Among my earliest memories, are those of my mother reading to me. Even more vividly are the stacks of newspapers that would sit in the kitchen chair as my mother slowly but surely made her way through the week’s news. My grandmother for most of the 30 years that I have known her has always read the Bible and the newspaper. She did not attend college, as was the case for many women of her day, but she was well-informed because she read. As a school aged child my mother and I often took trips to Powell’s Bookstore in Chicago, an amazing world of used books with any and every topic you could possibly desire. It was in this environment that I developed a voracious and almost insatiable appetite for facts, knowledge and ideas.
In my immediate family, education was first and foremost a tool of moving up the socio-economic ladder. Learning was valued not solely for expanding your mind but for broadening your array of life choices. I was definitely pushed to study hard, be competitive and not give up. While private school wasn’t an option due to finances I was able due to my abilities to attend magnet schools from the 3rd grade through my last year of high school.
According to my mother, I began reading right before my 3rd birthday. Writing essays and stories, only started once I was in elementary school. Interestingly enough I didn’t enjoy writing while in elementary and high school nor for the first two years of college. I lacked confidence in my ability to express myself on the page in a way that came with much ease when I would speak. In fact it was only during my last two years of college that I truly began to enjoy the writing process.
I have always liked school. High school got a little tiring but ask any teenager in their 3rd and 4th years of high school and they would likely say the same. My favorite subjects have always been languages and social sciences. Yes these areas were easier for me to comprehend and thus I did better, but the appeal had everything to do with these subjects being portals to unknown lands, cultures and ways of doing things.
I struggled with mathematics and science; math because it didn’t come easily and science because I neither understood it, nor did it come easily. I took the position that since social studies and languages were a breeze, so then should the other subjects. The most dramatic points of this experience had everything to do with my ego as I made the mistake that many a teenager makes and compared myself to my peers who were math and science savants.
College was an amazing experience for me because it was at this point that I became fully responsible for what I learned. With the exception of a few requirements, I had the power to organize my academic plan with the courses that pleased me most. I decided on a major of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies and spent three glorious years digging into the sociology, anthropology, history and language of this amazingly diverse region of the world. It was through this course of study that I developed an identity as a global citizen, and that I understood myself to have solidarity with people living in lands unknown. This awakening developed even before I ever visited the region through the basic act of reading my assigned texts and papers. This exposure was the beginning of what has been an ongoing engagement with this region and its people.
I had a professor, my favorite college professor, who took a great interest in me during my academic career. During one quarter of my senior year she took me on as an independent study student stating clearly, “Negarra I don’t care what it is you end up doing career wise but you’re going to have to be able to write.” And rightly, so we spent the quarter reading on a variety topics of Latin American history and me writing and revising essays in which she would show me what I needed to do improve or cheer me on when I wrote a clear and succinct essay. From that point on, writing ceased to be a chore or the cause of panic, but rather another tool in my box that equipped me to tussle with the ideas set before me.
Language has played a particularly important role in my learning process. My mother, a teacher of 35 years, was intent on her only daughter learning to speak grammatically correct English. To this day when I use slang or end a sentence with a preposition, I am reminded of the times I came home from school speaking incorrectly and was promptly reminded that such language wasn’t allowed in our house. The point of this being that there were situations where certain types of speech were relevant and necessary. This lesson was critical to my survival in public school. Around 4th or 5th grade I learned how to curse. It became abundantly clear to me that if I wanted to survive public school where children said any and everything (of course because they didn’t have a mother like mine to teach them the difference, ha!) that I too would have to learn to say such things more so to defend myself than to be considered cool.
I was infinitely lucky that my college had one of the best undergraduate language programs in the country. I endeavored to learn Spanish and then Portuguese and through my college’s renowned method of immersion both in the classroom and via study programs abroad, I was near fluent in both before graduating. For some the ability to speak a language is taken for granted as they have always led a multi-lingual life. Language for me, like reading, was another portal. Not only could I read in these languages and think in these languages (and thus learn in these languages!) I could engage with people speaking these languages. I could know their stories in their tongue and capture a meaning carefully stored within words that when translated (into English) lost some of their power.
My adult education has consisted of myriad experiences including travel, graduate school, living abroad and current events broadcast via print and television media. I often times feel a longing for school as it is a very convenient and structured way to learn, though it can lack variety at times. I often feel now that I get stuck in periods of reading the same types of thing all the time. The Internet has definitely impacted how I read. While in high school and college I still read books and articles. Since college I have increasingly read the bulk of my news directly from the Internet, fewer books and more magazines. The Internet I believe has increased my demand for short spurts of info thus impacting my ability to prepare the mind to endure a book. That said I hold books, still, in higher esteem than electronic reading material. There is (or seems to be) an engagement with the word on the page which more intense and committed, perhaps, than that which is transmitted electronically. A book is always there, and not something you get rid of, whereas material on the Internet comes and goes and it is not yours, per se.
Learning and subsequently writing have always felt like liberation and transformation. I believe that it is only when you have sufficiently freed yourself from any limitations (self-imposed or otherwise) that transformation can occur and then you are truly equipped to defend yourself. Fundamentally when I write now, it is because I am grappling with an idea, trying to understand it, seeing if it fits with my current worldview and if it doesn’t how and if it doesn’t why. Writing for me is wrestling with an idea and seeing where I am left once the fight is done. It is saying what most won’t bother to utter but what we all think.
January 28, 2010 • 22:40 0
Underwhelmed, but still intrigued
The rumor of Apple’s latest toy, the iPad caught my attention some months ago and I naturally assumed that like the Macbook, the iMac and the iPhone before it, it would go above and beyond the expectations and desires of even the most sophisticated tech geek. Fortunately for the discriminating consumer, the announcement of the iPad informs us that the release of this device is not about providing the consumer with what they want but Apple solidifying its identity as “Father knows best”. I am not the first to consider Apple’s motives and certainly not the only one who has written about it.
This device is sexy, shiny and alluring but even with all its hits (and there are several), it falls short of basic requirements that would make it a really useful device. I am thinking of how it could be used by entrepreneurs and small business owners and in that context, for me, it’s not yet worth buying. Below are the things that I would like to see the iPad achieve in its 2nd generation.
1. Microsoft Office: People in business use Office. Point blank. It is comfortable, convenient, easy and familiar. Imagine arriving to a meeting iPad, keyboard and dock and hand, ready to take notes, create draft documents and edit documents. People need to do more than read and review, they want to create.
2. Multitasking: the beauty of Apple computers and the iPhone (to an extent) is the ability to do multiple tasks at once. E.g. streaming live radio, while typing an email, then opening word to review a document, seeing a term in said document which then makes you wanna research the term on Wikipedia. That is 4 applications right there. Unfortunately the lack of multitasking on the iPad sets us back to the early 90s. I mean we might as well still have dial-up. (not really but you know what I mean)
3. Camera: I never understood the obsession behind taking pictures on mobile phone cameras. The quality is rarely as good as a regular camera and personally I feel like if you’re gonna take a picture use a normal free-standing camera, its sexier and more sophisticated…digressing. The lack of a camera, however, on the iPad is bothersome because then how will I video conference with my mama? Mother’s aside, this is a major disappointment. You now say I can use Skype for free but you give me no video capability? From the small business owner perspective, particularly if the plan is to maximize the machine as a business tool, then the ability to video conference is vital for maintaining a productive face (to screen) to face meeting environment.
4. Flash: this is last on my list of complaints but I sympathize with web site geniuses who are salty that there’s still no flash. I mean, I need to be able to read the New York Times on this thing and see all the cool multimedia thingies they post to complement the written content. But no, I can’t, at least not on the iPad.
My basic criticisms aside, I have to say that the iPad, is indeed as Steve Jobs announced yesterday Apple’s “most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.” That statement is more about the idea that the iPad represents and what Apple wants us to think and feel about its products and it being a leader in the technological market place.
The iPad in iteration 1.0 tells us that we should use the internet for every possible task. It suggests that Apple believes that documents as we know them now will become increasingly transferred to native web-based programs e.g. Google Docs. The transfer of iWork from a CD that you must enter into your computer and then install as a separate program to a web application that can be purchased at a very reasonable price and seamlessly downloaded is a subtle but salient change in the way we access, create and manage information.
The implications and impact are far bigger than we realize right now. Apple has done something ginormously significant again and when the 2nd generation of the iPad is revealed in summer 2011 there will be more clarity. For now, let’s just watch and see.
Filed under: Social Commentary, Technology, anything that can be read and reviewed