Cartographer Denis Wood argues that the power of a map is its "ability to do work." Like documentation, maps "operate effectively... [T]hey don't fail. On the contrary they succeed, they achieve effects, they get things done." At the same time, maps "make present-they represent-the accumulated thought and labor of the past... [M]aps facilitate the reproduction of the culture that brings them into being." Working from Wood's theories about the politics of cartography, Cindy and Dickie Selfe have argued that contemporary interface mappings rely heavily on Eurocentric, corporate ways of seeing and working. Folders, clocks, limited alphabets, hierarchical filing systems all work to validate one particular worldview. By conceiving of interfaces as (inter)texts, Selfe and Selfe say, we might begin helping ourselves and our students recognize the interested and political nature of interfaces, and also begin working to construct other representations. Similarly, we might begin questioning the assumptions that allow online texts to operate mechanically: What exactly is being automated? What decisions are made, and who/what is making them? If this task wasn't automated, what would I have to know to make the choices myself? What other texts and people might this text be connected to?
Click here to read linearly or click on
a link marker below.