21A – Reading Reflection No. 2

1.  What was the general theme or argument of the book?
The overall argument of the book is that people have been spending their free time differently than they did 50 years ago. Shirky believes that after the world wars, people came together to relax by watching sitcoms, however shirty believes that people are now coming together via social media and by sharing things with each other over the web. He coined the term ‘cognitive surplus” to mean that what free time people used to use watching TV, they are now using it by coming together and being creative with one another. 

2. How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003? 

Throughout this class I have learned that it is incredibly important to be creative in your ideas and solutions. I liked how Shirky felt that in general people were moving towards being more creative and open with one another than they used to be due to technology. I believe that this is the openness and creativity that ENT3003 has been trying to teach its students and we didn't realize that we were doing it all along. To be a successful entrepreneur, I think you need to harness these creativity skills and apply to your ideas and remain open with other people in order to keep useful connections. 
3. If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?

I would want to develop an that involves students, parents, and grandparents. One of the ideas Shirky brought up was creativity and how time spent digitally is time spent creatively. I would like to see if this effects creativity in thought. Are older generation less likely to think as creatively? To answer this I would like each student to take a question such as “Why are manholes round?”. From there I would like them to answer the question, as well as record their parents response, and their grandparents responses. We can then compare responses to determine which one was the most creatve. I think this would be an interesting test to see if time spent creatively results in higher creativity levels in thought or not. 
4. What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?


I was definitely not expecting the book to argue fro technology and against TV. Generation Z, anyone born from 1990s-200s, have been branded poorly by the media saying that they lack certain social skills due to time spent digitally, so I found it surprising that Shirky was arguing for technology when so many people are against. With that being said, I liked the change in option and I personally do agree that time spent online is more active then time spent on TV. Any time I am on social media, I am interacting with another person whether I realize it or not and that in and of itself is somewhat social. However, me, just sitting at home watching Netflix isn't useful in any way other than to waste time. 

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 4, 2017 at 6:36 AM

    It seems as though the book you read was pretty interesting since it was about thinking and creating solutions. I feel as though some of these ideas may be helpful to creating an entrepreneurial mind. Your exercise idea is very cool and I never knew that one could spend their time creatively or digitally. I also wanted to point out that I did not see the title of the book on your post and that would have been a little more helpful to reading the post.

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