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Week 14 Lab

For this week's storylab, I watched two Ted Talk videos about creative life.

First, I watched A New Theory of Human Intelligence by Scott Barry Kaufman. He covered twice-exceptional children, which are students have exemplary strengths while dealing with considerable challenges. He particularly focuses on students diagnosed with learning disorders and what they're actually capable of versus their perceived capabilities.

He says we need to leave more room for children to surprise us. He also points out the problems with putting academic success first, especially as a prerequisite to determine whether or not a student is allowed to pursue other interests.

His definition of intelligence is the dynamic interplay of engagement and ability in pursuit of personal goals. He wants to change how we value potential versus achievement, especially when it comes to IQ and SAT scores. He tells his personal story about how he was rejected from gifted programs and schools based on these metrics, but through creativity he found a way into those spaces and then succeeded exponentially once given the opportunity.

Next, I watched Copyright is Brain Damage by Nina Baley. She makes the point that the copyright owners don't make more money, they simply have the opportunity to censor art. Creative work becomes an abstract financial concept that doesn't benefit the artists or the public. Copyright encourages internal censorship, which inhibits art and your creative expression. The less you express creativity, the less you use that part of your mind, which leads to actual brain damage. We don't get to choose what enters our brain, and often the most proprietary works are what enter our minds the most.

Even though licenses give permissions that copyright takes away, licenses reinforces that you need the permission in the first place. Her argument for how to fight this system is to simply ignore copyright, and retrain our minds to not censor ourselves based on permissions we may need.

I really loved the animation she shared at the end of her talk, which if she had censored, would be a piece of art that doesn't exist.

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