"Gentrification has no room for the question 'Where did the displaced go?'".
This connection might seem like stretch at first, but -- last year Jason Brennan wrote
A Partial List of Questions About the Native Apple Watch SDK (maybe the only worthwhile piece of "developer commentary" ever written), and one the questions that has stuck with me is, "Will I think about where “away” is when I throw the watch away?"
In my view, one of the primary goals for our new medium is the visibility of context -- getting away from "peeking through a pinhole" and toward "seeing the shape of the whole". Seeing the whole, by definition, means that there is no more "away" where things can hide out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
The people that go "away" from a city as housing and population characteristics change,
the material that goes "away" when you throw a consumer product in the trash,
the carbon that goes "away" from a car's tailpipe,
the lines of code that go "away" when bundled up into a library and hidden behind an API,
(none of these things really go away, of course -- we just find ways to avoid looking at them, until the facade collapses and becomes a tragedy)
to me, all of those things are consequences of the same problem -- seeing the world through media that's too narrow and myopic to capture the full situation. (And the worst offender is "stories" in "words" -- a medium that's entirely about narrowing the viewpoint to a thin thread of causal events among a handful of actors. An utter misrepresentation of reality.)
I look forward to understanding the world through a medium that's so big, there's nowhere for "away" to go.
On Dec 30, 2016, at 11:32 AM, Toby Schachman wrote:
Hi Paula,
This was a great recommendation! I'm looking forward to our discussion and also excited to join the discussion at EM Wolfman. I think the chapters you suggested are relevant. A group's power in society is tied to the group's access to the tools and channels of media for expressing their perspective, and this is something as makers of a new medium that we need to think about.
The chapter "Vanilla Cities and their Chocolate Suburbs" also hit home for me. "Gentrification has no room for the question 'Where did the displaced go?'". In our case, to Stockton, Modesto, and Sacramento apparently (I had no idea about this). This underlying cause of inequity, that marginal communities have no permanent home, seems relevant to our group's emphasis on having a physical place for people to engage ideas and each other.
Thanks for spearheading this,
Toby
On Thu, Dec 29, 2016 at 11:12 AM, Paula Te wrote:
Hi friends,
As I have not read your emails and have only scoured the internet for interesting reads about community engagement and not been able to find a reading that summarizes why I feel community (and a diverse one) is important (ha) [1] I should probably give you a quick recommendation for something you might like to read - that does touch on why a diverse community is important - and that will also be followed with a book club hosted by a nearby community.
We Gon' Be Alright by Jeff Chang is a series of essays on race and resegregation. I am only halfway through but can recommend reading The Crisis Cycle (Introduction) and The Odds: On Cultural Equity. It's relatively quick read and I enjoyed the other essays too.
M's show a couple of weeks ago was at a rad bookstore in Downtown Oakland, E.M Wolfman. I talked to the bookstore owner and he mentioned this book and the book club that will be convening January 12th or 13th (they haven't yet confirmed) to discuss the book.
So! There you go.
Some other things I've skimmed:
• Co Evolution Quarterly Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog, Fall 1974 written by the Black Panthers. Stewart Brand says "It is an honor and a relief to turn over the editorship of this entire issue of The CoEvolution Quarterly to the Black Panther Party. A relief because the usual CQ staff is buried under a mountain of books getting out the Whole Earth Epilog. An honor because the Panthers are the most effective community service-and-organization group I know." [coevolution.pdf]
• OMCA Neighborhood Community Report: I found this interesting as an overview of the different "flavors" of the Oakland communities around us. [OMCA-Neighborhood-Identity-Report.pdf]
• The Establishing A Foundation section of "An Introduction to Engaging Diverse Audiences," with its tools and resources. [RACC-Intro-to-Engaging-Diverse-Audiences.pdf]
• One of Double Union's members went to the white house to work on the Inclusivity Kit for Obama's Nation of Makers program. Here is their draft. ************************
Ultimately I think we should be coming at this question of community engagement collectively, so I ask of you: What are your questions when you think of Dynamic Medium + community? I have many questions but also want to hear yours.
Awhile ago I talked to Josh about this, and he had a good one: How do you envision community engagement to look like in the new space, six months from now? If you take that exercise and really try to envision the bustling activity in the new space, and then we all collect our visions together, we'll have something concrete to work towards wrt community engagement.
[1] (Paula you're not supposed to write a thesis on community in tech, you're supposed to just start the conversation) (also scouring the web is a poor way of doing research)
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