Left or Right?

The Play section of Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” sort of follows Jane McGonigal’s idea/s in her TED talk. We’ve got to get away from the serious work routine and mix it up. Both of these people suggest (and insist) on playing games but more specifically, video games. Pink talks about how serious of an environment the Ford plant was, even going as far to outlaw smiling or laughing. Although this was a good example of how strict work places can be, I thought the Ford factory was a successful business. But anyway, I tried a few examples that Pink suggested.

 I took out my Iphone and began looking through the App Store for right brain, left brain themed games. I downloaded one where you answer a few questions (choosing A or B) and they tell you if you are left-brained, right-brained, or the all mighty golden brained. Each result comes with an explanation of what your type of brain entails. Now, this game was free, so I don’t know exactly how accurate it is, but you can try it out. Here is the title and cover art. 


21,000,000,000 hours?

So, I just watched Jane McGonigal on Ted talks… Maybe its because my idea of a video game is Donkey Kong on Super Nintendo, but I don’t follow anything she says. I agree with the fact that people play online games to escape from reality, but thats what games are; an escape. An 18 year old high school student isn’t going to buy or play an online game where he/she is a high school student in some suburb in (insert country here). They’d rather the game be a fantasy world with outlandish characters with outrageous abilities or weapons. The fact that she would like to see the world increase their game play time from 3 billion to 21 billion hours is unbelievable. How is putting kids in front of a computer for a collective 18 billion hours longer going to fix global problems such as obesity, especially childhood obesity? Someone please explain.

Picture from southpark.wkia.com


A lot of Negativity can be a Good Thing

So I read Dan Pink’s chapter on symphony, where he proceeded to tell me how I could develop my Symphony aptitude. His first suggestion was for me to listen to a few symphonies… No thank you. I read on and saw the negative space part of the chapter. Seeing something where there is nothing. “Seeing the bigger picture,” to quote Dan Pink.

I think everyone knows about the hidden arrow in Fedex’s logo, and the hidden kiss in the Hershey’s Kisses trademark, but here are a few more that I found. Some are tricky, but they are all clever.

negative space

See the lightning bolt? They are an electric company…

negative space

They are a web design agency, but you get picture.

negative space

You understand why it is spelled vertically when you recognize the negative space.


What do 2 Birds, a necklace, and a gourd have in common?

Our group has come up with a fairly simple, but pretty cool and creative idea for our invention mob project. Our idea came from Zhe’s song we heard on the first day of class, but with a twist. With our four selfmade objects, we have each asked atleast two people to write or type a 1 page story involving all of the objects. They can write on or about whatever they wish, with a target audience of whomever they want. We will take these stories, sentence by sentence, and intermingle them with each other’s story. This will create one larger story with contributions from all of our participants, but our group also assigned each object with some sort of symbolism. We will analyze each story, along with our collaborative story, and gauge how our participants rank each symbol within society.

 I can’t wait to see where these stories take us. I have a feeling some will be very similar, while others will be completely off the wall.

Mark Jackson