Reflection
Maps and Models
It is often said that we do not interact directly with our world, instead we interact with representations of it - re-presentations. One reason for this is that we are constantly receiving far more data than we are capable of dealing with; we generally have no need to be cognizant of the air-pressure or the humidity or what each of the spiders on the fence that we can see is doing, nor do we generally need to be aware of tension in our knees or of the degree of pressure we are exerting with our left little toe or of our ear lobes, and yet, when we need to be aware of those things the data are available to us, simply by moving our awareness to them. We do not normally require a highly technical knowledge of how the gears in our cars function or how the DVD player gets its signal to appear as a moving picture on the television screen; it is enough to know that when we do thus and thus the DVD does whatever it does and we are able to view the results.
However, in order for us to be able to imagine the appropriate ‘thus and thus’ we have to be also able to imagine how it might be performing its function. Our imagined solution is not required to bear any relationship to the actual workings of the thing, it simply needs to function adequately for the user to be able to make it work, and one user’s internal model does not need to be the same as any other human being’s model, it merely has to function adequately. Just as a map does not need to represent accurately what you will find when you get to the location you require for, of course, a 1:1 map would be the actual location and that would encompass more data than we required anyway so that we would automatically filter some of it out. ENGL242 has performed that function for me, it provided far more data about digital media and what happens when it intersects narrative structures than I could easily take in but it provided concepts of examination and terminology and expanded my knowledge base sufficiently for me to more adequately prepare internal maps to navigate the notions more usefully.