Hi, I am Joseph Mrowca, commuting from Mentor-On-the-Lake to John Carroll University. I don't have a preference between being called Joe or Joseph, either is fine.

Email: jmrowca18@jcu.edu

Hmm...hometown...kinda hard to say. I have lived in five different U.S. States. I was born in Texas, then my family moved to Vermont [my brother Michael was born there]. After that, we moved to the Lehigh Valley area in Pennsylvania, and stayed there for about 5 years. We then moved to Syracuse, New York, specifically the Cicero suburb town. I lived there for about 7 years [part of 3^rd grade to end of 9^th grade]. In the summer of 2011, my family moved to Columbus, Ohio, [Dublin suburb] where we stayed for less than a full calender year. The latest move was to Mentor-On-the-Lake, a suburb of a suburb [Mentor is a suburb of Cleveland].

For our purposes, let's say I am “from” the Mentor area.

I've never really thought of myself as unique to be honest, at least not for several years...

I guess I could say I am unique in the sense that I have lived in 4 different areas that I can remember well at the age of 18, given that some people never move from the city/town they were born in, let alone the county or state/province/territory...

I have an interest in history, as seen in the rant later in this post.

As far as this course in Social Justice and its intersection with digital media, it will probably take a couple sessions of verbal discussions and seeing others succeed in taking risks until I would really feel comfortable taking risks of my own and saying what I think about something.

Most Important Invention

The most important technological innovation in history is hard to distinguish because of the various categories you could go with. One could easily argue for the printing press, internet, or photographic equipment from the angle of the expansion democratization of knowledge.

Basic energy control [fires], language, or discovering that one can plant seeds to grow crops, rather than just constantly move around and hope you will find some more [early farming] , could be considered the most important, as they ultimately acted as prerequisites for all other technological inventions. However, they are not always considered to be technological developments/inventions by some definitions. The modern connotation that technology always has to involve computers somehow further cements those definitions.

If we were to restrict ourselves to deciding on the most important invention--not idea or concept--of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, I would argue for the invention/acceptance of use of vaccines that have saved countless lives and will hopefully eliminate more sever illnesses in the future.

Social Justice

Social justice is about fairness/equality to me. The mentality that it somehow isn't right for someone who needs help to ask for and seek help is upsetting to me. You take people that are already struggling to survive, and make them feel even worse when they come to get help. 

Another major issue for me is how ridiculously expensive it is to get health care services without insurance. I know slightly from experience with that, the 2 of the moves were because my dad was laid off. He was out of work for more than 2 years in New York... luckily that state had “good” Medicaid, but once that was gone, it was a nightmare to go to a doctor or get prescriptions filled.

I have called people out on making fun of special needs people and specifically the use of the word “retard[ed]”. My brother has high functioning autism, [you wouldn't be able to notice it anymore easily], he hasn't been made fun of directly in front of me, but I still take offense to people making fun of others or using the word “retard[ed]” to describe someone or something.

Class Question

The question I would pose would be for the class to go around and share what they think social justice is and/or their pick for most important technological invention.