Paradoxical Thinking of Google

Paradoxical Thinking of Google Abstract Paradoxical thinking is looking at a problem from opposite perspectives. We live in a complex world which is full of paradoxes. Paradoxical thinking has contributed to many companies success. It is important for us to know about paradoxical thinking. This article analyzed that how Google applies paradoxical thinking in their interface, products and '20 percent program'. Then the article indicated that the key to learn paradoxical thinking is open in mind. Paradoxical Thinking Introduction Before we get started, we need to know what is paradoxical thinking.A paradox is a group of statements that are contradictory. And paradoxical thinking is looking at a problem or a situation from different or even opposite perspectives, and finding the same thing which is deep down in two opposite perspectives. (Westenholz, 1993) For example, in the 1830's, Faraday had observed that a current of electricity passing through a wire could cause the magnetized nee dle, which was located close to the wire, to move in a rotational direction. This was the basis of his electric motor. But he didn't stop with this.He twist his mind and found that moving magnets can cause electricity to flow. This is one of the most brilliant application of paradoxical thinking. Paradoxical thinking has helped plenty of companies to be successful. The following research on Google is trying to find out how they practice paradoxical thinking. Research on Google Company History Google Inc. is an American corporation which provides internet-related products and services. It has the dominant position in this field. Google Inc. was founded in 1998 and set up the workspace in a garage.At the end of 1998, Google was recognized as the search engine of choice by â€Å"PC Magazine†. In 1999, Google received 25 million dollars investment and started its rapid growth. In 2000, Google started to release multiple language versions of Google. com and became the world's larg est search engine by acquiring the first billion-URL index. (Schonfeld, 2008)Google's initial public offering of 19,605,052 shares stock took place on Wall Street on August 18, 2004. Opening price: $ 85 per share. And the price is around $700 per share. Recently, Google. om is listed as the internet's first most visited website, and numerous international Google sites are in the top hundred, as well as several other Google-owned sites such as YouTube and Blogger. (â€Å"Our History in Depth† . Google Inc, 2012) Interface At the end of 20th century, countless search engines were published. What makes Google. com outstanding? I think the interface is a very important factor. As we can see in the pictures, many search engines, such as HotBot, Excite, DogPile, used very complex and colorful homepage in order to attract visitors and indicate their websites' powerful functions.While Google. com used a very simple homepage. It only got a logo, a textbox and two buttons on the websit e. At first, the complex homepages maybe more attractive because of their colors and structures. But visitors more concern about the result pages than the search engine page. Then the convenient Google. com became popular. This is a good example of paradoxical thinking. Complexity cannot always be good. Simplicity can be a better choice. Besides the simple homepage, the â€Å"Google doodles† is also a determine difference. The doodles are not just comics, they also include mini games and short animations.Visitors will have fun and learn some knowledge through these doodles. The doodles are great mixed with Google's logo. It will connect visitors good feelings with Google. com and make them more willing to re-visit it again. Sometimes people come back not because the functions, but for the little funny tricks. (Gube, 2009) Products and Services Google provide a variety of services for people and businesses, not just search for the word you typed. The CEO, Larry Page, described the â€Å"perfect search engine† is something that â€Å"understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want. This means making search smarter and faster. You can save time when searching information and have more time on the stuff you are good at. Advertising covers more than 90% of Google's revenue. Google has implemented various innovations in this market. Traditional way of advertising is that showing a product or a service and then trying to raise your interests about it or persuading you to pay it. While Google uses a different way. It takes full advantage of its search engine. The ads show up in the result you found and are related to what you are looking at. Helft, 2009) Ads are presented to you, according your interests. Only a few sentences can be more effectively than traditional ads. And people are more willing to see the ads that are related to what they are looking at. Google search is Google's core product. Now it is far more than a web search engine. You can get access to all the Google's products and services through it. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. They want to build a worldwide information centre. For example, the Google map.You can see almost everywhere all over the world. And you can get various information, such as traffic information, geography information, even the street view. Google also developed Chrome and Android to make it simpler and faster for people to do what they want to online. All the Google products and services are trying to make the complex web and information simpler and easier to access or use. 20 percent time Theories of workplace control don't talk much about freedom. The workplace is often understood as a totalizing environment, saturated with obvious and subtle forms of coercion.It is kind of like a prison camp. While, companies like Google have created environment that resembles a playground more than a prison camp. They use a innovative time off program called â€Å"20 percent time†. This program allows the staff devote 20% of the working time to independent projects of their own choosing. (Walker, 2011) Although, not all the independent projects can be applied, Google have got many innovative products, such as Gmail, Chrome, Google Earth and so on. This program is contra to the theories of workplace control, but it keeps Google's creativity.Culture Google is known for having an informal corporate culture. Unlike other big company, Google has a casual culture. Google has some philosophy like â€Å"you can be serious without a suit†, â€Å"work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun. † (Stross, 2008)They believe that great, creative thing are more likely to happen with the right company culture. It does not just mean lava lamps and rubber balls. The culture put an emphasis on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments has contribute to t heir success.They have built wonderful offices to make employees feel comfortable and fun, and made the company attractive and creative. Learn Paradoxical Thinking Paradoxical thinking is not a talent. It is a skill that you can learn and practice. Paradoxical thinking is looking at a problem or a situation from different or even opposite perspectives. The core is â€Å"outside the box†, which means be open in the mind. We need openness, courage and curiosity to think paradoxically. Openness means that we need to pay attention on our ideas that seem to be ridiculous and be open to learning new subjects.Be brave to try a totally different approach to what you are doing. Be curious about everything, especially that you have been ignoring for granted. Always ask yourself â€Å"Can I change this into the exact opposite? † Being a paradox thinker need to be skeptical. The more skeptical you are the better a paradox thinker you will be. Do not take for granted what others ac cept as a routine (K. R. Ravi). The eight skills related to intelligence are memory, logic, judgment, perception, intuition, reason, imagination and paradoxical thinking.Paradoxical thinking is often regarded as the least used of these skills. This is because that companies that survive hold rational views. While paradoxical thinking involves the ability to reverse, manipulate, combine, synthesize opposites (K. R. Ravi). It is hard to accept paradox for people that cannot live with two seemingly contradictory forces at the same time. Summary We live in a complex world which is full of paradox. It is very important for us to learn paradoxical thinking. (T. Belasen) By thinking paradoxically, we can find new opportunities, improve our performance.For management and leadership, paradoxical thinking means try opposite ways, and find the expectation in these ways. For example, the Greyhound bus line have gone through a very tough time because of the Green Tortoise. The Green Tortoise lin e's price is half of that of Greyhound. It is hard for Greyhound to compete with Green Tortoise on price. Instead of reducing the journey time and cost, the owner of Greyhound increased the journey time from four days to six days. This is trying a opposite way. Since he is more familiar about this place than the Green Tortoise does, he added more ‘fun' into the six days trip.His fun trip strategy gave him a new opportunity and changed travel into a pleasure industry. References â€Å"Our History in Depth† . Google Inc. (2012, October 21). Retrieved from http://www. google. com/about/company/history Gube, J. (2009, September 12). Popular Search Engines in the 90's:Then and Now. Retrieved from http://sixrevisions. com/web_design/popular-search-engines-in-the-90s-then-and-now/ Helft, M. (2009, March 11). Google to Offer Ads Based on Interests. The New York Times. K. R. Ravi. (n. d. ). Paradoxical Thinking. Retrieved from http://www. krravi. com/PARADOXICALTHINKING. df Scho nfeld, E. (2008, January 9). â€Å"Google Processing 20,000 Terabytes a day, and Growing†. Retrieved from TechCrunch. Stross, R. (2008). Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know. New York: Free Press. T. Belasen, A. (n. d. ). Paradoxes and Leadership Roles. Walker, A. (2011, November). ‘Creativity loves constraints': The paradox of Googles twenty percent time. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, pp. 369-386. Westenholz, A. (1993). Paradoxical Thinking and Change in the Frames of Reference. Organization Studies, pp. 37-58.

Plot Analysis

In her ground-breaking play â€Å"A Raisin in the Sun,† Lorraine Hansberry challenged widespread cultural conceptions about African Americans.By focusing her play on stark realism, Hansberry was able to create a play which, in both theme   and technical execution, offered something radically different than the portrayal of American life typically seen on Broadway stages in the mid twentieth century.The impact of the play, both visually and   textually, on American audiences was visceral and controversial. Hansberry relied on depicting vastly disparate emotional states and conditions for her characters, as well as enticing her audience to experience the world of her characters with as much empathy as possible.The play's opening, for example, establishes that the Younger family is waiting for a ten-thousand dollar insurance check to arrive after the death of the family's father.The fact that the family is so steeped in poverty that each of them concocts elaborate schemes and ideas of how to spend the money before it even arrives, grips the reader or alert audience member with emotion and concern.   The â€Å"intrusion† of the expected money also begins the tension in the play and drives the conflicts between the play's characters., most notably between Mama and Walter Lee.In order to engage the audience, and to cause them to identify with the Youngers, Hansberry uses the device of realism, which includes the construction of a one-room apartment set, complete with all the trappings of poverty: cramped quarters, worn furniture and carpets, and a conspicuous lack of privacy.Before the audience has even begun to grasp the events of the   play, they are immediately aware of the family's dire financial situation.The shock of the set at a purely visual and spatial level communicates the Youngers' distress to the audience.   Teh ensuing emotional tension between Mama and her son is meant to show that the external attributes of poverty have corresp onding emotional and psychological impacts and have extended to the relationships between the characters.By the end of the opening scene, the reader or audience member knows that great hope and expectation has been pinned by the family on the insurance money and many readers or spectators of the play would probably intuit that the family's emotional crisis goes far beyond anything which can be repaired with money.The idea is to advance the plot in a realistic manner so that the audience or reader not only experiences the events of the play but feels the emotional resonance which is intended to be a part of the event which are portrayed.   In order to accomplish this, every aspect of the play, not only the plot, are steeped in realism.One element of dramatic technique that enables Hansberry to successfully create a dynamic and realistic drama is her use of vernacular in the play's dialogue.Unlike the blank-verse constructions of Shakespeare, or the witticism of Oscar Wilde, or even the dreamy musings of Tennessee Williams, Hansberry delivers the dialogue of â€Å"A Raisin in the Sun† in colloquial language and this aspect of them play enhances the play's verisimilitude.The realism of the play then causes the audience to more closely identify with the play's characters and plot, and each of these aspects of the play helps to communicate the important sociological and racial themes that drive â€Å"A Raisin in the Sun.†This attention to realism and detail is important to the play's plot, also, because as the vents of the play unfold, the reader is drawn more deeply into an emotional connection with the characters because the characters seem for all intents and purposes to be actual people who face actual, real-life struggles.As the plot progresses, the insurance check actually arrives and in their haste to be a controlling interest in the spending of the money, each of the Youngers manages to ignore the others emotional needs in pursuit of persona l materialistic dreams.When Mama decides to use the money to move the family to a white neighborhood, a further sense of doom pervades th action as the Youngers fall further into emotional discord.Throughout the progression of the plot, the play's dialogue leaves an opening for the emotional outpouring which is markedly absent from the (seemingly banal) progression of events.Hansberry's dialogue, in fact, becomes a key driving force of the play's ultimate revelatory impact on the audience. As the play progresses and the characters become more clearly defined with motivations that the audience can identify with (or despise)   the dialect of the play begins to attain a lyrical uniqueness — a vocal music which was unlike any other play on the Broadway stage of the time.Lines such as â€Å"Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams†¦.’† (29) or â€Å"â€Å"There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t lear ned that, you ain’t learned nothing†¦.†(135) attain the status of aphorism in the context of the play and divulge important social and racial realities that, for most Americans in the mid-twentieth century, existed, if at all, as merely si-debar newspaper articles or in some other abstract realization.Hansberry's play, through its fierce and relentless realism, coupled with its themes of yearning and dreaming seemed to marry the â€Å"American ideal† to the â€Å"American nightmare† in a verbally original and thematically cathartic fashion, elevating the dialogue of racial issues in America to a place of cultural acceptance.Simultaneously, the play's plot moves in an arc of excited expectation to dissolution of dreams while expressing the internal progressions of the characters with a portrayal of external events.When Mrs. Johnson tells the Youngers about a black family that was bombed because they moved into a white neighborhood, the audience feels t he dream of Mama's to live in a better neighborhood deflating.The audience realizes that money, alone, despite the naivete with which the Youngers regard its power, will do little, perhaps nothing, to change the misery of their lives.The Youngers have regarded money and the future hope of what it may bring with a sort of â€Å"exotic† hopefulness which, in its perceived futility during the vents of the play, should cause emotional frustration and dissonance in the reader and in the the audience.This dissonance reflects the same dissonance which exists between the Younger's dreams and their actual position in the world.By combining a realistic set with realistic dialogue, a kind of exoticism was reached by Hansberry, through the depiction of extreme poverty and want, which is a powerful force in granting the play unity of theme, place, and time in keeping with Aristotle's theories of dramatic construction in his Poetics.This latter attribute helps ground the play in the tradit ional dramatic structure which off-sets the aforementioned â€Å"exoticism† of the play's set and characters.Despite the reluctance for most Americans in the late 50's and early 60's to face the racially based challenges of that era, â€Å"A Raisin in the Sun† demonstrated, through creative expression, the urgency of the plight of African Americans in a racist society.The play's climax, when it is decided that — despite the conflicts and hardships that the money has caused —   that Mama's plan to move to a new neighborhood will go through, exerts a sense of hopefulness in the face of manifested obstacles (and potential violence) which seems to suggest that optimism, ambition, and â€Å"togetherness† can weather storms and find fulfillment despite the truth of prejudice and poverty.However, a close reading of the play is just as likely to reveal in the reader, a sense that the Youngers are simply caught in a vicious cycle of hope and despair and t hat with each new breath of hope a corresponding crush of bad luck or ill-fortune will be experienced.   It is not fitting to say that the play, therefore, has a â€Å"happy† ending, but simply an ending which reflects an unending cycle of hope against an equally unending series of obstacles.Work Cited  Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Random House, New York. 1959

Andy

Hello everyone, and thank you for coming today. I start this meeting at Second. II. Explain activity . Motion. A. Today we are going to be making scented sachets, or Axing ABA in cell abortion of the Dragon Boat festival which is on June 2nd. Also, for those of you who are l. Here for the extra credit, you must stay for the entire activity and show Mrs†¦ Hung your finished product before you leave b.So that you are all familiar with what the dragon boat festival is we will be itching a video about the history of this festival, why it is celebrated, and what people do on this day. Pay attention because we will be asking questions after the video Is over. L. What Is this festival know as In Mandarin? A. Duane Joel ii. On the Chinese lunar calendar, when is the festival held? A. May 5 Who's death is this festival commemorating? Iii. A. Qua Yuan iv. Why did he commit suicide? A. The capital of his kingdom was overrun by the enemy v. How did he commit seclude?He commuted suicide by d rowning himself In the river vi. What do people eat when celebrating this day? A. Gong xi or Rice dumplings vii. How did the tradition of the dragon boats come to be? A. The legend that local people paddled out on similar like boo tats to retrieve Qua Yuan's body What are the Axing ABA believed to do? A. They are believed to ward off evil x. What are some fillings that are put inside the gong Uzi? A. Bean paste, ham, and egg yolk x. What are Axing ABA traditionally made of? A. Colorful silk cloth, Silk Ill. Activity a.You all should have gotten 2 two felt cut outs, a needle, and yarn. Is anyone missing anything if you are raise your hand and one of our counsel me members will come and give you whatever you're missing. IV. Directions a. Try to follow along with me as I read you the directions, and project what 1 . First, Thread the yarn through the needle, and meet the end together and tie them in a knot. 2. After you have done that, starting from the edge of the right ear, weave the needle through all of the holes until you get to the edge of the right ear. 3. Oh should have al received cotton, and some scented material Put the cotton in and then put the scented material in 4. Once both the cotton, and the scented material are in, continue weaving until you reach the point in which you started 5. Tie a knot to prevent your Axing ABA from opening. 6. A pair of scissors will be passed around to cut off the excess yarn. V. Finish meeting a. Okay, that's it. If you came here for extra credit don't forget to show Mrs†¦ Hung before you so that you leave and sign out. B. I sojourn this meeting at . Motion. Second

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