Clay Shirky

In this TED talk, Clay Shirky starts by telling a story to his audience to get their attention. His story is about how a job too big for one person turned into a site called Ushahidi. His story teaches us that when people work together, on something small, it can become a huge succeess. Also, the person who started the blog about Kenya learned a lot more about what was going on through the stories that people had told under her comments. Daniel Pink explains this in the chapter Story in his book A Whole New Mind. According to Pink, people learn better through stories rather than boring old facts. Building facts into a story makes the information more fun to learn and easier to remember because one fact leads to the next. For instance, last year in English class when we were reading the book Night, written by a holocaust survivor, I learned about the cruel and unusual tortures of the Nazis which made me angry but interested in the book. The detailed stories that the author told helped me learn the facts that were on the final test for that book.

Clay Shirky says that we are building a better, more cooperative world by using resources such as Wikepidea and Ushahidi. Wouldn't cell phones fall under that category? If they do, then why do a lot of people just think of them as distractions? With the new smart phones people can do things easier and faster all in the palm of their hand. Why wouldn't cell phones be considered a gift? The truth is that cell phones can be a distraction, however, they are also very helpful. If your phone has internet on it, you have easy access to information anywhere in the country, (maybe not in the middle of nowhere). By using our cell phones, multi-tasking becomes a part of our daily lives, therefore building a better more cooperative world.

"The stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act." -Clay Shirky
Those so-called "stupid creative acts" are helping Americans transistion from a left-brained society into a right-brained one. That creative act is taking a step towards using our right side of our brains more so that eventually those creative acts won't be so stupid anymore.

When the experiment on the day-care centers was tried it was surprising to hear that the number of late pick-ups increased when a fine was established. I think that the respect for the day-care workers dropped when a fine was established because the parents figured that the fine would make up for the loss of respect. So technically what the experiment shows is that people think money will fix everything.