Blake's Bistro

  This week's reading started with a simple observation from Dr. Dennen that made me laugh because it was painfully accurate..."No one likes a blank page." She's right. Give me a blank Google Doc, an empty Canva project, or a discussion board with zero posts, and I'll suddenly forget every interesting thought I've ever had. Somehow, the infinite possibilities of a blank page don't feel exciting...they feel overwhelming. What's interesting, though, is that the more I thought about it, the less I realized this was just about education. Almost every platform I use has quietly removed the blank page from my experience. When I open Canva, I don't see an empty canvas. I see hundreds of templates. When I open Pinterest, I'm immediately greeted with pins the algorithm thinks I'll like. Reddit suggests communities and new DIY projects before I know what I'm looking for. I open Instagram to reels that my wife sent me of what I should cook this we...

  When I first read Nicholas Carr's famous article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? , I expected to disagree with it almost immediately. My professional and personal life exists online, I teach with technology, and I'm finishing a graduate degree that has relied heavily on digital learning environments. I habitually use YouTube and Reddit as sources of information. If Carr was right, then I should probably be concerned. Instead, my reaction was more complicated. The argument that resonated most with me wasn't that the internet is making us less intelligent. It was the idea that the internet changes how we interact with information. Reading Carr alongside this week's materials made me reflect on a habit I've developed over the years: I constantly collect information. I have the New York Times Cooking App saved, and it has dozens of recipes I'll probably never cook. Reddit posts about DIY projects I've saved for "later." Browser bookmarks and folders whe...

The internet exposes us to thousands of communities that previous generations would never have encountered. It's like a buffet of hobbies we can take up at any time. I remember feeling this way during my undergraduate degree... wanting to feel more interesting beyond just my interests, with tangible products of those interests. I dove into so many rabbit holes and pulled some things that had longevity and others that I begun that just didn't resonate and stick around with me.  YouTube, Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok, blogs, and Discord servers don't just teach hobbies—they actively introduce new ones. Since my Web 2.0 started 6 weeks ago, I've been making bread thanks to my mother-in-law and several subreddits I've joined. Predominantly the former, because I was actively participating with a teacher in a kitchen space. The latter- those networked instruction materials- require me to be motivated and follow through with the guidance they provide at my own pace, asynchron...

  I've spent the better part of the last few days staring at a little blue arrow driving around the Southeast. When I’m road-tripping, Waze becomes less an app and more a travel companion. It tells you where traffic is backing up, where construction crews are making life difficult, and where police officers are apparently conducting scientific studies on how fast people drive through rural Georgia. I pass the phone to my wife to report stopped cars and police ahead. After enough hours behind the wheel, I started wondering what exactly Waze knows about me. The answer has to be “a lot”. It knows where I started. It knows where I ended. It knows the route I chose. It probably knows the routes I ignored because I looked at them and thought, "There is absolutely no chance I'm taking a 3-mile detour on an unpaved road through a town with three buildings and a Dollar General." That curiosity eventually led me down a Reddit rabbit hole, per usual. People were asking whether t...

Summer is in full swing, and I'm still spending just as much time in the digital landscape(s) as I am outside at the beach. I'm not mad at it... Plus, Florida is very moody and conditional about how much time it permits me to be outside. Anyway. My awareness of my own digital footprint started as a recognition of an ad on Facebook and me telling myself: "wow! I just was looking this up to buy" as I scrolled past more and more light-gray AISIC running shoes, or 'older-guy kicks' like my wife lovingly describes them. Now, years after these few small recognitions of the footprint I was leaving, I ask ChatGPT for options to make my own playground for our daughter, and the first response in that conversation included my daughter's name. It's what it is. Over the past two years, since we've used the generative/OpenAI service I mentioned, her name has come up. It clicked that much of what was in the service's memory cache was about me. Did I approve o...

  How is Pinterest different from other platforms you use? After revisiting Reddit extensively last week (and this week for the Community Norms Project), it was refreshing for my eyes and mind to not be reading conversational pieces and comments, and that format that we're most exposed to on social media sites. The organizational tools that are embedded in the site (boards, prompts to organize the boards, pinning to boards with a dropdown menu) are helpful and intuitive. It makes my overwhelmed self, when I go on Instagram or TikTok, where everything is just a compiled list of saved content, feel relieved to organize on Pinterest. In fact, this site reminds me of Tumblr from the early 2010s (I think the site is still active), where people blogged through digital media like GIFs, memes, aesthetic and niche pictures, and so forth. Pinterest has done all of that and more. With Tumblr introduced in 2007 and Pinterest in 2009, I definitely feel the influence Tumblr had on Pinterest, hel...