So far in this course I have learned a lot about my computer and its connection to the humanities that has helped me become more comfortable with my own computer and other technology as well. Before this class I found myself not thinking about how my computer worked, or how what I am doing on my computer comes to be, but after our conversation about Broad Band I have been thinking more about my computer itself and the inner workings going on when I use it. Specifically thinking about the part in Broad Band where it talked about the programs and the programs creating programs themselves, I find myself remembering this a lot when I am creating our daily journals and even when running other programs like Google Docs, Brightspace, Gmail etc. I have used this new knowledge and confidence to be more open to using all the potential of my computer and exploring what I can do to personalize my experience with it.
A concept in this class that has opened my eyes to more things outside the class has been the idea of paying more attention to the process of creating a work of literature instead of just the words written. I have found myself relating this a lot to my African American literature class, and how back when the works we look at were being published there had to be prefaces written by white people before the Black author’s work could be published. I related this to the conversation of looking at the process as well as the work itself because if one were to just read the preface and then the work they could believe that the author of the preface held a higher educational or professional ranking than the author of the work in question, but when you look at the context behind the written work you can uncover the fact that the only reason the preface was written was because of racist beliefs. I was happy I had the thought from our conversation about Thoreau and his writing to search and think more about the behind the scenes working of the reading in my other class so I was aware of the historical circumstances.
I have found that there has been a lot of crossover between this class and my women and gender studies class as well, especially with the book Broad Band and the fact that women had a huge hand in creating the modern day computer and the programming it uses, but it is still viewed as a man’s sphere and the women were uncreditted for the work they did. In my women’s class we also talk about how historically women have been underestimated and uncredited for the work they did that has impacted us up through today. Overall, this class has been very beneficial in teaching me how to utilize my computer, as well as utilize others classes to a full extent with confidence in what I am doing.