Harrell Response

The Harrell reading was fairly confusing to me, and I got bogged down in the use of the different terms that were similar enough that they often got mixed up in my head. I think the Brawn example was useful in understanding how we code our own biases into a computing system, especially when it comes to individual “epistemic domains.” I look at the eBay representation and instinctively see it as containing a useful set of information, but I realize how this might just be because it was what was offered to me. I think the section on basic semiotics was interesting and provided many ideas that were easy to follow, but I got confused at the difference between icons and indexes. I think more examples of indexes would let me understand what makes them different from icons, because right now they seem too similar to me to have unique terms.

Gestalt Theory Response

I think the examples given for the Gestalt Theory laws were fun, especially because some of them took some understanding but mostly made complete sense. The law of figure/ground confused me since I wasn’t sure how the definition linked to the images? I saw many of the images to contain at least two different common ways of viewing them, and seeing a different image, but I wasn’t sure if that was what I was supposed to understand.