Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators

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. 100Yet, 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. 212In 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.

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:StrengthsShirky 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 ideasChallengesReaders 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.OverallOverall 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.

Este livro deixa a desejar em relação ao "Here comes everybody". Se for ler apenas uma obra do autor, por favor leia a outra.Toda a abordagem é construída em cima do conceito de que a incorporação dos avanços tecnológicos criou um "tecido de conectividade" que representa um potencial de benefícios ainda pouco explorado. Pode ser criado mais conhecimento e inovação, podem ser tonadas melhores decisões e prevenidos abusos. Tudo leva tempo e esse processo é detalhado pelo autor. Interessante, mas tímido e morno comparado com o Here Comes Everybody.

A great book on groups psychology, online communities, the new media and making good use of people's available free time and enthousiasm for contributing to something useful or valuable, more or less. Additionnally, this book increases you faith in humanity. There's a lot of young and professional people out which would rather create stuff or solve problems online rather than watch tv, waiting for you to make it possible or easier for them.

While looking for the mouseI was digitally distracted turning pagesZero artificial intelligence 100% valueAs you would expect from Shirky: perfect timing

一般的なのかもしれませんが　実例でillustrative につたえようとするのですがかえって間延びのかんじもあります。　コンセプトは素晴らしい。combinability is a key feature of knowledge とはオリジナル表現か？　いいですね。

I eagerly purchased this Clay Shirky book based on listening to podcasts of his thoughts on the future of the newspaper business. The man's comments were insightful, he reeked intelligence. While I am sure he still does, it is difficult to tell in this audio effort as he chose to not narrate this book. I found myself drifting through vast sections with no memory of what had been spoken.Regrets, as had I bought the hardcover I would have still heard his voice and likely been once again spellbound.