Preview

Even the Stupidest Creative Act Is Still a Creative Act

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1016 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Even the Stupidest Creative Act Is Still a Creative Act
Clay Shirky opens up his TED talk with a true story about Kenya, and some of its citizens. During 2007 there was a dispute with the presidential election and ethnic violence broke out in the country. Quickly following there was a media blackout, during which a lawyer in Nairobi was chronicling the events in a blog. As she was tracking the violence and keeping others informed the comments began to streamline and if they contained pertinent information, she would collate them and re-post them for others to easily see. She reached a point where she could no longer keep up and must have lamented in a post that she wished there was an easy way to categorize and aggregate all of this information automatically. Two volunteer programmers responded and launched Ushahidi.com, which is in open sourced website which does just that, and puts it all on a map. Since then platforms of Ushahidi have been used in countries and projects all around the world.
Shirkey suggests that to be able to take a single idea and have it reach global deployment within the space of three years, you need both digital technology and human generosity. Now that we have the tools and the technology, we need the time, energy, and ideas and we need to put them out there. There is over 1 trillion hours a year of free time on this planet, and it is a curious notion to think of what all those hands and minds are doing during it. In the 20th century, our outlets of media and technology were not advanced enough to see what everyone else was doing, except for what was presented to us by a small host of producers. Shirkey suggests that we were “couch-potato consumers” because there were no other options for us. Now that we can, through the internet, peak into the musings and creations of others, we get a glimpse of what goes into some of those 1 trillion hours (though sometimes you wish you could delete a glimpse) “Even the stupidest creative act is still a creative act,” Shirkey says,

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    With technology comes great responsibility. By depending on technology one is becoming complacent and limiting one’s full potential to grasp new knowledge. This paper will analyze two articles discussed in class “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted” by Malcolm Gladwell and “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr as well as WALL-E. Society at some point will become too dependent on technology without even realizing, affecting the way individuals communicate, think, and learn. Technology will shape our society with both negative and positive effects. Technologies rapid growth is having a lasting effect on our future, where we become desensitized to reality.…

    • 518 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When the interested audience is as large as the world, the type and method of delivery for information is different from presenting information to a small town and the family members of those involved in the incident. The essence of the information must take on additional layers of responsibility when expressed from patriotic to political. When communicating information out to the world audience, the audience looks back at not only the…

    • 765 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Technology like any other resource has its limitations. Individuals, such as college students are one of the main reasons for materialism. A problem with society that has lingered for years is the distinction people cannot make between a need and a want. Now, in the twenty first century, many items are considered a need but weren’t before and that is because as society keeps evolving, people only worry about the latest and greatest thing. The American society is misplacing values into materialistic items and no longer in family traditions or human interactions. In the chapter , “Community and Diversity”, from Rebekah Nathan’s book, she discusses the concept of materialism and the evolvement of technology and how people all have their own devices and no longer need to share with others. She displays throughout her text of the impacts of materialism. “Small Change” by Malcolm Gladwell starts off by discussing the influence that social media has on activism in modern…

    • 1704 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    In Jane Hammerslough’s article, “What’s Changed”, from Next Text Making Connections Across and Beyond the Discipline’s, she discusses how technology has impacted our choices and how many we have in today’s society. American society has taken a turn in wanting more choices overall. “The accelerated pace of technological developments over the last three decades brings up new needs and different, possibly more efficient, solutions…What’s different now, however, is that today’s frenetic pace involving an infinite, ever-changing variety of material solutions”(Hammerslough 314). Hammerslough gives reference to this theory in a past experience she had with a neighbor in the early 1990’s who had previously been released from jail. Hammerslough comes to the realization of just how much technology has changed in the last decade; her neighbor has been in prison when he discovers a selectric typewriter that has been outdated for some time without his knowledge. Hammerslough mentions that changes occur and our survival may depend on adapting and learning new technologies. Hammerslough also uses an example of the production of car sales in the early days of automobiles; Henry Ford made it a simple, “take it or leave it” approach stating that “a consumer could have a model T in any color he wanted- so long as it was black” (Hammerslough 315). As opposed to today…

    • 1230 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The media tend to give information about dramatic issues that are considered "newsworthy" in order to trigger the audience's attention. This information leaves the audience with obscure knowledge about what is really happening behind the scenes. Wayne Hunt, the author of "Baghdad Burning: The Blogosphere, Literature and the Art of War,” talks about a certain type of media he refers to as the "new media,” blogging in this case, that gives valuable information regarding what is happening globally. This paper discusses two case studies that emphasize the type of information available in different types of blogs. The first case depicts the story of Riverbend, an Iraqi woman who blogs about what life is really like under American occupation. The…

    • 1098 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Let’s start back in the the 20th century. In the early 1900s America was at a time of rapid transformation. People were thinking “what can we change” and “how can we create a bigger and better America?” Even though they didn’t have iPhones or the internet they were creating new technology. Radios, washing machines, the Assembly Line, dishwashers, and vacuums are everyday…

    • 343 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Richard Slove's Future

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Richard Sclove defines the term “polypotency” as “potent in many ways” which is an applicable term in today’s technologies vocabulary. Sclove considers technologies “polypotent” because all technologies are associated with various hidden social effects and meanings, and that it is mostly in moral excellence of these effects that technologies come to function as a social structure. Technologies essentially work to structure the social characteristics in society by going beyond its intended purpose. People portray technologies in terms of a single primary intended function or occasionally several functions it is intended to accomplish. Society has come to recognize that technologies…

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Bag of popcorn? Check! The Mindy Project (my favorite TV show at the moment) streaming on Hulu? Check! Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook all being intermittently checked on my phone? Check! I’m ready for a few hours of what I like to call “downtime.” This notion has without a doubt changed many times throughout American history and culture. It’s even changed in my lifetime with new technologies (I used to spend all my free time in grade school reading mystery novels). Cultures and people are constantly changing with what they want from their media. They want it to be new, yet not too new in fear it won’t catch on. They want it to be high tech, but not impossible to figure it out. They want to be able to show it off, but don’t want to…

    • 2491 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Is Wikipedia Inaccurate?

    • 953 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Centuries have passed, whereas man has sought a means to share their stories, some were factual whereas others were simply factually based. In either case, the methods used throughout the years have transformed from cave drawings into endless amounts of data unified through the internet. Taking advantage of technological advances, Wikipedia has arguably become the predominant source for providing information across the globe. However, its success is completely based on its users to add and edit all data presented. Controversially, the information does not go through any real vetting process before worldly presentation, therefor worth no more than cave drawings or old wives’ tales.…

    • 953 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Baudrillard Research Paper

    • 3914 Words
    • 16 Pages

    We live in the world of science fiction. With our ipods, iphones, tablets, laptops, etc. we have a vast amount of information on our finger tips. Through all of our online networks, blogs, websites, etc. we have a whole virtual world online. Baudrillard would term this as hyper reality where there is so much information exchanged that the foundation of our reality has changed. We are building off copies of copies and restructuring ideas that have already existed. Any kind of information about anything can be accessed via Internet. If people don’t stay caught up they will be left behind in our modern world. Computers need…

    • 3914 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Better Essays

    In her book, The Real World of Technology (1999), Ursula M. Franklin argues that technology has a disruptive effect on humanity. If left-unchecked technology will eventually destroy society as we know it. Franklin illustrates her point by focusing on the effects technology has had on society and cultures in the past. She uses examples from China before the Common Era to the Roman Empire, with a majority of examples coming form the last one hundred and fifty years. Such as the Industrial Revolution and the invention of electronic mail. Franklin contends that for society’s sake, people must question everything before accepting new technologies into their world. In the book, Franklin’s argument urges people to come together and participate in public reviews and discuss or question technological practices that lead to a world that is designed for technology and not for society. The Real World Of Technology attempts to show how society is affected by every new invention that comes onto the market and supposedly makes life more easy going and hassle free while making work more productive and profitable. The lectures argue that “technology has built the house in which we live” (Franklin, p.1) and that this house is continually changing and being renovated. There is very little human activity outside of the house, and all in habitants are affected by the “design of the house, by the division of its space, by the location of its doors and walls.” (p.1). Franklin claims that; rarely does society step outside of the house to live, when compared with generations past. The goal for leaving the house is not to enter the natural environment, because in Franklin’s terms “environment essentially means what is around us… that constructed, manufactured, built environment that is the day-in-day-out [sic] setting of much of the contemporary world of technology.” (p.89). Nature today is seen as a construct instead of…

    • 1259 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In recent years, blog sites have been the avenue for political discourse on the internet, they have reshaped the way politician, and the populace approached the political process. Candidates are now turning to the use of blog as evident during the 2008 presidential election, when all candidates maintained a blog site, for example, Senator Hillary…

    • 661 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Asian Immigration 1800s

    • 1500 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Immigration has been a part of the world since the early 1500s. Sadly, the immigrants were treated very poorly when they first entered North America. Majority of the people in North America have changed their views towards people of colour compared to the past. Therefore, it is now safe to say there is more equality in the world today. Some people may still be judgmental, negative, and continue to think the way they thought back in the early 1500s. Luckily, most have learned to care and see everyone as an equal. Asians, East Asians, and black people have experienced similar treatment but some received more negative treatment than others. Racism was a big factor in the past, but it did not only occur due to the colour of someone’s skin, but…

    • 1500 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In today’s modern society, people have become more attached to electronics more than anything else. In This day and age, it seems that with the fast paced life style we are accustomed to, smart phones, laptops and tables are the things we now can’t “Leave home without”. With Blogs and online journals growing in popularity since the late 90s, people have found it easy to release their feelings through social media. In recent years, especially with societies with less freedom than ours, they turn to social media to express their ideas and express their views on current issues. With social media, all shared ideas and views come together in a more social setting that is easily accessible to everyone therefore making social and communal changes more impacting than ever. A great example of this is the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. Millions of citizens from a vast socio-economical background were unhappy with the ruling reign and wanted to make a change. Right away people took to social media to express their opinion and set up protest. Many news sources credit social media as a key factor in the uprising.…

    • 903 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Social networking has proven itself useful in a practical sense, such as Facebook and Twitter being used by natural disaster victims to communicate with the outside world, and YouTube proving helpful in war torn countries where dictators have tried to suppress images of war from the watching world. As well as being useful in a practical sense, social networking has been shown to satisfy all of the basic human emotional needs – communication, continuity and support. Social networking satisfies all these basic needs, all the while remaining instantly accessible and unlimited by barriers of geography, finance or class (Cooke 2011).…

    • 1067 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays