Schemas For The Real World

I watched a video by Carina C. Zona called “Schemas for the Real World”. It opens up a needed discussion about how people are characterized by the technology that they use and whether or not the labels help or hurt the people who use them.

One great example she gives is whether or not a widow should be forced to disclose an aspect of her identity that might be painful or uncomfortable in order to use a service. At first this made perfect sense and I was immediately struck with compassion. But after thinking about it, I started to consider how much context mattered to this discussion.

In a general sense, widows might not want to disclose that bit of information about themselves, but there are also social contexts where many widows would absolutely be looking to connect socially with other widows. I thought this talk was great. The takeaway for me was that as we develop schemas for the real world as developers, even in our consideration of others, we have to give them the freedom to be individuals and decide for themselves what matters and what they’re ok with.

I recently had a discussion in a group I’m a part of about whether or not professional sports teams should remove all imagery and references to Native American people. As a black man in America, surely I could understand why such references mightbe offensive to Native Americans everywhere,and surely it was my duty to speak up on their behalf. As it turns out, to my surprise, many Native Americans are not offended at all by such imagery. It was fascinating (and humbling) to me how I thought my thinking represented what was best for a group I was not a part of simply because I felt like I could identify with them.

In this global community and economy that the internet has developed, we still have a long way to go in understanding one another. Add to that the fact that we’re continuously changing as a species. We’ve certainly got our work cut out for us in creating schemas for the real world.