Cognitive Surplus
"Every single year for the second half of the 20th century, the amount of television watched by humanity increased. Collectively, we now watch more than one trillion hours of television every year – something not entirely unlike, as Clay Shirky sees it, tipping the free time of the world's educated citizenry (their "cognitive surplus") down an intellectual plughole. It's not that television is evil, or even bad. It's just that, as a medium, it's incredibly good at soaking up leisure and producing very few tangible results. It tells stories, it makes people feel less alone, it passes the time. It is, Shirky ventures, a little like gin in 1720s London, helping people cope with modernity by gently blurring the edges of their reality." More by Tom Chatfield on The Guardian
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What Hacker News says
- Clay Shirky told the same story in his excellent book `Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age`
https://witandwisdomofanengineer.blogspot.com/2010/07/engine...
TLDR: McDonald's customers buy milkshakes. Marketing people ask customers how they can make milkshakes better... to sell more. They make changes with zero change in sales.
A researcher asks people who buy milkshakes: what is the job that the shake fills for you? Why do you "hire" the shake?
Answer: early morning commuters want something to eat while driving to work. A shake isn't a good breakfast, but it's quick and easy to buy then consume while driving to work. Satisfying.
The point is making a shake "better" won't help anyone! "How can we make it better" is the wrong question!
- You'd probably enjoy Clay Shirky's book "Cognitive Surplus", which really put into perspective for me what this apparent glut of time I had on my hands meant.
There's an excerpt at: http://mentalfloss.com/article/18670/gin-sitcoms-and-cogniti...
- People who think Quora is temporary or just for hipsters don't understand Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus. 1) Contributing is more rewarding than playing video games or watching TV. 2) People have more free time now than at any other point in history.
They're going to contribute some kind of intellectual content whether its Wikipedia entries, lolcats, Quora, or Minecraft designs.
- Clay Shirky argued in Cognitive Surplus that excessive gin consumption was because those people were bored. It stopped when their job opportunities opened up.
IIRC, he was optimistic that media consumption would similarly dry up once people had more compelling options.
- More discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Surplus
(here we are, 14 years later than the book; are there any obvious examples of freed cognitive surplus changing the world in the interim?)
- Could someone recommend me good and interesting books about how social media changed/s people. Socially and psychologically.
I just read Stolen Focus 2022, a book that talks about the downside of social media. But I got a little bit disenchanted with the second half.
Is Cognitive Surplus a good book? What else comes in your mind?
Thank you.
