This morning I got back to writing. This is very hard to do during the holidays and considering the fact that I am very busy at work with people being out. My driving from Houston to Austin every week does not help either. Ok, no more pity. :-) No one cares anyway, the sooner you learn that the better. So, I got up this morning at 530 am and worked on my paper for about an hour and a half. If I want to get more done I simply need to be more disciplined about going to sleep. I am also preparing for an opportunity that is coming up and that is taking away some of my time as well. So, today I worked more on my transition sentences from one section to another and moving from cites around. I now feel pretty good about my first seven pages. I have 18 total that I am reworking to submit. In my next sitting which I am targeting to be Friday morning, since I am on the road tonight, have a meeting early on Thursday in Houston, then driving back to Austin and working all day on Thursday, should be Thursday night or Friday morning. The plan is to continue working my at least better transitions. If I make it through that, I want to add more cites that I have collected (see notes) and then start my problem statement section and move on to there. No more projections regarding when I will submit this draft. I will simply keep working on it as much as I can. I am definitely progressing, just not as frequent or fast as I would like. I would love to keep momentum and write tonight but I simply wont have the opportunity. The next source I would like to cite in my section on education is Watkins work on the history of Black Education.


Until Next time,
Kai Dupe

I spent some time this reworking my introduction. I think it is stronger now and makes the case of why this is important. It took me an hour just to do that. I could not find my notes from my last session which had my next steps on it. From now on I will post my notes for next time here so do not run the risk of losing valuable night and insights that were generated while working. I also looked over Blacks and Technology, Volume II by Raymond L. Chukwu and used it as a source in one of my sections for chapter 1.

Kai

I am still writing my chapter 1. I have 18 pages. I am still adding citations that I think are important. However, I also need to work on the flow of it and continue to produce my headings. Early in this week, I intend to finish my citations for this first draft and get all of my headings done and complete the flow. I should submit this first draft on Sunday. I will work on my paper every day this week including Saturday and Sunday in order to reach this goal. During my quiet time this morning, the thought arose that perhaps the reason I am still in an IT workplace is because this is the context I need to ask my research question. It is where I have the most familiarity with the profession and where I have the best access. The question is does the workplace provide the population that can answer the question: Why Are There So Few African Americans Choosing Careers in Information Technology?
And if so, how can I design a study around that question?

-Kai

After meditating this morning for about an hour, I worked on my chapter 1 of my dissertation. I have about 18 pages now but this will need to be distilled. But man I have some good stuff. There is still more work to be done. I have material from at least four other books and several articles that I want to include. That will make it even better. It will need to tighten up. The hard part for me now is going back and linking everything together better and really honing in on how I am going to study this problem so that the chapter 1 can lead into it. I know what I want to study, 'Why Are African Americans so underrepresented in the field of Information Technology? The question is how do I go about asking this question? My work for next time is to review the materials mentioned above, think about my headings and transitions and work on them, and maybe after that re-arrange a few things for flow. My goal is to have it arranged and tight and about 15 pages by Sunday night. I would have to do some work on Friday, Saturday and Sunday to submit Sunday morning. We will see how it goes. It will be tough since we are having a birthday party for my son on Saturday. I am going to try to rise early on Saturday and Sunday and see what happens. My backup plan is to submit during the week of Thanksgiving. I am very close to submitting so I feel pretty good. This week has been my only opportunity to work. If I had been able to focus this week I definitely could have submitted by Sunday. Oh well, I will keep plugging away. Time to go workout and then off to work.

Dr. Kai (someday soon)

I have been writing. I have 9 pages of my chapter 1 written and I have been thinking about my research design. I have not worked on my paper this week as work has been busy and family has been busy. My son John Kai celebrated his 2nd birthday this week. I am having the time of my life. I should get some work done on it this weekend and over the ThanksGiving Holiday I should complete chapter 1.

This morning completed my writings based on chapter 1 of Technology and the African American Experience. I think this book, at least the first chapter, has produced gold in terms of contributing to my chapter one and describing the problem of Why There Are So Few African Americans in Information Technology. This chapter lays the foundation for the historic origins of the attitude that black people are technologically inferior. This is important because we see these attitudes prevailing in several of the studies i have examined thus far in 2009. What has to change is the eradication of these attitudes by those who have been conditioned and those who are doing the conditioning. I hope to finish the book this week before returning to Technology and Social Inclusion. After that I should have enough to craft my chapter 1. It should be rich. However, I will need to arrange and wordsmith. I am really looking forward to finally submitting a first draft of my chapter 1 to Dr. Riel. I really feel that I am gaining momentum, learning a great deal, and truly enjoying the journey. I also discovered several resources, scholars such as Ron Takaki, Robert Rydell, and Michael Adams, as well as Technology and Culture, which is a magazine that examines the history of technology. I need to figure out how to get access or a subscription.

Stay Tuned,
Kai

This morning I progressed through chapter 1 of Technology and the African-American Experience. It is a collection of essays edited by Bruce Sinclair. I purchased this book because before becoming a doctoral student, much of the improvement in my life has been born out of reading of Africans in America. This book examines the intersection of race and technology and it is mind-blowing. Here is a quote from page 1


White Americans, including those as committed to Enlightenment ideals as Thomas Jefferson—even as he corresponded with Benjamin Banneker, the African American astronomer and almanac maker—believed that black people among them were mentally inferior, and by that they didn’t just mean a capacity for advanced intellectual accomplishment. What good would freedom be, one southerner put it, to a field hand whose highest faculties were taxed “to discriminate between cotton and crop-grass, and to strike one with a hoe without hitting the other? (Sinclair 2004, p.1).

Now we are getting somewhere. This document the origins of the concept that African Americans do not have the ingenuity to invent and that technological innovation to be left to those of a lighter hue. Was Thomas Jefferson a white supremacist. I like that term better than racist because it is more precise. After reading the chapter I wrote 2 pages in my chapter 1. Again this is zero-draft stuff. This book has me very excited about how I will fit this historical viewpoint into my chapter 1,so I am going to take it to work and read another chapter. I would like to get through the book and capture my thoughts for the weekend. My goal is to craft first draft and send it to Margaret on November 1.

No work yesterday. There are simply no opportunities for me to work when I am home on the weekends. Focus should be better next week if work allows. Last week was brutal.

Nothing to report. I am simply too mentally tired from the work week. I must get some writing done over the weekend.

No work last night. I worked a 12-hour day and I was back at work at 7:30. I was simply too tired. I am hoping to do a couple of pages tonight as well as on Friday morning.

I was not able to do any writing on Monday night. This is my travel day and I am usually too tired to even think by the time I arrive at my hotel. However, I am ready to complete my research so I have decided that no matter what I will write for at least an hour, even on Monday evenings. Last night I forgot the book I am reviewing so I did some work from Technology and the African American Experience. This book does a nice job at looking at the intersection of race and technology in America. I did some writing after reading the first chapter.

This morning and last night I completed my review and zero draft of Stuck in the Shallow End. This work yielded 43 pages of zero draft. Next I am on to Technology and Social Inclusion. It should not take as long as I have learned how to be more effective at doing this. Probably, over the weekend, I will take a break from this work, and get back to some reading. It is easier for me to read on the weeks as opposed to write since I am back home. My plan is to make significance progress in the reading of Grown Up Digital. I also wanted to place the link here for the software used by the Margolis team: http://www.atlasti.com/

More of the same. Almost done reviewing and writing about Stuck in the Shallow End. The last chapter is providing content for the kind of information that is suited for chapter 2, meaning approaches that have been attempted to solve the problem I am describing in chapter 1. My goal for Wednesday is to finish this book and move on to Warschauer. But I must say Margolis is a gold mine of information and ideas.

Tonight I continued going over Margolis. It is very promising but it is slow going. I think once I have done my review I will have plenty to do a rough draft of chapter 1. However, so far I do not have much for a chapter 2.

For the last 2 days I have continued my work on going back over my readings (name stuck in the shallow end) and doing zero drafts of my chapters 1 and 2 as suggested earlier. One conclusion that I have come to since my starting this research is that the dearth of African Americans and Latino students in this field has nothing to do with the field or anything to do with access and it all has to do with race and social conditioning and how expectations shape these communities beliefs about themselves and their identity as it relates to this field. When I began I felt something interesting was going on between African Americans and this particular field. I do not believe that anymore.

Last week I continued to go back over my reading and write from what I have read thus far determining what would be suited for chapter 1 and chapter 2. I should complete that exercise this week and get back to writing as I think and read. When I feel pretty good about how much of the literature I have covered I plan to actually go back and rewrite the drafts. Also, this week, one of my co-workers had a copy of "Growing Up Digital" on his desk. I borrowed the copy and I will read it next week and incorporate it into my chapters. I decided to get a copy since Margaret mentioned it may be a good study to model.

Kai

No writing over the weekend. I will hit hard again on Monday.

Last night I began my new writing strategy after reading from "Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day" by Joan Bolker. The idea is to write something every day, however you define everyday and also to make thinking and writing the first thing you do each. I am going to try for my everyday, Monday thru Friday since my weekends belong to my family. So, this morning I rose. Washed my face and headed to my computer and start to write my ideas and thoughts about my dissertation. It seemed to work well. Now this does not mean I may not write at other times, but for certain I will write each day as my first task of the day. Afterword, I worked out and took a shower and had breakfast before leaving for the office. What a great start to the day!

Title

Black Like Me? The Missing Faces in Technology and Innovation: Why Are So Few African Americans Pursuing Careers in Information Technology?

Tonight I continued to review my notes from my reading of "Stuck in the Shallow End" by Jane Margolis. I hope to complete this review in the next couple of days and then move on to Technology and Social Inclusion by Warshchauer. From there, I will review several of the articles that I have read and include them in my chapter. When I feel good about this, I will start reading again my next set of articles that will hopefully complete my chapter 1 and build my chapter 2. I would like to have chapters 1, 2 and 3 done by December. I still need a title. Although, I am very clear that I would like to look at the problem of the underrepresentation of African Americans in Information Technology, as of yet I still do not have a title for my dissertation. Here is on that I am thinking about:


Cracking the Code: Why Are So Few African Americans Pursuing Careers in Information Technology?