Around 1880 John Venn, a British logician and philosopher, developed a simple graphical way to represent relationships between two or more groups. Today this technique is known as the Venn diagram. A Venn diagram would represent two groups as two circles that overlap. The area where the two circles overlap represents a group that shares a relationship with both groups.
While a Venn diagram does a great job of explaining the relationship of statistical groups, it also does a great job of explaining my life.
Venn Diagram For My Early Years
For most of my life, at least my adult life, I have been passionate about cars and computers. That is my world. So as the Venn diagram above depicts, most of my life revolves around the implementation of computers in the automotive service industry. There are plenty of people that know more about cars than I do. There are also plenty of people that know more about computers than I do. But I don’t think there are many that know as much about both topics as I do.
Cars
I was one of those kids that would take his toys apart just to see how they worked. I didn’t tear toys up. I took them apart, put them back together, and they worked. I could build a small block Chevy engine before I had my driver’s license and I was probably the only 14-year old kid that knew the significance to “1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2.” While I almost went to college to study mechanical engineering, I just liked cars too much. So I have made a living in the automotive service industry my entire life.
Computers
As soon as the first personal computers hit the streets, I was fascinated by them. I had to have one. I paid about $2000 for my first personal computer, an Apple IIe. This computer wasn’t even equipped with a hard drive and you had to insert a disc just to run an application program. I set up spreadsheets to handle payroll at my shop and used it to track inventory. From that first computer until today, I still work hard to understand new and emerging digital technologies.
While tonight was the first time I drew out a graphical representation of my life, I have subconsciously and instinctively applied this filter to about everything I do. A good example is this website. I work hard to keep on focus so that the site does not cover random automotive information or random digital information. I try to keep it in the context of digital technology within the automotive service industry.
Venn Diagram For My Later Years
When I started writing this post I though of my life’s Venn diagram as a two group diagram. In the process of writing and thinking about this topic I realized that in the last 10 years I have added another passion, education. So, I had to go back to Photoshop and make another graphic. I had to add a third circle.
My passion for education and particularly instructional design for online classes is coming on strong and deserves to be in my Venn diagram. This should be it. I plan on using my God-given talents in these three areas for the foreseeable future. My plan is to use the Digital Literacy Project as my medium to use these talents.
PS: After I posted this, I decided to add the 3-group Venn diagram to my blog’s sidebar. It looks pretty cool.
I am Grant Swaim, the Digital Literacy Project's Site Administrator (head cook and bottle washer). This is my personal blog and will post something in it from time to time if what I want to say doesn't fit into the main part of the DLP site.