I really admire the premise of crowd sourcing. It relies on intrinsically motivated individuals working toward the greater good and helping each other. The idea that in a larger group of people, you’ll get better results and better information makes sense. I can also understand why it would be worrisome, because often the loudest people in a group will not be the most factual or correct ones. There are so many examples of vandalism on wiki pages and misinformation.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/spectacular-acts-of-wikipedia-vandalism?utm_term=.rcnOplW8B#.yrJZN4OGW

The link above is an example of a hypertext, which I had NO idea had roots on the older paper encyclopedias. I think that encyclopedias are kind of dated at this point and that people don’t really need to spend money on them, but I feel like if I had been alive a longer time ago I would have been the type of person to buy a set. I’m so glad I grew up in a time where most information is easily accessible through a computer. That’s why I loved Richard Stallman’s freedoms of software and his idea of copyleft. I feel like the more people have access to things, the better they’ll be. More people will be willing to fix and improve information and software, and more people will be using it which is good for them.

Crowd sourcing can be good for everyone. For example, WAZE is an app that uses crowd sourcing to help notify drivers of things on the road like blockages, traffic, police officers, etc. The more people use it, the better and more accurate the alerts become. Also, people like me who never update the app with information because I’m too afraid to do it while driving can still benefit because there are enough people who have passengers in their car who can update it for them and they help the rest of us.

A lot of citizens don’t quite know how to describe what being American is. Our nationalism is thin, and famously hard to describe. I think that as a daughter of an immigrant it is very true that many immigrants don’t really know what being an ‘American’ means in a way they can put into words. When my mom is with her family and her friends, she is Korean. They are her community. When she is at school or at work, she is an American. She is a citizen who deserves respect and all of the rights she earned when she became a citizen. It is kind of weird to see her shift identities so fluidly, but it also makes sense. America doesn’t have a cultural identity that is as prominent or strong as Korea, and my mom identifies so much more with the Korean culture that she grew up with. At the same time, she’s proud to be an American and chose this country because she loved it. I have always thought it was so interesting how people can move here and still retain so much of their culture and still be American.

When I think of ‘American’, I think of the painting American Gothic by Grant Wood. It has become an Icon that so many things have parodied. I don’t know why I feel that this painting just personifies America. It reminds me of the frontier that a lot of people associate America with, farming, white people, and work ethic and ruggedness.

Grant Wood traveled to Europe and his art was greatly influenced by artists there. This painting is a result of his Iowan farm roots and European influences. The painting is an example of how America is a collection of cultures and identities that form one nation.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf3ER5Ope_s