Can You Hear IT? (2.0)
The title of the mural Can You Hear IT? (IT Building 153, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 2020) is a play on words on several levels. Information Technology (I.T.) is both the computational and electronic hardware by which we work and communicate, and an abstract plain, encompassing various forms of connectivity, communication routes, and security shields and gateways. If asked what I.T. means to them, most people would most likely hold up a device, look at a screen, or point to the router overhead. They either see I.T.’s results or listen to them. Variously abled others may receive information via translators such as vibration, Braille type, or language software. But the emphasis is all the same: I.T. facilitates communication and reception of information between individuals. If it is working properly, I.T. should be a seamless interface between us and the rest of the world. So the question, Can You Hear IT? on one level simply asks, are you aware of how integral I.T. is to your life? The truth is, we don’t see or hear I.T. as much as live, breathe, and swim in it. I.T. is our context in the 21st century.
I.T. could also stand for Indigenous technology. New Mexico is rich in Indigenous technological traditions, of the Ancestral Puebloans, the Diné and the Apache, as well as many others. Indigenous cultures adapted to and prospered in this region thousands of years before Europeans came in the 16th century. They are still prospering and adapting. Long-standing traditions of Indigenous thinking are the baseline for my mural about information technology at UNM. These two forms of I.T translate as the specific technologies and ways of doing things Lobos and New Mexicans have developed, but also will develop, reflecting their unique cultural and locational perspectives in this region and to meet their future needs.
When I discussed the meaning, hope, and promise of I.T. with UNM’s I.T. employees, they used terms like embedded, enmeshed, and connected. They spoke of the promise of I.T. to liberate people from drudgery, to facilitate learning and enlightenment, and also to protect and nurture UNM’s students. These thoughtful employees were inspired by and full of hope for their work. I realized that any answer to the question Can You Hear IT?, needed to reflect their passionate commitment to the promise of information technology.
Yet, the historian in me could not help but temper their enthusiasm with a pessimism born of over ten years studying human beings’ various schemes of progress and advancement, all of which were born of similar aspiration, inspiration, and hopeful idealism, and many of which not only resulted in more drudgery, but explicitly excluded many different groups from their benefits. I would be remiss if I did not temper such optimism with the historical knowledge I possess about the complicated and even violent results of various information regimes in the highly contested history of the New Mexican region.
When I asked UNM’s I.T. employees what lay in the future of I.T., their answers quickly became the stuff of science fiction. And who can blame them? Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum says our era is characterized by a “blurring [of] the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.”[1] This Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing our world so quickly we may have difficulty in knowing where we end and Artificial Intelligence begins. Responding to rapid-fire innovations seemingly on a daily basis, we may struggle to gain the perspective necessary to see where we are heading, or perhaps more disturbingly, where I.T. is taking us.
When we imagine I.T. at the University of New Mexico, we envision one, unified network serving all users in our campus community. We are all Lobos! But when we think of the rings of information technology outside of the campus, in the city, region, nation, and world, we begin to see that one aspect of I.T. is to create barriers between “us” and “them.” This is true today, and it has been true historically in this region, where we see a veritable war between different systems of communication with radically different agendas, not all of which have been hopeful nor inspiring.
This more sobering aspect if information technology informs the deeper, tenser question at the heart of this mural’s title: who gets to create, access, and use I.T., and for what ends? Can You Hear IT? asks: Can you hear the potential future of information technology as it races towards us? Can you here the Indigenous technologies already well-established here in New Mexico? Are you thinking where all this is going, and are you taking the necessary actions today to ensure that the I.T. of the future produces a net benefit for all our children and grandchildren? The questions at the heart of this mural are thus moral and political questions.
History’s great benefit to the human race is that it provides a greater sense of objectivity and perspective. I am not so foolhardy that I am willing to attempt to depict a future I can barely imagine. Great art should be enduring and speak to aspects of the human condition which many, many future generations of viewers will be able to draw on and find meaning in. I can best accomplish that by grounding the image in past experiences of New Mexicans: in the longer, deeper, and site-specific history of UNM in the New Mexican land, in the homelands of multiple indigenous peoples, and within the layers of immigration and culture of New Mexico. Part of the purpose of this mural is to ask questions tinged with excitement and trepidation, but to also offer answers with a series of historical case studies from New Mexican history, each of which illustrates the powerful and inspiring potential of I.T. Thus, I can only create an image which offers multiple answers to the question, Can You Hear IT? Somewhere in the seven figures depicted in the New Mexican landscape in this mural, an answer to this question may be found.
Painting with I.T.
Before I briefly talk about the seven figures in this mural, I would like to explain the distinctive painting technique, which I developed for this mural. It is painting with I.T. I would like to thank my buddy Karl Benedict at UNM for helping me brainstorm this idea. He and a few beers are an amazing combination.
Networks and connectivity are what I.T. is all about. Early networks included large mainframe computers and ancillary hardware like printers, telephones, and fax machines. Today, the variety of elements making up a network are numerous and ever growing. Computer power is in fact based in networks. Paralleling hardware networks are social networks: the connections and relationships people form in the analog and the digital. A social network begins with the primary relationships of one person, and branches out to include secondary relationships contacts have with each other, and even tertiary relationships: friends of friends of friends. Social networks mirror I.T. networks to a degree, but the internet enables bridging to occur between unrelated members of a social network, and between networks, which is impossible for analog networks. Internet connectivity is unlimited. I.T. is thus a way to describe a framework encompassing the wired, the wireless, and the relationships crisscrossing around and between the two.
Various software platforms (OpManager, Ipswitch, Lucidchart, etc.) map I.T. networks into three-dimensional images called network diagrams or network maps (see examples). Network diagrams use a series of standard symbols (largely created by the company Cisco) to represent hardware and wireless capabilities, such as handheld devices, computers, cloud storage and firewalls. In the social arena, network symbols can be names, faces, internet handles, or GPS coordinates, etc. Both computer and social media network diagrams represent computer hardware, wireless, and/or social networks in three dimensions, so that I.T. builders, managers, and security teams can conceptualize, monitor, and secure networks. Using the electric connectivity of the I.T. network, these software can “discover” elements in a network in real time and manifest them on a screen, indicating if there are breaks in the network, as well as how and where individuals are connecting. Social network diagramming reveals when, how, and with whom people are connecting, and can be very useful for revealing the connections between contacts (or lack thereof), information which politicians and other network capital forms use for relationship building. Network diagrams can be simple, with just a few elements. Or they can be complex, with millions of hardware nodes. Network diagrams give I.T. managers a “macro” view of network connectivity in order to protect individual “micro” experiences with their devices or the internet. It is the I.T. manager’s job to see and understand the larger system, and to protect and shepherd hundreds and even millions of individual users as they roam the network. I.T. managers see and understand an important truth about the human condition: we are all connected.
I have produced a series of rubber stamps of I.T. network symbols, and with these stamps I have painted the water media studies for the mural. I will also paint the mural in the same way, with a larger set of stamps. Painting images with network symbol stamps, and then drawing the contours of images with lines between various aspects of I.T., replicates I.T. network diagrams. This technique makes the claim that today we are in fact made up of I.T. These images embody I.T. They also remind viewers that we are the sum of our connections. Each of us is a “we.” By means of I.T., we are all kin.
Image Description (refer to cartoon):
Can you hear IT? utilizes both sampled (i.e. appropriated) images from the historical record as well as original images, enabling viewers to engage with historical and visual content simultaneously. I.T. and I.t. have been the basis of community formation and cohesion in New Mexico, enabling its people to adapt to changing conditions over hundreds of years. The University of New Mexico is an institution that has emerged out of this long history of adaptation, resistance, and creativity, to help New Mexicans to be resilient and live better lives. At its heart Indigenous, Hispano, and mixed-race adaptations have entailed code switching, the process by which a person from one culture learns how to translate their ideas, feelings, and beliefs into the language of another culture, in order to survive and prosper. Another way to understand code switching is as a form of cultural information technology.
The knotted maguey rope stretching across the center of the mural is a symbolic example of I.t. It refers to a seminal event in New Mexico’s history, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan) religious leader Po’Pay organized the revolt. [2] He sent runners out to each pueblo with knotted maguey ropes. Insurgent leaders were to untie one knot to demonstrate their adherence to the planned revolt, and then another one each day until they were all untied. When there were no more knots, the uprising was to begin. This ingenious form information technology enabled the rebellion to be successful. It completely expelled the Spanish from the region of modern day New Mexico for nearly 13 years, and remains the only successful Indigenous revolt against European colonizers in North American history.[3] John Gahate at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center credited Indigenous social networks for the success of the Pueblo Revolt. The knotted rope represents both Indigenous Information Technology and Indigenous Social Networking.[4]
The heart of this mural is the Lady in Blue, New Mexico’s own distinctive Guadalupe. She emerges out of the blue and white of a New Mexican sky; she is sky, and she is also the soil of Spain. UNM historian Anna M. Nogar writes that “the Lady in Blue is unquestionably a persistent manifestation of miracle discourse born out of the region, written into the historical landscape.”[5] She was Sor Maria de Jesus de Agreda, a Spanish nun who lived and died in the Soria region of Northern Spain (1602-1665), and who claimed that six angels enabled her to travel to colonial Nuevo Mexico, to deliver a message about the Catholic Christ to Indigenous groups. First appearing in the region in 1628, the Lady in Blue was at once a code switcher, a translator, and a messenger. [6]
The Six Angels of Information Technology each offer a story about the centrality and importance of I.T. to the growth, evolution, and prosperity of New Mexicans.
From right to left, the figures begin with Malinche, La Malatzin, the original American code switcher. La Malinche, whose Indigenous name was Malintzin, was a complex character, about whom the Mexican people have never ceased arguing. Malinche had been born into a group dominated by the Aztecs – a powerful Indigenous confederacy that controlled all of central Mexico in the fifteenth-century. Her native tongue was Nahuatl, but she had been sold as a slave into a Mayan city, so she also spoke Quiche or Mayan. Cortez, who was nothing if not bold, had arrived on the coast of Mexico near Vara Cruz and had burned his ships, communicating to his men his utter dedication to his mission. He began to build alliances with local tribes who were chaffing under the yoke of the Aztec. One of these groups, the Tlaxcalans, gifted Malinche to Cortez, and the Spaniard rapidly ascertained that he now had in his possession a powerful secret weapon: a translator who spoke multiple languages. She quickly picked up Spanish as she became Cortez’s mistress. Bernardo Diaz—a soldier in Cortez's army who wrote the best Spanish account of the conquest of Mexico—Malinche was “the great beginning of our conquests.” Malinche is the Angel of Code Switching.
An anonymous UNM student writing an essay is the next figure. Taken from the UNM archives, this young woman symbolizes the importance of I.T. and I.t. to learning. She is the Angel of Education.
Henry Bake Jr., was one of the famed Navajo Code Talkers from World War II. He was one of many Navajo (Diné) troops who learned a secret, unbreakable code language, which the American military used to send information about tactics, troop movements and orders over the radio and telephone. The code was indecipherable to the enemy and a key factor in the American military victories at Iwo Jima, Saipan, and several other major battles in the Pacific theater. Bake is the Angel of Cultural Distinctiveness.
Soaring up to touch the sun is UNM Lobo and point guard Keith McGee, a junior from Rochester New York. His amazing physical feats represent the aspiration and courage of the future of I.T. He is the Angel of Hope.
Larry Casuse was a Diné activist and UNM student who challenged the Regents in the 1970s to be more accountable for their actions outside of the UNM campus, particularly as they pertained to the Diné. By all accounts, Larry was a persuasive and courageous orator. He occupied Regents’ meetings with his physical presence and his voice, shedding light on the immoral actions of some Regents. Larry is the Angel of the Just Voice, the Prophet who had the courage to speak truth to power.
The last angel is farm worker activist and New Mexican native Dolores Huerta, here using a megaphone to bath the people with inspiring and unifying words. Huerta represents the New Mexican tradition of translating the region’s wisdom and community power to improve the lives of other people in different locations. She, Cesar Chavez, and many others built a grassroots farm workers movement that has saved the lives of countless people. She is the Angel of the Healing Word.
[1] Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/, 14 January 2016.
[2] Joe S. Sando and Herman Agoyo, Po’Pay: Leader of the First American Revolution (Santa Fe, N.M: Clear Light Publishers, 2005), 89–90.
[3] Andrew L. Knaut, The Pueblo Revolt: Conquest and Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995).
[4] I am indebted to John Gahate for this important insight.
[5] Anna Nogar, Quill and Cross in the Borderlands: Sor María de Ágreda and the Lady in Blue 1628 to the Present. Notre Dame University Press, 2018, 3.
[6] Ibid., 43.