How Cognitive Surplus Will Change The World

In the first chapter, the author talks about how most people’s attention is on eye-catching images, instead of what is going on in the world. People care more about murders, airplane crashes, etc. instead of the exploding populations or the growth in the amount of nuclear weapons that exist. Because of this, our environment starts to deteriorate. The environment will continue to deteriorate, and such events will be out of control until the human race realizes just how selectively the environment persuades the human mind, and how the biological and cultural history determines our comprehension. The book is about fundamental connections to our past and how the human race can

The changes in how different psychological processes were identified and understood in the 1950s and 1960s is what many refer to as the “cognitive revolution.” The introduction of research in problems that have already been met - for instance, studying problems of memory and decision making - led to the new approach of theorizing. The cognitive revolution focused on just a couple of key concepts. One idea that stemmed during the cognitive revolution is that the science of psychology cannot direct study the mental world. Another idea that grew during the cognitive revolution was that in order to understand behavior, the science of psychology has to study the mental world (Cognition, pg. 8).

After reading chapter five I noticed cognitive dissonance throughout a large portion of the book. Cognitive dissonance was described in class as being a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. A good example of this was found on page 182 where the author writes about how we all tell our self that African Americans “deserve” all of this even though we know, but do not want to acknowledge that white Americans are less likely to be convicted of the same crime done by blacks. Cognitive dissonance applies here because we know that this mass incarceration is not fair or morally right to do, however, our behavior does not try to stop it from happening. Instead of doing what our beliefs say is right we try to convince ourselves that it is the African Americans fault that they are

Is the internet revolutionary? In a review of Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus, George Russell argues everything but the internet being revolutionary. Shirky claims that the internet is revolutionary because it provides people with a way to be productive in society by creating and sharing content in a convenient and simple manner. Russell’s claims are that the internet is in no way radical and has not changed the way people do things but is just another platform for corporations to, “fight for eyes and eventually wallets.” Russell’s claims and Shirky’s claims differ completely, and I tend to agree more with Russell’s claim in saying the internet is not revolutionary for the simple fact it is not. The internet has tied seamlessly into people’s

People are turning out to be all the more innovatively effective consistently. New developments and advancements are always being made. The Internet is turning out to be more "dependable" consistently. Be that as it may, what amount do we truly get from the consistent progression of Internet utilize and more quick witted innovation? Would it be advisable for us to take a gander at their commitments to the world as a promoter or a revile? The basic impact of "manmade brainpower" in the innovation we utilize each day is inspected by two splendid creators, Nicholas Carr and Jamias Cascio. In Carr's article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid", he clarifies the impacts of the Internet and innovation in our general public and cases that the abuse of innovation is risky and can influence how our psyche works. Jamias Cascio, then again, utilizes his article "Get Smarter" to demonstrate the beneficial

In the essay, “ Shooting into the Blogosphere”, the author shows readers the process of the development of the blog is also the process of transiting between public and private. He suggests that people should be personal instead of limiting themselve. The author shows the process of changing. When the blog just discovered, lots of people used it to participate into political event. At that time, there is no shortage of citizens willing to participate in rampant democracy. And, almost all Political clout

People can display themselves outwardly in a certain manner although on the inside be completely different. A person’s attitude and behavior can influence each other; a person’s surrounds will also have an impact on how the person is. An example of this can be seen in a person committing a crime such as shoplifting, the person knows this is illegal and not moral but in the right situation the person may forget his or her moral upbringing and commit the crime any way. Influences on the individual can be overpowering, causing the person to behave or act in an attitude different from the person’s normal action and behavior. People tend to suffer from

Internet plays an important role to collect people all over the world. People in social media present their opinion freely in several aspects, such as political, economics, entertainment, even their life experience. Clay Shirky mentions the example of Ushahidi. There is violence in Kenya after its election in 2007. At that time, the government announces a blackout of social media. People in Kenya cannot get the information about what happened in their country and where is the violence. Thus, there are two programmers lunch Ushahidi, which can locate the place of violence and let the public know. When people realize the Ushahidi are useful in their life, Ushahidi becomes a public platform to transmit the current event and uses in people’s daily life. People like to invent new things in order to make their life easier. People are not only concern to maximize their self-interest. People pay more attention on the society and eager to make contribution to this world. The cognitive surplus makes people selfless to the

Cognitive dissonance is defined by Gilovich et all’s textbook as “ A theory that maintains the inconsistencies among a person’s thoughts, sentiments, and actions create an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency”. While this definition is true it also quite confusing. To understand this first the words that make up the term need to be understood. Cognition is a mental action, it involves gaining knowledge and understanding through use of thoughts, senses, and experiences. This cognition can produce a perception, sensation, notion, or intuition. Dissonance is simply a discrepancy among two things. In the case of cognitive dissonance this discrepancy is between any two of the following; an idea,

There can be many explanations for why an employee would call in sick to work when he or she is not really sick. One reason could be explained through the attribution theory. The attribution theory explains the behavior like this can be explained by attributing it to either the employee’s internal disposition or to an external situation. The employee’s internal disposition could be that the employee always seems to have a bad attitude to his or her job duties and that his or her personality is pessimistic or lazy. The employee’s external situation could be that he or she has a manager who is constantly micro-managing them, which makes them unhappy at work, or the employee has a coworker who is their counterpart who is slacking at work. The employee may have to work harder at the job than the other employee to get their collective tasks completed. This may lead to the employee calling out sick because of his or her internal disposition – they are just lazy and do

When determining a course of action regarding the topic of my choosing for this paper, the ideals behind cognitive dissonance allowed for me to put to paper for the very first time, a topic that I believe fulfills the requirements of the assignment, and one that bears great presence in my life. As some may have gathered throughout our tenure in this course, I am mother to my nine beautiful children. Though I despise the formalities attached to assignment of titles, attention must be paid toward the fact that I have two stepsons, Dominick & Zachary – ages seven and six. I have always harbored an oppositional stance toward the idea of referring to them, or parenting them in a fashion as though they are

In the article “Money Can Buy You a Bigger Brain” it is argued whether children, teens and adolescents with families of a higher income are more intelligent than those who come from a lower income family. Children of upper class economic backgrounds are more likely to have higher IQ’s, attentiveness, spatial awareness and a greater capability of transferring acquired information, including memories, from short-term to long-term. With the objective to defend these claims a recent study was found, “The areas of the brain noticeably larger across more advantaged children are key to academic success, as well as memory retention, reasoning, and language skills, making their impact on potential prosperity vital. The finding chimes with a 2013 study,

“We’re drawn to the image of the lone genius whose mystical moment of insight changes the world. But the lone genius is a myth; instead, it’s group genius that generates breakthrough innovation. When we collaborate, creativity unfolds across people; the sparks fly faster, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

One of the most popular New Year’s Resolutions is making it to the gym and shedding off those extra unwanted pounds padded on from the end-of-year holidays that encourage over-indulgence of delicious treats and tasty comfort foods. This and many other unhealthy habits can lead to depression, anxiety and a reduced sense of self-worth. What most people do not realize is that the temptations can be lessened by having a better understanding of their brain health and its power. “Everything you are and everything you do is controlled by your brain” (Sharpbrains, 2014). Luckily, there is still hope for all of us to improve and repair our brains.

Old media like broadcasting, print, and film created a consumer culture in the public. Participants would consume the media they could find, and that was the extent of their engagement with a piece of media. But during the digital age, participatory culture has exploded. Participatory culture is a concept coined by Henry Jenkins where consumers take part in both the consumption and the production of media. The advent of computers facilitates a low barrier of entry for creation of digital media and its propagation. With the availability of personal computers and consumer level software to manipulate media as well as the popularity of the internet to spread content, fans have become more engaged with the media they consume. In turn, participants can create forms of that media that comment and expand upon the original content. Participants who used to only consume media now have the avenues to become producers of media. In this essay, I will explore participatory culture through the lense of Lev Manovich’s Five Principles of New Media: Numerical Representation, Modularity, Automation, Variability, and Transcoding.