Choose ONE of three projects:
1. FOOD: Visit the Farmers Market at Union Square. The market is open Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 8AM to 6PM, but it is at its best in the earlier hours. Specifically, you should
- Walk around, jotting down what types of food are being sold and what other activities are happening.
- Take photos.
- Buy food for a meal.
- Go home and make the meal. Take photos of it.
- Lastly, write a narrative of your visit, what you learned, and explain what meal you made. Add any/all photos to the blog entry.
2. FILM: Rent Sleep Dealer, watch it again and then write a 400+ word blog entry explaining in what ways the future of Sleep Dealer is really happening already. You will need to support your views with RESEARCH on the topics you mention, so at the end of your blog entry make a list of the readings you used to write your answer. Please don't just paste a bunch of URLs, but explain what topic they cover. Add images.
Issues to think about:
- Race/Racism: How does race/ ethnicity dictate how we interact with technology?
- Social Class: How does social class dictate how we interact with technology?
- Corporate Control of Water: How do corporations control who gets access to water (and food)?
- Virtual War: Drones like those in Sleep Dealer now fly in Iraq and on the border between the US and Mexico. So what? What difference does it make that a pilot can shoot it up Iraq all day and sleep at home at night?
- Virtual Labor: The manager of the cybermaquilas jokes that Mexico is finally providing the U.S. with what it really wants: work without the (Mexican) workers. What are some forms of virtual work already happening around the globe?
- Virtual Reality: Luz sells her memories for a living. How is this similar/different from videoing your life and putting it up on services such as YouTube? Or is there a difference because she is selling her memories?
3. STUFF: Choose one of the two items from The Story of Stuff: Cotton T-shirt or Jewelry on pages 40-43 of the packet. Then
- Read the narrative that explains how your item gets made, highlighting important points.
- Create a list of bullets point that summarize the narrative.
- Find an image that illustrates each bullet point.
- Create a presentation in your blog that uses the bullet points and images to illustrate how the item gets made.
- Conclude the presentation by answering the question at the end of each reading: What do you think the TRUE COST of this item should be? Why?
