Friday, March 20, 2020

Zeitgeist spirit

Zeitgeist spirit The digital age has brought several conveniences and inconveniencies to the modern life. The sweeping changes that have been brought about by the digital age have affected almost all aspects of life. The ease of access to information has also enabled people to question their choices in life and contemplate how their careers will be affected by the digital age.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Zeitgeist spirit specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More This happens to two salesmen whose careers become irrelevant due to the digital age. These two men are the subject of the movie â€Å"The Internship† which premiered in 2013. The movies portrays several shocks that have been brought about by the digital age including diminishing careers, changing work environments, changes in employer-employee relations, among other shocks. The dynamics of the business world are also shifting from a profit oriented business culture towards a more people oriented corporate culture. Over the last ten years, several movies have addressed various angles of these changes in the employer-employee relations through several movies such as â€Å"The Horrible Bosses† and â€Å"The Heist†. These movies depict the souring relationships between employers and employees. The recent revolution in the corporate world involves bridging this gap and making employees feel more like part of the corporate world and less like ‘tools’ to be used by corporate world. This revolution has brought about workplace day-care programs, extended paternity leaves, recreational facilities in the workplace, additional employee freedom, and giving employees access to free stuff. â€Å"The Internship† is able to capture the Zeitgeist spirit of the changes occasioned by the digital age and the quest to bridge the employee-employer gap in today’s corporate environment. â€Å"The Internship† is a movie about two men, Billy and Nick who find themselves jobless after their line of business becomes obsolete. This is after their employer goes out of business due to the diminishing demand for watches. Billy then applies for the internship positions at the giant tech company, Google.Advertising Looking for essay on art and design? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The two friends are consequently accepted for the summer internship in spite of their advanced ages. At Google, Nick and Billy find themselves as the odd interns when they are pitted against the other ivy-league schooled interns. The terms of the internship specify that interns â€Å"form teams that compete against each other and the members of the winning team get jobs at Google† (The Internship). Billy and Nick team up with three other odd-placed interns and their group is led by an equally odd character, Stuart. The movie depicts among other things the work envi ronment at Google, the interrelationships between top-level employees and lower-level employees, and the type of employees that are found at Google. Google is a company with a global outlook and it represents the most advanced level of digital culture. Right from the time Billy and Nick arrive at Google headquarters, they are bombarded with shocking levels of advanced digital technology. For instance, at the company’s entrance the two interns encounter a car that is ‘driving itself’ (The Internship). This advancement in digital technology is a reality in the modern world. The leading players in digital technology are always trying to outdo each other by fronting what is thought to be the most advanced level of digital technology (Kosfeld and Siemens 25). The remotely driven car is an example of displays of advanced digital technology. Due to the changing nature of the digital technology, today’s society is always on the lookout for the ‘newestâ€℠¢ form of technology. This need has prompted tech companies to dedicate a vast amount of their resources to finding the next big thing in technology. This movie represents the spirit of the fast changing digital age in a number of ways. In another instance, the interns’ teams are given the challenge of coming up with a phone app that is most likely to appeal to the public. Therefore, the winning app must represent the newest levels of digital technology. Corporations are going to great lengths to ensure that their employees are representative of the diversity of the modern world. Globalization has made it possible for anyone to work anywhere in the planet irrespective of the accompanying differences in cultures.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Zeitgeist spirit specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The corporations are also working hard to bridge the cultural gap between different ethnicities around the world. For example, today there are various technological applications that are aimed at bridging this cultural gap. â€Å"The Internship† represents the spirit of diversity through the movie’s cast. The interns in Billy and Nick’s group consist of Neha who is of Indian descent, Yo-Yo who is Chinese, among other diverse groups and mentalities. For example Neha, Stuart, Graham, and Yo-Yo all exhibit several deficiencies in their social behaviors. The spirit of diversity in the modern world is not restricted to racial diversity. However, diversity today calls for the inclusion of people who exhibit differing social behaviors. For example, the popular American comedy â€Å"The Big Bang Theory† portrays diversity among people of different intellectual abilities. â€Å"The Internship† seeks to capture the same spirit by portraying interns of different age groups, races, social orientations, and intellectual abilities (The Internship). The issues of misunderstandin gs among diverse groups are not synonymous with the digital age. For instance, the race issue does not come up in â€Å"The Internship† but other forms of diversity such as age and intellectual diversity are referred to in the movie. This spirit of the changing nature in diversity is well captured in the movie. From the 1900s, the relationship between employees and employers has been strained. First, there were the repressive working conditions during the industrial revolution (Bernstein 67). Then there were the employee inequality issues in the 1950s. More recently, the disparities between top-level and low-level employees that were highlighted during the recession have been the subject of rebuke within the modern society. This movie is able is able to capture the spirit of the changing nature of corporate culture. For example, the issue of employee rank is not emphasized in the movie. It is not until the end of the movie when the identity of the silent employee commonly kno wn as â€Å"Headphones† is revealed. ‘Headphones’ holds the esteemed position of the head of Google search. Previously, he could only be found around the premises blending with the rest of employees including interns.Advertising Looking for essay on art and design? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Moreover, most employees in the movie are given titles in accordance with the departments they work for as opposed to having titles that reflect on their rank. The movie is able to capture the spirit of change in the employer-employee relations. â€Å"The Internship† is a movie that details the work environment in one of the most respected corporations in the world. The movie is able to depict how the digital age is changing people’s lives as well as the corporate environment. The movie represents the Zeitgeist spirit in matters of the digital age and the corporate environment. In future, the movie will be used to investigate the digital age at its prime. Bernstein, Irving. Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker 1933-1941, New York, NY: Haymarket Books, 2010. Print. Kosfeld, Michael and Ferdinand Siemens. Competition, Cooperation, and Corporate Culture. The RAND Journal of Economics 42.1 (2011): 23-43. Print. The Internship. Dir. Shawn Levy. Perf. Vince Vau ghn and Owen Wilson. Wild West Picture Show Productions, 2013. Film.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

5 Brainstorming Strategies for Writers

5 Brainstorming Strategies for Writers 5 Brainstorming Strategies for Writers 5 Brainstorming Strategies for Writers By Mark Nichol Brainstorming is useful whether you have too few ideas, or too many. It can help you whether you don’t know how to organize your thoughts, or whether you don’t even have any thoughts. But before you start, remember the first rule of brainstorming: Enumerate, don’t evaluate. Just get the ideas down, and don’t judge them or organize them until the creative phase has wound down. 1. Cubing In this strategy, a topic or idea is examined from six distinct viewpoints hence the name. Describe the topic (what is it?), compare it (what is it like or unlike?), associate it (what does it make you think of?), analyze it (what constituent parts is it made of?), apply it (how can it be used?), and argue for and/or against it (how can you support or oppose it?). Cubing was developed as a critical-thinking exercise to help students express their thoughts in opinion essays, but it can be adapted for general nonfiction writing, though it is of limited value for fiction. A similar technique is to explore three perspectives: The first is to describe the topic and its features, its constituent parts, and its challenges, and to compare and contrast it with other topics. The second is to trace the history of the topic and the influences on it throughout that history, and the topic’s evolution. The third is to map the topic to similar contemporary topics as well as to its influences, and to topics that it influences. 2. Freewriting Write. You don’t know what to write? Then write that. Just write. Have a quantitative goal: 500 words, three pages, five minutes it doesn’t matter. Just write. Do not pause in order to spell correctly or write flawlessly, and don’t go back to rewrite. Turn off your inner editor. Do not strive for coherence. Just write. Consider closing your eyes while you’re writing or typing, or turn the computer monitor off. Just write. 3. Listing If your intent is to write an essay or a review or profile, what do you want to communicate? If you wish to craft a story, which ideas and elements do you wish to convey? Jot down a list of phrases or single words you will return to later. For nonfiction, the list can consist of opinions, arguments, facts, questions, or components, or any combination of the above. For fiction, list people, places, and things, values and qualities, goals and obstacles. Don’t outline at this point. Outlining stalls the creative act of brainstorming by requiring you to evaluate and organize your thoughts. Remember, brainstorming should be an uninhibited activity. 4. Mapping Mapping, also known as clustering and webbing, is a graphic form of listing that simply involves jotting down ideas on a large writing surface and then making connections by associating similarly themed ideas with color-coded circles or underlines of distinct patterns and then indicating other relationships by linking with lines. How you produce the map, exactly, is up to you, but as with any other brainstorming tool, wait until you’ve (temporarily) run out of ideas before you begin making connections but don’t hesitate to continue recording new ideas as you marshal others. The Creately blog has a great article with several other visual brainstorming strategies you can try. 5. Researching You know the topic you want to write about, or the outline of a novel’s plot, but you don’t know how to populate the piece with ideas? Go to the reference section of a library, or call up reference Web sites. As you read about a current or past event, or a contemporary or historical issue, record the ideas in list or map form. You might find the key point you’ve been looking for, or change the one you had in favor of this new detail. If you’re planning on writing a novel, learn more about the city or country in which it takes place (even if it’s the one you live in). If it’s a historical novel, read about the social structure and cultural atmosphere of the time and place, and take notes about how people dressed, talked, ate, worked, and engaged in other quotidian activities. The Next Step If one of these strategies doesn’t work for you, try another until something clicks. Even if one does work, try more than one. Then, whichever technique(s) you’ve employed, review your result. Don’t feel that you’ve failed if your work does not yield eloquence or epiphanies, but search for whatever may help you develop your writing assignment or project. If you feel that an outline is useful, make one after you complete the brainstorming activity. If you don’t, launch into whatever part of the topic attracts your attention based on your brainstorming output. You don’t have to start at the beginning, and you don’t have to complete one part of your assignment or project before you move on to another one. Just build on your background work one piece at a time as it develops. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Freelance Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:What is the Difference Between "These" and "Those"?The Letter "Z" Will Be Removed from the English Alphabet15 English Words of Indian Origin