Cognitive Surplus and Education in Mexico
I found the Cognitive Surplus piece from Clay Shirky quite interesting because I am a huge TV fan and will probably never give it up. I’ve never had a problem with this fact, however, because my TV watching doesn’t tend to affect my physical health. There’s much debate about the whole ‘couch potato’ idea of TV watchers, where someone who sits in front of the TV too often “pushes aside other activities that are less immediately engaging” (Shirky, page 6). I find that the downside of watching TV can be easily avoided and that TV is not an overall negative aspect of contemporary life. You can watch TV and be a healthy person both mentally and physically. You just have to make sure you are taking the steps to that kind of life outside of spending time in front of the TV. My primary motive for turning on the TV is to watch sports, which I feel is perfect for me. When I see athletes performing at the highest level on TV, I want to get myself moving to be like them. Another personal motive for watching TV is to be with my family. We will often have a game on in the TV room, but a lower volume than normal and be discussing/debating about the game. I disagree with Shirky’s notion that “Life in the developed world includes a lot of passive participation; at work we’re offive drones, at home we’re couch potatos” (Shirky, page 11). To a certain extent, I believe watching tv, particularly sports, promotes me to live a more active life. It can sometimes prompt me to go outside with my free time and shoot around a basketball. I admit, however, that my argument may be weak because I am mostly applying to sports related entertainment.
Being that my public issue is Education in Mexico, I’ve been finding wikipedia pages to be less informing and interesting. If I read Spanish well, I’m positive my view would be different, because the more in-depth, interesting articles related to Mexican educaion are published in Spanish. In reailty, there’s only two wikipedia articles I find appealing for my public issue: “Education in Mexico” and “Secretariat of Public Education (Mexico).” The other related articles are more statistical and basic. The SEP article is appealing because it provides multiple sections with various topics and details, along with a chart towards the end of the article. It also provides related links. These links, however, are again nonbeneficial to me because they are in Spanish! I do like the SEP’s bullet point introduction as well. It calls your attention immediately, and provides useful information that someone visiting this page is looking for.
After browsing kickstarter for a while, I came across what I found to be an absolute knockout kickstarter campaign: “LUNAR MISSION ONE: A new lunar mission for everyone.” The first thing that I found made the project more appealing than others is the use of “everyone” in its title. It makes the project attractive because as discussed in Cognitive Surplus, people have knack to want to connect with each other and be doing the same things. The notion of doing something together will pull in more people. Another heading high on the page is “Don’t just follow space exploration — be a part of it!” This is a great heading because again, it pulls people together. Moving forward, the rest of the page is beautifully constructed. There is extensive detailing and media as you scroll down. The design is tip-top, with appealing graphs, and outstanding rhetorical velocity. Colors flow well, paragraphs are detailed yet concise, and nothing seems to be out of place.
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