Clay Shirky: Congnitive Surplus

The TED talk by Clay Shirky is very informational and cannot be absorbed in one watching, it can actually take three or four watchings. Mr. Shirky has a way of presenting that is very sly and there are many sudden things that can surprise a person such as LOLcats appearing on the screen while the definition of cognitive surplus is discussed. He was not completely fluent throughout his speech and at sometimes it was hard to keep up. Subtitles are helpful.

Cognitive surplus is the ability for the worlds population to volunteer, contribute and calibrate on large projects(in the words of Clay Shirky). Cognitive surplus has been made widely possible with new technology and the wide variety of media outlets. Since it is widely available for the people of this world to reach and transfer information, the media has become a whole different game. In the Beginning of his TED talk Clay Shirky Spoke of a woman, Ory Okolloh, who created a blog to let people know where outbursts of violence where in Kenya, she received so many comments and emails with information that she needed a way to automate. Two programmer's helped and created a website where the information received would be automatically put on a map. This is an Example of cognitive surplus; of people volunteering their time and information to help better a cause. Cognitive surplus happens everywhere in our world today. YouTube is an example if this. A person can find just about any information they will ever need on YouTube. New Videos are uploaded every single day. All full of information, useful or useless, but it is still information given to the world by people who are not paid, but people who want to share their talents with the world. Cognitive surplus is our future, it is going to be the way that information travels, think about it how many people go to the news paper? How many people go to the internet to find out information? Cognitive surplus even affects us in Smith's English 9 Honors class. We share our information through fishbowl's and blogging. Cognitive surplus is the way of the future everyone must accept that.