For my final blog post this semester, I present a slideshow on an idea that I believe three popular literature all share about the topic of changing injustices in society.
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We are the first generation to experience the start of artificial intelligence and its rapid and widespread use around the world. AI has become a very controversial topic as it threatens to take over all jobs from programmers to artists. On the optimistic side, people believe that English skills have become more valuable with Large Learning Models such as ChatGPT. For example, an excerpt written by Alyson Klein says, "Students will need to practice using AI tools to get information, the same way previous generations learned the card-catalog system to navigate the library." On the more pessimistic side, people believe that AI will simply replace many skills and make them unnecessary to learn. To throw my hat into the conversation, I am also on the pessimistic side of things. To start off, I don't believe that the need to learn how to communicate with AI, is the same is learning the card-catalogue system of a library as the excerpt mentions. Communicating with AI has become so fundamental and easy that tens of millions of people are able to speak with it without a problem, since the AI is able to communicate very intuitively. It isn't that difficult to type in a simple prompt to get an entire essay back. Even calculators share a similar story. Those who know very fundamental mathematics are able to use a calculator without learning how due to how intuitive it is. With calculators, 90% of every math problem we have can be solved with our fingers, and so adults have started to forget about it. A similar thing can be said with Google. This generation has such as strong reliance to Google that they don't tend to retain what they believe is unnecessary information. At most, using ChatGPT will take a single class day to present and learn. It's also important to note that AI isn't going to take over every job, at least not within this year. I don't believe we are able to mention the idea of doctors using AI to determine a diagnosis as the excerpt mentions. We are currently seeing mass lay-offs from writing companies to crisis workers, who believe that AI can take over the job of a human. To be more optimistic, I do believe that there is still a market for writers, editors and English teachers. I believe there is still a human aspect or creative personality that people want out of a story or written piece. However, AI will no doubt be something that everyone will use for 90% of their English writing needs, from checking over grammar and punctuation, to creating an entire email for their boss. I think we should be prepared for the upcoming use cases for AI and whether this decade will become a futuristic society, or a dystopia.
Modern story telling and entertainment has come a long way from the generic and cliché antagonist. In the past, villains were seen as heartless monsters with no humanity and only holding ill intentions. However, we've started to make story villains far more interesting and complex with Shylock's character in the Merchant of Venice being no exception. Shylock's motivations and intentions are rather peculiar which brings up the question of whether or not he is really an evil character or a victim. In my perspective, Shylock as a villain is a classic example of a character who's doing the wrong thing for the right reason. In other words, his intent aligns with what we consider to be good, yet he intends to achieve his goal through disagreeable ways. For example, we as the audience can determine from the story that Shylock is often victimized. As a Jew, Shylock is constantly dealing with discrimination by his neighbors and the country he lives in. He has dealt with countless road bumps such as her daughter eloping with a Christian, her daughter stealing a significant amount of his wealth, Shylock being spat on and insulted by Antonio and being marginalized. The audience can feel sympathetic to Shylock and believe that he's the victim of his story. All he intends was justice with Antonio. However, this does not mitigate his quite literal thirst for blood. He wants achieve justice by getting a pound of flesh from Antonio and doesn't stop for riches or begging of mercy to achieve it. This, in my opinion, automatically makes him an evil character. An understandable text-to-text example would be the character Thanos. His intentions are quite positive as he wishes to prevent the extinction of species due to overpopulation. However, the way he goes about achieving his goals are far from agreeable as he wants to eliminate half the planet. Although, Thanos does deserve sympathy and understanding, he is definitely the villain of his story just as how Shylock is the evil character of his story. Perhaps his punishment of converting to Christianity and giving away his wealth my have been excessive for someone who may have already learned his lesson and simply wanted justice. Yet, I still stand by the choice that Shylock is the evil character in the Merchant of Venice play.
In today's society, it seems as though we face the same social issues that were presented decades ago with the same lack of knowledge on how to deal with them and eradicate them effectively. I'm of course talking about a major social issue known as marginalization or discrimination of certain minority groups. Marginalization is when a minority group of people are discriminated by a dominant group who often have more privileges and powers. This results in the marginalized group being excluded in social gatherings and are disadvantaged in society when it comes to wealth and job opportunity. A marginalized group that I'd like to focus on is with people of colour or race. Racial marginalization is the discrimination of a group of people because of their race or ethnicity; often the dominant group in racial marginalization are white individuals. Although racial marginalization has existed decades and even centuries ago in Canadian society, I feel that they are still being marginalized in many ways. I feel that people of colour face discrimination because they are disadvantaged in many aspects in today's society. For example, people of colour are disadvantaged in the employment opportunities. One study pointed out that black individuals are twice as likely to be unemployed compared to white individuals, and earn nearly 25 percent less when they are employed [1]. Another instance of racial discrimination is in the education space, like through physical violence, racial slurs and other forms of harassment [2]. Finally, and the most common example that appears in the media, is racial profiling. In other words, this marginalized group of people are unfairly targeted by police officers and other higher authorities due to the colour of their skin. They often deal with harassment, wrongfully detained, being affected by violence or even being shot. One recent example of racial profiling occurred in a Walmart where a black individuals was wrongfully detained [3]. All these forms of discrimination, alongside others such as systemic racism and household racism, occur because of a dominating group(s) who believes that the other group is less worthy, undeserving, a threat, or if they themselves are higher priority. With this said, I stand by the fact that racial marginalization still occurs in our society due to the presence of education, employment and security disadvantages in our society, all of which significantly impact their lives in unjust ways. [1]https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/discrimination-job-market-united-states
[2]https://www.safeatschool.ca/plm/equity-and-inclusion/understanding-sexism-racism-and-homophobia/racism [3]https://abcnews.go.com/US/black-correction-officer-mistaken-shoplifter-sues-walmart-racial/story?id=82460745 Today's world is experiencing the ever-growing rise and dominance of visual communication. We are witnessing more pictures and videos in advertising, social media platforms and learning. However, alongside this growth is a great fall in textual communication. Things like reading books, reading blogs, using text in media posts and using text in entertainment, has been replaced with visual alternatives such as videos entertainment, photographs posts. In a world where visuals are being used to convey anything, it's difficult to figure out what roles text could play. Whenever a difficult situation such as this occurs, a great way to tackle it would be creating a pros and cons list.
In the end, its the creator's choice as to whether or not they should convey their information visually or textually. Each form of communication has its own merits and flaws depending on what you are trying to achieve. However, although text does have its roles in society, it makes sense as to why visual communication has dominated our society with its effectiveness and impact which text can't hold up to. It appears that visuals are here to stay for a very long time.
For several decades, there has been a longstanding debate regarding the responsibilities photojournalists hold. The job of a photographer who works for a media company is to capture a photo of an event or person to create a profit. These photos are used to create engaging or impactful stories for consumers. The problem with photojournalism is that it requires to photographer to not influence, interfere or alter to real life event. This leads to concerning situations where a photographer shoots a photo of someone in danger or in need, but ignores them. The two sides of the argument consist of those who believe the photojournalist's job is to produce a story a nothing else, and those who believe the photojournalist has a moral responsibility to interfere when a situation unfolds. To cast my stone in the argument, I personally believe that the job of a photojournalist is crucial to give the grand audience an impactful story. For example, the image below depicts a vulture waiting as the young girl starves to death; the photo was captured by a photojournalist. Although there was debate over whether the documentarian should have helped the young girl, and although I believe this photographer went a bit too far, this photo is one of the most recognizable and impactful shots that represents extreme poverty and third-world countries. These documentarians help inform and educate the public on real-world situations and must not interfere with the events in order to do so. It is simply not their responsibility nor are they able to provide a solution to every event they capture. On the flip side of this argument, I do believe there is a fine line between keeping your job to inform the public, and heartless exploitation. There are always times when your moral obligations to your community exceeds your job obligations. If there is an opportunity to help someone, such as if they were drowning or thirsty, it is our moral duty to aid them, whether the photographer does it before or after taking the photo. We should never put our profit over an easily preventable death of a human being. I believe that photojournalists should recheck their priorities and consider their ethical implications before making the decision to click the camera button.
Many years ago, a social experiment was held in an ABC television show titled, "What Would You Do?" to determine how people would react when seeing a crime occur infront of them. However, due to a turn of events, the purpose of their experiment changed to whether or not people would react differently to crimes committed by children of colour. The results from the test was more calls to 911 and more confrontations of the boys. This study gives the conclusion that people are more likely to report a crime if the crime in question is being committed by a black individual. I find this conclusion incredibly surprising since I didn't expect such a clear-cut conclusion coming from a real-world experiment. It seems as though the people reacted the way they did because they viewed black individuals as a higher long-term threat than the white kids even though they were both committing the same crime. The callers must have thought the black individuals would either up to something worse or would likely commit another crime afterwards which they didn't want in their neighborhood. This would be alright if it weren't for the fact that people didn't view the white individuals as immediate threats. This bias could be the result of misinformation in the media, traumatic experiences or simply being very misinformed. In spite of this, I do believe that another experiment of this caliber must be performed to make any conclusions. Since this investigation was done 13 years ago, I think it would be interesting if one was conducted today. One with more test runs, a control, more locations, larger sample size, more detailed findings, and more. Until then, this experiment serves as a reminder of the effects racial bias can have on a community.
Recently, there have been videos and articles about highly-ranked officials and authorities releasing apology videos based on various injustice occurrences. An example being the Toronto police chief who publicly apologized due to a "disproportionate use of force on [the black community]". This has sparked debate on whether an apology is valuable and is enough. Some argue that apologies are useless since they don't change what's already been done to an individual or group of people. I, however, would reason that an apology isn't meant to undo what's already been done, but to acknowledge the lapse in judgment that took place and to lay the foundation for future resolutions. The first step in fixing any problem is to recognize that a problem exists which this apology accomplishes. Moreover, an apology indicates that the one at fault truly feel regret, shame or sadness. Apologies can be used in an unsympathetic way to ease an audience and fake a reaction. However, if used with the correct intentions, an apology shows that mistakes have been acknowledged and that progress will be made which, to me, is more than enough.
The broken policing system, meant to keep the peace and safety of communities intact, is now at the heart of many racially and politically motivated killings that still affect people today. Seemingly innocent civilians such as Michael Brown, Laquan McDonald and Eric Garner were killed by police officers for unjust reasons. The root cause behind police brutality and the broken policing system is difficult to identify as there are a variety of factors to look at. Factors such as the high budget police officers have, how they are trained, their inability to de-escalate a situation, the police Bill of Rights and more. However, I believe the biggest contributing factor to the recklessness of certain police officers is the lack of accountability and consequence for their actions. For example, according to the broken policing system video by Hasan Minhaj, it's almost impossible to sue a cop. This is because of a legal concept called qualified immunity in which a loophole prevents cops from taking proper accountability. Prosecutors are also inclined to not pursue criminal charges against the cops which is a cause for various unjust situations where the wrong-doing actions of the cops are negated. In my opinion, I believe that certain laws and enforcements that specifically apply to cops, as well as their ruthless training, are mostly necessary in a society where they have to keep their guard up to be prepared for anything, especially in a society with guns such as America. However, by not enforcing proper consequences like every other civilian, it not only proves a flaw in the justice system, but also signals other cops that they aren't bound by regular repercussions.
Art, like most topics, is a vast and boundless subject that has many interpretations. My definition of art is objects, actions, creations and ideas that are created through human expression through originality, imagination, experiences and emotions. Art can come in many shapes and forms since it’s an infinite topic that’s only bound by human imagination which is limitless. Art can be expressed through real objects such as paintings and drawings through various mediums, physically through dancing and acting, musically through singing and instruments, visually through writing and poetry, and so much more. The purpose of art is to evoke emotions out of the person seeing the art whether that is calming through a painting, happiness through an animation, misery through a movie scene, and more. Creativity is used in art and also has its many interpretations. I see creativity as the combination of inspiration from other people’s work and originality through the artist’s personal experiences and ideologies. In the end, I believe art and creativity is up to the individual and is something we should all strive to improve in.
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AuthorMy name is Piranaven Puvanenthiran, a grade 10 student and a certified blogger. ArchivesCategories |