"How did [Wurman's text on Point of View] effect your view point on the readings?"
I'm not entirely sure I know how to answer that. So I'll try to help myself by going over some points I thought were worth remembering, insightful excerpts from the full body.
Wurman says, "When we try to explain something to someone else, we either automatically assume they can see or understand as we do or we spend inordinate amounts of time trying to force them to do so." And I thought, how crazy it is that we can communicate to one another with that being said, what a miracle it is, that with perception biasing everything we've choose to taken-in, that we have similarities in these retentions of even more-so selective perceptions (laugh at the same things, agree on the same topics, etc). As graphic designers, our main goal being effective communication, it seems this writing made my job seem a lot harder than I ever imagined it was.
So I guess with this being said, I think I might know how to answer Michael's question. The day after having read all possible essays, we got together in groups to talk about the same readings others had chosen to focus on (my group's being Advertising). It seems that this discussion about our perceptions of the readings varied. We all selectively retained what information we understood, what fit nicely in our organized web of memory. Others retaining different lines from the readings would argue with another's selective retention, and so on and so forth until someone reassessed their perception, reorganized how or where -as a whole- 2 opposing ideas (i.e. for branding vs against branding) of 2 opposing authors (i.e. editors vs Klein), would reside in our minds. So Wurman's text effected my view point on the readings in that now I am aware/reminded that I had one when I began reading it. Its interesting to look back on the entry before this one and see just how it is I exaggerated things to understand them, and how i categorized it. While I try to forget my biases, I'm always attempting to see the whole (I now know this is impossible).
Other ideas noteworthy:
- Memory is a way of reorganizing information so as to make it special to the indv. who remembers; this process is so variable and idiosyncratic as to confound the formal models psychologist are forever trying to build.
- People have a tendency to shun information that contradicts pre-existing interest and attitudes.
- Exaggeration is a slice of the whole.
- All information is tinged with subjectivity.
