Week 2 – Inspiration and Mind Map

From Inspiration to Questions

The first part for this exercise is to identified 15 events, projects, objects, and performances that inspire me. To be honest, it was a bit challenging to get started because I don’t think I had an opportunities to organize things that inspire me before. Sure, I take pictures and screenshots of things that I found interesting but I didn’t categorize them properly before.

To start the process I first looked at the photos I’ve taken, identified what are some of the things I do regularly, and any projects that I remember vividly even after years. I was able to come up with 15 of these inspiration and asked myself why I found them inspiring.

The pink sticky notes are my inspirations and the orange ones are the reasons why I found each inspiring. As I was doing this exercise, I actually saw some patterns in the whys. Even though the source of inspirations are diverse, the reasons why I’m often inspired by these are somewhat similar. So I categorize them into the following:

After examining these categorizations, I came up with 5 questions that I’m interested in exploring further:

1. How might we redesign the system so that we can integrate tools to fight conflicts in the digital space without hindering its democratic development?
2. How can we translate values of freedom and equality into ubiquity in our audience’s daily practice through interdisciplinary media?
3. How can we foster positive interaction among groups of people with diverse background and goals?
4. People seem to be more open to doing things they that are unfamiliar with and take risks when they are in an environment that they know they’ll only be there for a short period of time. Can we find a way to replicate that mindset to people’s everyday life to encourage spontaneity and try new things?
5. I’ve experienced a few other VR stories, but how come I feel particularly emotionally connected to Dear Angelica? How can I use this immersive style to tell a story with profound impacts?

Mind Map

Another activity I did to help narrow down potential thesis topic is mind map. I picked the topic I’m most interested in (and super broad), human interaction in cyberspace.

Doing this helped me identify more specific areas that I can do more research on. When I first thought of this topic, I was just thinking about why are people so mean to each other online. By doing this exercise, it got my mind start thinking about different elements:

1. Human interaction:
   • Interpesonal vs intrapersonal
   • Internal group dynamic vs external interaction between groups
   • Technology’s role (as a tool or medium and how it changes human relationships)
   • Removal of physical bodies and how that affects our self identity
2. Cyberspace: 
   • What type of cyberspace? Social media? Online content creators (such as The New York Times)?
   • Peer to peer interaction vs hierarchy vs one way communication
   • Characteristics of the Internet and its system design

As I was doing this I found myself asking A LOT of questions and turns out I practically don’t know anything. Of course I have a lot of assumptions and theories, but without solid studies and research to back it up, I don’t want to jump to any conclusion. Further, I don’t think there is one “correct” theory that can explain everything since there are so many social, economic, and psychological elements that are intertwined in this topic space.

My questions can be categorized as followed:

1. Human interaction
2. Internal and external identity
3. Digital vs physical community
4. Community dynamic and how it’s formed
5. The nature of Internet and its effect on human dynamic

 

At this point, I find myself more interested in exploring peer to peer, flat interaction between people on social media and how these experiences can influence one’s self identity. But another sub-topic within this giant space I’m interested in is how to foster genuine connections and a sense of belonging for people from digital communities.

At this point I still struggle to fill out:

My Area is ______________

My Topic is _____________

If I could condense my thinking so far into 1 word it would be: _______________

I booked an office hour with my professor and hopefully will be able to get some guidance on how to proceed.