February 2020 – Your Life Through A Lens

Martha Stewart Weighs The Same As A Duck

Fans of Monty Python may remember the witch scene from The Holy Grail. Concerned citizens discussed things about a girl that had no relevance, for example, whether she weighs the same as a duck or not, to decide if she was a witch. Although a humorous reference, it gets the ball rolling for understanding the witch hunt we are all part of due to this new wave of technology. Technology allows us to communicate with many people, but it also allows many people to see what we say and sometimes limit our freedom of it. Many celebrities fell victim to the trap of free speech such as Martha Stewart and Kevin Hart.

Picture courtesy of Sheknows.com

Technology enables anyone, anywhere, to reach an audience of sizes never before seen (the world). There are always pros and cons to something this powerful: Mass communication and publicity. The way in which technology, specifically social media, shares information so quickly is through making a tweet, announcement, or post publicly accessible.

Many Kickstarters or crowdfunding projects have successfully made the world a better place, and some projects such as “Potato Salad” raised $55,492 to help Zack Brown in “just making a potato salad” [1]. Not to beat a dead horse, but because Brown’s idea was made public, 6,911 people saw this and gave monetary donations towards his cause.

It’s fun to read about heartwarming stories and those stories that make us laugh like the one above, but more often than not the public eye is not always receptive of what others have to say. This is especially true for celebrities who have a spotlight trained on their every public action.

Martha Stewart was chastised for using the n-word on television and Kevin Hart would have missed out on his goal of hosting the Oscars – had he not quit – because of comments he made towards the LGBTQ+ community years prior.

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech, but I believe technology gives the public an opportunity to blur the line with one word; Offended. If someone is offended by what another has to say, it must immediately be taken seriosuly to forestall any further hate speech if it has occurred.

According to WBGH, Stewart responded to Snoop Dog’s comment about the cover art for the infamous rapper, Lil Yachty, being “n****r s**t” on VH1. Stweart asked Yachty how he felt about Snoop using “n****r s**t” [2]. The question did not appear to be meant as offensive and was quoting Snoop Dog who most viewers would not have condemned for using it.

Professors and journalists argue about whether certain cultures maintain the rights to different words such as African Americans being the only culture allowed to use the n-word. If people, Martha Stewart for example, disagree that their language should not be limited because of their culture, who’s job is it to correct or agree with them?

Because of technology’s increasingly high level of publicity, it seems as though society views it as their own obligation to do so. It encourages viewers, who were not involved in the conversation, to be part of the solution or resolution.

As an added example, Kevin Hart commented on twitter about his predisposition against LGBTQ+ tendencies or associations in his home. In one of the tweets, he said that if he finds his son playing with a dollhouse he would ‘break it over his head and say… ‘stop that’s gay’ [3]. Hart later apologized saying he is “evolving and want[s] to continue to do so. [His] goal is to bring people together not tear us apart”. Although the tweets were offensive, had the exchanges been made in person to one or two other people, the stakes would have been much lower and he would have offended fewer people.

Technology gives everyone a voice to which they can use to inspire and reach others. Martha Stewart and Kevin Hart both used this ability with appearances in movies and tv shows as well as being active on different social media. However, if an online message insights hate or anger, it affects a much larger amount of people than if spoken verbally.

I believe that everyone should be able to exercise their freedom of speech and their freedom of religion. Many consider Christianity to include hateful themes such as their disapproval of homophobia and other similar LGBTQ+ identities. The backlash for Stewart’s quoting of Snoop Dog and Kevin Hart’s extension of his Christian beliefs can be traced to the introduction of mass social media and technology, but can also stand as examples for how technology can limit an individual’s constitutional rights.

Aside:

I understand the topics I covered are controversial in their own rights. I do not accept ‘hate speech’ as something to be allowed under ‘free speech’. That being said this blog post is about technology’s effect on society, freedom, and rhetoric, not whether or not these examples are in fact hate speech or free speech.

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– Michael Magnotti

Part-time writer, Michael Magnotti, thrives on leading passionate people to see the world in different ways. Although Michael writes about very different topics, he uses them all as an easy-to-read guide for seeing what you didn’t know was there!

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Resources:

Chess Slaps Not Gonna Lie … Here’s Why

Before I get into how to play chess (in the next blog), I want to answer the age-old question of “Why should I learn to play Chess?”. There are many reasons to learn the game and many of them revolve around academics. Academia tends to be fond of chess, but it is also beneficial to look at some social and practical reasons for learning as well.

(Picture by Michael Magnotti)

I learned to play Chess because a couple of my family members were playing and I was honestly upset I couldn’t play. I saw the two people I respect the most go head to head in a battle of the wits at the dining room table. They were glaring at each other until there was a winner. They shook hands and went their ways, one with their tail between their legs.

The dramatic scene unfolded as I watched. When it was over I asked my grandfather to teach me (mainly to give him an ego boost after losing to my uncle). We played for the rest of the night while everyone else partied away. I got sucked into it and could not leave until my parents said it was time to go, even then I didn’t want to.

The point of the story is this: Chess has always been a way to connect with people, and it still is today. My grandfather continues to meet people through Chess and he even got to meet a Chess Master. I got to play him even though he beat me faster than I could figure out what his plan was. I still had some great conversations and it exercised a part of my brain that I haven’t really used; critical thinking.

I don’t mean the critical thinking you learn in school or when you try to solve a math problem. I am talking about the type of critical thinking used when you analyze a situation and understand what is truly happening on both sides. In a way, Chess is almost rhetorical.

In most rhetoric courses, they will probably teach rhetoric as communication and ‘seeing’ how you affect someone else through your semantics. San Diego State University defines rhetoric as investigating “how language is used to organize and maintain social groups, construct meanings and identities, coordinate behavior, mediate power, produce change, and create knowledge”.

Chess is most definitely a player versus player sport, which forces opponents to coordinate the behavior of the other sides and take power over a given situation. Recognizing how your opponent is thinking and understanding how to fight it, defend it, or sometimes bypass it all together is a critical thinking skill far too common in society today.

Some people have recognized this lack of social communication and cognitive development like Greg Lukianoff. He felt so strongly about this topic, he dedicated an entire chapter or two in his book “The Coddling of the American Mind” to showing the consequences of limiting this type of interaction.

Chess as a game and as a sport inspires me to continue learning and continue interacting with the people I care about and learning more about the people I don’t know. It also inspires me to keep my mind sharp and think critically about the situation I am in.

Not everyone thinks the same as me, but if learning Chess for the academic benefits doesn’t interest you hopefully learning tp play as a way to connect with others does!

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Remember to Say It With Your Chess!

– Michael Magnotti

Part-time writer, Michael Magnotti, thrives on leading passionate people to see the world in different ways. Although Michael writes about very different topics, he uses them all as an easy to read guide for seeing what you didn’t know was there!

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Resources:

What is Rhetoric? | Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies

Royalty Who?

Chess comes with quite a bit of lingo and jargon with their own separate connotations, but one reigns supreme; excellency or royalty. Titles get thrown around like International Master and Grandmaster, and they all seem to apply to elite members of the community. This language comes from an older time when the connotations matched the players, but it is not so anymore.

Throughout history, Chess had been played by royals and intellectuals who trained with other players. Now, you can walk through Washington Square in New York and find Chess Hustlers playing people on their lunch breaks. The game itself has changed the demographics, but it still has a ways to go.

One of the greatest games was played in 1956 by Bobby Fischer, which they later called the game of the century. Similar to the Immortal Game with Anderssen, Fischer won after sacrificing his queen. What makes the match so historical, Fischer was only 13 years old at the time playing against 26-year-old chess master Donald Byrne. Fischer went on to become the youngest Grandmaster at 15 years old until very recently.

On top of the major exhibition of genius, Fischer came from a rough childhood. His father filed for divorce and left when he was 2 years old. He started playing when his older sister bought him a chess set, and the rest is history. Of course, Bobby Fischer paved the way for a lot of American chess masters, but the history is still being written.

As it stands today, there have only been 3 African Grandmasters. A Grandmaster is someone with a rating of 2500 or greater, assuming the rating comes from International Chess Federation (FIDE) sponsored events. These events are far and few in countries such as Zambia and areas like the Bahamas. The first black Grandmaster was Maurice Ashley, a Jamaican-American, in 1999.

The game tries to reach as many players as possible, but the main concern is a lack of funding and accessibility for many who want to join the game. Some participants raised thousands of dollars to attend just one event in hopes of rising through the ranks with enough money to keep them afloat. Yes, some players have been paid over $5 million for one match, but they had to play a lot more than one match to get there.

The United States had a select few who participated in Chess tournaments, but it took Bobby Fischer to ‘open the floodgates’ for Americans to see what can come of it. Players like Maurice Ashley and Pontus Carlsson are starting a new wave of inspiration based on love for a game that goes back more than a century (pun intended… from the game of the century… ). Either way, chess is a game of wit and strategy and triumph. It has a history of shinning the spotlight on the underdogs who shine out of nowhere. It is no longer dominated by experienced royalty with training and is instead a game anyone can win no matter where you’re from, or how much money you have, or what the color of your skin is.

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Remember to Say It With Your Chess!

– Michael Magnotti

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Resources:

Bobby Fischer, Troubled Genius of Chess

Personalized Versus Privatized: A White Christmas For All

“Bringing the best user experience to its customers through its innovative hardware, software, and services” – Apple Mission Statement

Corporations such as Apple and Google focus on ‘user experience’ when designing their products, and with good reason. People don’t buy iPhones and Google Homes because they have to, they buy them because they want the experience. Everything an iPhone can do necessary for everyday life, a $15 Tracphone can do for a mere fraction of the price. These major companies try to attract as much of your time as possible, it’s their business.

They have a moral dilemma to make, however: Personalized experience at the cost of user privacy or user privacy at the cost of business.

For years, scholars have debated the importance of personalization such as preferences, suggested, or ‘recommended for you’ aspects of technology. Some argue that this mass amount of information is going to be the future of technology, while others argue the dangers of personalized features leading to a dystopian world without privacy. The Netflix Original Black Mirror takes this idea to the extreme with their episode White Christmas.

In the episode, a cookie, or a neural code, of a person can be made and put into a device similar to a Google Home. The cookie, being a copy of the user, knows the user’s preferences and behaviors which it then uses to run the smart home personalized for the user. It sounds all good and well until you find out the cookie thinks just like the user – a human- and feels trapped inside the device with nothing to do but serve. (As you may be able to tell, I enjoyed the episode and I recommend it to anyone interested in questioning technology).

Technology as a topic can be very broad and lend itself to many ambiguous controversies; privacy being one of them. Because of this versatility as a topic, it becomes hard to be pro-tech when you also value privacy.

For example, companies like Google, Facebook, and the like all contain similar messages in their Mission statements. Google strives to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” with Instagram following suit by stating they “bring you closer to the people and things you love”^[1]^[2]. Facebook goes so far as to say people use the app to “stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them”^[3].

On the surface, all of these missions or core values appear to be user-oriented (and they are). A good customer experience keeps the population happier, less stressed, and overall in a better place. Without revolving around the customer, companies wouldn’t be doing their jobs. Although they revolve around the user, it begs the question – Is it doing good for the user?

The problem with personalization on the scale of mass social media, personalization requires details about the person in question: what do they like? What do they believe in? Who do they talk to? Where are they from?

Most people either don’t know about the Terms of Service or don’t care to read them. The reason I say most people don’t know, Google has been quoted saying the users agree to the Terms of Service when they use the google search engine. Imagine signing a contract you didn’t know existed. In order to “serve you relevant ads”, they collect data on your activity and use it to personalize your experience. That being said, NBC News contributes to the debate with the shocking fact that “Google has more data than Facebook”^[4]. A website created for users to look up information has more data than a social media app that requires a confirmed email, phone number, security question, and has access to your entire social network.

I have brought this topic up to many people, and there are a few skeptics (my father included) who do not believe a word of what I have mentioned. However, a TEDx talk by Eli Pariser provides all the proof needed. In his talk, he asked a couple friends to search for a simple, objective topic, ‘Egypt’. What came back were two different search results, one of which never mentioned the political protests in Egypt at the time^[5]. This finding strikes many like Eli as concerning because these websites show the user what it thinks they want to see, not what they should see. If that isn’t scary enough, Mark Zuckerberg being the CEO of Facebook might do the trick.

Zuckerberg is in charge of the user interface for Facebook. A user interface is the visual part of an app or website ( what the user sees). The CEO was quoted saying that “a squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa”^[5]. Let’s go back to Facebook’s mission statement.

“stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them”

If the program that decides what “matters” to us might choose to show us a video of a squirrel over the crisis in Africa, can it be trusted with the private and personal data the users allow it to access?

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– Michael Magnotti

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