Cognitive Surplus Review

Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus

Heidi Hopp

November 2011

Shirky begins his examination of our abundance of free time by painting a picture of a drunken city of London in the 1720s.  People were coming to the city looking for work.  The gin drinking helped ease people and transition them from a rural to an urban industrial society (Shirky, 2010, p. 1-2).  He further draws a parallel to what is happening in our society today.  People are still getting “drunk,” but not by alcohol.  Instead, we have become addicted to the technology available to us today, and we choose to spend a good deal of our free time with technology.  How we spend our available free time in a way that is enjoyable to us is what becomes known throughout Shirky’s book as “cognitive surplus.”  What is our “gin” today?  We have moved from sitcoms, to the Internet, and to other forms of social media that are commonly found across homes, schools, and businesses worldwide. 

Why are people spending more of their free time with social media tools?  According to Shirky, we need to have means, motive, and opportunity to do so.  He discusses each area in the next chapters of his book. 

The “means” are quite obvious and readily available.  Shirky (2010) calls media “…the connective tissue of society” (p. 54).  People want to reach out and communicate with each other.  They want to stay in touch with others and keep up with the latest news and information.  Whether it is via a computer, an iPhone, an iPad, or an iPod, people want to participate and be informed.  You can find the Internet in almost all homes and people viewing websites or checking emails daily.  Anyone who wants to have their voice heard can.  According to Shirky (2010), “Publishing used to be something we had to ask permission to do…” (p. 46).  Now if you have something to share, you can do it easily and cheaply.

The “motive” to participate has a personal, intrinsic value.  Humans have “…the desire to be autonomous (to determine what we do and how we do it) and the desire to be competent (to be good at what we do)” (Shirky, 2010, p. 75).  Deci’s Soma puzzle experiment proved that some of the participants worked to figure out solutions to the puzzle just because they wanted to get better at it and gain new skills, often working through their breaks (Shirky, 2010, p. 72).  After reading this section of the chapter, I wondered how we can instill that sense of intrinsic, inner motivation in our students.  Is this something that can be taught in school, or is it something that should be addressed mostly at home?  Certainly it is modeled at school, but I’m not convinced that the ideas carry through.  I work with several students with behavior issues who work for rewards and shopping.  Is this an effective motivator that changes and shapes their behavior for the better?  I’m not certain that I could say one way or the other.

Social motivations can be felt “…only when we are part of a group.”  These motivations focus around “connectedness or membership” as well as “sharing and generosity” (Shirky, 2010, p. 78).  Sometimes we want to know that there is another person out there in this world who is going through something similar to what we are experiencing.  It is comforting to know that information, and it makes us feel better.  Shirky (2010) describes Katherine Stone’s observations about the website Meetup.com where women who are suffering from postpartum depression can go online and share their experiences and realize that there is support, there are other people like them, and there is hope that they will overcome this and feel well again (p. 79). 

"Opportunity" must be present as well if we are to make sense and use of cognitive surplus.  Shirky (2010) argues that opportunities need to be “…communal; we must combine our surplus free time if it is to be useful, and we can do that only when we’re given the right opportunities” (p. 97).  The phrase, “Many hands make light the work.” ran through my mind as I was reading this section of the chapter.  Take for instance the million dollars the Grobanites rose by pooling their efforts and resources together (Shirky, 2010, p. 98).  An individual or small group effort would not have come close to what this large group did.

I was fascinated with Shirky’s aspect on how generations differ.  It was after this section that I said to myself, “That’s it, that’s why I have noticed differences in my students and even older family members.”  Shirky (2010) makes two valid points.  First, generations are different.  Second, the opportunities offered to generations differ (p. 121).  It was at this point that I thought about my grandma.  She was always quick to say things sure were different when she was growing up.  Indeed they were.  But what she didn’t take into consideration were the opportunities presented to her.  They were different as well.  She didn’t use the Internet, iPad, or even a cell phone.  But maybe she would have if these opportunities had been made available to her while she was growing up.  It was at this point in the book that I realized that similar differences exist between my students and me.  I grew up being primarily a consumer of knowledge, not an active participant or an author.  This may explain why I am a little more cautious and guarded online when it comes to openly sharing things about my own personal life.  My fourteen year old niece, on the other hand, is much more open and less guarded.  She has over 240 “friends” on Facebook.  I can’t help but wonder if these are true friends or just acquaintances. 

“Culture” is the final piece that Shirky takes a look at.  He argues that, “Knowledge is the most combinable thing we humans have, but taking advantage of it requires special conditions.”  These special conditions include, “…the size of the community, the cost of sharing that knowledge, the clarity of what gets shared, and the cultural norms of the recipients” (Shirky, 2010, p. 140).  In other words, the more people that have knowledge means more sharing will go on with very little, if any expense.  One such area where people turn to each other to share their personal experiences is in the area of medicine.  Websites such as patientslikeme.com convey this sense of caring.  Here people can openly share their life stories and offer support to each other (Shirky, 2010, p. 155).  A few years ago my mom was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer.  Looking back I wonder if she wouldn’t have benefitted from visiting such a site and reading about what other people were going through.  I often tried to offer her support and listen to how she was feeling, but it was rough.  I wished that she had somebody to talk to who truly understood what she was experiencing.  It has become evident that we have the ability to share our resources and knowledge.  Whether it is for personal, communal, public or even civic reasons, our ability to pool, collaborate, and share is becoming more and more common (Shirky, 2010, p. 173).

After reading our third book, I stopped and thought about the important ties all three books have.  Nye’s book, Technology Matters, leaves us asking several important questions about technology.  Carr’s book, The Shallows, examines what the Internet is doing to our brains.  Shirky’s book, Cognitive Surplus, looks at how we spend our abundance of free time.  All three books have something in common; the choice is ours with how we use the technological tools and opportunities that we have today.  The raw materials of free time and social tools aren’t enough.  Shirky (2010) states that, “The fusing of means, motive, and opportunity creates our cognitive surplus out of the raw material of free time” (p. 184).  Shirky leaves us with the notion that we will be “looking for the mouse.”  We have the means, the motive, and the opportunity to pool together our cognitive surplus and to be connected.  The question is what will we do with it? 

References:

Carr, N. (2010). The shallows:  What the internet is doing to our brains. New York, NY:  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Nye, D. E. (2007). Technology matters:  Questions to live with. Cambridge, MA:  MIT Press.

Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive surplus:  Creativity and generosity in a connected age. New York, NY:  The Penguin Press.