A Heart of Stars: Mapping a Screen Name is a collection of various mappings that represent my internet persona. These mappings both revealed and excluded information about me as “aheartofstars.” In a sense, “aheartofstars” became a character deviation of me. I decided to use these mappings to dissect the character of “aheartofstars” and to represent the growth of this character; thus, I have used the metaphor of a “road trip” to describe the journey of “aheartofstars” throughout various network of practices.
Beginning the Journey
In this section, I have documented the various …

For Information Architecture, I designed a presentation using Prezi’s Zooming Presentation Maker. In Information Architecture, our class examined information in several different contexts. We first looked at how language, one of the most popular vehicles of information, is structured to help people make meaning out of what they see, hear, and read. Metaphors We Live By (1980), by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, was both influential and helpful as it laid the foundation for many of the other things we would read later. From evaluating language, we then examined how …

This presentation is designed to
explore the relationship between writing, technology and information. To facilitate this, several different tools
were utilized. Including Prezi, Twitter, Facebook, FontStruct, Kuler, Google
MyMaps, Wordle, Tweetstats, Twitter Top Friends Network, and Nexus. These tools work to show the connections
between the writer and the users as well as to further the “Writer as
Cartographer” metaphor.
With this presentation, I attempt to
show the writer’s influence over the content and depiction of images as well as
the many information ecologies that surround each of us. If we look at the graphics and the
presentation as …

In the book Free Culture, Lawrence
Lessig discusses the effect that copyrighting has on creativity and cultural
production. He explains that in the good
old days there was a kind of uneasy balance between the rights of the creator
to protect their work and those of the public to experience it. People were more able to build upon the work
of others to create bigger and better things.
However with cases such as Eldred v. Ashcroft copyright protection can be extended far
longer than before. The case challenged the constitutionality of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright …

This has been a enlightening and challenging class.  The books we read lead way into fascinating discussions
that have caused me to re think many preconceived notions I have about;
metaphors, images, comic books, categorizing, the list goes on and on.  Now that the semester is coming to an end we
find ourselves looking back over all we have learned.  These questions are designed to try to help
us get an overview of the semester. 
Hopefully they will help in our discussion. 
1)     
I am sure that we each learned a great deal for
all of the …

When creating the initial sketches for my letters  I was hoping to create a very ornate font. Hopefully
my font would have still been easy to read and usable but it was also quite flowery.  However after quite some time playing with
fontStruct, creating this particular style of font did not seen possible.  I had been hoping to create a font somewhere in
between  Blackadder ITC
and Curlz MT .  In order to create the curls I had to make the
font quite large.  Since it was my first
time working with FontStruct I was uncomfortable …

Sorting Things Out:
Classification and its Consequences by Bowker and Star is an interesting look
at different systems of classification and how these classifications effect
people’s perceptions.  Bowker and Star
define classification as “a spatial, temporal, or spatiotemporal segmentation
of the world” (pg. 10).  The authors
discuss several different classification systems
but mainly focus on social and medical examples.  These include but are not limited to the Nursing
Interventions Classification, the International Classification of Diseases,
classifications of viruses and other illnesses, classifications in the work
place, and classifications of race such as during the apartheid. 
There are many
interesting sections and …

With Friendbar you can log into Twitter, Facebook,
or both and keep track of what is going on while you are doing other things
online.  This way you do not have to keep
jumping back to the actual Twitter and Facebook sites to stay in touch.  You can simply glance up to keep an eye on
what is going on.  With the settings you can
make have it beep to alert you when a new update comes in and it also flashes
yellow.
With the settings you can chose to have replies, direct
messages, text, pictures, or text …

In Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star dissect and analyze the system of classification and standardization in information infrastructures. Sorting Things Out focuses mainly on classifications and standardizations on the commercial and bureaucratic levels, but Bowker and Star state in their introduction “To classify is human. Not all classifications take formal shape or are standardized in commercial and bureaucratic products.” In order to further understand Bowker and Star’s theories and to open discourse I posit the following questions for the discussion:

Bowker and …

Sorting Things Out, by Bowker and Star is an examination of classifications that have become woven into lives without us even realizing it, how these classifications affect us and the way we think about things, and how they were formulated in the first place.
 
That being said, I found this book to be near impossible to get through.  The subject had great potential to be interesting, but the academic jargon and over-the-top writing style not only put me off from the get-go, but it nearly put me to sleep at the …