How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything

Out of the three different article, I enjoyed reading “How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything,” by Alexis Madrigal. I like that it started off with the history of Google and talking about how Google “began as an online search company that made money almost exclusively from selling ads based on what you were querying for,” and what it has developed into. I feel like the whole world revolves around Google and as much as you try to avoid using it, you just cannot because its like a force of habit to just "Google" everything. I think it is fascinating how fast it has developed and how it still is developing. I honestly love Google because it has everything you need, literally everything and I think that its amazing that we get to use it for free, since nowadays everything seems to have a cost, but I guess the cost of using Google is the whole privacy issue, but so far that hasn’t influenced my life in a negative way so I will continue to use Google. The article was also interesting in that it mentioned “augmented reality” because we had just read an article on the topic.

Augmented-reality maps

Watching Blaise Agüera y Arcas’s “Augmented-reality map” Ted Talk was very interesting, I was actually excited to watch it because I have always been a fan of Ted Talks. The whole concept behind it was to show everyone the new “invention” him and his team came up with, which is “Bing Maps.” I think the way he described the map didn’t make it sound too “empirical,” and scientific, instead, he showed street view of the actual environment of that place, where people are walking and the photos are candid instead of posed. It reminded me of Edward Ruscha’s “every building on sunset strip” project. They both give you the feel of the specific place, the people, environment, different times of day, which is way more “humanistic” than scientific, so it makes it more interesting because its something we can actually enjoy seeing, instead of numbers and graphs or just a bird’s eye view of the place. It made me feel like I was there in that specific place walking around with everyone.

"Homes for America"

It was interesting to read about the different styles of homes that are built. I have always been interested in interior design, and just home designs in general, so it was enjoyable to read the article about how the different companies plan on building “communities” with houses that look exactly the same. To me, driving in a neighborhood with identical houses is boring and doesn’t give each home its uniqueness, I wouldn’t want to live in a house that looks the same as 20 other houses on the street, I would want my house to reflect me personally. But overall, it was interesting reading about how they chose the colors of the houses and the maps. I also really enjoyed looking at the pictures of the different buildings on Sunset Strip in California; it made me think of an old black and white movie. 

Joan Kron’s “The Semiotics of Home Décor” article was my favorite article that we have read so far. I agree with most of the things he mentioned. In today’s society, many people tend to be materialistic and want to show off everything they own to the world, and social media helps with that, as we post pictures on Instagram or Snapchat for the world to see. It is in human nature that we sometimes look for attention from people, but some people use the attention in wrong ways that don’t benefit society. It is not always bad to show off the things you have, like decorating your home can be a good way of showing off, it gets you attention but in a positive way, where you can influence people and inspire them in a good way. Our world would be a much more positive place if people showed off some things the right way and with good intentions. Overall I really enjoyed reading this article.

Johanna Drucker's "“Representation and the digital environment: Essential challenges for humanists”

When I first started reading Johanna Drucker’s “Representation and the digital environment: Essential challenges for humanists” article I was a bit confused with the intro. I was not (and still not) sure of the whole point of the article other than the “importance” of “finding ways to represent [humans] within the digital environment.” I noticed that Johanna used a lot of words that I was unfamiliar with and had to look up. Then in the middle of the article I stumbled upon the word “modelling” with two “I’s” and thought that there was a mistake in the article and that I was the smart one to find it, but I was disappointed when Google told me that the world modeling is spelled with two I’s in England. Overall, the author sounded smart with all the big words she used, but I wasn’t very interested in it. 

Dawn of the Dead Mall

I really enjoyed reading this article and was intrigued by the title of it since I love malls and shopping. In a way, the title made me think of the Boulevard Mall, which is right around the corner from campus, because it is a “dying” mall, at least in my eyes since every time I go there it is always…. dead. It was interesting to read about Gruen, which were the architect and how the article described him as “the most influential architect of the twentieth century.” Another statement that I found interesting was, “In a country of cars, malls have provided a place for the pleasures of pedestrianism, and for the see-and-be-seen people-watching that’s one of the delights of the mall experience.” I totally agree with this because whenever my friends and I, or my family and I go to the mall, even if it’s just to walk around instead of shop, we still have fun. Overall, I thought this article was enjoyable.  

Semiotics of the kitchen video

Semiotics of the kitchen video

My impression on the video is that it was strange. I did not get what the point of it was other than the woman introducing kitchen supplies that correlated with the letters in the alphabet. It was awkward that she stood holding the sign in the beginning for at least forty seconds, then as she was naming the objects, she seemed angry during some of them like the fork and knife and how she was stabbing the air. She seemed like she was taking out her anger using those tools. It was definitely one of the strangest videos I have ever seen. At the end it was funny that she did not have any supplies that correlated with the final letters of the alphabet so she just acted them out, it reminded me of the YMCA song.