I am a true believer in the secrecy of memories; I am a strong supporter for the expiration date of digital memories

It used to be that memories only existed in the minds and hearts of those who dared to remember. Memories were kept private, within the person, within the family and with time, they eventually faded away by newer memories.

If I wanted to remember something, I would write it down, or take a picture of it, a true paper and ink picture and not a digital file. But with new technologies, many things have changed including memories. Viktor Mayer argued in his book that “because of the digital technology, society's ability to forget has become suspended, replaced by perfect memory” and just like anything, perfect memory has its pros and cons (Mayer 4).

Mayer mentioned that some individuals and organizations make better uses for this “perfect memory”, he mentions that medical offices, the law enforcement and even if some of us could disagree, financial institutions make use and benefit of the ability of keeping archives for non-expiring, undefined periods of time (Mayer 10-11). But you don’t necessarily have to be in an important job in order to benefit from this perfect memory.

• As a student, I enjoy the benefit of keeping my school files longer than I can hang on to whatever is it that I learned.
• As a family member, I enjoy the benefits of hanging on to pictures and videos or family time that happened some time ago.
• As an adult, I guess I enjoy laughing at the silly things I see myself doing in baby pictures, remembering (or believing to remember) memories of the things I did when I was not old enough to remember.

 But the cons of this perfect memory are that we are living in a panopticon under constant surveillance by technologies that will record of every move, every second (Mayer 11). This means, that both, good things and bad things about us are recorded and at times, made public, for not only this generation, but also future generations to come.

In his book, Meyer introduced the idea of an expiration date for digital information. The way this would work could be by requesting and requiring an expiration date before anything is saved, submitted or posted. After the expiration date, the files would forever be deleted (Meyer 171-181).

Now from my perspective, his whole idea of expiration dates seems feasible: a date would be required, the cleaning would take place on a certain schedule,a utility program that can help us manage the expiration dates of our files, but, of course, it could confirm (if desired) before the files are deleted (Meyer 171-181). The only complain I have about it, is that I would also like the option of a 00/00/00 expiration date, meaning that I would like personal pictures and videos of my family to forever be kept on my computer unless I get in a fight with my sister and as a way to deal with my anger and frustration, I decide to delete the file. Well, now that I think about it, I guess that maybe having the option of retrieving deleted files, could also be a good idea.  

As with everybody, there have been times when I have wished that some information about me could be deleted or expired. The most recent example that I can remember happened some months ago when my husband logged in into my MySpace account and read previous picture comments of old friends from high school. The comments were not obscene or anything, but my husband did not like the fact that some of my friends were commenting on my physical appearance.

Reference:

Viktor, Mayer-Schonberger. Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Princeton University Press, 2009. Print.

Biculturalism and Birealism

PART I: VILLANUEVA AND THE NEW SENSE OF SELF

In his book, Villanueva wrote about what it is like to be a Puerto Rican, a Latino, A Hispanic and a Chicano all at the same time. He uses many common terms among Latinos and Hispanics, but, from my point of view, I was personally not exposed to any new terms while reading part of his book. However, one of the things that I saw was that often than not, he had to clarify on many terms because some of them have one or more meanings and he needed to ensure that he was getting his point across using the correct term, with its correct meaning.

One of the words that stood out to me while reading part of his book was the term biculturalism. Villanueva describes biculturalism as “the tensions within, which are caused by being unable to deny the old or the new” (Villanueva 39). According to him, the “idea” of a bicultural society or human being in which both cultures are easily blended is nothing but an “ideal” because there will always be a battle between both cultures, there will always be a battle for not knowing who or what you are (Villanueva 39).

 I have to say that his definition of the term makes sense, but I do not believe that what he sees in biculturalism is the same as what I see. I personally believe that your ability to be a part of both cultures is not something that is inborn and it needs to be mastered, and when mastered there just shouldn’t be any problems with not knowing who or what you are. Anyways I just wanted to give my perspective on the term, now to the real stuff.

How could I use this term for my future assignments? Well, perhaps I will not be able to use the exact term, but I would say, that from Villanueva’s definition of biculturalism we can conclude that the term biculturalism resembles the idea of a hybrid. If I remember correctly, from the definition agreed in class, a hybrid reality is possible whenever one is not able to clearly define between real life and virtual life, pretty much between the old and the new just as Villanueva pictures biculturalism. Perhaps the ability to be bicultural and to live in a birealistic world is not an inborn ability. But I surely hope that eventually there will be a time in this “hybrid world” in which people will be able to master the art of biculturalism and “birealism” and will know exactly who they are, what they are and of course, where they are as well.

PART II: TEST QUESTIONS

Multiple Choice Question

According to Nakamura in Menu Driven Identities, what does it mean if a race has no box and if it can’t be clicked on? For example, if you try to say that you are Mexican American but this is not one of the options.

a.       It means that Mexican Americans do exists, but are simply less important than the other races that have a box

b.      It means that the company behind the menu does not acknowledges that Mexican Americans are important too

c.       It means that if it has no box, then functionally, it can't exist (CORRECT ANSWER).

d.      It means that the web developers behind the menu forgot to include Mexican Americans because they are not Mexican American themselves

True or False Question

In Menu Driven Identities, Nakamura compares the narrowing down of identity options to a decision tree (TRUE).

References:

Villanueva, Victor. Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1993. 34-50. Print.