Site Report 2, Revised, Trip to Vinegar Hill
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Vinegar Hill Site Report 1
Kyra Cuevas – Vinegar Hill Site Report 1
In addition to submitting the report, I’d like to add that I’m having a bit of a technical issue regarding one of the photos within the file. For some reason it won’t crop at the right place, so I will attach it here.
This is the picture I will submit in lieu of the photo that is improperly cropped.
Vinegar Hill Site Report #1
Vinegar Hill Field Report #1 — Jessica Samide
Above is the PDF attachment to my Vinegar Hill Field Report #1.
Vinegar Hill Site Report 1
It seems as if one of my pictures on page 2 of my site report is not appearing on the site report so I have attached it below:
Reflection #3: WikiGalaxy: A Visualization of Wikipedia Rabbit Holes
I really enjoyed reading about the author’s experience with using Wikipedia for one specific purpose and then hours later finding herself on a completely unrelated topic like the dog Air Bud. It’s a situation that I find myself in from time to time. I personally enjoy when I find myself wandering into this infamous Wikipedia Rabbit Hole. This is the moment when I actually learn the most. I become open to topics that I may know very little about or even ones that I’ve never heard of.
I have never heard of WikiGalaxy prior to reading this article. The way the author illustrates how it works makes it seem even more ideal for wandering down the rabbit hole. I think my favorite part of what I learned about WikiGalaxy is that the user is able to see how each piece of information is connected to the last. Little yellow lines are provided to connect each link with lines that vary in length depending on relevance. I think the amount of content all at once may seem overwhelming, but it can only lead to growing one’s knowledge.
Sketches: Atrium and Computer Lab
Sketch
WikiGalaxy: A Visualization of Wikipedia Rabbit Holes
As a person who gets so easily distracted by the weirdest things, I know exactly what the “rabbit hole” is, even without knowing that term until now. I think sites like Wikipedia that give links in blue to certain topics within the primary topic that we originally went to the site to research, it allows us to gather more information about whatever we came to find from a different perspective or source. But before we know it, we find ourselves completely far away from why we needed to be there in the first place. For instance, I may have went to Wikipedia to find out something about Ancient Greece for a college project. 20 minutes later, I’m reading about something completely different and I don’t know how or why I got there. I do not think this is something we do intentionally as people living in a world now with so much technology, media, and search engines where we can type in ANYTHING, and that’s what will be found in a matter of seconds.
Homework #3 Rabbit Hole
Just sitting in front of the computer, you never know what lurks behind that glass screen. The simple stroke of letters on the keyboard and the click on “enter” takes you to a different dimension of the inside of the computer world. What awaits and what pops up never ceases to amaze us. I often find myself in this same exact scenario, where I’m trying to research a certain topic and often get side tracked by a lurking headline that gets my attention and steer me away from my research. I get caught up and carried away and it takes me forever to finish an assignment because I’m reading articles on topics that is irrelevant to my assignment. I honestly believe what we need is discipline, focus and concentration. It’s so easy to get carried away on the internet, with our eyes and mind glued to the screen for hours, our fingers just clicking away and the world around us doesn’t seem to exist for a while.
Reflections #3: Rabbit Holes
The idea of a virtual world, or virtual sphere is clearly explored through the wikigalaxy. While theoretical, wikigalaxy also uses information a map out different articles to each other. By nature, and as described by this article, I sometimes find myself scrambling through various articles of different subjects through links and various sources. It’s fun to see this phenomenon in 3 dimensions, whereas a web page feels much more like a 2 dimensional interface.
I wonder what would happen if we suddenly decide to change search engines to look like this. Would we begin to lose focus, and thus follow rabbit holes? Or will we be driven by how links look like, rather than the use of keywords?
