5/7 Draft Questions - Angie Lai

1. In "Deus ex Machina: Tradition, Technology, and the Chicanafuturist Art of Marion C. Martinez", I found the up-cycling of e-waste in Martinez's art really interesting because it combats the environmental issue of e-waste while also conveying strong social messages through art. In this article, Ramirez says, "new technologies have transformed Chicanos… and they have enabled us to articulate (to enunciate and link) past, present, and future identities" (77). In what ways have new technologies done this? How is this related to previous readings about technology and time?
2. In "Afrofuturism/Chicanafuturism: Fictive Kin", Ramirez mentions the term "speculative fiction" and brings up the book Dawn by sci-fi author Octavia E. Butler (187). I actually read this book for an honors class called "Speculative Fiction and Social Reality" (would recommend if you like reading and sci-fi!), and it was the first time I encountered a written piece of sci-fi that centered around a person of color. Why is writing about people of color in genres like sci-fi or speculative fiction important? I'd argue that Afrofuturism is more popular today, but what about Chicanafuturism?
3. In "Missed Connections: What Search Engines Say About Women", Noble writes about the biased internet search process, often yielding results that "focus on porn, dating, and fetishization" when people search for women of color (40). In addition to this just being gross, why is this harmful? On a broader scale, why is having biased information presented as top search results harmful for society as a whole?
4. "In "Monstrous Children of Pregnant Androids: Latinx Futures after Orlando", Cardenas discusses social media as a tool for the marginalized, using the example of the Orlando Pulse shooting victims that used "Facebook, Snapchat, and text messages to survive", encouraging the use of new technologies "to try to keep ourselves and each other safe from those who see queerness, transgender lives, and transnational lives as less valuable than lives lived according to white supremacist cis-heteronormative nationalisms" (29). At the same time, despite the popular usage of social media platforms, they are often labeled as being harmful to society and criticized for setting unrealistic expectations and promoting idealistic false realities. What's your take on social media? In what ways can new technologies be used for good, and in what ways can they be used to harm?