It is a gorgeous afternoon here in St. Louis after a morning of rain and I have found myself in the usual haunt –with a large chunk of unexpected free time–with my left foot soaked and my right foot dry after a puddle across the street got the better of my agility, thinking about cognitive surplus.
At the very moment I had built the impetus to write that first sentence and plunge myself into the act of putting “black on white” a friend, an expert in paleotypography (Newton, primarily), comes to me with an existential crisis which evolves into a long conversation. The gist of our discussion is the obvious absurdity of his work on seemingly unimportant minutia in the face of unresolved injustices in the world. The hypotheticals of youth, his free time, and frustrated efforts led him to feel guilt for his sins of omission: he has done nothing to make the world better. The man who had dismounted his Harley at the peak of our conversation aptly said, “These are the problems of a man with a full belly.”
Too true and directly relevant to Clay Shirky’s point (text or video):
If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would’ve come off the whole enterprise, I’d say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened–rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before–free time.
Full bellies and free time can be as much an asset as a deficiency and Clay articulates well they means a society cops with such existential dilemmas:
I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.
The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing– there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.
In an age where there is cognitive surplus (his phrase), easy exchange of information, I think, exacerbates these sentiments. His point was that the dawn of the internet and its increasing use is a boon for this cognitive surplus, a good medium for its trade, through blogging and content creation. However, in light of the social injustices in this world, I suspect blogging in all its forms is hardly the answer–and Clay, I presume, would agree with me. While it does get people thinking and interacting with ideas in a more engaging way then, say, television, it still is a means for deferral at worst and merely a way to organize data at its best. Cognitive surplus is certainly a blessing for Western culture but only if we can figure out how to cash it in.
This is very much Clay’s idea and I suggest you go check out his perspective.