OLIT 391 Problems Summer 2008 Dr. Noll Timothy Sipp
Project Proposal for Independent Study
I intend to R&D the next generation of eBook that could be used to either gather, organize and synthesize vast, non-linear information for producing a Master’s or a Doctoral thesis and/or to innovate a richer information exchange and user interface in consumer content channels.
Originally, I wanted to tie together my junior year of academic work into a personal “wiki” but with more integrated user-friendly design features. Instead, I have decided to create an original research piece that requires several sources, both in print and online.
The content topic is “Racism as Technology: A Tool of Social Engineering”. The thesis requires vast informational support to assist the reader in innovating the connections necessary to reveal racism as an intentionally derived meta-cognitive model employed by institutionalized power structures to ‘better’ manage a population and maintain the status quo, i.e. power preserves power.
A portion of this support will be providing evidence of an observed trend in the institutionalization of individual ideals into social control structures. It begins with the engenderment of an ideal in an individual’s mind, then the subsequent politicization of that ideal and the eventual socialization of that ideal into a “an accepted value” for determining deviance and defining acceptability, which facilitates conformity, in the dominant culture. The inevitable economization or monetization of deviance and conformity renders a self-perpetuating institutional power structure that can become so engrained as to become inextricable from the character of the dominant culture and subsequently the entire society and all of its sub-strata.
These newly formed relational dynamics are neither organically engendered, nor easily removed once embedded. They do, however, experience the unbalanced outside forces of social evolution, which regularly test hypotheses and redefine acceptability and deviance as fluidly as the tides affect temporary change in the sand.
It is this systemic predictability that allows us to observe the evolution of racism from dysfunctional child psychology to institutional power structure. If we observe the past and the present of racism, understanding that racism is merely a tool in the toolbox and not a mythology with debatable merits; we may finally be able to choose a different tool to affect positive change in our society. By altering the nature of power in our nation so that future preservation of power can be accomplished without the divisive derision of internal division we can displace enmity with unity and realize our full potential as a people, as a nation and as a species.
I think that multi-disciplinary endeavors such as this could benefit greatly from innovations in OLIT to both produce and disseminate highly engaging material that can easily be reused by future individuals conducting their own research. Thus, this project…