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+---
+title: Helping the Multilineal Cultural Evolution
+date: 2015-03-29
+layout: post
+category: log
+---
+
+This weekend I attended the FTCWest, short for [[http://ftcwest.org/][FIRST® Tech Challenge
+West Super-Regional Championship]]. It was held in the Oakland
+Convention Center, and it was an eye opening experience from a
+cultural perspective. The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST_Tech_Challenge][FTC]] is one of the main DIY Robot
+championship intended only for grades 7-12. The FTC offers a kit to
+design, build, and program a robot that is able to compete according
+to given yearly rules. The components of the robots are mostly Lego
+NXT motors and sensors, attached to well crafted pieces of metal and
+plastic used as base and arms. Most robots in the competition are
+similar in sizes and shapes, but what differs in each are the
+extensions of the robots that interact with the challenge's physical
+elements. Be it gathering plastic balls almost the size of a ping-pong
+ball and transport them to a location, to opening a compartment full
+of these plastic balls, the extensions display the amount of work put
+into them.
+
+#+CAPTION: Typical FTCWest robot
+#+NAME: ftcrobot_thumb.jpg
+[[http://gnusosa.net/img/ftcrobot.jpg][http://gnusosa.net/img/thumbs/ftcrobot_thumb.jpg]]
+
+#+CAPTION: High-school students working on an FTCWest robot
+#+NAME: studentsftcrobot_thumb.jpg
+[[http://gnusosa.net/img/studentsftcrobot.jpg][http://gnusosa.net/img/thumbs/studentsftcrobot_thumb.jpg]]
+
+** Youth of today
+
+While there might be similar competitions to the FTCWest, and
+activities surrounding technology and science have almost become a
+norm in extra-curricular activities in the U.S.A. What amazes and
+intrigues me is the interaction of the many-to-many cultures, and I
+don't mean nationalities and regional cultures crossing, I'm referring
+to the modern subset of cultures of our post-service oriented
+lifestyle.
+
+#+CAPTION: High-school student getting ready to compete with his FTCWest robot
+#+NAME: kidftcrobot_thumb.jpg
+[[http://gnusosa.net/img/kidftcrobot.jpg][http://gnusosa.net/img/thumbs/kidftcrobot_thumb.jpg]]
+
+It took a decade, but we might be in the end of the full adaptation of
+the technology mindset into the common lifestyle cultures. How my
+generation differentiates race, sex, nerd, geek, hacker, cracker,
+scriptkiddie, devops, hardware hacker, real engineer, labrat,
+librarian addict, and such terms from each other, are radically of
+none existing matter to this new generations. I might depict myself as
+an old guy from writing this, and, well, you might say "you're in your
+late twenties, how can you say that.", I say that because it's
+becoming the norm in my daily media consumption to find an article or
+blog post with regards of discrimination of any type. We don't
+directly discriminate, but we do alienate in order to avoid conflict
+and maintain the "Chill" "Avoid any hassle and keep the peace on"
+mentality. In another spectrum, my beloved industry of software making
+is slowly alienating women and the diversity that brought it to its
+current grounds.
+
+Not even the now part of the popular culture terms, 'geek' and 'nerd',
+were in no way mentioned or thought of. All I saw was the youth
+collaborating with each other to solve one problem. The best part of
+the teams ensemble, was the fact that they were composed of teenagers
+with different backgrounds, nationalities, and races. Each with unique
+varying taste. To give two examples, one of the "mechanical
+engineers", the kid with the knowledge in handy tools, is a part-time
+break-dancer, unafraid to be mocked; the other team member is an
+advanced student in AP math and AP science courses, that preferred to
+take on the "industrial designer" role, since she wanted to take the
+influence of her art and design classes into the team's robot design.
+
+#+CAPTION: Same number of girls and boys attend FTCWest each year
+#+NAME: ftcwest2015_thumb.jpg
+[[http://gnusosa.net/img/ftcwest2015.jpg][http://gnusosa.net/img/thumbs/ftcwest2015_thumb.jpg]]
+
+
+** Nurturing cultural evolution
+
+I can't believe I'm saying this, but the small gap of information
+access that my generation and past one doesn't value, is all the
+change we needed to break with the continuous linear relationship of
+cultures. The content that makes 90s NYC comedy sitcoms to a certain
+degree funny, is broken down. No wonder, I can't make the sons of my
+cousins watch Seinfeld with me. I can see how most of it, is
+completely unrelated to them, when they could be watching a Korean
+Drama show, and probably after that, a Wes Anderson movie. So what
+happened?
+
+#+CAPTION: All cultures progress through set stages, while in the multilineal evolution model mixes and shares culture aspects.
+#+NAME: cultural_evolution.png
+[[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Cultural_evolution.PNG]]
+
+Multilineal Cultural evolution happened. Thanks to the irresistible
+craze for knowledge and how easy it's to access today's information,
+new generations have benefited from this new accesses to different
+sets of behaviors that revolve around well-established cultures. There
+are certain fruits of this lines turning into one, for instance,
+higher tolerance that arises from the teachings of independence of
+thought and liberation through knowledge. While my generation and the
+past one, have worked hard to eradicated fascism, sexism, and racism,
+we were at the same time eradicating terms and notions of how can and
+what work and what role the individual can take in her or his life.
+It's known that nobody is born a xenophobic, we teach xenophobia, but
+we first teach the concept of a stranger, there can't be xenophobia
+without the idea of a stranger. We have been slowly merging lines, and
+lines, to come out with a new line of culture without all the elements
+that we, my generation, keeps fighting.
+
+** New culture, new conflicts
+
+I'm excited to see what the future holds for the new generations, and
+their ideas of what is fair and just. More on that is the emergence of
+Nerdcore and other 'nerd' culture related content that is now basic
+cultural norm to each new teenager, and not even considered a mix by
+them. I can't believe a culture that was bullied and made fun of for
+an entire decade is now mixed with a culture that was speaking for the
+oppressed and angry that later became the billion dollar phenomena
+that it's now. That same culture, I'm referring to the Hip-Hop
+culture, is now interested in the bullied and the one that was made
+fun of, the tech-nerd-geek culture that seems to no longer exists in
+the current youth, since this culture is now ingrained to them as part
+of their normal activities.
+
+They can market to them as much as they want, but it seems that the
+new cultural line is not buying the formulated separation made by the
+media and the big Telcos, and I say good for them. I hope they don't
+jump in the same abusive behavior that was re-sold to past
+generations, like the grunge movement, and the horrible late 90s
+popular culture. New generations keep on fighting the good fight, you
+have the internet on your side, the old media conglomerates only have
+dead near them, just wait, it's only a matter of time.
+
+Now we can think of this multilineal cultural lines as nodes. Imagine
+what will happen when each node mixes to create a new multilineal
+culture, but now with massive cultural points that range from language
+to thought evoking processes.
+
+#+CAPTION: Each node is a multilineal cultural line
+#+NAME: 500px-Social_Network_Diagram_(segment).svg.png
+[[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Social_Network_Diagram_%28segment%29.svg/500px-Social_Network_Diagram_%28segment%29.svg.png]]
+