The Power of Viral?

All of the readings from this week focused on the viral power of the internet and when it can be potentially used for good. Just think about the positive qualities of modern technology. Information and ideas can be disseminated faster than ever and communities of people can be united across the world via online engagement spaces. Everything happens much faster and is exposed to the public eye at a rate never before seen or experienced. The whole concept of something going “viral” and taking over these online spaces (albeit normally for a short period of time) is potentially problematic if there is no productive follow up to the initial act, or if the viral thing is not something that is good in the first place. For the sake of this blog post I will talk about some of the positive aspects of the web for social good.

The internet is powerful because of numbers. The sheer access that the majority of people have now a days to connect and share information is incredible. It is extremely easy for people to voice their opinions and share their thoughts in a public domain (think stream of consciousness twitter, or Facebook rants). Every day it seems like someone new is trying to crowd source to get funding for their new project. Last week a friend of mine was looking to raise $300 for her Costa Rica trip this summer and today the first things I saw on my newsfeed when I went to Facebook was this.

 Ethan Mollick discusses the methods used in crowd sourcing and kick starter campaigns and why they ultimately fail or are successful. The idea of generating unregulated funds from the general public is a relatively new concept and something that brings up a lot of conversations about privacy, obligation, and group manipulation and marketing. Although this isn’t in the realm of activism directly, it still shows the power of the internet, and if it is this easy for people to back a project monetarily, imagine how easy it is to back free ideas.

When there are multiple people on the same platform sharing ideas and interacting, it practically creates the breeding grounds for uniting activism and bringing to light issues that normally would take a while to gain followers and traction. The Zuckerman reading discusses the Arab spring movement and censorship in China in conjunction with activist movements online. The Arab spring movement was as successful as it was in gaining support quickly and bringing the public eye to governmental injustices via photos, tweets, video streams, and posts that broadcast the movement for the whole world to follow. It was there in front of our eyes. We could not turn away. While I observe the speed with which action was taken in this case, I can’t help but think of other movements in the past, before the rampant use of technology, and how ideas traveled back then. My mind jumps to the Civil Rights movement and sit-ins and marches.

I think of how these would have been publicized probably by word of mouth or by flyers. There would be no mass texts, no Facebook groups, no catchy videos to post and share with your friends to get them excited about joining you. What might have happened if the people at the Greensboro sit in had cell phones and could text their friends or live tweet about it? I can’t help but draw parallels to what we are seeing in Ferguson today and how the same situation is seen in a more public eye today and it has quickly become a daily topic of conversation. Likewise, in looking at comparative timelines of both the Civil Rights movement and the Arab Spring movement, we see that in the Arab Spring movement action was obviously seen sooner.

I can’t help but wonder though if something about the lack of technology in the past made people devoted to the cause more dedicated since they worked all that much harder to gain support. Without the ease of the world just a click away each step to get followers and expose the injustices in the world, I could understand how every member mattered more. When there are so many people following a mass movement very easily it seems that some of the camaraderie built from mutual struggle is lost. At the same time I can see how perhaps the same ideals are still present in the more modern context and technology hasn’t changed the nature of relationships in activism, but rather created new ways of doing the same thing. I think of code words used by people of various groups for example to connote meeting places safe from the prying eye of the policing public. In the same article mentioned before Zuckerman discusses how people in China used code words to talk about censorship since the word “censor” triggered keyword filters and alerted authorities. They used Mandarin homonyms to beat the system and have an underground (yet still very public) conversation. In a way this mirrors the physical policing of organizing in the past in this new modern web space. The same dynamics of policing are still at play just in more subtle, less immediately violent ways.

One new way of visible online activism is through Twitter hashtags as we discussed earlier in this course. Suey Park elaborates on the politics of Twitter hashags and says that, “We use Twitter to remember we are not alone — or crazy — but instead part of a collective struggle.” The platform of a public domain unites people in common struggle. The hashtag “#hasjustinelandedyet” is a good example of one positive way that the twitter community pointed out racism and help one woman accountable for her words. By being part of the public space, her once problematic inner thoughts were exposed to the world and communities united to call her out. If she had just said this to her friend and then someone overheard and told some friends and then maybe they shared the story with a few more people, it would not have had the same traction that it did in this very public space. Communities can also be created by in and out groups of who can use and appropriate certain hashtags. Park notes that “#NotYourAsianSidekick” a hashtag that she started to talk about the appropriation of Asian culture in media, “has never existed in a vacuum–it exists in a continuum, within a women of color feminist genealogy — it is the continuation of a dialogue, of a series of efforts that have had successes and failures.”  These hashtags and forms of online activism need to be seen in the larger context of their use and the conversations from which they are born.

Overall in my lifetime I have seen the internet mobilize and unite people across the world in more positive ways than not. There is real power here and we need to take advantage of that when we can, but also understand the implications of public dialogues and movements in these nebulous spaces. How can we make sure we are using it productively and taking advantage of this source at our fingertips.

Questions to think about:

What might activist campaigns (like I,Too, Am Harvard) in the age of the internet have looked without the internet?

How has policing played out in these spaces?

What are some of the positives and negatives of concepts/ideas/campaigns that “go viral”? How can we compare the rise and fall of these viral concepts with the rise and fall of past movements before the internet? Is there something problematic happening here or is speed and brevity everything?

Sources:

Mollick, Ethan R. 2013. The Dynamics of Crowdfunding: An Exploratory Study. SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 2088298. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2088298

Zuckerman, Ethan. 2014. “Cute Cats to the Rescue? Participatory Media and Political Expression.” In Youth, New Media and Political Participation. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/78899

Park, Suey, and Eunsong Kim. 2014. “Hashtags as Decolonial Projects with Radical Origins.” Model View Culture. Accessed August 18. https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/hashtags-as-decolonial-projects-with-radical-origins

http://www.buzzfeed.com/alisonvingiano/this-is-how-a-womans-offensive-tweet-became-the-worlds-top-s

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/erikanderslang/be-the-ball-a-documentary-on-golf-and-sprituality

http://itooamharvard.tumblr.com/

 

The Racist Camera

How is the camera racist? This is the broad question that I hope to research for my final project. By exploring the roots of this modern technology I hope to uncover the white supremacist ideals upon which it was founded and expose (no pun intended) the flaws in modern film production and media representation of minority groups.

There is an inherent bias towards white skin in photography. That is how film works. You choose a subject, expose for that light, and then adjust the camera’s shutter speed and aperture to best capture that subject in the current lighting situations. But what happens when you have the camera doing this automatically? Or when you have two subjects with varying skin tones?

Often times it is the light skin that gets exposed for and everything darker falls out of the frame of reference. This is because when color film was first being developed the researchers needed a standard for skin tone. They chose this fancy white lady in a white dress. Today her skin color reference cards are known as “Shirley cards”.

Syreeta McFadden writes that “The image is used as a metric for skin-color balance, which technicians use to render an image as close as possible to what the human eye recognizes as normal. But there’s the rub: With a white body as a light meter, all other skin tones become deviations from the norm.” The problem here isn’t the face value science of the camera or the light meter per se; both are programmed to work in certain light situations and expose for the correct amount of light. Certain tones of skin are naturally going to reflect more light than others and thus need different exposures just as a white or black chair would need different settings. The problem is though when standards and “normal” settings are set with the lightest white skin tone as the basis. It comes from those who were in charge of the camera industry when film and devices were being developed (cough cough…white males) and how this technology was decided to be used.

The legacies of white supremacy in these early decisions are still seen today. They are seen in the lightning of celebrities’ skin tones on magazine covers, in the way filming direction needs to be thought out when filming a cast with darker skin, and overall how the representation of skin color plays out in the public eye.

I expect to use some limited resources I have already found, such as articles online and in journals, as well as resources here at Harvard that might have old cameras, or old instructions for using cameras or advertisements for photography. As Lorna Roth, wrote, the techniques behind the development of color film, “could have been designed initially with more sensitivity to the continuum of yellow, brown and reddish skin tones but the design process would have to be motivated by a recognition of the need for extended range” (Roth), but back then the entire market consisted of white consumers. There are tons of old archived magazines and newspapers in the library system that I can look into to find more evidence of this. There are also archives of actual old photographs that I can use and maybe get some first hand accounts. I envision this project taking the form of a visual website that will combine text describing what I find as well as a highly visually based component since the controversy around the camera is visually based. An aesthetic like those on medium.com is something I am envisioning. At this point I only see it being text and image based, but perhaps if I start to find certain statistics that are relevant to track along the way, I can include graphs or time lines that portray particularly jarring facts. This project is simply seeking to shed light (or darkness) on an issue that most people don’t even realize is a problem. Photographs saturate our lives and we are such a visually based society. It is time that we know the history behind the devices we use.

Sources:

Hornaday, Ann. “‘12 Years a Slave,’ ‘Mother of George,’ and the Aesthetic Politics of Filming Black Skin.” The Washington Post 17 Oct. 2013. washingtonpost.com. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

Inside Amy Schumer – Interracial Wedding Photographer. N.p., 2014. Film.

Johannesburg, David Smith in. “‘Racism’ of Early Colour Photography Explored in Art Exhibition.” the Guardian. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

Keilla. “Fashionably Informed: “White-Washing” & Skin Lightening.”College Fashion. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

Roth, Lorna. “Looking at Shirley, the Ultimate Norm: Colour Balance, Image Technologies, and Cognitive Equity.” Canadian Journal of Communication 34.1 (2009): n. pag. Web.

“Shirley Cards.” the colour balance project (BETA). N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

“Teaching The Camera To See My Skin.” BuzzFeed. 12 Apr. 2014 Web. 20 Oct. 2014.

“The Hardest Part of Being in a Biracial Relationship Is Taking a Picture Together.” Imgur. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

“The Truth About Photography and Brown Skin.” Jezebel. 3 Apr. 2014 Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

How the Dynamics of Cyber Racism are seen in the Debate over Facebook Name Regulation

Recent news has circulated around Facebook’s enforcement of their policy on using “real” names. Although it may not seem to be directly related to cyber racism and the readings from this week I still see common themes that show how cyber racism is at play in this recent debate. The Guardian reports that recently hundreds of drag queens were informed that their Facebook profiles were going to be deactivated unless they changed their names to be “real” names. In a discussion of authority, white supremacy, and globalization below, I hope to shed some light on the key issues I see with the enforcing of this policy.

Safety in the Internet world

            In the same article in the Guardian, Facebook justified their actions by saying that “we’ve seen situations where people have used fake names to engage in bad behavior online”, and the author notes that this “completely misses the point. Seeing ‘situations’ where fake names enable bad behavior isn’t a reason to crack down on pseudonyms. It’s a reason to crack down on bad behavior.” Getting to the root of one problem is better than creating another. The Facebook online policy on “changing your name and birthday” corroborates this statement: “Facebook is a community where people use their real identities. We require everyone to provide their real names, so you always know who you’re connecting with. This helps keep our community safe.” But hate speech online occurs regardless of whether you can be identified by your name or not. In a blog post on NPR a statement from Chris Wolf, national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League’s Civil Rights Committee, tried to justify the real name policy and said: “As someone who has studied online hate for 20 years, I know that a real name policy works to prevent hate speech and harassment. … On balance, the benefits on anonymity for one group needs to be balanced against the potential harm anonymity can cause everyone.” The problem here lies with the anonymity of a name. In this case, people aren’t trying to hide, they are trying to belong. A name is the ultimate signifier of identity, it is how people know you and how you represent yourself to the world. Nicknames and fake names can often be more important signifiers of belonging to certain communities than one’s birth name. The Internet communities of belonging, for example your circle of Facebook friends, are thus regulated and patrolled under the guise of public safety. Where is the regulation of usernames on white supremacist sites that enable hate speech and blogging? Why aren’t those users forced to give their real names, to own up to their speech, and not hide behind the screen of anonymity and a fake username. There was even a discussion in Cyber Racism by Jessie Daniels on how people on these sites choose their usernames, how there are cultural, racial, class, and gendered specificities that go into picking a username that fully represents the individual who registers with the site (Daniels 63). If these people are allowed to have so much freedom and thought go into defining parts of their identity with a name, why aren’t people allowed to use their desired names on Facebook?

Further along the lines of safety, sometimes people may change their Facebook names to protect themselves from an abusive past. Maybe there is someone that they don’t want to find them or know about their life. Changing a name gives the people control of how they represent themselves on the Internet and can give a comfortable level of anonymity that is controlled within a small circle of friends. In the NPR article the author notes that often, “in a violent situation, control over one’s self is taken away. One of the ways to restore it, she says, ‘is really having the freedom of choosing whatever name you want to use, whatever gender you really are and want to be’”. By being told that they are being forced to use “real” names, those who maybe felt once safe are now going to be exposed.

The concept of “real” in general is also very troubling. Who gets to dictate what is a real name? How will this be regulated? In the “Help” section of Facebook they say that “The name you use should be your real name as it would be listed on your credit card, driver’s license or student ID” and a very broad statement proclaims: “Pretending to be anything or anyone isn’t allowed”. This speaks to authenticity and that those who don’t use their real birth names are somehow “pretending” to be something they’re not, that any form of deviation from the norm is not real, it is an act, and should not be taken seriously.

How white supremacy reigns

            The white supremacy behind cyber racism is discussed at length in the Jessie Daniels reading. It is the foundation upon which all the tenets of Internet racism and policing rest, and the lens through which established thought comes to be. Just think about who gets the make all the rules, who is designing these sites, who is in leadership positions in the companies that get to make decisions like this one? The authority in charge has the power to put into place the ideals of white supremacy and just acts as a catalyst for maintaining the current power dynamics. The author of the Guardian article notes that, “A ‘real name’ policy is fundamentally an appeal to authority – we outsource the ability to determine “real names” to parents and parent figures in the government. So when Facebook allows users to report “fake names”, it is giving them permission to enforce other people’s identities that they think are not sufficiently ratified by existing government authorities”. The population in power is largely white and male. Laws have been institutionalized to include and privilege certain parties in this world and basically make it practically very hard to live comfortably and be anything but white. Systemic racism uses institutionalized practices to invoke and enforce racist practices. In this case, the regulation of true self proclaimed identity is an attack on personal liberties and is a way of systemically controlling populations.

Furthermore, Facebook is a site for people all over the world and thus enforces the ideals of white supremacy to a global audience. Daniels also notes how white supremacy is not confined to US boundaries although the majority of hate websites do come from American domains (Daniels 45). The “white is right” mentality is insidious and is pervasive in all facets of life around the globe. It is seen covertly in everyday life. In Facebook’s “Community Standards” regulations page they say that, regarding hate speech, “Facebook does not permit hate speech, but distinguishes between serious and humorous speech.” I will not discuss the problems of this statement at length here for the sake of brevity, but again, putting the judging of harmful speech in the hands of outside parties disregards the effects that many covert forms of subtle cyber racism have on large populations of people. Just take a look at popular media. Look at the people that are featured on the covers of magazine and in leading roles on television. We are saturated with images of successful white heteronormativity on the daily (examples below) and thus are told that this way of life is “normal” and “right”. Everything else is some deviation from that and thus subject to regulation to realign with those frameworks.

 

Gender Dynamics at play

            One doesn’t have to look far to see how gender dynamics are affected in this case. First of all we can see how people who may be transitioning, or are drag queens are directly targeted here. Facebook is taking away the liberty for people to say who they really are and to define how they represent themselves to the world. Furthermore, men or women with abusive partners may be searching for a safe haven in the anonymity of names on Facebook and are now going to be forced to reveal themselves to a potentially dangerous partner. If you think about those who are targeted by this new policy we can see how gender roles are also at play. I personally know many high school girls (also mostly white) who change their Facebook names during senior year so that college admissions offices can’t search their names and find pictures of them at some high school party with a beer in their hand or wearing a “slutty nurse” costume from Halloween. These young white girls are not the target of Facebook’s new enforcement of the policy and yet they have more to hide, one could argue, than many people who are.

Racial dynamics at play

Beyond the racial elements already mentioned, we need to really consider what we mean when we say “real” name. This essentially means a “normal white sounding name” and thus reinforces racial divides in another way. There have been many studies done on the effects of job hiring as related to your name on a resume and as mentioned in a New York Times article from 2009, “Research has shown that applicants with black-sounding names get fewer callbacks than those with white-sounding names, even when they have equivalent credentials.” Since whiteness equates to being hired and being more successful, it is no wonder that applicants will try to downplay aspects of their blackness (like going by a different name). The article in the New York Times further notes that, “if playing down blackness is a common strategy born of necessity, perceived or real, it still takes a psychic toll, maybe a greater one now, as people calibrate identity more carefully.” The regulation of Facebook names is just a more institutionalized practice of the self regulating that already sadly happens in many non-white communities. The author of the article further mentioned that, “In some ways, they are denying who and what they are,” he said. “They almost have to pretend themselves away.”

Immigrant and other dynamics at play                 

The policy is also a very US citizen centric one. First of all, names cannot include characters from other languages thus enforcing English as the universal language and othering anyone else who writes or speaks in anything else. Furthermore, Facebook only accepts certain forms of ID as valid:

• “Birth certificate
• Driver’s license
• Passport
• Marriage certificate
• Official name change paperwork
• Personal or vehicle insurance card
• Non-driver’s government ID (ex: disability, SNAP card, national ID card)
• Green card, residence permit or immigration papers
• Voter ID card”

The nature of having many of these IDs is specific to being an American citizen and often the tests, fees, and overall process of acquiring these forms of ID also reflect institutionalized practices that are meant to privilege white Americans and shut out or make life difficult for anyone who threatens the status quo.

If we want Facebook to be a truly free space for people to express themselves, connect with friends, and ultimately feel safe, then having a “fake” name is in no way threatening this. More often than not the names that are used are more “real” to the user than their birth name anyway. It’s all about really thinking about who has the authority to regulate in these situations, who are the victims, and how those power dynamics speak to larger discrepancies in gender and race relations.

Sources:

“What Names Are Allowed on Facebook? | Facebook Help Center | Facebook.” What Names Are Allowed on Facebook? | Facebook Help Center | Facebook. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Sept. 2014.

Farrington, Dana. “Facebook Requires Real Names. What Does That Mean For Drag Queens?” NPR. NPR, 28 Sept. 2014. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.

“What Types of ID Does Facebook Accept? | Facebook Help Center | Facebook.” What Types of ID Does Facebook Accept? | Facebook Help Center | Facebook. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Sept. 2014.

“Facebook Community Standards.” Facebook. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.

Luo, Michael. “‘Whitening’ the Résumé.” Www.nytimes.com. The New York Times, 5 Dec. 2009. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.

“https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByL-frtCYAA_ebH.jpg”. 2014. JPEG file.

Screen shots of google searches. 2014. JPEG file.

Zimmerman, Jess. “Facebook’s Real Name Policy Is a Drag, and Not Just for the Performers It Outs.” Www.theguardian.com. The Guardian, 24 Sept. 2014. Web.

Thanks Mom! Childhood Jealousy Turns Grateful Adult.

For the sake of being concise I am only going to talk about technology that comes in the physical form (like computers, phones, television etc…) and how my experiences with these devices in my earlier childhood have shaped how I interact with them now.

 Pre Grade School

My first memory of technology came from music and games. When I was younger I was only looking for ways to entertain myself and, although I did spend the majority of my time outside in our back yard playing with the hose, turning over stones, or climbing trees, I do have some early memories of using the computer for fun. I specifically remember playing a Winnie the Pooh computer game and a Stellaluna computer game. They were essentially books online that you could read and interact with. I actually found a video of both recently and it was a bit freaky to watch; I remember what would come next in the game, how the page was arranged, things the characters said, and the intonation in their voice.

I also remember music being a large part of my childhood. We had TONS of records, tapes, and CDs in my house growing up. I remember my dad made me a tape of songs (mostly the Beatles, Foo Fighters, and The Police) that I would play all the time. We had a portable player that I would put the tape in and colorful headphones that I would wear and walk around with while played.

 1^st-5^th grade

In first grade I remember being introduced to technology in a more explicit way and for the first time being jealous of my friends for having things that I was not allowed to have. Some had cell phones and laptops and I did not have either. I remember the thrill of playing games on my friend’s phone or playing video games at her house. These were not things that I was allowed to do at home and it became a thing of luxury to try to get to the next level of the Harry Potter game. I lived vicariously through her you could say. She always found it funny that I was so entertained by her games and toys. I also remember having my blue Walkman that I would play CDs on. I didn’t really have many of my own, but I do remember an S Club 7 CD being used a lot.

 5^th-8^th grade

It was during this time that I first started to encounter social media sites more openly. I had gotten my first computer, a blue and grey PC, and had a Hotmail email account. I also got an AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and had shoot4goals07 as my username. I thought I was clever in the double meaning since I played soccer and also desired to have goals in life. I was a charmer. I remember the amount of thought I would put into my status updates and how meaningless the conversations I had on AIM were. The excitement was so intense when a friend would go from offline to online and you would either wait for them to message you (if it was that cute boy from your math class) or you would immediately message your friend with something akin to a cat stepping on the “y” button for too long: “HEYYYYYYYYY!!! :)”

 8^th-10^th grade

In these years I transitioned from middle school to high school. I got my first phone in 8^th grade because I started getting more involved in after school programs and needed ways to contact my parents to tell them if I was going to be late, or where I would meet them when practice/rehearsal ended. My first phone was a black flip phone, then 2 years later I got a blue flat phone (sort of looked like a blackberry). See photo progression below. On these first two phones I would only call and text. There was no Internet, emails, or picture mail. I was also not allowed to use Facebook or other social media sites like MySpace or Twitter during this time. I knew they existed, and I loved looking at my friends’ profiles when I would hang out with them, but I never had my own.

10^th -12^th grade

These last two years of high school probably were the most transitional in my technological upbringing. I was finally allowed to use Facebook the first day of my Sophomore year of high school. I recently went back and looked at my early posts and most of them were friends being really excited that I was “FINALLY ON FACEBOOK!” and I learned that I was really annoying. I apologize to the Facebook world on behalf of my younger self. I also transitioned to using a MacBook computer and dropped my CDs for ITunes and digital music. I left my Hotmail account for a Gmail account which was much easier and more centralized with sharing documents and using gchat to talk about projects. I had more papers and school work that required a computer at this time and it started to become a more integral part of my education. I also got an IPhone after high school ended. I remember I had to make a case to my parents about how it would be useful in college (it has.) and I had to pay for the monthly cost of the new additional data myself. I also got more interested in photography, both digital and film, during these years and thus saw that more creative connection to my computer too.

 College

I think the most meaningful experiences with technology have come with my college years. Some of the highlights of my college career have come from the successes of the power of social media (especially Tumblr). I still use Facebook, but mostly just to see events that are happening, and to keep in touch with friends that have come and gone over the years. It is rare that I post a status update. I definitely spend a lot of time on the computer today. I listen to music mostly on Pandora or Spotify (free music sites with occasional ads) and am always online checking my email, reading articles, writing papers, scrolling through Facebook, or working on my photography. I definitely spend way more time on my computer than I would like. But is it all necessarily bad? I have been able to become a much more aware and informed individual through research and interactions in online spaces. Even the fact that we are doing this for a class is pretty cool. Still, I think there is growing skepticism today as to the effects of the Internet on how we socially interact with other people. Are we still making meaningful connections? Are sites like LinkedIn really useful? Has the internet-mediated way of relationships become the norm?

There was an article that I read this summer that made me want to take a break from it all: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/hit-the-reset-button-in-your-brain.html?_r=1.

I think personally I try to be conscious of how I use the Internet and also pair it with meaningful face-to-face connections. Some applications like Skype or Snapchat are a happy medium between these spaces. Technology can be extremely useful as a supplement, but the danger lies in when we over saturate ourselves with a screen and lose the beauty of real lived experiences. Perhaps the conflation of the two, as the screen becomes real life, is where the confusion and struggle to separate lie.

Works Cited:

132511-sprint-pcs-vision-phone-katana-by-sanyo-open-angle.jpg. Digital image. N.p., 14 Sept. 2014. Web.

“Disney Animated Storybook: Winnie Pooh – Part 1.” YouTube. YouTube, 24 June 2011. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.

Levitin, Daniel J. “Hit the Reset Button in Your Brain.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 09 Aug. 2014. Web. 14 Sept. 2014

“Playthrough: Stellaluna-Part 1.” YouTube. YouTube, 19 Dec 2011. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.

Sprint-sanyo-scp-2700-qwerty-phone.jpg. Digital image. N.p., 14 Sept. 2014. Web.