Arlon Arriola's CSUMB Learning Journal 50

I drew that this evening for design class.

This week in design class we're learning abstract compositions and color themes in Illustrator (or Inkscape.)

I used the gestalt principles of common fate ( the hair ), a lot of similarity and a little bit of symmetry in the first two, a little bit of continuation I think is happening in the second one, and in some of the features in the third one perhaps, and perhaps some proximity in each of them. I don't think I used closure anywhere that I can see, and I think the reason is that I like to fill in everything, and closure is the opposite, leaving something out that's implicit.

For the colors, for the first one, I picked bright gradient colors because those are my favorite colors. I don't have a favorite color, I have a favorite saturation, and it's full saturation, although the white is mixed in too to increase brightness. So, bright purple, orange and green because they go together without contrasting too much. For the blue one I just picked some blue hues I thought looked cool, and white for the other half of the gradients to make them look even cooler and brighter. I guess didn't have to pick the colors for the third one because those are standard colors, I just matched what I was drawing. That was supposed to just be any screaming face and just by luck almost that's how it wound up coming out, as I drew it. If you look at the whole three together, a lot of orange, a lot of blue, and more orange, I think together they exhibit somewhat complementary colors overall. Any time I wanted shadow or sharpness I defaulted to black, just like cartoons do.

Now that I think about it, there's missing squares in the second one - that look like squares - so there's a little figure/ground, and perhaps the tiny space between the hair could be considered closure. Wait a minute - the bridge of the nose is closure too - it's not there, but it is.

For Race gender class in the digital world class we're beginning our volunteering for technology related service, which mine is helping Grey Bears computers refurbish home electronic and computer equipment. Also we're posting discussions about problems and possible solutions with racism and inequality in our society today. Inequality is widespread and includes racism, financial inequality, unfair alotment of opportunity to various under-priveledged groups within our society. I personally believe we should not only not exhibit racism because it's completely pointless, but also not discriminate against race in any way. In all these discussions about racism white people are nearly always fingered as the bad guy. Which is inherent racism. I think fairness should be fair, not targeted at fingering a certain race (we all know history has been ridiculous) but in modern day we're all mixed and I really don't see the point of distinguishing anyone by race even if it's the bad race (white people) because that's just more racism, once again, in another form - don't fight fire with fire. So I think fairness is an extremly important goal for the future of our society.

I discussed in our class discussion that I've always felt completely immune to racism, myself, but then when I got older certain people told me that I myself was racist because of my supposed race, but which wasn't even completely known, since it was simply judged externally, so that was obviously flawed logic. So I think that not only is this a huge issue, it's also a completely scrambled one. I can tell you right now I personally never paid any attention to skin color until I got older and now there's all this strange nonsense going on, seeing who's judging who - someone's got to do the judging to say if anyone's judging, right? To me it all comes straight down to one thing - just get all my work done. The world can spin out seeing who is and isn't racist, meanwhile I'll be at home, not being racist, with all my work being done. Since I'm not involved in law enforcement, my passion is programming computers, I'll make sure my programs are completely logical. I think logic eliminates racism. After all, colors are just colors, who wants everything the same color, and who's there to judge to see if they are?

I also mentioned that the statistics are shocking. 91% to just 1% is travesty. It makes me wonder about age though. I've always thought all the OLD people have all the money, not all the white people. Here in Silicon Valley it definitely does not seem to be 'all the white people', at all. Is anyone talking about age? The old people grew up in and after the great depression and I see the ones I've known as being natural hoarders that hate young people. I think the old people are the real culprits, and someone is twisting the numbers to make it look like it's white people when it's really old people controlling everything. But I'm not the one who took the statistics, and I'm also not the one worried about it. I personally just want to get my work done, be as responsible of a citizen as I can, help make the world a better and more logical and more fair of a place for everyone, not just any one particular group. It sort of seems to me like if we start worrying about what group has it better, isn't that judging too? And honestly if we're so worried about who has the most money, why not track it? Literally, find out who has all the money, and tell them to knock it off, whoever it is.

I also mentioned, in response to the question: "In what ways do you think residual effects of past discriminatory laws persist today? Consider wealth, housing, employment, health care, and such."

that:

If I let my bank account get under $2,500, they either take $8/month for no reason or require regular direct deposits. The implication being it costs money to not have that much money. Like a gravity or some sort of money-draining force, that flips if you have enough. If it were just that perhaps $2,500 would be the stability point, but the thing is, that's not the only institution that does this. For my old job I have to do real estate appraisals which require subscribing to the local real estate listing service. I'm not sure of the exact numbers but it's somewhere around $1,000/yr. If you don't have the $1,000 in one lump sum you actually have to pay a lot more in smaller individual payments that all add up to a lot more than $1,000/yr. My insurance also works that way, and of course that's just the institutions I'm directly involved with in my small life, there's obviously a slough of them that do this, affecting poor people across the board, taking their money because they don't have any. So you either have plenty of money and make interest or have below the stability threshold and get what little you do have sucked away from you with the excuse that you don't have enough. Obviously this defies all logic.

I also mentioned, in response to the question: "As computer scientists and communication designers, what do you think your profession can do to come up with equitable solutions to systemic inequality issues, such as health care, law enforcement, education, housing, racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and so on?"

that:

As a fair and intelligent programmer I will provide software that properly implements fair and logical user interface choices. If I am instructed to execute any immoral implementation in any way, first of all I wouldn't do it, and second of all, I would for sure discuss with the appropriate parties that there is a huge problem. In this day and age - as a programmer that likes to help people learn to use computers - I see end users think of software as final authority. I see it personally as something that needs to be made correct but that's the programmer talking. The end users don't know how far what connects to what and generally think, these days, if the software isn't reflecting what they expect, they're the one that's wrong, not the software, when in reality, software just isn't all there yet. SAP is one example. I haven't used it but I'm starting to gather that the SAP company is leaving end-interface programming to individual companies to customize for exactly what they need. Then users in the company don't realize if the interface is glitchy, that's something that needs to be fixed. I see this also in real estate appraisal submission software. Choices you need that aren't there. Choices that shouldn't be there, that are. Province as an option for properties in California. Provinces are for China, there aren't any in California, yet our MLS here, which is supposed to be customized for just this area, has the option to specify a province. They keep adding features like that but don't fix bugs that have been present for literally over a decade. I wouldn't write software like that, I prioritize my development, fix critical bugs first and foremost, and make sure all additions are logically prioritized so the end product can actually be as useful as possible.

I also mentioned, in response to the question: "The war on drugs began during Nixon’s Administration and was brought to life again during the Reagan Administration. How is the increase in law enforcement budgets connected to the increase in the prison population and how are these two factors connected to the War on Drugs? In what ways did this disproportionately target people of color? In what ways did this disenfranchise voters?"

that:

The war on drugs, in my opinion isn't what it seems. There is something else going on, I'm not exactly sure what it is, but it's not warring on any drugs. We got the worst meth the world has seen, now, in our state. It makes people go crazy, literally, when just a few years back, it wasn't doing that. We got new whole entire tent-city skid row areas popping up all over the place across the state, also partly because of this new meth. We got new forms of opioids kids are overdosing on thinking it's heroine or something, I'm not sure what it is, I just know I've heard of this happening, very recently, in my town, to one of my best friends son's friends. There's even one called Krokodile that makes people's arms and whatever else body parts fall off!! We got people thinking pills are okay to pop which is a huge problem in itself. I even see it on big name politicians faces, the signs of popping pills. We live in a time that is a lot worse than it looks. I always say if one person has a problem, everyone has a problem. It's not okay for one group to be pushed aside. I can't make much commentary about the police force other than I think we just got $300 lifted, today, in my family, right out of a purse, and nobody can do anything about that, not the police, nobody. And once my friends car got stolen and the police arrived at the scene hours later to casually report on what had happened. My parents have used law enforcement against me, personally, lying to them to get me in trouble, to win arguments they shouldn't have won, causing me personally huge and lasting detriment. I told law enforcement that my parents were lying and I still have charges on my record I never committed because of this inherently flawed system. Some day I hope to elevate myself to be an influential programmer, beyond being framed by conniving parents or getting caught into the system. I hope to be able to set an uplifting example for the world to show how to go through this life with passion, strategy, compassion, and everything else that is good.