One response to “Clay Shirky on the Cognitive Surplus”
Dan
This is a very frightening way to look at life and people. I understand the concept that he’s talking about, time can be thought productivity, especially when people put their minds together… but who says that leisure time (drinking, playing, socializing, watching tv) is wasted time?
I personally do not watch tv, but I do not look at it as wasted potential. All people need to unwind. This ‘cognitive surplus’ may not be a surplus at all. Thoughts and logic need time to unwind. Any and every time and peoples have their methods to do this, even without tv e.g. meditation, prayer, music.
This comes off to me as fear mongering. Playing on peoples’ worries that they aren’t doing enough with their time on this earth, but really, tv is a medium. And any human medium is art, intentional or not. It is something we are a part of. We don’t watch just anything, we watch things that affirm us, console us, make us happy. This is all so that other times where we need to work are more tolerable. TV time is not wasted wikipedia time, it is making the wikipedia time more tolerable.
One response to “Clay Shirky on the Cognitive Surplus”
This is a very frightening way to look at life and people. I understand the concept that he’s talking about, time can be thought productivity, especially when people put their minds together… but who says that leisure time (drinking, playing, socializing, watching tv) is wasted time?
I personally do not watch tv, but I do not look at it as wasted potential. All people need to unwind. This ‘cognitive surplus’ may not be a surplus at all. Thoughts and logic need time to unwind. Any and every time and peoples have their methods to do this, even without tv e.g. meditation, prayer, music.
This comes off to me as fear mongering. Playing on peoples’ worries that they aren’t doing enough with their time on this earth, but really, tv is a medium. And any human medium is art, intentional or not. It is something we are a part of. We don’t watch just anything, we watch things that affirm us, console us, make us happy. This is all so that other times where we need to work are more tolerable. TV time is not wasted wikipedia time, it is making the wikipedia time more tolerable.
Did I waste cognitive time disagreeing with you?