Service Learning Journal 56, Friday week 8 CST-462s Race,gender, Class in the Digital World

Service Learning Journal 56, Friday week 8 CST-462s Race,gender, Class in the Digital World

Assigned questions:

What went well? What would you improve? What was the most impactful part?

Just an attitude of wanting to make an impact makes an impact. People see the spirit of wanting to participate, join in and help with what they are doing and automatically that generates positive energy. What challenges did you face? In 25 hours nobody really knows exactly what to do with you, especially at first, so you kind of have to jump in, be outgoing, which is tough if you're shy (myself) and show what you can do. Once the ice is broken and people see you're not just there because you have community service in lieu of jail time or something, and see that you want to help and participate, you should be good. What went well was general overall attitude by all parties involved. My service site was extremely friendly with me and that really helped me for me to come out of my shell and be able to show what I could do. I busted out my skills several times and surprised people as well as filling in the rest of the time with any tasks I saw that could use help, and that was well received and seemed to be applauded, figuratively.

What advice do you have for future SL students?

Try and be helpful, and people will see that and let you be helpful. Make no mistake - they are doing you a favor just letting you be there to participate - so don't pretend you're God's gift to them, you're a student begging for service hours so you can get your time in, so you can graduate, and hopefully get to use the 25 hours for something productive and helpful to them, if they let you. They don't actually need your help, they're doing just fine without you, but you might get a chance to make a tiny sliver of a positive impact if you really have a great attitude toward being there, helping, and making a positive impact. And the flip side is 25 hours is gone and past before you know it, so really try and help as best you can because it will be over before you know it, and then you get to talk about how much you helped. Don't expect to be given the tough technical lead assignments just yet, this is just a taste of helping technicians do what they're already doing, feel very lucky to be able to help and participate. As much as you might want to revolutionize their process, recognize that enormous inspirations toward their process are not going to be necessarily understood or well received - save the brilliant ideas for your marketing department to present to them later in their full glory. Start telling them you could do it this way or that way - even if it's a million times better - that's when they're going to start rolling their eyes at you. So help how they want you to help, and don't necessarily think you're going to go in there and flip their shop upside-down with your brilliant inspirations about how they should be running things, because likely that would fall on covered ears, not that that's the way it should be, but that's my observation. Turn the tables on yourself, nobody wants to be told how to do things, so just remember you're there to receive instruction and provide service they can use.

Required letter to influential policymaker: (Santa Cruz District Supervisor Bruce McPherson was selected.)

Subject: Utilizing Open Source Solutions

Dear Supervisor McPherson,

In our class, Race, Gender, Class in the Digital World, which I am taking at California State University at Monterey Bay, we have done a study on how to improve our world in this modern age of technology. We have completed service volunteer hours for sites relating to technology, done interviews with personnel involved in creating equitable solutions of technology for our community and those affected by the digital divide.

We have discovered in our conclusions that, as you already know, technology is becoming a critical element in our culture - but what you may not realize, is that it is being pushed in an artificial fashion by the large corporations with the most to gain, and in ways that may actually be harmful, going in the opposite direction that they may appear to be.

Take the Apple corporation and their contributions for example. According to our research, they are providing hardware to impoverished communities in order to help the community grow, however when the specifics of the actual hardware and software being provided are critically analyzed, it can be seen that the features being gifted may be akin to sending in wolves in sheeps' clothing - because this hardware is both engineered to have incompatibility with other competing hardware and because it is permanently tied in all ways to Apple, and, in turn, being manufactured out of China, also tied to China. The user interface, while being touted as 'user friendly' has become intentionally inferior and obsolescence is mandatorily built-in, possibly making the apparent gift a long-term curse rather than what it may appear to be.

Microsoft is no better, forcing not only undesired behavior such as forced interruptions, but also inappropriate and borderline rude verbiage directly into their operating system, disrupting work, education and business - small and critical alike - across the globe - an intentional attack on our world, unseen by most, because of the trust in Microsoft - making it a covert unseen attack on us, by an entity that we trust.

I urge you to be aware of the mal-intent of these large corporations, avoid contracts with them, and instead embrace contributions to our community from the free and open source community. Through open source solutions, the community can build solutions for itself built by the community, for the community, which are entirely transparent, so that any undesired aspects can be illuminated and mitigated, always by the community and for the community's benefit.

One easy replacement for Microsoft's Windows is the operating system called Linux Mint, among many other available Linux distributions, and the replacement for Apple is Android and more open hardware with Linux Mint or similar running on it, instead of any proprietary operating system.

By utilizing open source solutions, our community will be able to most effectively embrace the future in a way that is by the community, for the community, in all respects. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Arlon Arriola

End of letter to influential policymaker Santa Cruz District Supervisor Bruce McPherson