Professional Seniors

today’s wind down wednesday jam is a true winding-downer. enjoy this strikingly beautiful piece by max richter on a meditation of virginia woolf.

well, it’s a lot of things. you may just think of it as a group of people with their own ideas, but it boils down to a group of people with a collective set of values and norms. this is clay shirky’s conclusion, and the consensus of almost every sociologist. 

all of us college students are part of an educational culture, and our universities have expectations, rules, regulations, blah blah blah, that they expect we conform to. shirky discusses educational culture in “cognitive surplus.” consider this. 

in 2007, avenir, an engineering student at Ryerson enrolled in a chemistry course and discovered that it was hard as shit. who would have thought? he eventually became the leader of a FB study group of 146 people, and was threatened with expulsion by his school, because they expect their students to come to their own answers, and that using FB was an illegal media to use in this setting. but avenir argued that a FB group was no different from a study group on campus. it’s still part of the social world. 

shirky uses this example because the group had 146 students, which as he points out, is too big a group to host on campus or elsewhere. and this is a problem, because there’s no doubt that some students were freeloading. despite the fact that the group had a rule, or cultural norm, that everyone had to contribute, there is a degree of personal discipline needed in order to fulfill their cultural duty to each other, and this puts the idea of education at risk if students can just join an online group and get all the answers to their homework.  

so kids, the main lesson here is don’t take a damn chemistry course in college. curiosity killed the cat for a reason. 

but really, if you’re going to be in a study group, try your best to understand the material as best as possible instead of showing up empty-headed with no ideas like our president. and if you’re a leader, never give the answer. always guide your peers by asking simple questions that lead them to the answer. this is called inductive learning. it’s hard, but worth it. let this be your culture. 

“Before the rise of file sharing, you could give a CD to your friend,but once they had it,you didn’t. This was the normal case for recorded music,indeed for any physical object. Sharing a book or a magazine or a pair of shoes is what economists call”rival” sharing;if I have my copy of VanillaIce’sTo The Extreme,you don’t, and if you have it, I don’t. A song on your computer,though, is different, because with digital music I can give you a copy while keeping mine”. -Cognitive Surplus

It’s Wind Down Wednesday. We hope everyone is having an amazing week.

some nice chill lennox for your wednesday winding down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAOHuJ2aXao

ever heard of clay shirky? you should. he’s a writer and teacher particularly interested in internet technologies, and he has some good news. according to shirky’s tedtalk, the internet has created a space for collaborative projects that can benefit society, and there are over a trillion hours a year (yes you read that right) “up for grabs” that allow people to be creative with these internet technologies. shirky coined the term cognitive surplus to describe the free time we have that allows us to do creative things in the first place, and the number is only increasing. as long as there are generous organizations, we can take advantage of cognitive surplus. 

so this is great news for people, but especially for you and i, the blooming members of society that still have the ability to impact the world.

shirky’s overall thesis is that cognitive surplus will change the world, if we use it as a force for good. in his book “cognitive surplus,” he provides social, political, economic, and even historical examples of it in use. one of the more remarkable examples comes from the south korean protests of 2008, when thousands of teenage girls took to the streets to protest south korea’s renewed trade policy over beef imports from the US. many of the girls protested because they received news from “the rising gods of the east.” a bloody boy band. they made the post on their popular website, and the teenage girls were concerned enough about public health that they took action. 

what’s amazing about this example is that the boy band did not even try to spark a movement. the protests, which were peaceful and family friendly, all occurred over a simple post. 

cognitive surplus isn't always going to work that way. but the point here is that our content can reach wide enough audiences to make a difference either in our lives, or for society. hell, journey found their replacement because some philippino dude posted his covers on youtube.