Extra Credit1: Media Equation

This chapter focuses on politeness. It is intersting to think about where all of our social norms have come from. Most everyone understands the subtlties of interacting with other people. In a summaraztion, being polite is trying to make everyone feel happy and comfortable and the way that you can make people feel that way is to think about how you would feel and what you would want others to do for you. This chapter is interesting in that it continues to bring this idea of being polite into the rules for computers. Are the rules social ettiquet the same for computers as it is for humans? This is where some awesome experiments can come in. Two rules have emerged from this.
Rule 1: When a computer asks a user about itself, the user will give more positive responses whan when a different computer asks the same questions.
Rule 2: Because people are less honest when a computer asks about itself, the answers will be more homogeneious than when a different coputer asks the same quesions.
Even though these are interesting findinge, I feel like I have read them before or it is just common sennse. In any case, we can use this information to effect media. Most people deny that they are polite to media, but that doesn't make it any less the case. Their responses were automatic. This proves that computers are social actors. It is important to then create media to be polite, but it is even more important to make sure that the media is not impolite. Designers can ensure this by borrowing results of social scientists who study politness. One great scientists that can be looked towards is H. Paul Grice. He narrowed down the rules for polite interaction by four categories: quality, quanitity, relevance, and clarity. This means that speakers should only talk about what is important on a level that is equal to the listener and that they should give a resonable amount of information - not too much or too little. Some other important facts to know is that it is impolite to reject something, it is polite to say hello and goodbye, it is polite to make eye contact, and it is polite to match the method of communication. The interesting part of politness is when you start interacting across different cultures and demographics. This is the case because in one cluture a gesture may be polite and in another the same gesture is impolite. So, the developer needs to make sure they know their audience. This chapter was really interesing. Most of the material I think I already understood, but it was cool to see how they put it into words and applied it to computers.

Extra Credit #1 Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter five in the book Why We Make MIstakes is mainly about how humans are horrible multitaskgers. The example that he used to start of the chapter is an intense one. I never really realized that that could actually happen. However, it shouldn't surprise me because I am very easily succeptable to tunnel vision. The accident actually had a phrase coined after it: "Controlled Flight into Terrain". In most cases, the flight crew had lost awarenedd of the situation inside the cockpit. This is similar to multitasking. Sadly, our brains cannot function like our computers which are so good at multitasking these days. However, when you actually get down to it, even a computer cannot multitask unless it has multiply processors. "It switched back and forth between tasks several thousand times per second, thus giving the illusion that everything is happening simultaneously." Multitasking actually slows us down and causes us to forget what we were doing. This reminds me of a study that I read about where a select group of people in the work place were not allowed to check their emails for a week. I believe this study focused more on social interaction in the work place, but the results highlight how much more effecient the workers are when they are not distracted by there email. What is probably the most scary about multitasking is the condition called "inattentioal blindness". This is where you can be looking direcltly at somehting and still not see it. This is why it is so crucial not to talk on the phone when you are driving. Your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. I was surprised to learn that " a single two second glance doubles the risk of an accident". This provides a great area of research of how to minimize the risk when driving but still being able to use devices like a GPS and a phone. A really cool device mentioned in this chapter is the Intelligent Driver Information System. This will block telephone calls when drivers are changing lanes or turning. This chapter was well written and kept my interest with the various examples that it contianed. It was also good to read this article to remind me the dangers while driving - especially since many people will be driving home this week.

Interaction Diary

Meeting 1 (3 hours)

Met from 9:00 to 12:00 on Thursday
one of two girls playing
about 30 people there
most people were playing one on one games
introduced to the game and how to play
instructor was very patient in explaining
encouraged us that we would get the hang of it the more we play
for some reason it seemed like they really wanted us to learn the game
the room had sporadic game posters
there was also a box of free cards that people could use if they so desired - fosters new players to create their own deck.
Decks can consist of five different colors/elements
first analysis of deck colors:
white deck: consists of humans and angels focuses on giving life back to player
green deck: consists of beasts and elves - has a lot of low level creaters that do not cost much mana
black deck: consists of zombies and undead - can bring back creaters from the dead
red deck: consists of goblins and vampires - spells that hit for 3/5 damage - may also damage yourself
blue deck: has a lot of counter spells and abilities to hinder the other players strategy
there are different rules for casual play versus renouncement play
one player that I played against seemed to get bored because he continuously beat me and I was probably taking a while to make a decision on what to play
It was amusing when we would play a random card that we thought was just okay, but then they proceeded to tell us the strategy behind why that card was so great.
We did not talk much about anything outside of Magic
players have more than one deck of cards
was very willing to teach us how to play
Surprised by how fast they were able to make decisions on what card to play
has a different strategy for each deck
could know what the opponents strategy is by just their first three cards (makes me curious how long they have been playing this for)
extremely different vocabulary mainly because they have all their cards memorized
put cards into covers - this helps to protect the cards
learned that cards could range up to 200 dollars!!
I was actually became comfortable in that atmosphere quicker than I thought
the game mixes strategy and randomization which is fun.
The games took place in a game store. This store contained various board games and other table top games.


Meeting 2 (2 hours)
Met from 10:00 to 12:00 on monday
surprised how fast time can go when playing this game
saw some familiar faces from the previous meeting
am curious to see how often they come to clockworks
Played some games with a guy named Viet
I was surprised that he came over and initiated the game. I thought that we would have to go over and awkwardly ask people if they wanted to play with noobs.
Viet works at clockwork and claims that he isn't very good at the game, but he does have three different decks with sleaves and a game board(which I have no idea what the use is for. - it just looks like a giant mouse pad)
His three decks consisted of a vampire deck, zombie deck, and a white green deck. (ordered from his favorite to least favorite)
He was very kind and insisted that I just drew a bad hand when I lost, but he obviously plays better than I do.
Next time I think it would be interesting to watch a legit game maybe at a tournament so that I can see what a competitive game looks like
I also wonder if people have a "normal seat" that they always play in. This can be discovered in future observations.
another interesting area of research that could be done is to see how the personality of the player correlates with their deck. If for example they like to play with a black/red deck they may be more aggressive  whereas a green/white deck may resemble a more peaceful person.

Meeting 3: (3 hours)
Met from 6:00 to 9:00
This was an interesting time where we decided not to play Magic with them but instead asked them a set of predefined questions and just had a conversation with them. These are the following questions that we asked:
How experienced do you consider yourself?
(1-5, 1 being beginner....5 expert) (quantitative, subjective)

How many hours per week do you play Magic?
(quantitative, objective)

How many hours per week do you spend on Magic outside of battles and playing other people (trading, building decks, etc)?
(quantitative, objective)

How much money have you spent on cards?
(quantitative, subjective)

What is the highest amount you have paid for one card?
(quantitative, objective)

Have you ever played Magic the Gathering as a video game? (ie through steam?)
(quantitative, objective)

Would you consider Magic to be addicting?
(quantitative, subjective)

Would you say that you are addicted to Magic?

(quantitative, subjective)

Would you say that most people you play against are addicted to Magic?

(quantitative, subjective)

When did you begin playing?
(qualitative, objective)

11. What/Whom introduced you to Magic?
(qualitative, objective)

How long did it take to learn?
(quantitative, subjective)

How much longer do you expect to play Magic?
(quantitative, subjective)

Do you spend time with the people you know from Magic outside of the venue?
(quantitative, objective)

Would you say this time spent is mostly talking about Magic?

(quantitative, subjective)

How old are you?
(quantitative, objective)

Do you go to A&M?
(quantitative, objective)

What is your major?

(qualitative, objective)

While askingthese questions, certain discussions were spurred.

I learned more about casual game play verses hard core.

casual gamers seem to regard the "hardcore" gamers in a negative light

and most of the people who played Magic thought of Yugioh as a dummer version and thus attracts dummer people.

One surprising aspect that I saw this time was that there was a group that was playing Apples to Apples - a game that is well known by the average person.

This can be explained by one person's answer to the question : are you addicted to magic. His response was that he is not addicted to Magic specifically but to board games in general.

Another insightful comment was given in response to the question "How long do you expect to continue playing magic?" and His answer was a couple of years because I've put money into it.

There was again only 3 girls in the room including myself, and I was fortunate to interview one of them.

Most of the people that I talked to were very chill and friendly. I could definitely see myself becoming friends with a lot of them.

Assignment 10 - Blog and Read Opening Skinner’s Box

Chapter 1: Opening Skinner's Box: B.F. Skinner's rat race
To be honest, I didn't know much about Skinner before \reading this chapter, and so I was surprised when they said his vision was "to build a worldwide community where the government would consist of behavioral psychologists who could condition, or train, its citizens into phalanxes of benevolent robots." This obviously worried me and wondered why we were learning about his research. After looking into him a little more though, you could see that he just wanted the best for humanity - even if he didn't have the greatest idea of how to go about it. His research was interesting and I can believe he could teach a pig how to vacuum. It will be interesting to read about his other experiments.

Chapter 2: Obscura: Stanley Milgram and Obedience to Authority
Lauren Slater has a very interesting writing style. It is like she is trying to create a fiction page-turner book, but the subject is about experiments..... Anyways, this chapter first goes over Milgram's experiment which we read about in the previous book. Slater explains that he bottled absurd behaviors in his lab. These experiments led to the discovery that people will commit horrible acts even in the absence of aggression. It was interesting to note that there were no consistent character traits which determined if the participant obeyed or disobeyed.

Chapter 3: On Being Sane in Insane Places: Experimenting with Psychiatric Diagnosis
Is it legal to fake a mental illness? Apparently so. Rosenhan's experiment illustrates how "the world is always warped by the lens we are looking through." The most interesting part of this experiment to me was that the other patients in the ward new that the participants were sane way before any of the doctors. I was especially interesting to read about the experiment where students IQ scores increased based on a fake test. Even the experiment with Clever Hans, it proves that we find evidence for a conclusion that has already been made.

Chapter 4: In the unlikely Event of a Water Landing: Darley and Latane's Training Manual - A Five-Stage Approach
Darley and Latane made an experiment to see happens when there is no authority in a group crisis. It was based on a murder where there were many witnesses and yet none acted. So, an experiment was conducted where the participant thought another person was having a seizure. A second experiment was performed where smoke just started coming out of the ceiling. In each case, when there were multiple people no one acted because the responsibility was difused amongst them. However, when only one person was present, they immedialy went for help. The five stages of helping behavior is: 1. You, the potential helper, must notice an event is occurring. 2. You must interpret the event as one in which help is needed. 3. you must assume personal responsibility. 4. you must decide what action to take. 5. you must then take action.

Chapter 5: Quieting the Mind: The Experiments of Leon Festinger
When Festinger infiltrated the cult, he came to the conclusion that religious groups begin to proselytize when their belief is disconfirmed. This is a type of defense mechanism. He also discovered cognitive dissonance. This predicts that the more insignificant the reward is for engaging in a behavior that is inconsistent with one's belief, the more likely it is for that person to change their belief. What I don't understand is why someone would ever engage in a behavior that is contradictory to there belief. (I guess you can say it has something to do with the obedience to authority experiment :p) His experiments rivaled Skinner's because Festinger said that we are driven by punishment and paltriness. (example: fraternity hazings) Festinger defined consonance as paying attention to information that is consonant with our beliefs like surrounding ourselves with similar people to ourselves. Side note: Linda's story is really odd.....

Chapter 6: Monkey Love: Harry Harlow's Primates
In his experiment, he was able to show that infant monkeys cared for a soft surrogate mother than a metal milk-bearing one. This experiment was really interesting because it showed that love/touch is considered a need as much as food. He concluded that the primary function of nursing was not to give food but to "insure frequent and intimate body contact of the infant with the mother". On the creepy side of this experiment, Harlow wanted to see how the babies would react to an "evil" mother who he named the Iron Maiden. This froze them, sprayed water at them, and even stabbed them. The animal rights movement was partially created from this experiment. Even though the babies seemed fine when they were little, they could not figure out how to interact with other animals. And then when they did have kids, their kids were autistic and ill. The key points to love is touch, motion, and play.

Chapter 7:  Rat Park: The Radical Addiction Experiment
Robert Coambs and Patricia Hadaway wanted to see if addiction was inevitable even in a benevolent environment.Alexander  studied this and his conclusion was that there is no such thing as a chemical that causes addiction. He claims that "there is really nothing inherently addictive about any drugs" and that "repeated exposures to even the most enticing drugs do not usually lead to problems". He proceeded to become a student of Harlow's because Alexander was unlucky in love and Harlow was studying love. However, he continued to study addiction especially since Harlow used. Alexander assumed that people didn't have to use but they did because they were adapting to a difficult circumstance. This is shown in the rat park where rats in horrible situations become addicted but those in the park choose not to take the drugs. However, the argument was that if one was allready on the drug, it would be hard to get off of it. But again, you see the park rats to slowly decrease their morphine use. Therefore, he says that it is a choice. Even though this contradicts Kleber's belief, they both want a better social structure. I think it is hard to draw concrete conclusions from this experiment because how different rats are from humans.

Chapter 8: Lost in the Mall: The False Memory Experiment
Freud and Plato had the greatest contribution about memory. However, Elizabth Loftus wanted to challenge this as she created an experiment in which she determined whether memory can be called fiction or fact. She proves that recollections can be contaminated by implying a light was red instead of yellow or that a man in a movie had a beard when in actuality he did not.  Spurred by the Franklin trial, she wanted to go further and prove that memories can be implanted not just altered. So, she had an experiment where a family suggested to another family member that they were lost in a mall when they were little. 24-48 hours later, a fourth of the people had fabricated a long story to fill in all the gaps. This makes me wonder how much of my memory is correct.....Her conclusions produces a lot of abuse for her and her students. The story of Paul Ingrim proves that we concot stories at all costs even if it puts us in a bad light. She says her purpose was to reunite people - to create relationships that she did not have growing up. Her work consumes her and this is sad. This whole book is depressing. It seems that each scientist is looking for something to improve society or themselves and they miss the only thing that matters. Jesus Christ. If they want to find meaning in life, learn who He is and what He has done for you.

Chapter 9: Memory Inc.: Eric Kandel's Sea Slug Experiment
Eric Kandel challenged Loftus by exploring memory recall. I found that it was really creepy that there are no nerves on the brain. H.M. was an interesting case to read about but it was also really creepy. Kandel discovered that there are two different types of memory: procedural and semantic memory. Procedural is mostly the unconscious memory for motor skills whereas semantic memory is how we retain facts. He began his experiment on slugs as he was a radical reductionist. He trained the slugs in three different forms of learning or memory: habituation, sensitization, and classical conditioning. This was later challenged by Tully who was trying to train flies. He was actually one of the first to actually provide a molecular model of primitive memory.  The next step in his research was to figure out how long term and short term memory is connected. The topic of memory is important to computer science because we rely on computers a lot to remember things for us. It king of freaked me out when it started talking about how losing memory would be better for people. This reminded me of the book, The Giver. MEMORY LOSS IS NOT A BENEFIT! Even though, it did touch on how it would be able to cure PTS.....Interesting food for thought.

Chapter 10: Chipped: This Century's Most Radical Mind Cures
This chapter talks about lobotomy and cingulotomy. "In lobotomy, surgeons separate some of the cables connecting the frontal lobes to the thalamus. In cingulotomy, surgeons separate some of the nerve tracts from the frontal lobes to the cingulate gyrus, which is the place in our brain supposedly responsible for mediating anxiety". Antonio Moniz won a Nobel Prize for his discovery in psychosurgery. He thought that mental illnesses were purely organic. He was also the man who came up with inserting dye into the blood stream in order to better see tumors and fault lines. This is called angiography. Carlyle Jacobson and John Fulton snipped the fibers connecting the frontal lobes to the limbic system. This removed a lot of aggression. Moniz wanted to try this on people. I'm surprised that this chapter focused on all of the positive effects of this surgery and barely mentioned the negative effects like seizures, deaths, burst blood vessels, infections, relapses, and incontinence. However, it does seem to work better than pills. Freeman and Watts developed transorbital lobotomy. This is where they cut under the eyes instead of the hairline. 

Assignment 9 - Blog and Read Obedience to Authority

Chapter 1: The Dilemma of Obedience

This chapter sets up a broad overview of the experiment. It defines obedience as “the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose. It briefly explains the various excuses that people give for their immoral actions. They want to be polite and keep their promise to the experimenter or they just don’t want to go through the awkwardness of confronting authority and withdrawing from the experiment. They become immersed in the technicalities and push off responsibility to the authority. Ironically history shows that authority pushes the responsibility off to the person you commits the final act of atrocity. I am interested to see how I would have responded in such a situation. I also wonder how different it would be as an experiment compared to a wartime scenario.

Chapter 2: Method of Inquiry

The second chapter focuses on the details of the experiment. It reminds us that simplicity is key because psychological matters can get very complicated. There moral standard occurred through this universal concept: “One should not inflict suffering on a helpless person who is neither harmful nor threatening to oneself”. The details that they convered included how they obtained participants, who were the participants, the procedure, what the victim had to learn, information about the shock generator, the sample shock, instructions given to the participant on when/how to shock the victim, the feedback from the experimenter, special prods, feedback from the victim, and how the participants were debriefed. They had to experiment with the victim’s feedback to get correct results. This need for change revealed that subjects would obey authority to a greater extent than the first anticipated.

Chapter 3: Expected Behavior

It was interesting to see how people would predict themselves and others to act in such an experiment. If I’m being honest, I would have predicted the exact same thing, which is why I really want to know how I actually would have responded to such an experiment. However, I was surprised by how high in voltage some would predict that they would go especially when they say they would stop there because they would have compassion, empathy, or a sense of justice. Their predictions assume that people are by and large decent human beings, that “the individual is preeminently the source of his own behavior”, and that they would act in the same way as their decision. All of these assumptions are wrong. That helps me to understand the mispredictions.

Chapter 4: Closeness of the Victim

Surprisingly to me, there were almost no participants who disobeyed authority when the victim had no vocal complaint. So, the experiment was changed to include 4 scenarios. In the remote feedback variation , the victim had no vocal complaint and was put in another room. The second experiment was called voice-feedbcak where the victim was still in an opposite room but vocal protests could be heard. The proximity case included the victim in the same room as the particioant. The last case was called touch-proximity, which had the participant force the victims hand onto the shock plate. As would be guessed, obedience decreased with each test. I was extreamly surprised that the percentage of definance only increased by 2.5% between the first and second tests. I would think that if the participant knew the desires of the victim, they would comply to them.

Chapter 5: Individuals Confront Authority

This was probably the most interesting chapter so far since it actually shed light on particular individual’s actions during the experiment. It was scary to read about the first reaction where there was absolutely no hesitation or tension.  In the others it was curious to see how each individual dealt with the conflict differently. Some would just be sad, others would follow the experimenter, one transferred his idea of an authority figure from the experiment to the victim, and the industrial engineer just flat out said no. Again, this begs the question of how I would act in that same circumstance.

Chapter 6: Further Variations and Controls

How does mention to a heart condition not lead to a greater disobedience? That is really scary to see those statistics and what it means about humanity. It was also interesting to note that the appearance of the experimenter or victim did not effect the outcome. However, removing the experimenter from the room greatly increased disobedience. Other areas that were looked at included women as subjects, limits on the victim's contract, and looking at institutional context. Thankfully another experiment was done which removed the experimenter and revealed that most people do not select high voltages when they are free to choose the values.

Chapter 7: Individuals Confront Authority II
This chapter continues to relate various stories of how subjects reacted in the experiment. For many of them it sounded like they had dual personalities. They wanted to stop, but couldn't. I was getting stressed out just reading the reports of what they had to go through. However, I then came across the account of Gretchen Brandt who restored my faith in humanity by being firm in her decision to stop applying voltage. It made me wonder what was different about her compared to the other subjects. The last subject brings up the idea of obedience in warfare - how is it different from obedience in the lab?

Chapter 8: Role Permutations
In this chapter, the experiment is again repeated but varies the appearance of authority of the victim and the experimenter. I'm surprised that they have been able to complete so many experiments without being questioned about their ethics yet. The first way that they changed the experiment is where the learner demanded to be shocked. Then, they changed how much authority the experimenter had by replacing him with the appearance of an ordinary man. Experiment 13a created the subject to be a bystander when they finally disobeyed. What was really interesting is when they created two authority figures who contradicted each other.

Chapter 9: Group Effects
In the previous chapter, they increased the number of experimenters and so for this chapter they increased the number of participants.Adding in this component allows them to evaluate between conformity and obedience. The participants conform based on hierarchy, imitation, and explicitness. They had one experiment where there were two peer rebels and another where a peer administers the shock.

Chapter 10: Why Obedience? - An Analysis
They try to answer this question first with a comparison to evolution and survival of the fittest. However, they then were able to re-explain it through a cybernetic viewpoint. The combination of these two explanations really helped me to understand the concept. This chapter also talked about hierarchical structuring, variability, and the agentic shift.

Chapter 11: The Process of Obedience: Applying the Analysis to the Experiment
Questions addressed in this chapter include: what conditions will a person move from an automonous to an agentic state?, Once the shift has occured, what behavioral and psychological properties of the person are alterd?, and what keeps a person in the agentic state? (135). Some antecedent conditions of obedience include family, institutional setting, and rewards. Some properties of the agentic state include tuning, redefining the meaning of t situation, loss of responsibility, and self image.

Chapter 12: Srain and Disobedience
Some ways in which people reduce the feelings of strain are avoidance, physical conversion, dissent, and disobedience. Depending on which action is executed probably relates directly with how much stress the participate is feeling. These feelings normally stem from conflicting beliefs of morals, social norms, or self image.

Chapter 13: An Alternative Theory: Is Aggression the Key?
This short chapter covers the effect aggression has on the experiment. This is defined as the flow of destructive tendencies. The Freudian view illustrates that everyone has destructive forces, but they do not always fin ready release. The experiment creates an environment where it is okay to cause harm and actually is for the cause of science. The conclusion was that the key to the subjects behavior did not lie in their inner anger, but with their relationship to authority.

Chapter 14: Problems of Method
In this chapter, the author addressed the criticisms that other people have stated about this experiment. The main ones that he countered included that the people studied were not typical, that they didn't believe they were administering shocks to the learner, and that it is not possible to generalize from the laboratory to the larger world. These are founded concerns and questions. So, I'm glad that Dr. Milgram incorporated this chapter into his book.

Chapter 15: Epilogue
This chapter demonstrates that atrocities done in Germany could be demonstrated still today. It specifically talks about the war in Vietnam. It was interesting to read the account of the soldier. What he did was wrong, but in a military environment the stakes for disobedience are a lot higher. Questioning authority or disobeying it could result in the loss of your life or the death of the whole platoon. You also don't have all the information that your superiors have. So, I would be much more lenient about giving grace to soldiers verses people doing a volunteer experiment. I really don't think they should compare the two scenarios as equal.

Book Overview:
This experiment was really interesting to read about because it the results did not correspond with the predicted outcomes. This then raised many interesting questions about humanity, morality, and obedience. At first I was surprised that people followed authority more than their morality. However, as I continued reading, I realized there were a lot more factors that went into that decision besides just authority. Even so, it makes me scared that meaningless fears of self image can trump what someone believes in. I was also surprised to see how long the experiment lasted and how many variations of it were conducted especially since many people think it was ethically questionable. The most interesting chapters in this book were the ones that gave a word for word account of what people said during the experiment. It helped to remind me that even if they did go to the end of the experiment, most participants at least spoke up in some way to the experimenter that what they were doing was wrong. Some people just have a stronger backbone of confronting people. I think that our society focuses a lot on tolerance and making sure not to offend others. So, I wonder if this experiment was conducted of solely Americans or solely people in Germany, would the results be different. This topic was briefly covered in chapter 14, but it would be interesting to have a more in depth study of it. (Howdy! if you have read through all of this for every one's blog, I am thoroughly impressed and you deserve a medal.) Psychology is such an interesting field because no two people are the same, but there can be generalizations. For example most people went through with the experiment, but they all had varying reactions to it. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and being able to see how people interact with each other especially since I have never had a psychology class. However, as it got towards the end, I began to loose interest because I for some reason saw it as repetitive. Relating this book to computer science, it is scary to think that a computer that is giving instructions could have the authority to produce the same outcomes. What happens if there is a bug in the code? Will the user still execute the order even if they think it is wrong? Or will they think that the computer is wrong and go look for the human programmer to double check? This has a lot of interesting food for thought.

Assignment 8 - Blog and Read Gang Leader for a Day

Chapter 1: How Does it Feel to be Black and Poor?

It was interesting to see how Sudhir first interacted with the gangs. He was either fearless and bold, or just completely unaware of the danger that he was entering. I agree with Sudhir when he explains that the studies and seminars in the academic world seem “cold and distant, abstract and lifeless”(3). This can be seen by comparing his awkward questioning with his hang outs with JT. Being submerged into the culture helps immensely in understanding exactly where that group is coming from.

Chapter 2: First Days on Federal Street

I was surprised that JT enjoyed having Sudhir around as much as he did, but I guess it makes sense if you look at it as JT having a pet that follows him around and who he can show off. I liked being introduced to Ms. Mae as it seems she has a good understanding of her surroundings at yet truly desires to help the people around her. This was starkly contrasted by Sudhir’s witness of the beating of C-Note. Part of Sudhir’s naivety was finally shattered, and he began to understand a little better of what he got himself into and how JT is able to lead the BKs.

Chapter 3: Someone to Watch Over Me

With the beating of C-Note Sudhir finally realized that he is witnessing a lot of illegal actions. He struggles with the idea of whether he should call the police or not. However, he knew if he did this that his connections inside of the BKs would probably be cut off. It took me by surprise that a gang would get involved in politics and how the structure was so similar to corporate companies with a hierarchy and rivals. In regards to these rivals, Sudhir is forced to pick sides and decided if he is with Autry or if he is with JT.

Chapter 4: Gang Leader for a Day

I think the name of this chapter and the name of the book is very misleading because Sudhir barely did anything in regards to leading the Gang. However, it did give him a better perspective of what the day to day jobs are and how JT goes about solving conflicts within his gang. When they realized that one of the members were selling diluted crack, JT asked Sudhir what he would do, and he responded that he should be kicked out of the gang. JT’s response surprised me in that he doesn’t want to belittle the members thought process of obtaining more money, but he does need to learn that diluting crack is not the way to go about it.

Chapter 5: Ms. Bailey’s Neighborhood

Ms. Bailey is scary. It is almost as if she is in control of her own little gang and yet still is connected to the BK. On the surface, it looked as if she really was helping out the people in the community, but it turned out that she was very biased in who she helped. You could tell that her motives were not to help the people in the projects, but to make a profit for herself by any means necessary. Sudhir had a rude awakening when he got taken advantage of by Clarisse. Ms. Bailey proceeded to inform him of the consequences that could be produced because of it. In addition to this, Sudhir again proceeded to break the correct way to perform an ethnography by kicking Bee-Bee.

Chapter 6: The Hustler and the Hustled

How did he just now think about consulting a lawyer? Whatever the reason, he finally realized in this chapter that he is a hustler just as much as the people in the BK. This was highlighted by his mistake of revealing personal financial information to Ms. Bailey and JT. Through this mistake many of the tenants stopped talking to Sudhir. Sudhir plays this off as he just didn’t know, but I think he knew completely what he was doing. He was just to consumed by the information that he disregarded the effects that it would create.

Chapter 7: Black and Blue

This was the second recorded incident of a drive by shooting. The response was different because the attackers had “no business sense”. So, JT found the shooters, beat them up, and took their guns. Sudhir was also able to learn a lot more about why the people in the projects were scared of the police and never called them. He was able to see how corrupt they were. His perception of protective police officers was erased and replaced with a more realistic view which displays both sides of the coin.

Chapter 8: The stay-Together Gang

News of the demolishment of the Robert Taylor Homes had everyone scared. People had to start thinking of where they were going to live and what they were going to do. This area was one reason why JT was doing so well, and he knew with it gone that his leading the BK would be over. In this turmoil, some families were intent on staying together because of the network that they had already created with the Robert Taylor Homes. Dorothy took it upon herself to help these families stay together in order to survive in another neighborhood. It was interesting to see the sympathy that was created for these gang members and their troubles.

Book Overview:

This book was actually a really fun read that helped to spur ideas and questions to ask when doing our own ethnography. It was very enlightening to view gangs and gang members in this light. It reminded me of their humanity and their sad circumstances that they were born into. Given those circumstances, it is amazing how they have learned to survive in their own community. What would it look like if each and every neighbor helped each other out like the people in the Robert Taylor Homes did? Even though this wasn’t the main purpose of the book, it is one of the themes that I connected with. I believe that Sudhir’s main reason for writing this book was to persuade the benefits of being an ethnographer verses those in sociology who use quantitative and statistical techniques. He more than likely exaggerated his naivety in order to better support this point that he wanted to make as well as making it a better read. He also used this tactic in order to portray himself in a better light since he did act in morally questionable ways at some points. This can be observes in his process of gathering information. He broke many rules of an ethnographer and had to contemplate within himself how to correlate his actions with his moral compass. In addition to this, he witnessed how corrupt police officers could be. This was also a shock to me since I have grown up with a huge respect for them and their ability to protect the community. Obviously, the account of this book doesn’t mean all police officers are like that, but it did make me realize that there are a few out there and this in and of itself changed my viewpoint a lot. It was also interesting to note the different roles/positions that comprised of a life in the projects. You have the leaders like JT, T-Bone, Autry, or Ms. Baily. Then you have the other officers and the lower members who sell outside on the streets.  Outside of the gangs, but not free from them, there are squatters, prostitutes, and business stores. I think that Ms. Baily is almost the foil of JT in that her corrupt means of obtaining what she wants demonstrates how JT is a more sensible business man and cares a little more about his people even if he is also power hungry. Seeing this type of structure in a gang was very surprising for me to read about. I did not realize how it ran was so similar to a normal legitimate or shady business. It was also interesting to note how Sudhir was able to build relatively close relationships to everyone in the gang – even to the point where T-Bone gave him the Black Kings financial ledger. This obviously could never be obtained by the previous reporters that came in because they were associated to “be with” the police. Therefore, they were not able to understand the people and community as well as Sudhir came to know them. In the end, it was amazing to see how just demolishing a building could completely destroy the BK in that area. The chaos that it produces is good to remember whenever the government wants to supplant homes with some other project that they think would better help the community.

Assignment 10 on Ethnographies

It is hard to come up with types of groups that you have never been apart of. However, I can tell from past experience that there is an obvious differences in personalities and group dynamics at a LAN party than at a soccer practice. If people have never experienced this atmosphere I would strongly encourage them to try and join a group similar to this for their ethnography project.

A group that I think would be really interesting to hang out with and observe is a theater group or the corp. However, if we are suppose to actually be able to participate with them, there may be some issues in be allowed to do that. So, another group that crossed my mind is participating in a book club. No matter which group of people I observe, I will learn a lot because each activity draws a variety of different personalities.