Book Reading : Obedience to Authority

Chapter 1:
Author start with an example of Nazi that people follow authority's order even to kill many other ordinary people. It then talks about the experiment which is about a learner and a punish-er  After the experiment  most people reply with "I am just doing what I have been told".  People just escape from the responsibility of what they did. Many people would say just followed the order from above.

Chapter 2:
One important theory is people learn things correctly whenever they get punished for making a mistake. The study is not done with undergraduate at Yale, but the High Heaven community. Victim's reaction is  important factor for controlling subject's behavior. This chapter explain the procedures of how the experiment will go on depends on the subject's behavior.

Chapter 3:
The author ask subjects to participate in a survey and predict what or when they will stop the experiment  As result, most of them said they will stop the experiment at learner's will or 150 volts. The participates includes psychiatrists, college students, and an audience of middle class adults of varied occupations.

Chapter 4:
As experiment 1, subjects can't hear the learner nor the learner can hear or see the subjects. As result, 26 obeyed the order of experimenter to the end. There are four experiments conduct with 40 adults, which are remote, voice feedback, proximity, and touch proximity. As more directly contact each condition gets, the less obedience.

Chapter 5:
This chapter is taking us from the experiment to the subject's world. It describe all four conditions with different users within it. I was surprise by touch proximity condition and the man just do all the orders without question. For other condition, I expected some of the result to be like what it is. However, many people complain about this experiment when they conduct it which is what I expected.

Chapter 6:
This chapter gives more variation in the experiment  In experiment 5, the experiment change into the actor would mention that he had heart problem. I am so surprise that 26 out of 40 would ignore this fact and continue to the end. In experiment 7, it makes the experimenter leave the room and give instruction by telephone. This decrease the obedience of the subjects. In 9, it's about the subject would notice there is a legal agreement between them. This would increase the disobedience too. In 10, it's about changing the location from Yale University. This also result in lower obedience. In 11, people are freely to choose any lvl of shock, and the mean is around 30.

Chapter 7:
This chapter give more details on how the experiment was. It details out the conversation during the experiment. It shows many people would continue to the end of the experiment with question. They would continue only if the experimenter take the responsibility  There is a German woman refuse to give shock at 45 level which is surprise. 

Chapter 8:
It start with defining three elements of this study, such as position, status, and action.In experiment 12, the role exchanged as learner demand for shocks. The result is every subject stopped administering shocks upon the experimenter's order. Experiment 13 is instead had the authority giving out instructions, it was an ordinary man. Result drop quite a bit. The next few experiment go with authorities change roles.

Chapter 9:
Hierarchy, imitation, explicitness, and voluntarism is important in this experiment  In experiment 18, group effect take in place which two peers would say stop the experiment. In result there is only 10% obedience. In 19, it's about two peer suggested go to the end of the experiment. As result, only 3% refuse to go to the end.

Chapter 10:
Few major points, "organized social life provides survival benefits to individuals who are part of it. Hierarchies can function only when internal modification occurs in the elements of which they are composed." There are two mode for anyone, which are autonomous and systemic mode. In here, it defines why people would administrated  the shock. It's because when a person sees himself under another person from higher status, he will define himself as an instrument to carry out action that other person wants.

Chapter 11:
This chapter talks about why people will not stop carry out the experiment  There are two factors that will cause people to get into agentic state, which are antecedent conditions and binding factors. Antecedent condition includes pre and immediate antecedent condition. binding factors are anxiety  situation obligation,and sequential nature of action.

Chapter 12:
There are several strain that talks about in this chapter - moral, law, cries from learner, self image, and direction from learner. There are few ways to reduce the strain, take away the responsibility, turn around, ask aloud.  There are few consequences for strain, such as disobedience, dissent, physical conversion.

Chapter 13:
This chapter talks about aggression which they define it as action to harm another organism. It said this experiment give condition that people can harm another under science. But actually people gave themselves to authority, and that's the key.

Chapter 14:
People states there are three problems of the methods used in this experiment  such as people are not typical   they didn't believe they are actually giving shocks, and it's not possible to generate this to world.
Chapter 15:
This last chapter gives an example of why solider obey orders to kill people. This is mainly because that they learned they need to obey the authority during training, before get into army, and in mission. The way it works is separate them from the world, and give them harsh way of punishment and reward. This will makes them remember what is right or wrong.

To the whole book:
This book talks about obedience to authority is exist in many places, even in a lab. Through out this lab, people obey the authority is due to many reason. I do think these factors do make sense and help me to understand more how authority in the society work. The one society that we all are in is school right now. We learned how to obey professors, if we dont then we might fail the class. This is because they have more authority level than us which they can give orders to us.

Ethnography idea

There is a good idea for others to do which is magic club. This is a very open club and also ambiguous club. The things they do is very fun and good to study with. Another idea that I would do is to study FUSED which is a dancing club. I know every dancer has their own theory of dance or life. And I had a little touch with one of their members which showed me that they are really open to anybody. therefore, I think this would be a good idea to study with.

Book Reading #2: gang leader for a day

Chapter 1:

Sudhir is a college student who is doing research on African American. He was a the University listening to seminar, and he felt those are lifeless that he want to "actually" know the answer. He approach to a professor, but the professor told him his project going on. However, this still doesn't answer his questions. He decided to go to black neighborhood and he meet many gangs there. They first threaten him a lot, but after he meet J.T. , the leader of this gang, he decided to hang out with them to study more about them. And J.T. invited him to hang out with them, therefore, author shows up and hang out with them.

Chapter 2:
Sudhir gets more to know about J.T. who's the gang leader. He found out that J.T. is not an average gang leader, he actually is a mindful person. He would give some question to Sudhir to test on him. One day, J.T. took him to Rober Taylor to meet Curly, a gang in Robert Taylor. After the conversation, J.T. needs to move to there, and he invited Sudhir to meet him there too. One day, he meet J.T. 's mother - Ms. Mae. She persuave Sudhir that this is a community, not a project.  At the end of chapter, C Note got beaten up by J.T. This really question Sudhir is J.T. had some other side that he never show him.

Chapter 3:
Sudhir witness another beat up case,  which is Brass. J.T. and his gang members beat up Brass because he didn't pay his squatting fee. This bring even more question up for Sudhir. J.T. explained this is necessary to hold his authority. After that, Sudhir attend Lenny' talk about how to live in this community. One afternoon, a woman was scarming out and everyone try to see what happend. She claim a man raped her daughter and gave her S.T.D. which found out is from other people later. They use another way to found out the truth. Rober Tayler A only has three apartment, and Robert Taylor B has large group of children. And there is problem from A trying to get over to B. Autry invited Sudhir to a basketball meeting which J.T. is really mad about.

Chapter 4:
In this chapter, Sudhir has his chance to be gang leader for a day. He had to deal with issue that J.T. normally does. He promise not to use any weapon and violence to settle things down. There is a case, Billey and Otis who both saying they own each other's money. In the end, Sudhir concludes that Otis stolen the money from Billy which is Otis's fault, and he punished him.

Chapter 5:
Sudhir takes his focus from J.T. to Ms.Baily, who takes in charge of the community. She is a chair man for the building which hold a tennat meeting on daily basis. During the meeting, people try to blame her for having a new tv, but not helping others. Ms. Baily turns back to them and accuse them for other new stuff she help them on. She never do anything for free, such as the way she get donation from people. It's not a actual donation which is exchange for what they need. There is one more instance that shows how powerful she is and how she fix problems for people. BeeBee was beating up by her manager and she called C-NOTE to take care of this. She can actually takes care of anything in the building.

Chapter 6:
Sudhir talking to Ms. Bailey and J.T. about legal obligations such as having to tell the police about any violence he see's. J.T. and Ms. Bailey were aware of this and give Sudhir the 2 options: go to jail or rat on the gang.
At the end of the chapter Sudhir goes to a council meeting held by Ms. Bailey. Many women are not happy about Sudhir's appearance at the council and yell things at him. Finally he realizes women think their daughters and sleeping with him during the writing workshop. Sudhir ends the chapter realizing it's hard to think of any tenants that weren't mad at him.

Chapter 7:
 the residents of Robert Taylor were out and about around the building. having a barbecue in the summer heat. Everyone was relaxing and having a good time until a car pulled up with a few of men in it and started shooting. Sudhir was asked by J.T to attend the next regional BK meeting with J.T. Reggie had invited Sudhir to the bar with him to hopefully further his insight of what the police men do on a daily basis, while at the bar on of Reggie's fellow cops started to become arrogant towards Sudhir and sending threats towards him. Just a few days later Sudhirs car got broken into at the Boys and Girls club.

Chapter 8:
The Robert Taylor research, had finally rewarded Sudhir a junior fellowship at Harvard’s Society Of Fellows. Announcing this news to J.T left an awkward tension between the two. Everything relatively related to the Robert Taylor Homes had fallen apart. Ms. Bailey and J.T were struggling to find employment or any sort of pay. As the months passed, Sudhir and J.T’s friendship fell apart. Sudhir’s last thoughts were “ How could I learn so much, absorb so many lessons and gain so many experiences at the side of a man who was so far removed from my academic world.”

Article Reading: Non-obvious Observation

Video for observation study

The video we created as a group is about walking from the entrance of Annex and borrow a DVD. We do not have any restrictions to this scenario  We as a group agree on the following route: walk from the entrance of Annex Library, take the stairs to level 4, borrow a DVD, return DVD, and walk back to the entrance. This is very boring route, however, we can do whatever we want during all the time. It might be hard to distinguish the difference or identify our group members from those videos. As what I said before, I will give few hints here. Look for mirror reflections, this is a great way to identify the group members. 

Non-obvious things

There are many non-obvious thing that we can discover more about a person. As the author of "Secret Life of Pronouns" mentioned Sherlock Holmes, he is a great example of whom discover non-obvious things. The first chapter basically talks about how the author come up with a word counting program. As what I have read, I understand the way people talks would be one of the most important way we get information of a person from. The word choices, emotions, or even categories of a word would matters. Another way I might be take note about is to look at a person's gesture and the way they stands. One example would be crossing hand on their own chest would mean they are conservative on the topic they are talking about. 

Ethnography Readings

People are interested in values, worldview and ethos of the culture. the process is first determine the meaning of  a gesture, then the appropriated situation to use it. After that, move to another region to see if it still mean the same thing. Cultural boundary of communication is founded by this way.

Ethnography is widely used, such as in business, communication studies, and sociology. They used it to analyze communication behaviors to find out the answer of why and how come of human communication. There are five ways to evaluate ethnography  they are substantive contribution, aesthetic merit, reflective  impact, and express a reality.

The author of Coming of Age in Somoa is Margaret Mead. Her study was to see does the civilization changed the nature of adolescence . After her research, she state few facts that shocked the public and became remarkable figure in this area. However, after few years she passed away that a man publish a book indicated her founding is a joke. He found the participant in her study to show her study was based on their jokes. This is huge debate between that, since Mead passed away and no one will notice the truth. In my opinion, I think Mead did a good job on study in this group of people. Freeman is only trying to be famous by take her down from this remarkable figure. 

Book Reading #2: Emotional Design chap 1

Comparison:
In this book, the author mentioned about three levels of process which are visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Examples for each are sense something is good or bad, unconsciously driving a car, and consciously think something while driving a car.
The author tried to find the relationship between asetheriac and function. He stated at the beginning that this is not related at least in his own country  however, he founds out this is related and did experiment to it. he mentioned good feeling will affect people's behavior and how bad feeling will drive people crazy at a problem.All of these things he mentioned, are mainly his view points in chapter one. 

The difference between the two books which are one teach how to design a product in a easier way in behavior and the other is through emotion. This book actually inspire me more in design this way, such a way that I never really look into. From all the classes in A&M, this is the only one that mention about how to design a product related to customers' emotion. And I do believe this is a very important view in designing. This is mainly because people buy a product depends on their emotion and use a product under a certain emotion. This emotion will greatly affect their way of using a product. In design of everyday things, they help readers to develop a design cycle within their mind. This is very important to any design process. 

In my opinion, I think both books talks about different major view point in designing process. I am glad that I have been read these two books before I am graduating. This will reinforce me to develop a better product in the future.