A new framework for understanding social media | Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a...

great insights | Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age | Clay Shirky

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	• Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age Clay Shirky Penguin Press HC, The, 2010 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Now you can stop cursing the darkness

Arthur Shopenhauer, 19th century philosopher coined "the three stages to a truth"; Ridicule, Objection, and then Apparently Obvious. For anyone who runs a business that is still in the first two stages as to the relevance, strength and permanence of social media and it's role in global commerce, you can stop cursing the darkness. This book is your match. Light it!

A new framework for understanding social media

"One thing that makes the current age remarkable is that we can now treat free time as a general social asset that can be harnessed for large, communally created projects, rather than as a set of individual minutes to be whiled away one person at a time," according to Clay Shirky in this book. The time which people are no longer spending passively watching television can now become what the author calls "cognitive surplus".

People who used to spend most of their free time consuming are now voluntarily making and sharing things. Most of the "user-generated content" that they are making and sharing is of low quality, but this is the start of a "participatory culture" rather than a passive culture. The means for this change is provided by social media tools; the motivation is people's intrinsic need for autonomy and competence; and the opportunity is created by the patterns of our lives as social creatures.

The book provides a very interesting explanation for the successes of Wikipedia, open-source software and similar things which rely on careful co-ordination of large-scale volunteer efforts. I found the chapters on motives and opportunity less interesting because much of the material has already been covered in other books on behavioural economics. On the whole, though, I think that the book does provide a valuable framework for understanding the new age of social media.

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great insights

Shirky's book was a great read. He identifies research and insights that I found beneficial as both a person and social scientist. I highly recommend this book.

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Connected world

The ability to create and share, in the public, on a large scale, without the regards for geography or other "social norms" is a new phenomenon, but as the author argues, it is here to say - and that's a good thing. From lolcat photos to wikipedia, the "surplus" which we previously channeled into more passive or local activities can now be (more) effectively coordinated and captured using the internet: open source, political movements, youtube, blogs, and the list goes on. Of course, this same technology can be used for deviant intentions as well.

As Clay Shirky points out, our track record for being able to predict how technology will impact us and our social norms is very poor. For that reason, there is no one verdict or strategy for the new "social" world we live in, instead we should keep trying and not limit ourselves or our imagination in where this "cognitive surplus" can take us.

It's a refreshing read, as it avoids all the usual "recipe for social media" nonsense, and also provides a nice set of examples and historical comparisons from centuries past - the technology and context is new, the social turmoil is not. Highly recommend it.

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The thing I'll take away from this book is how to put social commentary in the right content. Instead of asking "Why would someone do this?" you need to ask "Why does the world need this?"

The author of the breakout hit Here Comes Everybody reveals how new technology is changing us from consumers to collaborators, unleashing a torrent of creative production that will transform our world.

For decades, technology encouraged people to squander their time and intellect as passive consumers. Today, tech has finally caught up with human potential. In Cognitive Surplus, Internet guru Clay Shirky forecasts the thrilling changes we will all enjoy as new digital technology puts our untapped resources of talent and goodwill to use at last.

Since we Americans were suburbanized and educated by the postwar boom, we've had a surfeit of intellect, energy, and time-what Shirky calls a cognitive surplus. But this abundance had little impact on the common good because television consumed the lion's share of it-and we consume TV passively, in isolation from one another. Now, for the first time, people are embracing new media that allow us to pool our efforts at vanishingly low cost. The results of this aggregated effort range from mind expanding-reference tools like Wikipedia-to lifesaving-such as Ushahidi.com, which has allowed Kenyans to sidestep government censorship and report on acts of violence in real time.

Shirky argues persuasively that this cognitive surplus-rather than being some strange new departure from normal behavior-actually returns our society to forms of collaboration that were natural to us up through the early twentieth century. He also charts the vast effects that our cognitive surplus-aided by new technologies-will have on twenty-first-century society, and how we can best exploit those effects. Shirky envisions an era of lower creative quality on average but greater innovation, an increase in transparency in all areas of society, and a dramatic rise in productivity that will transform our civilization.

The potential impact of cognitive surplus is enormous. As Shirky points out, Wikipedia was built out of roughly 1 percent of the man-hours that Americans spend watching TV every year. Wikipedia and other current products of cognitive surplus are only the iceberg's tip. Shirky shows how society and our daily lives will be improved dramatically as we learn to exploit our goodwill and free time like never before.

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