Task 1 – What’s in Your Bag?

Hi everyone! My everyday bag is a purse from a Japanese brand called Issey Miyake.

The size of the bag is small enough to fit on the side of my car door when I drive to work, and it is big enough to fit all my necessities. I carry this bag for any occasion, from going to work to taking a vacation with my family. My favourite part is that there is a zipper so the contents of my bag don’t fall out. In the bag currently, there are several things I carry in case my 5-year-old daughter, Chloe needs them. They are tissues, hand sanitizer, green oil for bug bites, and extra masks in a waterproof pouch. The rest are items for me:

1. Name cards in case I meet someone that I need to exchange them with on work trips.
2. Pens for unexpected situations where I need to fill out forms, such as at the airport or at the hospital which I recently used when I went in for a COVID-19 test, which was negative.
3. Car key to my Land Rover, which I never have to take out of my bag because it is sensor operated.
4. Apple ear pods for listening to ebooks on my phone.
5. A property management bill that I keep forgetting to pay for, I have until the end of this month to complete payment.
6. Plane ticket stubs that I forgot to take out after a Palau vaccine trip I took with my family last week. I live in Taiwan, and we have been waiting without luck for a COVID vaccine. Since it looked like our only option was either going to be getting AZ (which may take several months more waiting time) or a Taiwanese vaccine that hasn’t even gone through phase 3 clinical trials yet, my husband and I decided to fly to Palau to get a Pfizer shot there.
7. Vaccination Record Card from Palau.
8. A red bag which I keep all my credit cards and money in.
9. I usually carry my iPhone 12 Pro Max in my bag, but you won’t see it in this picture as I was using it to take the picture.

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?

There are Chinese texts written on my name cards which give an indication that I live in a Chinese-speaking country, and the fact that I carry name cards with me and use them regularly tells others that I am a career woman, and in my job, I meet others outside of my company to make connections. The Land Rover car key may tell others that I enjoy outdoor activities with my family. If you look into my red change purse, you will see Taiwanese NTD, Chinese RMB, and American USD currencies in there which demonstrates that I have recently travelled to places that use these currencies.

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?

In my property management bill, there are bar codes that allow for easy payment at a local convenient store. In this way, the text is closely connected with technology since it allowed for the bar code reader to scan how much the bill was and the system at the convenience shop allowed me to pay by credit card. My Apple AirPods Pro allows me to listen to the e-books on my phone when I am on the go. Reading is no longer confined to paper for me, I can easily access them through my iPhone.

What do the items in your bag say about the literacies you have?

Literacy is very complex. Before answering this question, I Googled “different kinds of literacies” and found a good list: https://gaspelit.ca/types-of-literacy/

I think there are multiple literacies that can be seen in my bag. Having physical pens in my bag shows that I value being able to express myself through writing on paper. Sometimes to explain a concept, I feel like physical drawings can allow me to represent the idea better. Having evidence of travelling outside the country might suggest to others that I value cultural literacy.

What would this same bag have looked like, say, 15 or 25 years ago?

If time shifted now to 15 years ago, and I am still at this age, I think most of the things would still exist in my bag such as the wallet, name cards, green oil, hand sanitizer, pen…etc. Instead of an iPhone, I would probably have a Nokia flip phone in there, and no AirPods for sure.

How do you imagine an archeologist aiming to understand this temporal period might view the contents of your bag many years in the future?

An archeologist would probably look at the name card and think that in this time period, it was important for people to define what they do to make a living, and printing it on a small card to give to others was a regularly accepted way of greeting others. They also might find having a vaccination card was odd since I would imagine that everything in the future would be documented digitally. Having a physical bill would help archeologists understand that in this time period, people who lived in apartments often had a property management entity that helped with taking care of shared public spaces such as gardens, and elevator maintenance.