"You Are Here" images

While I misplaced my "You Are Here" map in the disorganization of sophmore slumping (but will recreate it and post it shortly), I can illustrate my map through my own words. My original map was dominated by several pockets of visual punning. For example, I had a bold image of a man with the words BIG BROTHER is watching underneath to represent privacy issues and the implications of social media sites having access to so much personal information. 

In the left corner, I had a pair of reading glasses with a cracked lens to show questionable authority. The glasses were meant to be a representation of academia and the crack was drawn to show that even though the user can rely so much in academic sites and sources like Wikipedia, the authority is "cracked", or questionable, because the community behind them can only represent a small elitist population with biased views and slanted personal agendas. 

In the right corner, I had a large female gender symbol and in the middle I wrote, "Gender Gap". As stated, this was supposed to represent the gender gap between the participation of men and women in technology spaces. The gender gap on Wikipedia especially stuck with me because I was so frustrated with the irony that Wikipedia is so adamant about maintaining a "neutral point of view" but inherently fails at ever achieving it because their community is dominated by educated, white men. As men are dominating the knowledge production of such a universal source of information, the international community is receiving such a slanted perspective on endless subjects. Topics that are focused on women and people of color are devalued in turn, as few within in the Wikipedia community come from these spaces and see them as important pieces to write about. 

Finally, in the middle of those three dominant images, I wrote, "I AM HERE" to show how I am mentally circling between these three main themes as I juggle them through each reading and each new research venture. "I am here" is also in the middle of a big white patch, which I feel can also represent how I have so much space for new ideas and how all of our course dicussions are being freshly written on a nearly blank slate (this blank slate being how new I am to examining the relationship between education and technology).