Week 10 Story Lab - Two More Ted Talks

Ted Talk Logo. Source: Wikimedia

     For my story lab project, I chose to watch two Ted Talk videos: Copyright is Brain Damage by Nina Paley and A New Theory of Human Intelligence by Scott Barry Kaufman. I thought the latter was the more interesting of the two and had some concerns about the former. In Nina Paley's talk, she discussed the impact of copyright and how it causes our brains to self-censor, as well as how copyright allows the copyright holders to censor works of art. I think she had a lot of good points, but I was a little concerned about her approach to fixing it. She decided she was going to ignore copyright and use material she didn't have permission to do. I think she's on the right track and that our copyright system has some negative aspects, but I actually believe copyright is a good thing in many senses. I wouldn't want my work of art being claimed by someone else because I didn't realize something in it was copyrighted, but doubly so I wouldn't want someone to steal my work.
     Scott Barry Kaufman's talk was rather interesting. He talked about reforming how our school systems judge intelligence, like how we shouldn't allow predicted potential to overshadow actual achievement. I agree with his statement - if a student clearly performs exceptionally, then perhaps we should look at that rather than a performance exam they may have taken several years before. I do think our system does a good job in many cases, though, because there is a strong relationship between predicted potential and actual achievement, which means if potential is shown early on there is a solid chance they will perform exceptionally in the future.