Month: January 2019

After rereading Erard’s essay, I found that I still agreed with most of my original comments. One thing that I took more of a notice to this time was how people were not comfortable with being uncomfortable as they read metaphors. As Erard says, people wanted certain terms, “because they’re conventional and recognizable”. That being said, people can take metaphors  with comfortable terms and relate their lives to them, or even understand them better. Along with realizing this, I also took into consideration how much effort Erard put in to making each metaphor and its author credential by showcasing their education. However, I personally feel as though his “paintbrush as a pump” metaphor still does not make sense. Sure you can explain that a paintbrush moves liquids just as a pump would, but a pump can also push air through it, unlike a paintbrush. If a consumer were to look for paintbrushes and saw “paintbrush as a pump” on it’s package I feel like they would question it and not understand that both objects move liquids. Although I do not have any examples of my own, I believe there could be better ways to compare a paintbrush with another object that would be appealing to everyone, not just the designer.

Rereading the essay not only brought these views into light, but I was also able to better understand the major points that Erard made after “glossing the text”.  When I first read the essay, I was unsure as to what he meant as he talked about “pseudo-mistakes” and their importance. Once I took the time to look up pseudo, I found that it meant fake/false, and was able to conclude that the term pseudo-mistake meant a fake mistake. Intended I guess you could say. Metaphor designers deliberately use this strategy to make their metaphors understandable. As if they had just been throwing words all over the floor, as Erard would say, and later examining them and testing their collaboration with the original object of comparison. If you spend hours miscategorizing an object, you may be able to find a similarity between said object and another member in that same category, as he did with a paintbrush and pump. After understanding this term, I was able to better understand what Erard was attempting to explain to his audience.

In conclusion, rereading this essay has created a better understanding, personally, as to how Erard was explaining the metaphor process, and how to create a meaningful one.

Who knew metaphors could be so incorporated in the world around us? Michael Erard explains the ways in which society understands a metaphor, and how two opposite objects/ideas can relate, such as “the paintbrush and pump”. As I was going through this text, there were a couple quotes that really stuck out to me. They made me sit and think a little more about the importance of the text I was reading, along with what the author, Erard, wanted his readers to comprehend.

One quote that really stuck out to me was how metaphors, “generated new perceptions, explanations, and inventions” which Erard quoted from US philosopher Schon. I know what you may be thinking, that’s the whole point of a metaphor! In all honesty, I’ve never really took them into consideration. How they constantly defy the odds of objects, and “miscategorize the thing you are trying to explain” as Erard says. For example, the well known metaphor “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get” by the infamous Forrest Gump. Life and a box of chocolates, two completely different things. However, the metaphor, to me at least, makes complete sense. When you are given a box of chocolates, there are a variety of options for you to choose, and you often blindly choose one. As with life, you never know what is going to happen. We blindly walk through our days, with both big and small options that we are always choosing. What will we eat? What will happen tomorrow? How will I do on this test? Will I get accepted into this college/job? We really never know. With that being said, this metaphor has already created this new perception in my brain as to how our life works. Despite there being two different objects compared to each other, I feel as though I understand everything the author has tried explaining to me.

Later on in the text, Erard describes how him and his fellow colleagues tested a set of metaphors on pedestrians walking by on the street. To briefly summarize their experiment, they started with asking what skills are, then after receiving very few thoughts on what a skill is, gave them a metaphor combing skills and ropes, which then resulted in lengthy explanations by the passer-byres who were unsure how to answer at first. He describes this, “as if this new idea, which we gave to them, had taken them by the hand”. I completely agree with what Erard is explaining to us here, mostly because as I was reading this I acted as if I was one of the pedestrians walking by. When asked to explain skills, I could mumble a bunch of words to you in my best efforts to sound educated. However, if I was given an explanation such as “skills are like ropes, woven out of many components braided together” I could then go on and on about how a skill is created, what they are, and how they apply to everyday life. The metaphor almost guided me, as well as the other pedestrians, to a better way of explaining an easy word which we already knew, but just not how to explain it.

I believe that if taken seriously and done in time, ePortfolio could hold a great potential for all students including myself. As the days pass by, technology is becoming a bigger  part of our society and is the most important way to advertise businesses, products, media, etc. It is too early to tell if there are any downsides to this website, however I can tell that it may take time to figure out how to work everything. Although, the extra time taken to learn how to work the website will benefit as students can showcase their work to graduate schools, and possibly employers, which would be difficult to do with just pen and paper work. Personally, I’ve always worked with technology in my academic settings but never created a website of my own, and I am excited to see what my ePortfolio will have to offer!