Thoughts on Who Knows What

It’s heart breaking to think that there was a time where lynchings were ok. But it goes deeper then that. What I really can’t believe is that people, normal people like you or I, thought that these spectical lynchings were alright— and not only that they were alright but were also enjoyable events to bring family and friends to.It’s disgusting.They were a form of entertainment. What I will never understand is how people could ever be that cruel and inhumane. It goes even farther than that even…

About three hours south of where Fairfax and GMU lay, is a small city called Lynchburg, VA. I only know of this city because of an ex of mine who happens to be from there. It’s a beautiful place, situated on the top of rolling hills. I think it’s even nicknamed the “City of the Seven Hills” or “Hill City”, not that it matters. There is a strong music and art scene located in Lynchburg with more then a few bands and galleries. Generally, it’s an amazing town with beautiful greenery and some unique architecture. What I find most fascinating about this town, however, is it’s name and history.

This first point I have little to back me up then the word of my ex who had lived there all his life, however I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised if it were true. He claimed that Lynchburg was where lynching was invented, by a guy named John Lynch. And that there is where the city got its name. I hope with all I can that this isn’t true.

In allure of writing this post I did a little digging into the towns past. I’m going to keep it short and sweet, you can find more at your own leisure on the city’s Wikipedia page in a mere matter of seconds. It was founded by a man of the last name John Lynch in 1721 after having been settled by Native Americans since 1270. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about how that happened. The city proceeded to make most of its money from tobacco and slave labor. During the Civil War, Lynchburg was a Confederate transportation hub and supply depot. The later history is equally as vast, however less relevant to my point and this class.

What are we saying with places like Lynchburg? That’s the question I’ve been trying to answer all along. Its past and name are riddled with racism and yet we still memorialize our toxic American history. Now I’m not saying that we should change it, and I’m not saying we should keep it the same. Is it really bad for a town to be proud of its past? I think the answer is both yes and no. I should mention that there are a few confederate memorials in the city itself, so is it not ok that there is a memorial for the confederates when the confederates were not the socially acceptable side? Or you could think of the memorial as being in honor of those who died, not necessarily in honor of confederated themselves but rather in honor of the brave men (and women) who fought for what they believed in even if they were incorrect beliefs. That’s why the issue of taking down confederate and racist statues is such a sticky topic with no right answer. I personally think it’s important to remember where we came from and our past, if only so we remember not to fall onto the darker paths again. History repeats itself and it’s a good reminder of what should never happen again. At the same time, like I mentioned earlier, I don’t believe we should glamorize or dark past either which is something that I find can happen with memorials. There’s really no good answer to that….

I can’t stop hearing Hawaii in all the country music we listen to now! It’s kind of stressing me out in the most amazing way.

After our discussion about the steel guitars’ origin and how that is perpetuated in country music, my first thought was something along the lines of: “What? No way. Maybe it’s from Hawaii, but we must just be hearing it because we were primed.” And then I proceeded to hear it more. Now I can’t stop. It made me consider what that meant from a socio-cultural lense. Elvis Presley, known as the king of rock and roll is also well known for his use of steel guitar. I’ve always found that he is associated with Hawaii and wondered why. He wasn’t from there and nothing spectacular happened to him while he was there (that I know of, I’m not his biggest fan though so there isn’t likely something I’m missing). It appears I may have finally gotten my answer. This country music Hawaii contrast was only emphasize to me more with the example Professor O’Malley showed us of the quick country song he whipped together. The song very clearly read to me as country until he threw in the steel guitar, even then it still read as country, but it also emphasized the Hawaiian. It became a two for one song.

The GarageBand example brought my mind elsewhere too. Is GarageBand, in its entirety with what it does good of bad? On one hand it’s a great way to express creativity that wasn’t possible before. Some nobody with zero skills can open up the program and compose a song— even sell it given that Apple doesn’t copyright the sound bites. Is that really all god though? What does it say when we no longer need years or training and experience to become an important musician? Even more then that, what does it mean for the real people who recorded and preformed those clips? They get nothing. I don’t see how that’s fair. We learned of a sister site that contained clips of other exclusive paid sound clips meant for GarageBand. On it was a man who was on his death bed. In his life, he was and important figure in the music scene. To pay for his hospital bills, he agreed to selling his content. It’s terrifying. Not only is he selling a piece of his soul, but he’s also jeopardizing his future hiring opportunities. What’s going to happen after his hospital say? It’s not like he can just die, he had to go to the hospital and therefore he has to pay his bills. What now? I feel so bad. It makes me hate the people who would buy this kind of content. The world is all one big giant mass of people and it’s not always a good one.

Gonna be honest, this class was a slower one. There is a statement that stood out to me however, Professor O’Malley told us to think about how ugly English would be without the letter “U”. That in its self isn’t a super interesting thought, but it did lead me to think about those tests you used to get emailed back in middle school where they’d challenge you to read a paragraph with missing or mixed up letters. He then went on to point out how redundant and unnecessary certain letters are, so why do we have them? They just take up room and provide no substance, right? I couldn’t help but explore that thought. At first I agreed, it seemed language had evolved to that point we didn’t need all of our letters. Then I thought about why we had gotten to that point, and its because we see some words so often we recognize them even when they’re jumbled and there is connotation to every word that you can piece together from context. So what would happen if we completely changed the way we write, omitting “QU” and using just “Q”? What if we got rid of vowels all together? At first, I doubt anyone would struggle. People would still be able to communicate and write and speak. It’s just texting lingo after all. But over time, I imagine that would change. The repetition is the reason we understand jumbled and incorrect words, eventually that repetition would no longer exist. At that point one of two things would happen, either language would evolve to become some new version of old (almost like Shakespeare if you want to think of it that way) or people would become illiterate and mute.

That having been said, language is evolving all the time. Think of all the new language parents yell at their kids for using, lit, shook, bet, fam – the list goes on but I’ll stop for fear of sounding cringy. Our modern tongue would be unintelligible gibberish to someone from the Elizabethan era.

This day was another HIST day, not that there’s anything wrong with that, I find it fascinating. We talked a lot about Vannevar Bush’s idea of a memex. A desk that can only be explained as the same concept as the internet— minus the online wifi part. The memex was a way of forging one’s own path in researching. You’d be able to access all your information in one place as well as notes you made, and it all fit very well in your traditional desk. Now, Bush’s really complex idea just couldn’t quite be achieved with how far along technology was in his day. While Bush never managed to see his memex come to fruition, he did pave the way for communicative and research development.

He predicted so many things— and I mean so many; kindles, the internet, cellphones, VR headsets, GoPros, the lot and so much more. What I found most interesting were his visions for them. When I say Bush predicted the aforementioned technology, he predicted the concepts, ideas and functionalities of them, not their actual form or what they looked like. Bush’s technology, I can only imagine, would have looked incredibly steampunk…. I think that’s awesome. I love steam punk style so I’m gonna add pictures in case anyone doesn’t know what “steampunk” is and just because I like it, this is my blog and I can.

What I imagine the memex would look like

Bush’s GoPro

(of course you can’t have steam punk without the hat or goggles)

Steampunk is basically fusing technology with industrial era clothing or life, it’s a subculture of people I think fits perfectly for Bush’s ideas. The main thing I took away from our lesson was, however, the way Bush looked at the future. It left me wanting to take time and think about advancements and technology I can imagine in the future. All inventions and all ideas are derived from what we already know or have available to us. We as a species are incapable of seeing into the future. If we could, everything would have been discovered or invented already. What Bush did was take what he know about knowledge, information and research and reshape it into a more effective process. I reflected on what we know/have now and Bush’s idea for his memex. I think the modern era version of a memex is what we see in books and movies. Below are my notes from class, they describe it better since it was in the moment:

• We talked about how research is done and that the internet is the solution… I was thinking it can go further – like the desks used in Ender’s Game that’s what they would look like. And this “dex” to use Bush’s work would be touch screen. Each addition to the thread of thought is like a little hexagonal blurb. You draw lines and connect them, you make more hexagons with writing, these hexagons could have anything (articles, links, photos, videos, poems, whatever is useful to your research. That would be the ultimate “dex”
  • In the future someone might see my idea and think of a better way to make a dex using technology they have and forces that we presently are unable to.

The fact that the authors like Orson Scott Card, and others who write dystopian novels, have already come up with this idea means it isn’t an original though. It’s funny to me how authors would write about these “dex”s that would undermine their being. It’s like Professor O’Malley mentioned in class, Bush (also Berners-Lee who we hadn’t talked about yet) practically made books extinct. Why read someone else’s train of thought, their biases, when you can research and compile you own? This memex would have been the first thing on a long road to their demise. That being said, I think books will never die. That’s because they’re more then just research and information, they’re also stories; and there’s no other solid source of stories.