reproduced cultural messages, usually visual in nature with some changeable text, that are usually found on social media sites. Memes are also a highly effective way of learning and reproducing the transient cultural norms of the time. Students in an intro level sociology class will learn how to build memes, and produce sociologically relevant memes to spread on social media sites. Each week, students (working in teams) will look for memes relevant to the topic of the week and tweak (jam) it to convey a sociological message instead. In class, teams will present their memes, and the class will vote for the ‘Best Meme’ prize. The winning team’s meme will then be spread around by all students on their social media networks. At the next class, students will reflect on any feedback or responses they receive about the meme from their social networks, and how they responded to those reactions.
  3. What Would Marx Tweet?: In an effort to include students in the ongoing online cultural conversations on topics like race, gender, inequality, education, etc., I want to scaffold intro students into such conversations as informed and engaged participants with a defined perspective. The aim of this project is to have students use Twitter to tweet a series of messages they think their assigned social thinker would say about the world today. Since this will be for an intro class, students will use the topic they are reading about that week and create a series of tweets (4-5 per week) that uses the concepts learned that week to their everyday life. To give the students a sense of perspective, the instructor will assign prominent social theorists to students, and the students will combine their knowledge of the work of the assigned social theorist/perspective and the concepts of the week to come up with appropriate tweets. Later on in the semester, students will also be required to engage with other students’ tweets and start a conversation or debate on the topic (which will inevitable be based on the perspective they are assigned). Toward the end of the semester, students will also be required to engage in ongoing Twitter conversations that is also connected to the topic they would study during that week (the instructor will identify and assign these conversations to groups of students). Students will be required to use class-specific hashtags (#marx, #introsoc, #race) to track conversations between themselves as well as make it easier for the instructor to track the work students are doing.

Hamad Sindhi – Project Ideas

So I’m not a very creative person, and I’ve been trying to jot down as many ideas as possible, but so far have only been able to produce 1 and a half ideas, and here they are:

1. The half idea: I like the way memes play a part in the social life of the Internet. I was impressed with Patrick Davison’s ‘The Language of Internet Memes’ in The Social Media Reader, as well as our conversations about memes in the Core I class – their folk character, their ephemerality but also how they can provide a window into the cultural conversations of the time. I think it may be a good idea to show students how to create these cultural objects, how to trace their distribution in a social network and how to analyze the conversations people initiate because of the ideas embedded in those memes. This does not have to be a ‘creation’ activity only. Before students start creating their own memes, we could learn how to analyze the significance of past memes that garnered much attention (ex: #muslimrage, the ‘this is what I actually do’ meme, etc.). Students will learn about the context of such memes (why and how did they start?), and learn how to analyze their impact on the communication, spread, and death of ideas.

2. Creating an intro level Sociology inter-textbook: For an intro level class in Sociology, almost all professors use a large and expensive textbook that is usually never bought or read by the students (at least in my experience at BMCC, where students come from financially unstable backgrounds). I’ve been thinking of ways to provide students with the relevant chapters as cheaply as possible without violating copyright laws, but it still does not seem to be enough. Even if they have access to the material, it is often written in a language that is not at their reading level and/or does not engage them enough. Thinking through how to get the students to engage with any material before class, and connecting it with the principle of intertextuality at the core of the Internet as well as the principles of collaboration, citation and source-recognition at the core of Wikipedia, has led me to this idea: the students will use the Internet’s many ‘texts’ (written, pictures, videos, audio, games) to create their own chapters on a very large online cork board-type space (pinterest?). As the professor, I would provide lots of structure, like taking the main concepts found in one textbook chapter and setting them up on the board in a logical manner, and guiding the students to figure out what is a good source and what is an unreliable source of information. The students will then post (under their assigned concept) any relevant texts that provide the definition of the concept, examples of the concept, people associated with the concept, etc, with a brief explanation of what the post is and how it relates to the concept. Students will also be required to comment upon and question the postings of other students and thereby engage in a dialogue about their interpretation of the concepts. To make this as close to a traditional textbook as possible, the questions on any quizzes or tests will relate directly back to the boards they create. In short, I envision this as a space for students to create their own chapters, still working with the concepts that any traditional textbook would contain, but making it their own by posting texts that make sense of the ideas to them and engaging with other students about the validity of their sources and the level of understanding they have about the concepts. Class time would be used to go over the board the students have created during the week and fill in any gaps or correct any inaccurate information.

Hamad Sindhi – bio

Hello everyone! I’m a third-year Sociology student. The question that drives my academic work is: how do we belong in this time of neoliberalism and globalization, and how does that belonging get strengthened for some and disrupted for others? I’ve focused this question down to questions of citizenship and embodiment during environmental disasters. I am particularly interested in observing the relationships between people and objects when preparing for and dealing with disasters, because I believe that studying such interactions can tell us something about how disasters are important in the social construction of belonging. Along with my research interests, I am also devoted to pedagogy and to being a public sociologist. I have taught ‘Introduction to Sociology’ and ‘Media Theory’ (at BMCC and City College, respectively), and have also started a personal academic blog to help me start and explore ideas that may become research projects in the future: www.socobjects.org, which is still in a nascent stage with only one post so far. And here’s my twitter handle: @hamsindh.