Blog on Perspectives - Erik Larsen

     When we went over the concept of maps in class, and how people based maps of ones they had already seen, I suspected that it would eventually lead to poor map quality. Much like the game telephone, where a message is passed from one person to the next, in a circle. The message is really ever the same at the end. As the understanding of the land develops, though, then maps become more precise. Another idea on maps that I started thinking about was the idea that maps are unfair and bias towards more developed countries. If i were to design a map to prevent this, I would make a map that is flat and perfectly round. I scale every land mass as accurately as possible. Because of the maps round shape, it would have no defined up or down. The reading of the “Allegory of the cave” also sparked my interest. But this time, I thought of the real life aspect of this story. I realize that it is just a story and that it was meant to prove a point. The idea however, that i pulled out of the story was that you can’t know something is bad before you try it. That applies to a lot of things, but when you assume something, it can sometimes make an as-(out of)-u-(and)-me. When your friend tries a new activity and says its really great and you should try it, normally all you can think of is the negative effect of what the activity entails. Like what your friend could have done with his time, or how much worked he/she needed to do, or how much knowledge he/she needed ahead of time. It is because of our lack of knowledge for the activity that we only assume it is a waste of time or no fun at all. Just as in the story, were when the man left the cave, then came back to tell the others, there was no physical way to explain to them what was “out” there. The other men could only see the negative effects, like the fact that he could not see in the dark, or that (in the other men’s perspectives) he had lost his mind. I wondered how many things I have passed up because of what I assumed.