MASTHEAD Fernanda DeSouza Editor-in-Chief
2
FIT
Letter from the Editor
Dianna Mazzone Miriam Lustig Deputy Editors Megan Venere Executive Editor Richard Gilmartin Hermina Sobhraj Senior Editors Dara Kenigsberg Managing Editor Amanda Baldwin Copy Editor Hermina Sobhraj Treasurer
W27Newspaper.com Molly Yarsike Community Manager
Art Kevin Braine Art Director Kelly Millington Junior Designer Courtney Wall Junior Designer Jessica Farkas Alexander Papakonstantinou Photographers Faye Asido Chloe Dewberry Fashion Editors Sara Rabin Illustrations
Contributors Yesica Balderrama Rachel Basel Britt Bivens Francesca Beltran Kyle Dunigan Sarah Fielding Dana Heyward Alexis Katsafanas Christina Macaluso Sarah Malmgren Marissa Mule Desiree Perez Daniela Rios Zach Rosenbaum Aaron Valentic Venus Wong
2000: my father brings home the most expensive materialistic object we had ever owned up to that point in our lives: a Hewlett Packard computer that took the manual labor of two men to unload from a car. The modem alone was the size of my nine-month-old sister. But how shiny and exciting that $400 hunk of plastic, glass and computer chips looked in my eyes. I quickly created my first e-mail address, Fefex2000@aol.com and became an explorer of the World Wide Web (making sure to make stops along Disney and CartoonNetwork.com to play the Little Mermaid and Powerpuff Girls games). I ran home from school to play on Paint, partake in Harry Potter themed chat rooms (yes, I was one of those) and to read the various encyclopedias copied onto CDs and colorful, see-through floppy discs. Then I discovered Google and well...we know what happens next. I became an information junkie at a tender age of nine. I couldn’t help devouring information. I figured it replaced extra afterschool activities anyways, plus it was educational (or an addiction, whichever way you see it). My first encounter with a mobile device came late in my life. I was 15-years-old and was sick of asking my friends to borrow their phones to call my mother for a ride home. I was rewarded with a pain-in-the-ass pay-as-yougo-phone. I was annoyed I didn’t get the Bob Dylan record I specifically asked for and it wasn’t a Sidekick, but nonetheless,
John Simone Editorial Faculty Advisor
I felt like one of the cool kids. I could communicate with the outside world: my mom and dad, aunt and uncle, a few friends and of course, 911 (if I had even had enough money left on the phone to call during an emergency). It’s 2013 and I’m sadly, along with almost every human being in the world today, attached to my phone. As old school as I am (I feel like I’m the only person keeping the post office alive with all the letters I write to friends all over the world), I can’t say I saw it coming. I scoffed at people who glued their eyes to their Blackberries (before Apple ate them up, pun intended). Now I’m one of those people, except a little behind the times what with my iPhone 3 (four more months until that upgrade!). As humans living in the Information Age, which began in 1975 but did not take off until the 1990s with the introduction of equivalent modern day Internet that we know today, we don’t realize how far we’ve come from
Albert Romano Advertising Faculty Advisor
A FIT STUDENT ASSOCIATION PUBLICATION
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Alexander Papakonstadinou, Faye Asido and Chloe Dewberry teamed together to create a design of binary proportions to showcase a technological fashion interpretation for W27’s Big Data Issue.
the speed dial up we grew accustomed to close to two decades ago. And now all we hear is BIG DATA. There are now rooms housing colossal computers whose jobs are to collect, aggregate and analyze terabytes of data to detect patterns and fuel research conducted by researchers and institutions. The amount of information out there is almost unfathomable. This theme challenged writers to dig in to the core significances of big data and what it actually is and how it impacts us in all aspects of our lives. Maybe you’ll think twice before posting that selfie of your drunk ass on Instagram next Friday night. Because you never know who’s watching. Big Brother, out!