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Books such Snow Crash<\/a> <\/em>by Neal Stephenson and Ready Player One<\/a> <\/em>byErnest Cline have been cited as inspirations for the creation of virtual reality technology. Luckey Palmer, the founder of Oculus VR, mentions these exact books as motivations for building his VR HMD (head-mounted display) in The History of the Future<\/a> <\/em>by Blake J. Harris. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My journey too starts with a book. But, not these books. It starts with a thin black book with a dusty image of a palm tree trunk in the foreground and more palm trees amongst telephone poles in the background. The title of this book: The Little Edges<\/a>. <\/em>The author: Fred Moten<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Little Edges <\/em>is one of Moten\u2019s poetry collections. I was assigned to read the poems \u201cforted.fortrn\u201d <\/strong>from this collection for one of my undergraduate courses in English Literature. I still can\u2019t exactly tell you what the poem is about; there is a history to it embedded in blackness, anti-black violence, and jazz. I can tell you – It\u2019s a beautiful poem that ebbs and flows and dances. It plays with words, structure, affect, sound, and concepts of being, presence, and reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are some excerpts from the poem. Included to demonstrate the content and structure. Included also because of love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As a naive poetics theorist and non-computer science major, I raised my hand and said this poem reminded me of code. My professor corrected – \u201cWell\u2026It\u2019s more like jazz.\u201d He was correct. This poem is nothing<\/em><\/strong> like code! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, I saw code because like code appears to a non-programmer this poem was structured weird and made absolutely no sense. But, it started me thinking about alternate realities – <\/p>\n\n\n\n Which if you think about it (these excerpts) long enough, you’ll notice they are also the poetics of virtual reality.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what did I do with these new insights? Change my major to computer science? Nope! I dug in and became of literary scholar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I studied Black Existential Philosophy and poetry and poetics for my master\u2019s program in English literature. Most of you know poetry; less of you poetics, which is the theoretical and linguistic study of poetry; and few of you know Black Existential Philosophy, which is a school of thought that examines existence in the context of blackness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All together, I was interested in how non-white bodies came into existence and how this <\/em>world in the culturally and conceptually normative sense didn\u2019t know what to do with us. I was tired of being unmappable and unintelligible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n People said, \u201cYou look Asian.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, they\u2019d ask, \u201cWhy\u2019s your last name Montez?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019d reply, \u201cYou tell me.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, they\u2019d assume, \u201cYou\u2019re dad\u2019s Hispanic?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n They were correct; my dad is Hispanic and of Mexican heritage. But, they were still wrong about me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019d have to explain, \u201cI\u2019m Hispanic through adoption.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Anyways, I was tired of this disconnect with the world and the confusion I generated in others. So, I really started my studies in search of a different world or at the very least a way to break this <\/em>one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In studying blackness, I learned a lot. I learned that the mere fact of my existence is the break and I learned that it is near impossible to break out of this<\/em> world. However, it is possible to touch and see other realities. Perchance to visit. By studying blackness, I had \u201copened a box with a lid on it\u201d and entered a different world even as it was impossible for me to inhabit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also learned that studying English can only take you so far in crossing worlds and upending realities. First, and most brutally, the general public isn\u2019t interested in philosophical and literary treaties. Second, as a scholarly practice, the study of literature is geared towards critique and examination versus application and creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Technology on the other hand has revolutionized the world with inventions like the personal computer, internet, and mobile phones. However, as Algorithms of Oppression<\/a> <\/em>by Safiya Umoja Noble, Shayna Small, et al. and Netflix\u2019s Coded Bias<\/a> <\/em>documentary reminds us, technology is not without its limitations. These works opened a space for me to enter into technology and computer science. I felt invited in by their subject matter and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. So, here I am studying computer science and learning about AR, VR, and XR. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I am still in search of different worlds and believe augmented and virtual reality technologies can build them. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n See for example, Breonna\u2019s Garden<\/a>, an iOS AR application<\/a> which serves the purpose of restorative justice through the preservation of the memory of Breonna Taylor<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m working on the AR Popup Storybook Companion Application. The technological goal of this app is to bring to life children\u2019s books using augmented reality technologies and the iPhone. The user goal is to increase children\u2019s interest in reading by leveraging the widespread parental usage of screens to entertain and distract children. The ultimate goal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/almontez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/almontez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/almontez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/almontez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/almontez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/almontez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/almontez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/almontez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/almontez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/almontez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\n\n\nForted.Fortrn <\/em>Excerpts<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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