This article is about the need and usefulness of the content control features. It is impossible to filter who gets online and what they write about. The only thing we can do is not look at it or ignore it, but when we first get online we do not know who is going to be on and what they have written or are going to write. The content control feature helps eliminate your chance of viewing content that your not comfortable with seeing. Most people believe that you could just ignore rude comments, but “The fact is, long-term exposure to threatening situations, such as online harassment, is one of the major causes of PTSD.”  This is less apparent in children of the new era. Older generations believe that PTSD is just something that war veterans can get but in younger generations are more resilient and can handle more emotional content.”Millennials are not afraid of these conversations. Quite the opposite… young people have finally begun to acknowledge how many of us have dealt with trauma and violence…”  Women are often a key target to online discrimination because often they are seen as weaker and easier to attach. To lower chances of any abuse happening the content control feature should be enacted. This is not to say that abuse can not still happen but the likability of this happening is lessened. I believe that the content control feature is a basic feature of online and should be available and should be understood more.

King, Melissa. “Better Online Living Through Content Moderation,” Model View Culture 28 (October 14, 2015). Web: https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/better-online-living-through-content-moderation.

(CW)

Has anyone ever told you to go out and smell the roses? Have they ever said to go out and look at all the colors? In this article they explored the colors outside while taking a walk in New York City. It is often hard to just focus on your destination when walking, especially in the city. There are many eye catching objects of many different colors. In the article they decided to take William Burroughs advice and take a color walk. The main objective of a color walk is to choose a color and focus on it in as you walk.  There are also a lot of things that catches your eye and slows down your journey. What the article recommends is that you pick and stick to one color or go out and let a color find you. In the article they expressed how at the end of their color walk they had many colors on their minds. In my opinion this could be used to improve health. I believe that a peaceful walk focusing on other things could help lower blood pressure or help sooth anxiety. This also helps us look more closely at the built environment and you notice that more important things like taxis, fire hydrants…etc colored in bright eye popping colors like yellow and red. Taxis are yellow because they stand out from the natural colors of other cars. Billboards are high above eye level so they must create a more eye popping display. Going out on a color walk you should be able to see more things you wouldn’t have noticed before. In America with our growing technology we forget about the little things around us. Things that we take for granted like the changing of the colors of leaves and art and graffiti on the walls is what this article, in my opinion, is trying to get us back to. The color walk could be an attempt to turn the technology era back to a time like the Renaissance. Overall the article was just giving a new way to step back and appreciate the little things.

“Color Walking” by Radiolab: http://www.radiolab.org/story/214709-color-walk/

Right now we are in a gender revolution. Walls are being torn down and norms are being challenged. At a baby shower when revealing the sex of the baby the most common sign are pink for girl and blue for boy. This country was built on the foundation that he is better than she, and the years following, the wave continued. In the designs we see in some of the most successful businesses are not only male dominated in work but also in design. According to today’s view men and women are becoming more and more equal. “Masculine and feminine definitions are being switched and obscured, but this essentially a human phenomenon.” (Suzanne Tick) Which is basically saying Men can do what females do women can do anything men can do.

Feminism is making its way back into the system and not in a minor way. Women are not empowering only women to stand up but also men to speak out. People are stepping away from labels.For example, college students do not fill in the gender part of forms when taking a test. Children in middle school are speaking out on how they feel and are getting their gender roles changed to unspecified, according to the article. Transgender citizens weren’t viewed as anyone, but soon changed when the CEO United Therapeutics was reported the highest paid female, although born male. (Suzanne Tick) As Martine ‘Apartheid of sex’ was published its become common to say five billion people equals five billion different sexual identities.

The “rules” of gender have all been broken and our view on a male and female have all been diminished to the anatomy instead of the ability and appearance. The only real thing that separate men and women are anatomy. Men look like women,and women look like me, women are taking on men roles in politics and in business, and men are becoming stay at home dads. In the Magazine article Making Bathrooms More ‘Accommodating’ it talks about the challenge of transgender and the bathroom. Big companies like google have taken note of the changes and adopted gender neutral and unisex bathrooms. (Suzanne Tick) In a time where gender is only anatomy, how do we design a bathroom fit for everyone, and accepted by everyone. Although,we have unisex bathrooms they are one staled and lockable, which makes them private bathrooms not public.This is not like the Disability act that required everyone to follow a certain guide line. You can’t add rules and regulations to fix this problem. It is just the beginning of the gender neutral design era but this issue can’t wait. During this human phenomenon of post gender world how do we accept someone physically but not socially? I agree with the article; designing in a gender neutral environment is more challenging because you don’t have guide lines, nor support or understanding from certain groups. It took many years, protests and wars for things like race and sexuality to be accepted and to make rules protecting it.

His & Hers: Designing for a Post-Gender Society” by Suzanne Tick

The Equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment gave the right of equal protection under the law to every citizen regardless of their age, gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation. As of June 2015 same sex marriage is legal. During this time and age gender walls have broken down. Men do what females do and Females can do what men do, but one thing still separate us. The most universally form of gender separation are bathrooms. The male bathrooms have the sign of a person and the women bathroom has a person wearing a dress, but none for transgender people. The way things are now are because of norms that have been since anyone can remember. When women began to enter the work force the bathrooms were redesigned to fit the “weaker body of the working woman”.(Bazelon, Emily) The bathrooms for women were intended to be a resting place for women, while away from home. Women were seen to be weak and prone to fainting. At the end of last year Houston had a voting for broad equal rights ordinance.It stated that there would be no discrimination against any citizen according to gender, age, race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Voters rejected the idea with tee shirts and TV ads focusing on the voter biggest fears. (Bazelon, Emily)

 Schools have adapted to the change on how we call and recognize transgender students but have yet to treating them as what they want/are. The main desire of solution is for everyone to accommodate them. To learn to accept what they did not before. A transgender 12 year old says that she is allowed to shower with her other girl classmates, and do not feel weird when she walks in the locker room. Activists, however, have recognized the accommodation as a distinction between normal and the other. (Bazelon, Emily) They believe there is a norm and someone comes along and asks to change that norm; to accommodate them. That is not the only way to look at the word accommodating. There are time were to accommodate means “two way street”. (Bazelon, Emily) We use this method every day, for example, relationships.We give up something, the other party gives up something, so that we can live peacefully together.  I believe that separation is not based on feeling or wants, but proof. Bathrooms are based on the parts off a person not on the mind. A basic human want is to have a sense that you belong.

BAZELON, EMILY. “Making Bathrooms More Accommodating.” New York Times Magazine. 17 November 2015. Web. 2 January 2016.

 This article talks about the use of photography to unveil the forgotten New York. Looking at New York you would describe it as one of the U.S busiest cities. Look closer you see the many different people living there the art all around the neighborhoods. This is how far people look when describing New York. Why not look deeper into New York? You will see the crime and poverty running through the streets. The homeless population is often overlooked even though it has been an issue for quite some time. There are so many buildings for living yet still an overwhelming amount of homeless people, who contribute their own structures to the cities by building a shelter using personal belongings and materials found on the streets.
 This article is not to attach New York on its system of dealing with the homeless population, or the lack thereof, but to make a spectacle out of what has been hidden in plain sight. Homes, not homeless, treats homelessness as something you can’t become. Homes are superior to the homeless, but why does the homeless care. The pictures used show that the homeless, not homes, are one in the same. Although, not the socially accepted, the homes built by the homeless are the same as the houses built and lived in by the homes. Life, even though not socially recognized, for the homeless are similar in ways that some have pets. How do you have a dog and be homeless? Same reason why others own dogs: companionship, protection, physical needs…etc.

Mac’s first house, East River, 1992. Margaret Morton. Image courtesy of Leica Gallery

 Morton’s tunnel photographs show not just where the homeless live, but those out to destroy them. Homelessness can’t be defined as a condition of not having a home; because the homeless have homes. Government demolishes these homes because of their lack of valid material and visual appeal. This shows you how unstable a home can be. Making homes and the homeless the same, but what loss is loss from a home losing their home and the homeless losing their home? The feeling of loss is universal but more recognized in the homeless population. Morton’s view on shelter and the lack of shelter on ones physiological state is shown through interviews and even through some of her photographs. Many people in the tunnel stay, while others try their luck outside of them.
 Morton interviews a homeless man named Doug. His description of the east river describes a different,yet closer look at what is seen just by a glance. He says “You may drive by here and see that they are shabby, but I think that if you look again you see this person took the time to build a place that could be comfortable for himself…The person who will take the time to build for himself is the person who still has an interest in himself.“(NERSESSOVA, IRINA) Goals of the situationalist internationalists are to blur the lines between art and life, but I believe Morton’s view is that there is no line. Life is like a work of art. Look beyond what’s hidden behind rusted material to see how we can tell the homes from the homeless.

Sources
NERSESSOVA, IRINA. “Tapestry Of Space: Domestic Architecture And Underground Communities In Margaret Morton’s Photography Of A Forgotten New York.” Disclosure 23 (2014): 26. Advanced Placement Source. Web. 20 Nov. 2015.

   This article looks into the time of discrimination in a new less obvious way, architecture. Robert Moses known as a master builder in New York, was known for his bridge work. More recognized for his intentional bridge design,that lowered bridge heights so that buses wouldn’t be able to pass under them. Why didn’t he want buses? Busses are used majorly by poor and minorities. Bringing unwanted noise and crime. Was this the real reason or was it more to it than they were letting on? Bus systems like MARTA are under criticism today for this very reason, but life is considerably different from the 1970s. In 1974, the city of Memphis, white residents request that a street be closed off, which connects a majority white and black neighborhoods. When brought to the Supreme Court it was ruled as a “routine burden of citizenship and slight inconvenience” (Schindler, S…) Justice Marshall didn’t withhold acknowledging the message hidden behind this.
  Laws and lawmakers which are intended to help prevent racial discrimination are a main contributor to the very things it seeks to prevent. Regulations, requirements, even structural designs are all tactics that lead to discouraging certain groups to migrate over to other locations. Lawrence Lessig’s regulatory theory which states that behavior can be regulated or contained by architecture. (Schindler, S…) Regulations enforced by architecture is harder to identify through the courts because they are less noticeable, not as direct, and generally unfamiliar to the eyes we use to see the world everyday (common eyes). We do have laws that prevent discrimination through architecture, for example, through the Americans with Disabilities Act which gave us handicap parking and ramps. Obvious architectural exclusion or human right that just so happened to involve the changing architectural design to allow accessibility to other places, but how does this differentiate from the low bridges restricting minorities and poor from going into certain neighborhoods?

Example of a low bridge that keeps buses out of certain areas.

  Architectural discrimination is not always intentional. When constructing a new highway or Bridgeway constructors plan on location, traffic accessibility and economic impact. Looking at it as a built environment a highway can divide two neighborhoods, making it inconvenient to associate with each other. Politically, however, according to Lessig “That the Constitutional Court in Germany is in Karlsruhe, while the capital is in Berlin, limits the influence of one branch of government over the other. These constraints function in a way that shapes behavior. In this way, they too regulate.” (Schindler, S…) Here Lessig is not directly acknowledging that there are architectural constraints, but refers to them as “codes”, like technology linking together the behaviors or real world architecture to cyberspace. Legally physical exclusion through the use of architecture can easily be overlooked because structures are built according to laws. Laws made over a century ago to prevent to races from interacting are still used causing neighborhoods to still be segregated.
  This article was to seek attention on the use of architecture to bring together or separate certain people. However you may see the world around you, this article hopes to enlighten the common eyes, scholars, politicians, courts, and citizens’ eyes to see what may seem innocuous and according to law may have meaning to regulate and control the environment around them. Although signs and laws that divide us racially were taken down; new lines were drawn using architecture as the pen.

Sources
Schindler, Sarah. “Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination and Segregation Through Physical Design of the Built Environment.” Yale Law Journal. 124.6 (2015): 1934-2024..Web. 24 Jan. 2016.