Response to Clay Shirky's TED talk

At first, after watching Clay Shirky’s TED talk, I was highly highly confused. I couldn’t understand how the daycare example and cognitive surplus went together. But then I thought of Dan Pink’s example of Wikipedia versus a Microsoft run/owned company and which would be more successful, which Pink referenced in both his TED talk as well as his book A Whole New Mind. In this example Wikipedia comes out as more successful, and is a great example of cognitive surplus. Shirky defines cognitive surplus as the ability of the world’s population to volunteer and to contribute and to collaborate on large, sometimes global projects. He goes on to explain that cognitive surplus is made of two things. The first thing is the world’s free time and talents; the world has over a trillion hours a year of free times to commit shared projects. The second thing is the media landscape; in the 20^th century created people that are very good at consuming, however with media advances we are discovering that we like to create and to share. This relates to the daycare situation because the beginning with the social agreement, there was no punishment or consequence for parents picking their kids up late, then there were less late pickups. Whereas after a consequence was added with the contractual agreement, there were more pickups because the parents felt like there was no adverse impact on anyone like there was before, because the workers were being compensated for their extra time. The social contract is similar to cognitive surplus because the parents were volunteering to pick their kids up at the normal time.

Shirky also talked about communal value versus civic value and how they make up the two types of cognitive surplus. Communal value is described as something that is created by the participants for each other. Communal value is everywhere, every time you see a large aggregate of shared, publicly available data. An example of communal value is LOLcats, but the problem with this is that it is a largely solved problem. Civic value is something that is created by the participants but is enjoyed by society as a whole. It is created to make life better for everyone in the society. Ushahidi and the similar sites are very good example of civic value.

Clay Shirky’s speaking techniques and presentation style were very interesting. He brought up humor in his presentation occasionally throughout, however there wasn’t much build up. The way he did this created a nice subtle yet humorous layout. However, in the other TED talks there was more humor and more storytelling, which created a more enjoyable presentation. Although, Shirky’s TED talk was much shorter than the previously watched TED talks by about 7 minutes, so there wasn’t as much time to tell whimsical and humorous tales that related to his subject of cognitive surplus. In addition, Clay projected his voice very well, he didn’t mumble, or stumble on his words. He stood tall and looked very professional as well as comfortable.

The topic of cognitive surplus doesn’t directly affect me, but it is something that I see in the everyday world. I use sites like Photobucket, YouTube, etc. almost everyday. I even have things on these sites, but I have never stopped to think about the principal of cognitive surplus and what it means in relation to these sites. Websites like these are prime examples of communal value; they are created by the participants for the participants. I also use sites like Wikipedia, which is an example of civic value. Any open source website is either one or the other. But this fact is not something I have ever thought about. One thing that I question with this, is how reliable are these sources. Teachers constantly say that we cannot rely on Wikipedia as a source because anyone with a computer can get on and edit the information

and therefore it is not reliable. However we can use videos from YouTube as a source in our online essay. So how can we find the balance between the two? That’s just the problem; you cannot get the serious examples without the throwaway examples. But if you think about it, the stupidest creative act is still a creative act regardless of whether or not it is a throwaway example.

Daniel Pink's TED talk Response

After watching Daniel Pink’s TED talk titled Daniel Pink – On the Surprising Science of Motivation I see how motivation is a major impact on our lives. In school there is a major little carrot big stick method used, we are rewarded for right answers, and punished for wrong answers (Schulz). However, as Pink mentioned in his talk, this isn’t a good thing because as studies have shown higher t incentives lead to worse performance. Why this is exactly, well, Pink didn’t exactly delve into that, but my theory is that there becomes a greater pressure, you start to rush yourself, and you make mistakes. This is true especially when money is involved because when there are financial incentives it results in negative impact on overall performance, but the issue is, all of the jobs in our society are based on financial incentives. We do a job and we get paid for our work.

This is where we run into the issue of how to change this norm while still keeping people employed and being compensated for their work. Daniel Pink gave several examples of how this autonomy has started to be implanted into businesses, including the fedex days created by Atlassian, during this 36 hour period employees get the chance to work on anything they want that is skewed toward their products, and at the end of the next day, they present their ideas to the company. Pink also mentioned the “playtime” (Mediratta) for Google employees. In this program the employees at Google get to devote 20% of their time, or one day a week to something that is related to the company, but isn’t exactly in their job description. Another autonomy that has crossed over into the business world is ROWE (What), a type of business where the employees don’t have schedules as long as they get done, meetings and conferences are optional and it has been proven to increase productivity.

As far as Daniel Pink’s speaking styles go, nothing really grabbed my attention. In fact, throughout the talk, I even got bored. The subject matter he was speaking about didn’t maintain my attention. This surprised my because for the most part, his book A Whole New Mind keeps my focused and entertained, as well the excerpts from his novel, Drive. However, regardless of my opinion, I noticed that one of the components that dominated Pink’s talk is the eruptions of passion that came through while he was talking. It shows that he is truly passionate about what he is speaking about.

While watching the speech I couldn’t help but think how this applies to my schooling and me. The schooling system is the exact opposite of what Daniel Pink talks about so often in his novels and speech. The extrinsic motivators in my schooling are my parents and the pressure to achieve good grades in order to go to a good college, and eventually get a god job. The intrinsic motivators are the teachers and the same pressure to achieve good grades. Both of these pressures combine to become a massive force that is overwhelming. But you can’t slow down because if you stop than there are consequences which is exactly what Pink is trying to change. Our schools should be preparing us more for a right-brained world in a right-brained way. White color workers are doing less left-brained work, and more right-brained work, so how will our students survive in the real world after they graduate if all they have been taught and all that they have been taught with is left-brained? It’s a scary thought to think that working so hard to achieve good grades, and participate things that I know will look good on college applications, or in other words working my butt off, might get me no where in the real world. School’s say that they push us and have punishments for grades that are less than the “level they know we are capable of achieving” because they want us to succeed in life. But how can we be successful if we are not prepared for the real world?

Works Cited

Mediratta, Bharat, and Julie Bick. "NY Times Advertisement." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 21 Oct. 2007. Web. 21 Apr. 2011. .

"What Is ROWE?" Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE). Web. 21 Apr. 2011. .

Design Fishbowl Response

Today during class we held our fishbowl discussion over the Design section in A Whole New Mind. I think the discussion overall went decently well. The main issue I noticed in during the fishbowl was how much we strayed from the reading. While we did discuss right-brained vs left-brained issues, we often had to regroup and refocus to tie back to Design. I was a discusser in today's fishbowl and I think that I was very well prepared. I have been thoroughly annotating the text so when the conversation started to lack I looked through my notes to find a question I had written that I thought would supply the inner circle with some good content matter. I have noticed with the non-fiction book that we seem to stray a little more from the assigned section to more abstract topics that relate to the overall book more. I am enjoying this book, but I think it has shown me that I am more of a fiction person. This book is challenging for me to read, as well as challenging for me to participate in fishbowl's with.

However, I did think the class had a lot of good points. One thing we touched on a lot was the school scheduling and how it is forced upon us, and if things start to go downhill, the first thing to go is our extra-curricular activities that we have chosen instead of being chosen for us. I like how we then tied this to design and tried to figure out ways that design could help improve this attitude and make it a more likable, right-brained learning atmosphere. We talked a lot about what we can tie design to to make it more beneficial and improve it. Things like hospitals, and learning environments, and offices, as well as why things like design make a difference.

To sum up, I think the class and I individually did very well, but I do still see room for improvement; but knowing Smith's Period 2 class, I know we can do it!

Kathryn Schulz's TED talk Response

After watching Kathryn Schulz talk titled Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong, I have a different outlook on my beliefs and how I see the world. It is interesting to think that an issue or topic that I have a stance on and I think I am completely right on, someone can view the same issue or topic have the complete opposite stance and still think they are completely right. There aren’t many of my beliefs that I think I am wrong about, but then again if I thought they were wrong, why would they be my beliefs? Why would I believe in something that is wrong when in our society we are raised to think that the people who get stuff wrong, are lazy, irresponsible dimwits, and the way to succeed in life is to never make any mistakes.

This video showed me how large of an issue this is because if everyone walks around in their little bubble feeling very right about everything then errors are bound to occur. Errors like a surgeon performing a surgery on the motor vehicle crash victim’s ankle and leg; the surgery goes well until the surgeon is writing the postoperative orders and realizes that the surgery was performed on the wrong side of the patient’s body (Bailey). Another problem that occurs from everyone’s feeling of being right all the time is how it causes us to treat each other terribly. This occurs because if someone disagrees with us we first assume that they are ignorant. We assume that they must not know the facts because that is the only way that anyone could think that our view is the wrong view. However, when we find out that they are indeed well read on the subject at hand we come to the second assumption is the idiocy assumption. This is the assumption in which we think to ourselves that they are just idiots, because there is no way that an intelligent person could disagree with the point of view that you are supporting. Then after all of the pervious assumptions have been proven wrong, we come to the final assumption that they are just evil. We come the conclusion that they know the truth and that they are “deliberately distorting it for their own malevolent purposes” (Schulz).

Kathryn Schulz’s talk was very interesting because of her speaking techniques. The way that she engaged her listeners with stories, analogies, images and quotes was an interesting yet effective way to capture the audience’s attention. As with most TED talks, if she were to stand up on the stage and go on and on about being wrong and stood their without moving around the stage, without have slides to accompany, support, and illustrate her talk then I as the viewer would have stopped paying attention and lost focus about 30 seconds into the speech. With the roadrunner analogy, the picture of the picnic bench that Kathryn mistook for a Chinese symbol, the pictures and text that appeared as the explained the “series of unfortunate assumptions” (Schulz), the surgeon story, interaction with audience and all of the other creative tools Kathryn used in her TED talk comes the promise of a successful presentation.

Kathryn’s talk really made me think about how being wrong applies to our school and education systems and how they interact with being wrong. When the students get an answer wrong they are penalized and that isn’t necessarily a good thing. The education system should be more lenient with wrongness because it will allow us to be more fearless and comfortable with being told that we are wrong. As Kathryn explained in her TED talk the human race has a lot of trouble with being wrong, and this is a problem for us as individuals as well as for the culture. But if we eliminate the harsh reprimands and consequences for incorrect answers then the fear of being wrong will lessen by a wide margin. As a student in school you are given tests, worksheets, and book problems and when you get an answer wrong on any of these methods of learning then your grade drops. In school everything is based on grades, so when your grade drops it is an issue. But if there were other styles and methods that could be used instead of an automatic penalization for wrong answers then it would greatly help to resolve the issue of the alarm and panic that people feel when they are wrong and especially when they are told that they are wrong.

While listening to the TED talk I thought about my personal experiences with being wrong. I don’t like being told that I’m wrong, especially when I am so confident that I’m not. There are even times when someone will tell me I’m wrong but I won’t believe it and will still think to myself that I am right. These instances occur especially when there is no factual evidence involved. While at the same time, I am willing to except my faults and realize that I am wrong in hopes to correct and expand my knowledge, or at least I like to think so. I encounter this same issue with my father almost every day. He is always right, about everything. However there are those issues, that, God help us, he is wrong about, and what’s even worse …… I was right! That is where my father and I run into issues. I have noticed as I have been making the transition into “adulthood” I have inherited a lot of my father’s characteristics. This means, I feel that there are a lot of things that I am right about, and while this has the ability to make me sound extremely conceited, snotty, and stuck-up, it’s not like that all the time. My father and I get into arguments a lot of the time because he or I don’t agree on something and neither of us is willing to back down. However, what generally happens is, regardless of the truth, he is right, and I as the child just have to accept it and admit defeat. But what this makes me wonder is how these arguments will affect me later in life. Will being told that I am wrong finally make me except it, or will I always be this headstrong?

Another issue that Kathryn mentioned in her TED talk is the embarrassment that comes with being wrong. If I’m in class and my teacher calls on me for an answer and I get it wrong, I blush, and when I blush it is very noticeable. I’ve grown up in a society and a school system where I have been taught that being wrong is embarrassing, that it means there is something wrong with you personally. While that assumption is not even remotely close to the truth, its still hard to deal with. So in an attempt to avoid this pit feeling, we become perfect students, we become over-achievers, and we become perfectionists. But in reality, the horrible feeling that we as humans associate with being wrong, has nothing at all with the actual act of being wrong. Being wrong feels like nothing, in fact being wrong feels like being right, because we have no internal cue to let us know that we are wrong about something. We get that terrible, embarrassing feeling when we are told we are wrong, and our fears are confirmed.

Works Cited:

Bailey, Melissa. "Doctor Operates On Wrong Leg | New Haven Independent." New Haven Independent — It's Your Town. Read All About It. 02 Nov. 2010. Web. 19 Apr. 2011. .

Schulz, Kathryn. "Kathryn Schulz: On Being Wrong | Video on TED.com." TED: Ideas worth Spreading. Apr. 2011. Web. 19 Apr. 2011. .

Sir Ken Robinson TED talk Response

After watching Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, I think something needs to be done to change the public education system to be more allowing and accepting of childhood creativity and innovation. As Sir Ken Robinson said in his talk “all kids have tremendous talents and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly” (Robinson). The current education system requires every single student’s to submit the same answer, and allows no room for difference. Kids will take a chance, because they aren’t frightened of being wrong, but throughout our education systems we stigmatize mistakes. In our national education systems being wrong is the worst thing possible, and the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Another good point from the TED talk is that “we don’t grow into creativity, you grow out of it, we are educated out of it” (Robinson). As Robinson says throughout the TED talk, our education system changes the way we think and takes the creativity and innovation out us. This is summarized quite well be Picasso when he said “all people are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist at we grow up” (Robinson).

Another point the Sir Ken Robinson brought up in his TED talk is how academic ability has come to dominate our sense of intelligence. In our world today, if you fail all of your classes, regardless of the fact that you can paint a masterpiece work of art, you are not intelligent because you couldn’t pass your high school trig class. This view and perception of intelligence is highly skewed. This relates to Dan Pink’s novel A Whole New Mind, in which he writes about how right-brained people (the creative side of the brain) will rule the future. If this is correct then our education systems really do need to change, if the future is changing to be lead by right-brainers and our schools don’t accommodate to fit this change we will have a large problem because we will be mass-producing children who can’t find a place in the society.

Sir Ken Robinson’s humor throughout the TED talk most definitely created an effective presentation. His stories about his son in the play, and his son moving away from his girlfriend, it helped to capture the attention of the audience more than if he continued on and on for twenty minutes. It kept me amused and paying attention and served as comedic relief in a way.

The TED talk really made me think about my education and the level on which I am able to express myself and be creative. As a student at Arapahoe High School, I am required to take at least one arts class each year, and because of the student’s opportunities to choose their own schedules, if a certain student wants to take more than one art class they have the opportunity to do so. However, most of the classes I am currently enrolled in consist of sitting in a desk, listening to the teacher, watching a video, taking notes, solving problems, and taking more notes. The teachers the assign on a nights worth of homework that is generally plain and not very interesting making it hard to focus and get the work done. On the other hand, in my English Honors class we are allowed to work with projects, and make them our own by adding creative aspects, acting out scenes from Shakespeare plays, making websites and other creative outlets that allow someone who is more right-brained and creative to be more in their comfort zone and do their thing. In education where all of the learning consists of listening to a lecture, then writing an essay about it, or reading from a text book and taking notes on it there is no room for children who have trouble learning that way, or would do better with more hands-on, creative learning that allowed them to do projects that included aspects with art or some form of it to achieve good grades.

As someone who can learn either way, but prefers the more creative tools, I completely agree with Sir Ken Robinson. The best grades I have achieved so far this semester have both been grades that I was allowed to be creative with. One project was to act out a scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, in this project my group added artistic components to the project by using modern-day songs to make it a musical. Because of my group’s imaginative addition to the performance, we achieved an A+ on the project. The same goes for a history project, the assignment was to make a propaganda poster for WWII, we had to hand draw the entire thing and the n an outside source selected the best one. I drew one for my group and it was selected as the winner, and the teacher is having it laminated, for this assignment I achieved an A+. Another proponent of the creative style of learning is that even if you aren’t Picasso, you can still achieve a good grade. My learning and comprehension of the subject matter came through more in those projects than in any of the pervious projects because for me, I do better with those types of assignments then an essay I am told to write about a specific topic that has been chosen for me.

Works Cited:

Robinson, Sir. Ken. "Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity | Video on TED.com." TED: Ideas worth Spreading. June 2006. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.