Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010)

Really enjoyed this. It's mostly about why people do things (especially on the internet) to amuse or help people for reasons other than money.
It's also kind of about what people have been doing with their free time since they suddenly got a lot more of it in the 20th century, and how just watching TV isn't really enough anymore.
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All through Cognitive Surplus I was compulsively underlining and marking key paragraphs in an approved Jacobsean manner. Shirky elegantly illustrates how participatory culture–like Wikipedia or YouTube–changes the nature of media, and gives names to many of the phenomena we’re peripherally aware of as users. He attempts to draw up guidelines for successful harnessing of cognitive surplus at the end, although I didn’t find that as successful as his catalogue of examples. But the man is amazingly quotable, and you feel like he actually understands where media is going (his online writing on the state of newspapers has been the best analysis of their woes I’ve read). ( )

I found this a fascinating read. He talks about how now, with the combination of surplus time in society (all time that has previously been spent in watching television) plus new opportunities to share and create online (think Wikipedia, Apache, online charities, couchsurfing.org, meet up.com, pickupal etc.) that there are now amazing ways to use our cognitive surplus for public/civic good. Obviously he's talking to readers on the other side of the digital divide, employed people with surplus time and money. He says that people are no longer satisfied to be merely passive consumers of media. Given the opportunity to interact and to create, people prefer that. Gone are the days when only publishers can publish and only organizations can organize. Also, cyberworld, now that so many of us are on it, is no longer separate from the real world. It is part of it. This book crystallized many things I've already been thinking--as I belong to many online/real world communities and I was already in awe of the potentials there. Reading this book made me really excited about the potentials of online sharing/networking and publishing. ( )

We live in amazing times. For the majority of those of us who live in America, we have vast reservoirs of free time.

But how do we choose to use that free time? Sadly, for the last fifty years, we have spent most of it passively watching television, watching television to the exclusion of other more social, more fulfilling activities. Last year, in fact, Americans watched about two hundred billion hours of television. And, even more sadly, studies show that those who watch tv are less happy, more overweight, and less social.

Shirky begins his book with this information, but he does have happier news to report: Americans are gradually beginning to turn off the tv in favor of other, more interactive activities. Shirky looks with great hope at the new social media that allows users to accomplish big social projects in easy ways.

A book that is definitely worth reading.

Genuinely enjoyed this one. Picked it back up after reading the 2/2011 New Yorker piece on the different flavors of internet enthusiasms. Shirky seems a reasoned member of the Never Better camp; and I hope he is right. Is this all a matter of opportunity? Now with technology we have the ability to 'easily' apply our discretionary time to creation and sharing - potentially for the greater good. Will we? ( )