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Clay Shirky

Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age Hardcover – June 10, 2010

by Clay Shirky (Author)

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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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Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Press
Publication date

June 10, 2010
Reading age

18 years and up
Dimensions

6 x 0.85 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

1594202532
ISBN-13

978-1594202537
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Clay Shirky teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, where he researches the interrelated effects of our social and technological networks. He has consulted with a variety of Fortune 500 companies working on network design, including Nokia, Lego, the BBC, Newscorp, Microsoft, as well as the Library of Congress, the U.S. Navy, and the Libyan government. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, Harvard Business Review, Business 2.0, and Wired, and he is a regular keynote speaker at tech conferences. Mr. Shirky lives in Brooklyn.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Press; 1st edition (June 10, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1594202532
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1594202537
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.85 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #755,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #520 in Social Aspects of Technology
- #1,301 in Internet & Telecommunications
- #5,481 in Business Management (Books)

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Clay Shirky

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Clay Shirky teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, where he researches the interrelated effects of our social and technological networks. He has consulted with a variety of groups working on network design, including Nokia, the BBC, Newscorp, Microsoft, BP, Global Business Network, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Navy, the Libyan government, and Lego(r). His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times (of London), Harvard Business Review, Business 2.0, and Wired.

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One of My Top Ten For 2010

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 24, 2010

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One of my Top Ten for 2010:

This is unequivocally one of my favorite books published in 2010 (I read about 100 a year). Shirky is on the faculty of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. He's written Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, consulted for a literal Who's Who in the FORTNE 100, and publishes viewpoints in the NYT, WSJ, The Times (of London) HBR, and Wired.
What the heck is a "cognitive surplus?" Listen to Clay Shirky:

"Imagine treating the free time of the world's educated citizenry as an aggregate, a kind of cognitive surplus. How big would that surplus be?" p. 9.
"When you aggregate a lot of something, it behaves in new ways, and our new communications tools are aggregating our individual ability to create and share, at unprecedented levels of more." P. 25

"The wiring of humanity lets us treat free time as a shared global resource, and lets us design new kinds of participation and sharing that take advantage of that resource. Our cognitive surplus is only potential; it doesn't mean anything or do anything by itself." P. 27

"The cognitive surplus, newly forged from previously disconnected islands of time and talent, is just raw material. To get any value out of it, we have to make it mean or do things. We, collectively, aren't just the source of the surplus; we are also the people designing its use, by our participation and by the things we expect of one another as we wrestle together with our new connectedness." P. 29.

I don't know about you, but at this juncture in the book, I was hooked. A fascinating, tangible reality that Shirky goes on to explore, explain, and exhort us toward realizing the power of the possibilities. This isn't some theoretical mumbo-jumbo, On the contrary, this volumes is filled with practical examples that stimulate the inquiring mind.

In a world where we are constantly being bombarded with images and messages the promote the perception of scarcity (albeit in some cases - a tragic truth), Shirky's message is one that encourages us to combine the cognitive surplus, social networking and ever-advancing tools of technology to make positive impacts that we have heretofore believed to be beyond us.Shirky's point is that we currently possess unrealized abundance, that can (and must) be integrated into new ways to approach both current challenges and innumerable opportunities.
I particularly enjoyed a few comments that Shirky made regarding the dichotomy of amateur vs. professional in today's new reality (think digital media, social networking, You-Tube and the like). Shirky observes:

"The logic of digital media, on the other hand, allows the people formerly known as the audience to create value for one another every day." Today, the revolution is centered on the shock of the inclusion of amateurs as producers, where we no longer need to ask for help or permission from professionals to say things in public." P. 52 (emphasis is mine).

"Amateurs are sometimes separated from professionals by skill, but always by motivation; the term itself derives from the Latin amare-"to love." The essence of amateurism is intrinsic motivation: to be an amateur is to do something for the love of it." P.82-83 (emphasis is mine).

For many, Shirky's thesis of a cognitive surplus will come as somewhat of a surprise. Yet at the author points out: "A surprise is having new information that violates our previously held assumptions. A surprise, in other words, is the feeling of an old belief breaking. The surprise here was that our assumptions about how off-putting new communications technologies were turned out to be absolutely worthless." P. 100

Yet, Shirky remains both optimistic and realistic: Listen to the following:
"Given the right opportunities, humans will start behaving in new ways. We will also stop behaving in annoying old ways, even if we've always tolerated those annoying behaviors in the past." p. 100

"Ways of coming up with the right answer that involve simply asking other people, without internalizing the process, don't actually educate the student." P. 148.
Throwing off old constraints won't lead us to a world of no constraints. All worlds, past, present and future, have constraints; throwing off the old ones just creates a space for new ones to emerge. Increased social production heightens persistent tensions between individual and group desires." P. 162-163. (emphasis is mine).

For me, Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus - Creativity and Generosity In A Connected Age, possessed the power to stimulate my imagination, energize my creative thinking and require me to embrace the prospects for the possible, well beyond the boundaries I came to the book with. Listen to Shirky:

"The world's people, and the connections among us, provide the raw material for cognitive surplus. The technology will continue to improve, and the population will continue to grow, but change in the direction of more participation has already happened. What matters most now is our imaginations. The opportunity before us, individually and collectively, is enormous; what we do with it will be determined largely by how well we are able to imagine and reward public creativity, participation, and sharing. P. 212

In a world deeply embroiled in vicious attempts to hold onto the past coupled with the tension inherent within the necessity to create and innovate - Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus - Creativity and Generosity In A Connected Age is a work that must be devoured to inform this dialog.

Like I said, one of my Top Ten for 2010. A spectacular contribution.

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Mark P. McDonald

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 27, 2010

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Clay Shirky captured the ethos of social media with his book "Here comes everybody." He follows that book up with one that concentrates on the fundamentals of turning our cognitive surplus into value. Cognitive Surplus provides a compelling and clear description of the fundamentals of social media and collaboration as well providing principles that are guiding developments and innovation in this space.

There are many books out there that either describe the social media phenomenon or profess to provide a `recipe' for success. Neither of these approaches can provide you with the insight needed to effectively experiment and deploy social media for the simple reason that social media is changing too fast.

The book is organized into seven chapters that outline a complete way of thinking about social media.

Chapter 1: Gin, Television and Cognitive Surplus sets the context of social change and evolution of free time. This chapter sets the context for the rest of the story giving you the perspective to think through the issues.

Chapter 2: Means discusses the transition of the means of production from one of scarcity controlled by professionals to abundance and the participation of amateurs.

Chapter 3: Motive captures the essence of the reasons why people contribute their time, talent and attention to collective action. Here Shirky talks about issues of autonomy, competence, generosity and sharing.

Chapter 4: Opportunity recognizes the importance of creating ways of taking advantage of group participation. This chapter contains discussions of behavioral economics and the situations which generates group participation.

Chapter 5: Culture discusses the differences between extrinsic rewards - where people are paid to perform a task and the culture of intrinsic rewards - where compensation comes outside of a formal contracted pay.

Chapter 6: Personal, Communal, Public, Civic this chapter brings it all together giving the book a solid foundation illustrated by compelling examples.

Chapter 7: Looking for the Mouse is as meaty a chapter as any in the book. Normally the final chapter wraps up, but here Shirky discusses 11 principles associated with tapping into cognitive surplus. These principles are among the best in the book.

This book gives you a way to thinking about how people contribute their time, attention and knowledge and therefore how you can think about social media. In my opinion, this is THE BOOK to read if you are new to the subject of mass collaboration, social media, Web 2.0 etc. Here is why:

Strengths

Shirky provides a comprehensive discussion of the fundamentals of cognitive surplus and how those fundamentals have changed over time. This provides the reader with a solid foundation to translate their experiences and understanding into a new media.

The book does not talk about specific technologies. I do not think I read the term blog or wiki too often. This is strength, because frankly the technology is changing is too fast. Shirky does discuss the reasons why applications like Napster met with such success.

The book has a gentle blend of academic and journalistic writing. There is real depth of thinking in the book. One example is the discussion about the fallacy of Gen X being different or irrational. At the same time the writing is clean, well organized and easy to read.

The book provides a thoughtful discussion of the principles that drive social media and give the reader a framework that they can apply to their own situation. A word of warning, you will have to think about your situation and these ideas

Challenges

Readers looking for a recipe will be somewhat disappointed as Shirky recognizes that social media solutions will continue to depend on design principles more than detailed processes.

The book occasionally falls back into a policy mode as it describes social trends and societal implications. This can draw you off the main argument from time to time.

This book is dense with great insight and thinking. I list this as a challenge for people who are looking for quick read. You will get more than a simple 12-step process from reading this book.

Overall

Overall recommended for anyone who wants to understand the social media and mass collaboration phenomenon. This book is strongly recommended as a first book to start reading about social media.

Business executives reading the book can gain a deeper understanding of social media that will help them avoid the - we're on Facebook so therefore we are social solution.

Technologists will initially be disappointed as this is not a technical book, but I ask them to read the book carefully and think about how technologies create the means to bring collaboration together. After all, successful social collaboration involves a unique blend of social and technical systems. The technical piece is significantly more straightforward than getting the right social systems and this is what this book is all about.

159 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Paperback writer

Overwhelming but worth it!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 15, 2012

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I decided to read this book as it was recommended by a fellow web professional as a must read for people in our field. He was right on as there are so many books available on the subject, it can get confusing.

It's not a how to guide to social media - more of a philosophy about the digital age. I gained loads of insights and so will you, hence me writing this review so that I am social networking the good word!

It also made me stop and think about my 'free time' and how I choose to use it.

One person found this helpful

Taylor

Yes, a thought-provoking, and possibly even important book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 4, 2011

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Shirky's theme is that many of the social and even private behaviours which we take for granted as 'human nature' are in fact adaptations to information restrictions or costs. And those restrictions are now gone! His conclusion is that we now have the opportunity to restructure our society, our conception of the state, and actually, our conception of our own potentialities. A rare argument for rational optimism, and a call to action. Bravo!

10 people found this helpful