Hi, I'm Darcy! If you’re not yet acquainted with the Fallible Fox (tFF), it seeks to organize and explore mental and digital tools that you can harness to more effectively think about and respond to the media you read, watch, and hear. Check out an overview of the site here and a more detailed look at its aims here.
I started tFF because I was unsatisfied with the availability of good resources that directly target critical thinking about our online experiences. On the one hand, the relatively static nature of textbooks renders them slow to respond to social and technological change. Further, their exorbitant cost makes them inaccessible to nearly everyone. On the other hand, the free resources that float our way—like infographics about how to think critically or identify fake news—are sometimes eye-catching but end up contributing minimally to advancing our thinking.
I think the MAPS model is a nice solution. It’s an organizing framework to help us acquire tools to think about and use the information we encounter online. Although it’s currently in an early stage of development, it already offers a useful framework with some good resources and ideas. Whether you’re a student working on a research paper, a voter trying to navigate the onslaught of media coverage in the lead-up to an election, or a concerned citizen trying to find out what to think about COVID-19, MAPS has the framework and foundational content to help you process what you read.
So, what’s the point of this blog? Imagine it as the less organized and more adventurous cousin of the MAPS model—I’ll use it to go deeper into things touched on in MAPS, consider applications to current events, and sometimes go further afield with ideas from psychology and other disciplines. The point, again, is to share stuff that might improve our relationship with what we read, watch, and hear in this fast-paced and cluttered digital environment. I hope there are things here that pique your interest and spur further thought. Feedback is always welcome!
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