path: root/log/2015-03-29-helping-the-multilineal-culture.org

---
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
[[../img/ftcrobot.jpg][../img/thumbs/ftcrobot_thumb.jpg]]

#+CAPTION: High-school students working on an FTCWest robot
#+NAME: studentsftcrobot_thumb.jpg
[[../img/studentsftcrobot.jpg][../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
[[../img/kidftcrobot.jpg][../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
[[../img/ftcwest2015.jpg][../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]]