4, Illustrating Concepts

Assignment 4: Illustrating Concepts

After watching Philip Zimbardo’s “The Secret Powers of Time” video and then comparing it to an animated recreation of Zimbardo’s presentation “RSA Animate – The Secret Powers of Time,” it was quite clear the difference between the two videos (even though it was the same briefing).  I personally found the animated presentation superior to Zimbardo’s talking head video when comparing the ideas and presentation.  Below I explain both videos and then provide my reasoning for preferring the animated versus the lecture video of the material.

            Philip Zimbardo is a Stanford Psychology professor who wrote a book called “The Time Paradox” in 2008.  This original video is a recording of Zimbardo’s lecture providing a presentation on his book and the concepts he had discovered in regards to time and the perspective of this in children.  The video takes place in an auditorium full of people.  He stands at a podium with a screen behind him that presents some of his data slides.  The video/briefing Zimbardo gives runs approximately forty minutes.  Zimbardo’s argument is in regards to attitudes toward time in our lives, where it is mostly an unconscious act, where these attitudes can shape our personalities and the lives we end up leading.   This video is informative, on the long side, filled with lots of information/data/videos of proving the concepts, and set in an academia environment.

            In the second video featured, it takes Zimbardo’s lecture video and transforms it into a somewhat animated presentation.  The animated presentation takes the audio of the lecture but edits it to where it only provides the main points of the briefing.  This video lasts approximately ten minutes and provides only a white board and someone drawing pictures (in fast motion to speed up the process) of what Zimbardo is presenting.   The video is short, to the point, and entertaining.

            The whole point of Zimbardo’s lecture is the importance of time and how it affects our lives.  He explains that there are 6 main time zones that people live in; 2 past, 2 present, and 2 future.

People focus on the past focus on the memories/good old times (past positive), and the others focus on regret/failure (past negative).  Two present oriented; hedonistic (live for pleasure/knowledge/sensation and avoid pain), or the others that believe life is fated by religion/class/status/socio-economic standing, and that it doesn’t pay to plan.  Finally the future oriented; learned to work rather than play/resist temptation, the other is based off that true life doesn’t begin until after death of the mortal body (depending on your religion).  The future oriented trust that when you make a decision for the future, it’ll carry out.  Zimbardo states that we are all born present hedonists because we want things right away, pleasure, and avoid pain.  However, family and schooling help teach us how to go from present hedonists to future oriented citizens.  He also states that those of Catholic religion seem to be more present or past oriented, whereas those of the Protestant religion are future oriented.  Time duration and pace of life compared to different cultures and cities. High pace of life are more prone to heart disease.  Zimbardo describes that when kids drop out of school, it affects their growth from present to future oriented and could possibly push them into the past negative category.  Unfortunately boys are more likely to drop out of school than girls, and that boys are more inclined to expose themselves to video gaming which affects their brain functioning.  Zimbardo emphasizes that this outcome is a recipe of disaster for developing boys in America.  He believes that specific forms of technology is are causing boys the problem to grow into future oriented citizens because video gaming and other forms of technology are more attractive/fun/exciting for boys and it allows them to live in a world they create.  He believes their brains are being digitally rewired which he says they will never fit in a traditional analogue classroom because this would be boring to them and it lacks their control.  If schools go back to focusing on reading/writing/arithmetic school are doomed to fail because kids are being reprogrammed in learning.  They don’t want a passive environment.  This results to a present hedonistic mindset.  When kids are present oriented, they know the future consequences however that knowledge doesn’t change their behavior, whereas future oriented kids know the consequences and manage their behavior to stay on the straight and narrow.  He believes we are underestimating the power of technology in rewiring people’s brains.  We are an impatient society and there is a fundamental change in our culture.

            I believe Zimbardo is somewhat right in what he is stating.  After watching his video and then the second one, I realized that I am becoming more and more impatient with long videos that don’t just get to the point.  The animated video did just that.  I don’t believe it is just children’s minds that are being rewired and reprogrammed, but adults as well.  We are becoming a society where we want things now and hate to wait.  Our culture is fundamentally changing, but not just for kids.  Education is still in the traditional analogue structure, in which will continue to fail in a society that is constantly changing.  Ironically, comparing the two videos, it emphasizes my person time perspective with what’s going on around me.  I preferred the shorter, animated video of Zimbardo’s lecture because it was short and to the point, which highlighted Zimbardo’s concepts of time and our attitudes.