In Studio 2 class, we gather in small groups and explore real-life examples and our understanding of “knowledge”, “skills both analog and digital”, and “assumption”. After putting everyone in the group’s idea on paper. We then have the chance to peek at others’ poster and copy their interesting ones on with a different color pen. In the end, we share each groups perception on this topic and learned a lot about these three vague words’ definition through different perspectives. Some interesting ones that I got from other group’s posters are ” Assumptions come with age” and ” Knowledge is power”.
Now I have a more complete understanding of these three words.
Knowledge for me is never unified and always changeable. It passes on through generations, merges with personal contents such as culture or traditions or bias, and through mouths, varies again and again, and beng processed in my mind in another totally different way.
Before digital skills, there were only analogue skills. As technology rises, digital skill born as one of the analogue ones, and slowly grew in sizes and separates from analogue. But still a lot of skills are not able to be separated, they are both digital and analogue. Skills, that blurs the line, we discussed are “communicating” “researching” “problem-solving”.
“Assumptions” is one we found really difficult. It ties tightly with the themes we are exploring in digital culture class, ” identity, class, race, gender, environment. I learned that assumptions can be transformed into truths or just the outcomes of stereotype. I will try to explore assumptions in my theme of identity.
How do these three things positively inform or adversely affect research?
I think researching as both an analogue and a digital skill and is a skill that is necessary to obtain in order to learn other skill, similar to a basic skill that modern people have to have. If “Skills” is the material of researching, then “Knowlege” is the content. Because of how unstable and variable knowledge is, researching becomes a shapeless container and can be performed in different ways to capture the right knowledge. And sometimes assumpted knowledge can even adversely affect the quality and credibility of research because people tend to shift the meaning of the knowledge they gain from research to a way that they personally accept. Assumptions narrow the range of researching and therefore creates a cycled set of assumption based on biased proof of research knowledge. “Assumptions” in some way for me is a form of “not open-mindedness”.
