And then I saw that the stroke of midnight looked exactly like the unique creation myth in the Old Testament.” Cinderella’s curfew was, if you look at it on Vonnegut’s chart, a mirror-image downfall to Adam and Eve’s ejection from the Garden of Eden.
vonnegut discovered that the story of adam and eve had the same drastic fall as cinderella, and in this way were their arcs similar
Eventually, he says, this research could help scientists train machines to reverse-engineer what they learn about story trajectory to generate their own compelling original works.
it's believed that this research can lead to having computers write and publish their own stories and such
“The ‘Rags to Riches’ emotional arc embodies a story that we all love to believe in, widely popular in the American dream itself,”
the "rags to riches"story is easier to map out because it's not only the most common, but very relatable and many like to read stories about growing from the ground up
And though the researchers were focused on a book’s emotional arc—not the structure of its plot, per se—they found overlap in how plot points reflected emotional highs and lows as measured by the sentiment analysis.
the computers focused mostly on how the emotion and sentiment in the stories were built up rather than the actual plot development
Vonnegut visualizes its arc as a staircase-like climb in good fortune representing the arrival of Cinderella’s fairy godmother, leading all the way to a high point at the ball, followed by a sudden plummet back to ill fortune at the stroke of midnight.
he gives cinderella's story a strong visual of a staircase to demonstrate the steady climb of the stories plot
The X-axis represents the chronology of the story, from beginning to end, while the Y-axis represents the experience of the protagonist, on a spectrum of ill fortune to good fortune.
the author uses an x and y axis as a metaphor to compare it to the flow of a story and how it may progress
There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers. They are beautiful shapes.”
the author proposes stories and their structure be installed into computers
Pretty soon, the rest of the class was singing along, tapping the rhythm on their desks. Ears open, eyes on one another, not a phone in sight.
Renstrom ends with her experience that eventually, during something significant, people do manage to put their devices down and appreciate/join in the moment
When a non-native English speaker’s phone rings in class, I encourage singing in the native tongue. The rest of us have no idea about the lyrics or pitch – all we can do is listen in awe and appreciate how big the world is. I’ve heard songs in Dutch, Mandarin and Turkish: brief lessons in culture, courtesy of the policy. Once, a student whose phone rang happened to have his guitar with him, and he played an entire Bob Dylan song at the end of class. A kid this year did the robot dance, which was particularly appropriate given that it was in a research seminar on artificial intelligence.
due to Renstrom's policy her students got creative on purpose whenever their phones went off. it was a positive thing that came out of it, introduction to different cultures, various performances on guitar, and even the robot
The results often indicate that students won’t admit to being ‘addicted’, but will confess to using their phones and computers for 12 hours a day. When we talk about technological unemployment, they vehemently insist that humans are better than machines, yet they worry about getting jobs. They recoil at the suggestion that humans might merge with machines.
Renstrom is astonished at her students' admission to technology's everyday dominance, but are hesitant when it comes to the change it could cause to the future.
The students write papers on internet addiction, the consequences of smartphone use, the internet of things, the dark side of Fitbits. And yet they actively demonstrate everything we discuss. One of my students acknowledged that she can’t avoid surfing the web if she uses her laptop in class, yet she doesn’t opt for paper and pencil
this addiction to devices and the internet is known by all who are affected, however they can't bring themselves to part from the devices that bring them distractions.
While I miss taking hard copies to the park to grade, this approach is eco-friendly, nothing gets lost, there are no disputes about whether or when something was turned in, and I can copy and paste examples from these submissions to use in class.
technology does have benefits, such as it is healthier for the environment, it makes sure assignments were turned it, and stuff is saved securely. however, it is a double edged sword if learning is being sacrificed for the benefits.
we can just Google everything. Researchers from University College London report that readers skim information, rarely reread, and engage in something called ‘power browsing’ rather than actual reading.
with Google at our fingertips it's easier to depend on looking everything up than actually reading and doing valuable research
No matter what the technology might be doing to the brain, it’s become increasingly clear to me as a teacher that learning is impaired. I believe that texting is largely to blame for my students not knowing how to use possessive apostrophes, or even how they’re intended to be used.
once again, Renstrom points out another negative to technology use: students brief texting styles and the use of internet language takes a toll on their grammar and use of it.
Because we text with our thumbs and swipe with our index fingers, smartphone users’ brains register more activity in the parts of the brain that correspond to these digits; these areas of the brain are also bigger.
texting and cellphone use is changing our brains for better or worse, but it is amazing that our brains have such a reaction to technology use.
Psychologists believe that social media creates a ‘dopamine induced loop’ of craving and satisfaction. All we have to do is see that someone has given one of our Facebook posts the thumbs-up, and dopamine feeds our brain’s pleasure centre, satisfying the craving. When the effect wears off, we crave it again.
not only is "internet addiction" diagnosed with the same symptoms as drug addiction, but it produces the same reactions as would a drug. receiving acknowledgement on the internet provides a similar dopamine reaction and craving.
. More than 210,000 children aged 6-19 in South Korea could require medication or even hospitalisation for internet addiction, and the country has trained counsellors to specifically address the problem. Roughly 10 million Chinese teenagers have been identified as internet-addicted; China has regulations discouraging online gaming for more than three hours a day. Like South Korea and China, the United States now has internet-addiction treatment and rehab programmes, such as reSTART near Seattle, the country’s first inpatient centre.
internet addiction has gotten so bad and so prominent in young children and teenagers, counselors and experts have taken appropriate action to deal and treat such addiction.
They email me without checking to see if the syllabus has the answer because they can, because I’m supposed to be accessible and answer their questions.
through this Renstrom sees that because everything is so accessible via the internet, students find ways to use it even if and when the answers are in plain view.
Though I’m grateful on a daily basis that Facebook and cellphones weren’t around when I was in college, this isn’t a new problem. Students have always found more satisfying ways to spend time than writing essays and studying for tests; even with nothing urgently (or not so urgently) fun to do, they have always waited until the last minute
students have always looked for distractions or reasons not to do work, only now its way easier and way more accessible to distract one self and lose track of time.
In Chongqing in China, sidewalks contain a special lane for people who can’t be bothered to look up from their phones. And in the German city of Augsburg, there are traffic signals on the ground for people who would otherwise endanger themselves by failing to notice red lights.
the world has made it easier, and if it not enabled, people being glued to their phones constantly by making walking while using a phone simpler.
When reading on screens, students don’t annotate or reread. They get glassy-eyed, zone out, and then struggle to find quotes they only vaguely remember when it comes time to write the paper
because it is harder to "map" a reading on a pdf, students hardly go back to reread annotations, as well as struggle to find and remember information for essays. students inherently struggle more with absorbing information on a screen than on paper.
perhaps because the physical act of turning the pages helps our memories encode the words. Another study revealed comprehension loss for subjects reading PDF versions of texts
even though reading on a device may seem simpler and more accessible, it is proven that comprehension is lost immensely and paper physically has the power to assist in retaining information.
In the minutes before class – the ones I used to spend shooting the breeze with students about TV shows, sports or what they did over the weekend – we now sit in technologically-induced silence. Students rarely even talk to each other anymore.
Renstrom noticed that the same students she would have multiple conversations with were now sitting in silence, waiting for the chance to reach for their phones. this observation showed how dependent her students have become on their phones for comfort and entertainment instead of finding that in each other.
Kurup, 47, discovered that he was having trouble reading long sentences with multiple, winding clauses full of background information. Online sentences tend to be shorter, and the ones containing complicated information tend to link to helpful background material.
reading anything online is always concise and simplified, it also helps that if background info is needed it is linked, so it's harder to maintain focus and interest in sentences in novels that ramble on about the same thing.
Reading in print even gave us a remarkable ability to remember where key information was in a book simply by the layout, researchers said. We’d know a protagonist died on the page with the two long paragraphs after the page with all that dialogue.
the brain can identify patterns, and through this it can "map out" a novel while reading, but because the brain is learning "nonlinear reading" it makes it harder to remember where key points are so we end up skimming and jumping.
The brain was not designed for reading.
through science it is proven the brain learns how to read, like adapting to shortcuts, it can relearn how to deep read again.
It was torture getting through the first page. I couldn’t force myself to slow down so that I wasn’t skimming, picking out key words, organizing my eye movements to generate the most information at the highest speed
our brains have adapted to absorb as much info as possible in the smallest amounts of time, that it doesn't allow us to "slow read" and digest anymore
The brain is the innocent bystander in this new world. It just reflects how we live. “The brain is plastic its whole life span,” Wolf said. “The brain is constantly adapting.”
because the brain is always adapting to the way we live, it is only natural that the brain develops the shortcuts that are reflected on our screens
“I give it a few seconds — not even minutes — and then I’m moving again,” says Handscombe, a 35-year-old graduate student in creative writing at American University
Due to the fast pace social media and the internet in general have, it's become normal to not spend more than a minute reading before moving onto the next thing.