THE FIVE MINDS FOR THE FUTURE

In this weekly reading, Howard Garder address what people need 5 minds nowadays;disciplined mind,synthesizing mind, creating mind,respectful mind,ethical mind.For me as a international student who are from China, in our culture ,the last two minds would be most important, or it could be seen as the basic personality quality. And Garder especially care to mention the importance of the creative mind which i agree with. Because the creation is becoming the most important quality in China. It is obviously that the population is huge in China, the pressure of competition also extensively in China’s major cities.

For a long time, we all have a dram, which is people trend to summarized those who change the world, and promoting human progress cattle people come to the conclusion that some things in common, to provide reference for the own and later time,like Steve jobs,But this is not an easy thing, the great man a different character, different backgrounds, their success path cannot follow, also not good copy.What if they really have in common, that is they all have very strong creativity.

Overall creativity is a very complicated phenomenon, any single condition is not enough to lead to the generation of ideas.Focus on creative work, enjoy your work and do not care about the details of life.Success is included with the harvest, target is not the beginning.Great achievements of creativity is usually not a brainwave, but the result of the whole, is the process of slow, even last a lifetime.

In this weekly reading, the author Judy Wajcman talks more about how we manage our time. She explains why we interpret our experiences with digital technology as inexorably accelerating everyday life. Being in a rush lifestyle drives our daily life. Is that good or not? Is a faster life really help to build a modern societies? Actually, it is not about speed, being better and using the tools to this end rather than being used by the tools.

I have read a quite similar book online years ago.  《Dark Time》The author weipeng Liu used to be a blogger, he shared his point of view on his blog, compare with Judy Wajcman, he is draw more attention to advice young people how to be good use of their time. There is a part in the book really remarkable, to translated here,"Our life is like an hourglass, everyone’s hourglass filled with the amount of the sand, and everyone live almost long.The difference is that some people’s hourglass necks are small, some coarser hourglass necks are big.The big neck is to capture every grain of sand of time, although the amount of sand, but relatively have a longer life."

In this weekly reading, it addressed about the craftsman mindset, Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that “follow your passion" is a good advice. According to the book:
“If you want them in your working life, you need something rare and valuable to offer in return. In other words, you need to be good at something before you can expect a good job.The narratives in this book are bound by a common thread: the importance of ability."

The craftsman mindset is crucial for building a career you love.The deep questions driving the passion mindset – “Who am I?" and “What do truly love?"-are essentially impossible to confirm. “Is this who I really am?" and “Do I love this?" rarely reduce to a clear yes-or-no response. In other words, the passion mindset is almost guaranteed to keep you perpetually unhappy and confused.

Steve Jobs had a speech in 2005 Stanford university graduation ceremony, “You’ve got to find what you love.The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle.”

Steve jobs is not the first person to put forward the idea.Since the last century, in a lot of career development and success in the book, all mentioned “follow your passion", told what we should find our true interest, and will it linked with our career, we will be succeed.This view is so popular, until later, a lot of books no longer even argumentation and emphasized the importance of it, and tell we should how to find our passion.

To sum up,Learn to think in artisans, honed in the concrete work of self unique skills, attention to efforts to the world, rather than the world gives to the self.Skills is to obtain working capital, later turn into the strength of self.

Zhu, Ying, & Rosen, Stanley. (2010). Art, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

This book is tell more about the context of Chinese cinema, composed by three main parts. The first part put focus on film industry, to tell the audience about the local and global markets. It has been states the evolution of Chinese film as an industry at very begin,then talked more about Chinese cinema’s international market.

As a international student especially from China, i know that the content of Chinese film can not ignore politics, in this book second part has draw attention to that.Be seen as a part of Chinese film culture, the author talked about 1960s to 1980s this special period of time, more of that, it is also important to illustrate the history of Chinese film.

Moreover, in the part three, the art form has been introduced, for example, the fifth generation auteurs, also the case of Zhang Yimou’s early works. Most cinematic art form has been told. Normally, the filmmakers’ work can represented the society current situation，in especial Chinese film industry. In this part, it helps a lot when i was researching the gender of Chinese filmmakers. It explain the style and authorship with the background of time period which is very good, it has a clear time period for understanding how Chinese film has been development and revolution.So many significant Chinese filmmakers has been mentioned, like Zhang Yimou, Jia Zhangke and Feng Xiaogang. 

Chau, J., Rosen, Stanley, Cooper, Eugene, & Goldstein, Joshua. (2010).The Chinese Film Industry’s Soft Power Implications, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.

Compare with any other medium, film has been seen as soft power in many contexts, and Chinese-language film has the potential to be a form of soft power. In this article, it has comprehensive

analyze how Chinese film as a from of soft power which related to the Chinese culture, at the same time it would be good to compare with the American Film.

On the other hand, in the second chapter, the author has introduced the production and distribution system of Chinese-language film, which not necessary put in our group work but good to have a overall reading. At the third part of my reading, the author put focus on the limitations of Chinese-language film as soft power which is very important. It gives quite few films as example, this is a good way for me to understand the impact of Chinese-language film on American audiences, which case study would be easy reading. In addition, Chau has pay a lot attention to the comparison. This is a good research for our group when we doing comparing to United States, not only film form but also, economic aspects. Moreover, Chau has also mentioned the difference between Chinese filmmakers and American studios, which is also a good comparison points. From reading  we know that China still struggles to use their own cultural products in their films while Hollywood has capitalized on its system.

This weekly reading is talking about people who work in media industry, the situation of those labour, and also pay attention to those who are informal media work has a real downside which is repetitive and lowly paid, especially for freelancers and other workers at the bottom of the food chain.Ken Muise as a freelance creator gives some advices. Indeed, in that chapter, we also address that informal modes of media work. As authors noted: “There would be no culture, no media, without labor. Labor is central to humanity, but largely absent from our field.” To conclude, we need formalization, the understanding of that need across time and space.

I am used work as a editor for internship which in another word could be freelancers, so i know the feeling of it,especially in this circumstances,different background, international student, work for Chinese enterprise. Actually, Chinese enterprise means non-standard. However, the author also explains: “Informality is the structuring principle in which many small and medium-sized new media companies seem to operate:finding work,recruiting staff,getting clients are all seemingly removed from the formal sphere governed by established procedures,equal opportunities legislation, or union agreements, and located in an arena based on informality, sociality, and ‘who you know’ ”. So first step, instead of repressed, we should pay more attention to apparent conundrum debate the utopian claims for coexisting formality and informality- brought into the open and discussed.