I’m not really sold on either of the ideas I am posting about. If I was forced to pick between the two, I would pick the slacktivism idea, but I am still trying to find a shift that I am one hundred percent committed to.
My first idea for a paradigm shift is the shift from actual activism to internet slacktivism. Before the rise of the internet and social media, to actually make a change in the world around you, you had to actually act. These actions included anything from actually traveling to the areas you were trying to help, or donating time to a specific charity or cause. Nowadays, however, if you want to “help” you can stay at your computer screen and “share” a cause with your friends and donate money to charities! You get a feeling of gratification from doing absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, these generally do nothing to make change, as sharing different causes just enable your friends to do the same thing and the charities that pop up on social media usually do not use the money you donate to actually help anything. It just lines the pockets of the executives of the charities. The KONY 2012 movement and anything having to do with Susan G. Coleman come to mind as a few charities who do not use the money you donate for actual change.
I’m not sure if this is a paradigm shift, but my second idea for a shift was going to highlight the recent court case surrounding the University of Texas Law School. In the case, a white student alleged she was denied admission to the University because she was white. This has been a reoccurring problem for many white students applying to college, which is the same problem that many minority races faced during the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, granted on a much smaller scale. The shift in this scenario is that universities are accepting more minorities than they are white students. If I did this, I would analyze if this was actually happening, or if it was just blown entirely out of proportion. (Again, I’m not sure if this is a paradigm shift, so if I am wrong please correct me).
Also, adding to the stuff he posted today, I like the idea of possibly doing the change in warfare due to new drone technology.
My favorite Ted Talk is Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture. I’m not really sure if it is classified as a Ted Talk but it is on the Ted website and I haven’t seen a Ted Talk other than that one. Here’s a link to it. I really enjoyed this lecture because of its context (Randy was dying of pancreatic cancer at the time) and because I read his book and really enjoyed it. I highly recommend watching this if you have not seen it yet.
It seems you have a lot of good solid starting points for the first idea. I’m especially interested in how you might show the idea of slacktivism in deviating from actual help (especially the monetary aspect of it). However the second idea also sounds intriguing (majority becoming the minority). Either one would be good, though the first idea might have more information out there to draw from.
I really like your first idea, and while i was reading it, KONY 2012 was the first thing that popped into my head. I think it is fascinating to look into how the influences you see on the internet or on facebook can completely shift ones views, even if that person has no idea what the cause actually is. They see their social media friends fighting for that cause, so they jump on the bandwagon and fight on with them.