Guerrilla Lit Reflection

What inspired me to write this narrative was my love for traveling to different places and some people may not know or realize there are some good/special places in our area that people may not know about. I chose to write about the local places because there are many younger people that don’t know what to do around here and hopefully this will help. I came up with this idea because I follow a hiking group on Facebook and asked a bunch of people’s opinions where they like too to go for a walk and majority of them listed the places that I chose in my narrative that I have created.

The form and content work together to compliment each other in this case because it is a new and unique way to tell a story by using Google Maps to see where these places are, and you can also zoom in on satellite mode.

The process of this creation was fun because not many people would think to tell a story on Google Maps and it tells a story in a new way and shows how many cool places there are around our local area to go to or do I just hope that people do not vandalize these places, so they don’t disappear like more places are. The challenging part of this project was picking a story that I wanted to tell because there are many different stories someone could tell. I overcame these challenges by asking the people in the group on Facebook where they like to go.

Some of the artistic choices I chose to use while constructing this project was using actual physical places, asking personal feedback from other people in the surrounding area, using different colors for the different places, and adding pictures so that people can see what these places look like instead of just describing them.

This kind of storytelling is unique different than most because the typical was to read a narrative is either a hardback book or an electronic version, so this is a different kind of way to tell a story with visual aspects to make it more interesting and involve the viewer not just with a description in the story-line. The advantage this medium offer’s is that majority of people use Google or Google maps for directions and it is easy access and can easily be shared with the public.

 I learned a lot during this creation process that I will carry after I leave this class. I learned a different way to create and/or tell a story in the non-traditional way of a book. This project helped me look at various guerrilla lit platforms that you can create a story on like Yelp, Craigslist, eBay, and TripAdvisor just to name a few of the other platforms people could use differently to tell a Narrative. There are a lot of different creative ways to tell a story that you might not have thought possible but with a little creativity and hard work anything is possible.

Collaboration

What do you think the significance of collaboration is? Do you view it differently? What do you personally use it for, work, school, or in general? I use collaboration a lot for school and work a lot. When I have free time I love to travel local and far but I collaborate with other people to get directions to some of the places because they sometimes don't have the specific location. A good example I found to show what I mean would be "Humans of New York".
                  
The value of collaboration can be very important in most instances because it can help you make a decision about somewhere to go by getting feedback from someone else who either knows or is familiar with that place. Their is also some challenges like if the person you talk too had a bad experience that doesn't mean you are going too as well but that's the chance you take. Digital tools make collaboration so much easier because you can get answers within minutes instead of hand writing a letter and sending it through the mail and waiting days to get a response.

Hacking

Most people think of "hacking" as a bad thing and they are right but their is also good hacking as well. Bad hacking is when people try to steal information or overtake a company's website to find out personal information or try and steal money. Good hacking is when specific people are hired to try to break through a security/fire wall so they can change it and make it more secure for the user and the business themselves.

I have personally never hacked or even tried to hack someone or something for goof or for bad because that takes a lot of time and computer skills that I do not have and if you get into trouble there can be a hefty fine or consequence.

In my case with traveling it would be pretty easy for a skilled hacker to put wrongful information about traveling on the internet. "When Pop was Home" is a good example to reference because you can mark or put a location on a specific place and basically lie to other people about either the location or give them a bad review even if the place was very good. Some who can hack well can alter directions or travel information and can be catastrophic in some cases.

Also there is good travel hacking like when people post or use tips and tricks when traveling like using frequent flyer points, booking in advanced, using coupon codes and just personal experience. 

Media and Traveling

There is so many ways that social media has on traveling. Majority of people either have a Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest account if not all three! Each of these media platforms inspires you to go to these beautiful places in the United States and around the world. Most people today share or can share a location with a picture they post which makes it easy to access/find that place. I can honestly say that I have used the location tags on Instagram to find local places to go to and they were very accurate.

People no longer need guidebook that were created a long time ago thanks to advancement of technology. There are many different travel sights on the internet that are popular like "TripAdvisor".  These posts are sometimes edited to make that specific place look good but some of the local places are becoming less and less due to vandalism and littering which isn't right! People need to respect the landmarks and respect the property so that other people can enjoy it as well before they disappear.

When people are looking or thinking about a place to go, people search the internet to look for the top places around the world or a much narrow category like a specific state and a good example of this information is shown above in the link.