We had our first Socratic Seminar on Wednesday! It was far better than anything that we ever had in Ms. Lucy's class, although that's not saying very much… but either way, the discussion was okay. I personally thought we were going to apply the Smith's four forces and apply them to China (hence why we watched Edward Burtynsky's TED talk). I do think that the discussion had too many times where people were trying to talk for the sake of talking (?), and that they did just trail off into streams of consciousness. The ideas that weren't in the readings that were thrown around could have been researched better too because people did talk about certain things that were unfeasible within the limited timeframe they discussed. I think it was nice that we did stay on the topic of The World in 2050 and its contents, but I also think that discussing that, instead of discussing Manufactured Landscapes (or at least Burtynsky talking about it), was more abstract and less definitive? Applying the ideas to China instead of the world in general would have been more tangible and concrete, rather than kind of shooting in the dark. Our focus on The World in 2050 and hypotheticals, I think, is why we didn't have as much credible information to back our statements (or at least we're not nearly knowledgable enough to make those sorts of claims any authority). I say we should focus more closely on situations that are less hypothetical in nature in the future to ensure more concrete statements. I could have talked hella more too, but I guess I wasn't nearly that comfortable in discussing such abstract topics. It could have gone better ^_^