Attendance Log for SPRING 2014 - Week 4

Date of Class:

Thursday, February 6, 2014

FUN AND INTERESTING MEDIA Week 4

Pop!Tech Review

Located in Links to Other Miscellaneous Resources

Comments and Reactions

Social contagion:

What do we really know?

What a very big, very broad question to ask, plus they lead with this 

The phenomenon of social contagion...is both intuitively appealing and potentially powerful. 

Social contagions can be very good, but also very bad. Places like Facebook, Twitter, and tumblr all go contract this infectious disease, whether it be from LIKEing an outfit, or retweeting someone, or reblogging an opinion about a popular opinion
but this can lead to

"...dramatically alter[ing] the prospects for social epidemics, as well as introduce other mechanisms entirely by which social change can come about, yet models of social influence reflect very little of this added complexity."

The good news is, these social media platforms, will not just hinder us but give us aid towards new innovation. People's understanding of social contagion is likely to improve dramatically in the near future, thanks to an avalanche of new data, much of it generated by social media platforms.

Thanks to the technological revolution of the Internet, however, this situation is undergoing rapid transformation. Researchers have recently used social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to track the diffusion of individual pieces of content over interpersonal networks on a massive scale. Even more recently, Facebook’s data science team has conducted a “field experiment” that, through random manipulations to their newsfeed algorithm, shed new light on the mechanics of interpersonal influence with respect to user actions such as “likes.”

 All in all, the studies are headed well,  and social contagion will be researched and properly utilized to help the general populus.

Thanks for reading! Remember there are links all over my posts, so be sure to check out where these articles come from and go gather an opinion! :)

Insights and Discoveries WEEK 4

Totally me in a spandex suit

This is your friendly neighborhood blogger, Sophie speaking, 
and today, we are going to be doing something a little different!

Today's lecture was given not by Dr. V, but by a GUEST SPEAKER :O . Dr. Rodney Hill's lecture title was Personal Space & Creativity! I say this about every lecture Dr. V gives, but as the first guest speaker, I wasn't too sure what today's lecture would entail, but I was thoroughly surprised.
To start off the lecture Dr. Hill had us do a personal space exercise where we stood up, got into the personal space of the person next to us, then hugged them, it was very....uncomfortable interesting. He then showed us some funny videos about personal space such as....

There were a couple more after this, but personally, this one was one of my favorites

Who knew there were so many kinds of personal space?! There are a couple of subsections in the personal space titled Intimate, plus many other kinds of space...

• Intimate
• Personal Close space
• Personal Far space
• Social space
• Business Distances
• 7-12 feet
• Public close
• 12--25 feet
• Public Far Phase
• 25+ feet

Plus, there were all sorts of ways of getting people to interact with each other during social events, like couch arrangements and centering everything in the kitchen, which was really interesting!

There was also information about gender differences in personal space such as

• Men have a hierarchy when it comes to personal space, there is a competition for relative power
• Women have connections with each other, they orchestrate the relationship from being close, or distant

Attendance Log for SPRING 2014 - Week 3

Date of Class:

Thursday, January 30, 2014

FUN AND INTERESTING MEDIA Week 3

Space Tourist Review:

Located in Potpourri from Dr. M. Bunch

Comments and Reactions

WHAAAAAAAAAT

Touring in SPACE...WHAT??!?!?! That's just crazy talk! right?

WRONG!

Well sort of wrong..this raw footage show another test run (the 3rd one as a matter of fact) of a supersonic flight. Turns out all objectives for the test flight were accomplished!

"Today's flight was another resounding success," said Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides. "We focused on gathering more transonic and supersonic data, and our chief pilot, Dave, handled the vehicle beautifully. With each flight test, we are progressively closer to our target of starting commercial service in 2014." (Youtube Description Video).

The fact that people, who have everyday lives and can be almost as regular as anybody else...aren't. People are so innovative and imaginative that they can literally..accomplish whatever they put their minds to. People will continue to surprise other people, and themselves, of the fact that the human race can accomplish wonders, there only has to be effort.

I have to say, the idea of tourist space travel sounds terrific! To be able to see the world from above, looking down at everyone, would truly be a spectacle. I'm reminded of the movie Gravity, with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, where a regular everyday scientist (Bullock) gets to go up into space and see the world, but I would rather do without all of the flying debris...

The going up into space part, that would be the fun part, NASA and Virgin Galactic can work out all of the kinks...

The Real Neuroscience of Creativity:

Located in Primary Content Folder - Miscellaneous Articles - On Neuroscience and the Brain

Comments and Reactions

"I'm more creative because I'm right brained!"

"I'm better at MATH than art so this must mean I am more left brained."

To quote this article...

*Sigh*

No.

Just no.

Stop it.

Please.

This type of thinking not only isolates different kinds of people from interacting with each other, it also limits a person's scope of their abilities and what they can and can't accomplish. This article proves that science has explained that the right and left side of the brain interact when developing creative thoughts.

Creativity does not involve a single brain region or single side of the brain.

I never knew there were so many parts of the brain working together to do simple things. For example, "every time you pay attention to the outside world, or attempt to mentally rotate a physical image in your mind (e.g., trying to figure out how to fit luggage into the trunk of your car), the Visuospatial Network is likely to be active. This network involves communication between the frontal eye fields and the intraparietal sulcus:

If your task makes greater demands on language, however, Broca's area and Wernicke's area are more likely to be recruited:

 ."

Big words right! Basically, everything is working together to do other things. Which is just another amazing aspect of the human brain!

There are apparently 3 networks that are critical to understanding the neuroscience of creativity. These three are located all over the brain, and 

"Sometimes, it's helpful for the networks to work with each other, and sometimes such cooperation can impede the creative process."

The Executive Attention Network, The Imagination Network, The Salience Network work together to create, evaluate, and implement creative ideas, without them we would be plain, ordinary, creatures with no cool ideas...

 "It's an exciting time for the neuroscience of creativity, as long as you ditch outdated notions of how creativity works. This requires embracing the messiness of the creative process and the dynamic brain activations and collaborations among many different brains that make it all possible."

Insights and Discoveries Week 3

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

-Albert Einstein

I couldn't agree more! And that's what today's class was all about! Take 2 of today's exercise was entitled A New Paradigm for the Imagination. The first two exercises flipped on the switch for imagination, which helped stimulate our minds!

My answers were going to Disney world for a happy memory we have lived. As for a happy memory we have not lived, I told my partner I wanted to go to SDCC...she said she imagined a husband and family. After that I told her I liked hers better  This really helped put a perspective on creativity and set the atmosphere for the class!

WHOOPS

So I was really unsure how to use Blogger, but now I'm really comfortable with it! New Updates will now be posted in the NEW POSTS section, rather than be a page, but they will continue to go in the order of

• Insights and Discoveries Week #
• FUN AND INTERESTING MEDIA Week #
• Attendance Log for SPRING 2014- Week #

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! I hope you will enjoy! The main things that's going to be updated is the pages section, so go check those out! :)