Small Topics, Big Ideas & Big Problems

If it's one thing I have learned from the readings we've had to analyze these last few weeks, that the biggest ideas can come from the seemingly smallest of topics. From garbage plates and bumper stickers to crowd sourcing and large student archives, it doesn't matter how big the topic is, the ideas that you pull from it can be as big as infinity. However, just because the idea is big does not mean that it's great. You can easily run into large problems in your research, some you need to fix, and some that you need to question.

As in the case of Bumper Stickers that Whitney Baker had been studying. She found that preserving the bumper stickers she was doing her research on was tricky, how do you know the right way to do it? To make sure the glue does not ruin itself and what you are trying to preserve? (268, Baker) Much like Starecheski's questions of why do people bother to contain oral histories? When the population has easier ways to create their history themselves? (Starecheski 215) I think that these questions are important, that by deciding what we want to talk about, we create questions that keep us going. No matter how big, it allows us to keep up with what we are interested in, long past the time we thought we would be able to shut our computers and be done with it.

It's kind of magical, in a way.