Facebook's Design Trap

With about 134,000 Facebook users only in the United States, and the average American user spending over three hours per day on the social networking site (Facebook statistics here), it has permeated through all facets of the American, not to mention global, population. Therefore, there is not only a lot to be said about the goal behind it, connecting friends with friends and allowing them to share updates about their lives at any time, but also the structure and design of the site which allows this goal.

Although Facebook has frequently changed up the format of their site, causing much unease and frustration amongst its users, its most basic functions have remained the same. Users setup two-dimensional profiles for themselves, complete (yet perpetually incomplete) with a profile picture, birthday, career description, relationship status, and different interests. To this profile, users can then add statuses, upload pictures or videos, and share the posts of other groups or people. The next step is connecting with other users by “friending” them, which then allows every user to see the activity of their “friends” on their “News Feed” and either “like” or comment it.

Though many of these aspects of Facebook could be picked apart structurally, it is one of the most enticing and attractive features of Facebook, the ability for each user to create his or her own personal profile page, that I want to take a closer look at.

The Facebook Profile Page

Selectively choosing pictures and descriptors that paint the picture of themselves that they wish others to see. Structurally, Facebook has made this very easy, with simple drop-down menus for things like relationship status (which may be much more complicated that it would seem on the site) or upload options for profile picture (which could be of the actual person or of a leek, depending on the user’s whims and fancies). This structural choice to make users’ profiles boil down to their age, what they look like, who they are with, the things they like, and the things they say online is very intentional and has far-reaching effects. Because users are selective about what they publish about themselves, they are not only broadcasting a warped and incomplete image of themselves to the world, which people like the author of this Economist article would argue breeds nothing but unhealthy envy, but they are looking into a warped mirror of themselves, breeding narcissism and body image issues.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook. I shamefully spend hours on it everyday, sucked in by the never-ending updates on my News Feed and the exchange of comments with friends. I also see benefit greatly from it, as I can keep in touch with long-distance friends and stay in the loop with the different extracurricular groups or classes I am in. However, I have also made a concerted effort to recognize the slippery and intentional design tactics Facebook has used to keep me hooked. And while the profile page allows us to connect with and learn about others, we have to realize that it occupies a space somewhere between the second dimension and unbounded imagination.

The Ins and Outs of the Bard's Language

The language William Shakespeare used in all his plays is like a whole new geographic world. I say ‘geographic’ because it is certainly has texture and allows for movement, constructed with topography and features. And although the structure and workings of Shakespeare’s language can sometimes make the dialogue of his plays difficult to decipher, it is in this structure that Shakespeare focused his most concerted effort, as his plot-lines were often revamped versions of old stories and myths, as with Hamlet. Therefore, this geographic world of the structure of Shakespeare’s language is undoubtedly worth exploring.

One example of the interesting structural practices the Bard utilized with this writing is inverted sentence orders, as described more fully in this article. By switching around the sequence of the subject, verb and object of his sentences, Shakespeare accomplished multiple things. He was able to match the rhyming metrics of the time better, turn certain parts of speech into different ones (verb -> noun, noun -> adjective, etc.), and also shift the overall emphasis of a line to particular parts of it which would have been otherwise glossed over.

Another especially troublesome structural tactic Shakespeare used in his plays is omitting a whole array of things, from individual letters and punctuation to whole words or lines. Similar to the inverted sentence structures, this was probably done primarily for practical reasons, allowing him to get his ideas across in the demanded number of syllables and with the vocal stresses that made performing the play easier and more powerful. However, this practice also resulted in the creation of a sort of new language altogether, anachronous in all eras. As years of human development lead to the shortening of words in everyday language to breed colloquialisms, Shakespeare did the same for the communities of characters in his plays, making the language uttered by the actors in The Globe Theatre in 1610 and the actors in The Chicago Shakespeare Theatre in 2010 equally as foreign to their audiences.

A third particularly nasty structural habit Shakespeare had with his language was the insert large swaths of text in the middle of ordinary dialogue which leads the audience in hundreds of other tributaries and rivulets they were not expecting to traverse on their journey down the river of the play. While confusing, a lot can be said for insight these additions provide into the rationale and conscience of the characters as we are not simply taken from the characters’ observations to their conclusions, but have to buckle up and take the trip through their entire path of coming to that conclusion as well. This leads to better character development and depth and complexity in the stories.

So whether for practical or rhetorical reasons, Shakespeare’s purposeful use of unusual structural techniques definitely resulted in his language remaining memorable over more than 400 years. And perhaps that is its biggest legacy. While students may be cringing in their classroom desks while reading his plays off paper, people all over the world still flock to theatres to see them performed, leaving their own world behind to explore the ins and outs of the Bard’s language.

Balloon Rooms

While scrolling through my favorite visual arts blog (which I highly recommend), I was intrigued by one particular eccentric project. Penique Productions, an artist collective based in Barcelona, came out with a series of photographs of transformative installations they had created in public places. These installations consisted of enormous plastic balloons inflated inside grand spaces within buildings or other interior areas. Below is an example of one such installation, but this link will take you to the entire series.

When I saw the brief introduction to the series which explained that these artists had chosen to When I first saw these photographs, I did a double take. The results of their efforts were like nothing I had ever laid eyes upon before. So many aspects of the rooms had disappeared, hidden behind the rubbery sheets of the balloon. There were no longer colors, except for the one solid color of the balloon, there were no people, the lighting was completely thrown off, and there was no sense of depth. However, with these things lost, other aspects of the room that would have otherwise gone unnoticed suddenly jumped to the foreground. For example, the outlines of the pillars and intricate edges of the architecture became sharp and eye-catching as they pushed on the flexible fabric. And by washing out the colors of the walls and warping the lighting through the large windows, my perception of the size and shape of the room changed dramatically, just as my house somehow seemed much smaller or larger after we moved all our furniture out before we moved.

This results of this project immediately reminded me of the neurological phenomenon that occurs when people lacking individual senses, like sight or hearing, try to gain insight from the same things as fully sighted or hearing people. Often, it is observed that those lacking certain senses have compensated with hyper-acute other senses, and perceive things using different parts of their brains than those with all their senses fully functioning. For example, as this source describes, blind people often use their advanced sense of hearing to detect the locations of objects, therefore highlighting aspects of those objects that sighted people would tend to take for granted.

Areas of brain activated by Braille tactile discrimination task indicate activity in occipital lobe (includes primary visual cortex) of early blind person, but not of sighted person

It is wonderfully curious that this seemingly simple and done-for-the-hell-of-it design project can serve as a simulation of the mental processes of the blind and deaf. The perception exercise that simply scanning these photographs evoked is one that is very valuable for all people to experience. Not only does it give us a deeper understanding of the world view of a significant population, but it also gives us a deeper appreciation for the simple things around us. Who knew a balloon in a room could do so much?

Decorum, Please!

Currently blogging from a world class Model UN Conference, MUNUC, or Model United Nations of the University of Chicago, I am astounded. Hundreds of delegates are gathered together to discuss relevant and extremely complex global issues, and the diversity and urgency of the ideas swirling around me are palpable.

However, it is something more basic and mundane yet undoubtedly essential that is especially piquing my interest. It is the strict and sturdy structure of the Model UN committees I have witnessed that has actually left me with many questions. The officials in charge of keeping order in the committee, also called the “dais”, have been extremely prone to banging their gavels repeatedly almost every few minutes, demanding “decorum”, or a strict adherence to the rules of parliamentary procedure, which is the specific protocol to be followed during the debate forums at Model UN conferences. And they don’t do this at discrete or convenient times. They do it in the middle of somebody’s speech, or when people start laughing a bit.

In essence, most natural exchange of thoughts is being constricted by the pathways delineated by parliamentary protocol, such as making motions, giving speeches which normally last for 30 seconds to a minute, and hosting chaotic unmoderated caucuses. The flow of the debate is unnatural.

Sure, I can definitely see the merits of the strict structure of Model UN. While our committee is relatively small with only about 30 to 40 delegations represented, some of the larger committees can include hundreds of delegations, making such protocol necessary to ensure that the voices of all countries can be heard in an orderly and civilized manner. However, I cannot help but wonder if jumping through all the rigidly-set hoops is what keeps us in committee for four hours at a time, twice a day, with hardly anything getting done. And I also wonder if all the components of parliamentary procedure are necessary in this day and age. For example, the chairperson of my committee repeatedly corrected people for using the term “caucus” instead of the more accurate term “informal session”... Really?

I’m sure some happy medium exists between structure and the free exchange of ideas, but I am curious to hear where you all think it is located. Especially since actual institutions, like the real United Nations, operate through the structure I am experiencing this weekend.

Reading "Reading Lolita In Tehran" Out of Order

One of the most unique aspects of the novel Reading Lolita in Tehran is the nonlinear literary structure it is written in. This structure is also what happens to make the novel quite difficult to read, as it weaves in and out of decades, juxtaposes several completely distinct and isolated ideas, and brings certain sets of characters to the foreground at one point in time only to fade them out a couple pages later and then discuss them a hundred pages later as if they had never left. The reader really has to make an effort to keep up. But the price is not paid in vain. Though daunting, if a reader is able to understand and embrace the nonlinear narrative structure which Azar Nafisi so beautifully utilized in Reading Lolita in Tehran, he or she will in turn unlock many mysteries about the nature of memory and human consciousness.

The essence of nonlinear narrative structure is the intentional abandonment of conventional chronological sequencing of events in a story. Common side effects of nonlinear narrative structure include disjointed events, parallel distinctive story lines, and frequent changes of narrator, setting, or time. Below is a flow-chart modeling such a structure:

Flowchart of nonlinear narrative structure

By leap-frogging back and forth between events, leaving the reader to piece together the true order, writers can create a surprisingly accurate simulation of memory. For the same reason that TV shows employ the use of flashbacks and out-of-body narrations from different times, Nafisi’s use of non-chronological storytelling allows the reader to delve into the way she herself emotionally experienced and interpreted the events in the book. This very act is what finally broke the hard shell of a “book” to get at the human who was telling it-- what transformed the novel into a memoir. Just as we discussed with The Things They Carried and The Poisonwood Bible, the emotional truth of a story is much deeper and sometimes the opposite of what the factual truth of the story suggests, and it is the emotional truth that we should always try to understand.

Therefore, I would like to rescind all my mumbled hateful comments about how difficult and cumbersome you book memoir was to read, Ms. Nafisi, and would instead like to thank you for showing me so effortlessly what you felt.

Blog Reflection

Exploring, compiling, reshaping and understanding different concepts through the lens of structure and design with my blog has been a rich journey this past semester. Hours of browsing different blogs and websites, dozens and dozens of open tabs, and several fortuitous insights resulted in seven separate posts, each discussing unique and intriguing topics. However, it has not been an easy or smooth journey. Through the experience of blogging, I have learned many things about the strengths and weaknesses of my own thinking as well as how to fit into the intellectual fabric of other thinkers.

Two of my strongest posts were “One Dollar Social Experiment” and “Stories vs. Statistics: The Structure of Our Worldview”. By examining the former, some of my greatest strengths as a blogger become evident. In this post, I shared a beautifully-crafted and thought-provoking video about the artist Mark Wagner who creates intricate collages with individual one dollar bills. I used this video as a basis for a discussion on controversial design and its effect on viewers, tying in our class discussions about the role of museums in our understanding of the world. Towards the end of the post I wrote,

“Wagner's design choice of using dollar bills in his collages is akin to him simply taking a dollar bill and sealing it in a display case for viewers to ponder. By breaking the connections we viewers have to that piece of money, he is allowing us to not only analyze the story his assemblages narrate, but also analyze the relationship we have with the most basic unit of wealth in the world.”

This quote illustrates my strength in connecting classroom material to outside ideas in order to create deep insights. One of my other strengths is to cover a wide spectrum of topics in my blog, which is demonstrated by how different the latter post, “Stories vs. Statistics: The Structure of Our Worldview” is from the previous one. In this post, I expanded on our class activity on statistics about global demographics and attempted to generate a debate about how people should best interpret the world around them and their place in it: through narratives or through isolated, cold facts. In addition to delving into a topic much different from other topics I had already covered, this post also succeeded in the task of attracting debate, as evidenced by a comment by my classmate, Nina:

“You need to belief in something, and yes that thing, whether it be a country, an idea, a person, or whatever, will have factual flaws. Only from a narrative perspective do goals become meaningful and worthwhile.”

Although she mostly agreed with my premise that a happy medium is necessary between stories and statistics, she refuted my point by claiming that ultimately narratives are more valuable to individual lives. After reading this, I felt a great sense of satisfaction that I had chosen and written about a subject rich and raw enough to have such a conversation.

However, not all of my posts were this successful. I encountered many problems along the way, including links to outside blogs and articles relevant to my writing, and making extensive use of my lens in analyzing the topics I chose. A blog which accomplishes both these tasks, “The Teenage Interpreter” by my friend Julia, is one admire tremendously. She seamlessly weaves different bits of news and information into her blog posts while keeping her lens of adolescent perspective at the forefront of her writing.

If I am able to improve in these two areas in particular, my blog will not only become more cohesive, tied together through my lens, but it will also become more accessible to the public. I plan to achieve these goals by staying more up to date with the blogs of my peers as well as those of experts in structure and design, and planning out my posts a bit more so as to ensure they are properly captured through my lens.

Writing my blog has provided me with the unique opportunity to extrapolate the ideas discussed in class to things I see and hear everyday outside the classroom, and develop my personal voice in the process. If I can improve my writing sufficiently to attract the voices of my classmates and even complete strangers, I blog will finally occupy the right space and thrive even as I leave my high school English class behind.

Word Count: 734

The Qur'an: Deconstructing Literary Structure and Power

At the core of the Islamic faith is their most renowned holy text, the Qur’an, which all Muslims believe to be the revelation from God. Divided into 114 chapters, or suras, which are each made up of several verses, or ayahs, the Qur’an has significant literary power. The structure of the text, including the interplay of diction, phonology, syntax, rhythm, rhetoric, composition, imagery, symbolism, and point of view, contributes a great deal to the attitudes of Muslims towards their Scripture.

Issa J. Boullata, a Palestinian writer, scholar, and Arabic translator had much to say on this subject in his book, “Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qur’an” (link). Citing the opinion of literary history Taha Husayn, Boullata highlighted the point that the style of the Qur’an is neither prose nor verse, but some sort of hybrid that does not exist in any other piece of Arabic writing. Husayn calls the “bonds” with which the Qur’an binds itself to be two-fold: “rhyming and assonant ends of its verses, and the peculiar musical sound of its wording”. This is important to not because it perfectly in line with how the Qur’an is intended to be understood-- through recitation. Reading the suras out loud, often over a city-wide speaker system, as if performing a long, sacred song is a vital part of the daily lives of Muslims. This practice not only brings Muslims together, but also helps each one of them memorize lines and doctrines more easily, which is also highly emphasized in the religion. This literary structure of the Qu’ran contrasts starkly with that of the Bible, which reads in a much more paragraph-bound narrative style, for the most part.

In addition, one of the most important literary design aspects of the Qur’an is that it is always in Arabic. This has many implications. Not only does this foster a deep sense of community between Muslims in several different countries who are thus able to speak a common language, but also preserves much of the original meanings of the Qu’ran, and preserving the legitimacy of the claim that it is the “pure” word of God. The potential for important religious doctrines to be “lost in translation” is averted (though, admittedly, the potential for doctrines to be lost in context is just as high as with any other religious scripture written centuries ago).

The language, word choice and rhyming structure of the Qu’ran are just a few of the literary devices the holy scripture has been designed with, but they are some of the most influential ones. In order to fully understand any religion, especially one the prizes their text as highly as Islam does with the Qu’ran, it is important to deconstruct and analyze that very text and how it maintains its immense power.