Response to Clay Shirky's TED talk

At first, after watching Clay Shirky’s TED talk, I was highly highly confused. I couldn’t understand how the daycare example and cognitive surplus went together. But then I thought of Dan Pink’s example of Wikipedia versus a Microsoft run/owned company and which would be more successful, which Pink referenced in both his TED talk as well as his book A Whole New Mind. In this example Wikipedia comes out as more successful, and is a great example of cognitive surplus. Shirky defines cognitive surplus as the ability of the world’s population to volunteer and to contribute and to collaborate on large, sometimes global projects. He goes on to explain that cognitive surplus is made of two things. The first thing is the world’s free time and talents; the world has over a trillion hours a year of free times to commit shared projects. The second thing is the media landscape; in the 20^th century created people that are very good at consuming, however with media advances we are discovering that we like to create and to share. This relates to the daycare situation because the beginning with the social agreement, there was no punishment or consequence for parents picking their kids up late, then there were less late pickups. Whereas after a consequence was added with the contractual agreement, there were more pickups because the parents felt like there was no adverse impact on anyone like there was before, because the workers were being compensated for their extra time. The social contract is similar to cognitive surplus because the parents were volunteering to pick their kids up at the normal time.

Shirky also talked about communal value versus civic value and how they make up the two types of cognitive surplus. Communal value is described as something that is created by the participants for each other. Communal value is everywhere, every time you see a large aggregate of shared, publicly available data. An example of communal value is LOLcats, but the problem with this is that it is a largely solved problem. Civic value is something that is created by the participants but is enjoyed by society as a whole. It is created to make life better for everyone in the society. Ushahidi and the similar sites are very good example of civic value.

Clay Shirky’s speaking techniques and presentation style were very interesting. He brought up humor in his presentation occasionally throughout, however there wasn’t much build up. The way he did this created a nice subtle yet humorous layout. However, in the other TED talks there was more humor and more storytelling, which created a more enjoyable presentation. Although, Shirky’s TED talk was much shorter than the previously watched TED talks by about 7 minutes, so there wasn’t as much time to tell whimsical and humorous tales that related to his subject of cognitive surplus. In addition, Clay projected his voice very well, he didn’t mumble, or stumble on his words. He stood tall and looked very professional as well as comfortable.

The topic of cognitive surplus doesn’t directly affect me, but it is something that I see in the everyday world. I use sites like Photobucket, YouTube, etc. almost everyday. I even have things on these sites, but I have never stopped to think about the principal of cognitive surplus and what it means in relation to these sites. Websites like these are prime examples of communal value; they are created by the participants for the participants. I also use sites like Wikipedia, which is an example of civic value. Any open source website is either one or the other. But this fact is not something I have ever thought about. One thing that I question with this, is how reliable are these sources. Teachers constantly say that we cannot rely on Wikipedia as a source because anyone with a computer can get on and edit the information

and therefore it is not reliable. However we can use videos from YouTube as a source in our online essay. So how can we find the balance between the two? That’s just the problem; you cannot get the serious examples without the throwaway examples. But if you think about it, the stupidest creative act is still a creative act regardless of whether or not it is a throwaway example.