Hi everyone! My name is Kirn [Ke-ran], I live in Vancouver, BC and I love being outdoors in our beautiful weather here. I am a User Experience (UX) designer, in my spare time I enjoy being active indoors and outdoors, eating yummy meals with my partner, and reading. I am also the founder of a small non-profit that helps young people explore STEM careers. 

I believe my bag is a fairly good representation of me, as it is small and carries only what it needs (no extra baggage here haha). I opt to carry a small belt bag because I usually do not need much on me and it is super comfortable, sometimes I forget I’m wearing it! 

The items in this bag are what I need daily, starting with my card-holder wallet and keys. I need these items to get around, pay for my life, and access important documents, such as my COVID vaccine record (which isn’t available digitally for me, yet).

Inevitably, COVID-19 added additional critical items to my bag, like a face mask, hand sanitizer, and moisturizer (to balance out all that sanitizing). Whether or not face masks are mandatory, I always keep these items in my bag. 

I also always keep bandaids, vaseline (my lip balm), cash, sunglasses, and my airpods in it. I like to think the bandaids are for my partner, but they are definitely for me because I am constantly injuring myself. The airpods are an item I am thinking about removing from my bag because I do not use them as much anymore. I used to use them a lot for walks to listen to podcasts or to call someone, but I’ve been enjoying more quiet walks along the seawall.  

I think this most random item is the beard comb, which I stole from my partner because I have long fine tangly hair, so the comb is a necessity for me and fits perfectly in my bag! 

Questions I considered: 

  • What is your daily need for the items in your bag? 
  • How might these items be considered “texts” and what do they say about you, the places you inhabit, the cultures with which you engage, and/or the activities you take up?
  • Thinking about the title of the course, what are the “text technologies” in your bag, if any? What do these items say about how you engage with language and communication?
  • What do the items in your bag say about the literacies you have?
  • How does the narrative of the (private) contents of your bag compare with the narrative produced by image you have of yourself or the image you outwardly project?
  • What would this same bag have looked like, say, 15 or 25 years ago?
  • How do you imagine an archeologist aiming to understand this temporal period might view the contents of your bag many years in the future?

[1.4] Activity: Defining Terms

I would like to tie in some of my reflections from activity 1.4 (defining terms) into this exercise. The relationship we have with text and images has been evolving over the years in a variety of different forms. One common relationship we have with text and images is memes. Meme culture has become a big part of some individuals lives because it allows for humour and expression of self with very few words. Further, these memes are posted on public social pages for other individuals to view, relate to, and comment on. This might seem like a small change, but it has altered the way we communicate with people on social media forever.

My voice recording below highlights my basic interpretation of text and technology, and how this relationship can be limiting for individuals with accessibility barriers. Thankfully, alt text is becoming more common, however, not common enough and people that use alt text often still do not get the full picture. How can we change this? How is our current understanding of text limiting for people who cannot perceive text the same way the majority does?