During June of 2010, Clay Shirky opened his TED talk with the story of unrest in Kenya, which occurred in 2007 after the presidential election. The government shut down media output as an attempt to keep the citizens uneducated on the state of the country. One blogger, a woman by the name Ory Okolloh became a necessary source for the people of Kenya to understand where violence was taking place in their own country, due to the lack of media. Her followers supplied her with information as to what was happening in different areas of the country. More comments and information poured in until the point that Ory was incapable of posting all the events due to lack of time. Two of her followers then designed the program Ushahidi. The program took reports from her commenters and aggregated it and then placed it on a map to further simplify the understanding of all the commotion. The program has since become open source and has been successfully launched to track snow removal in Washington D.C. and other various subjects such as after shock from the Haitian earthquake.
He then goes on to say, "Now what Okolloh did would not have been possible without digital technology. What Okolloh did would not have been possible without human generosity," (Clay Shirky). He refers to a situation in which those two circumstances exist as cognitive surplus. Cognitive surplus is composed of the world's ability to volunteer, collaborate and contribute to large projects and free time and talents of the world's population. Media and tools allow the talent to then become material. However he says the world has a total of over a trillion hours of free time. Estimating the population of the planet to be around 6.9 billion that means each person would have around 143 hours of free time a year. Now I am curious what he defines free time as, because I personally know that I have over a half hour of free time per day. Unless he wouldn't refer to that as free time. An experiment of that magnitude seems as though it would become more inaccurate as you applied it to a larger group of people. Never the less, this is what he says.
He begins another story, the one of LOLcats.
These developments are a form of cognitive surplus. Despite their insignificance, they stand on the same level of the Ushahidi program, being defined by the characteristic that their creator did something instead of nothing. However LOLcats are of communal value, they provide use and enjoyment for the participants of the cause. Ushahidi on the other hand is of civic value, providing benefits to not only the participants of the cause, but to all of society. I find the LOLcats to be of very little value, quite honestly, not only does our world have this supposed trillion + hours of free time, they are, in my opinion, wasting it on something such as these. This contrast he poses to the audience I find shocking, and especially effective at opening my mind. Although hard to understand at first his words are starting to penetrate my thoughts, and his speech marks the beginning many what if... thoughts which multiply quickly.
If humans have the growing free time and generosity that Shirky says they do, why aren't they directing it towards projects of more civic value? It's although most people are 90% there, they just have to make a small but different decision to direct their free time and talent towards a cause that would help more people.
In the conclusion of his TED talk I feel although he poses a challenge to me,
"There is a trillion hours a year of participatory value, up for grabs. That will be true year-in and year-out. The number of people who are going to be able to participate in these kinds of projects is going to grow. And we can see that organizations designed around a culture of generosity can achieve incredible effects without an enormous amount of contractual overhead. What's going to make the difference here is what Dean Kamen said, the inventor and entrepreneur. Kamen said,'Free cultures get what they celebrate.' We have got a choice before us. We've got this trillion hours a year. We can use it to crack each other up, and we're going to do that. That we get for free. But we can also celebrate, and support, and reward the people trying to use cognitive surplus to create civic value." (Clay Shirky). Going back to what I previously said about seeking to use more of your time for increasing civic value, I think Shirky asks a hidden question in his words, 'which will you be?'. Will you be a person who uses their free time and creativity as a useless attempt to spread a worthless idea? Or will you take the basic simplicity of what you have naturally been bestowed with, and change the world for the better?
Although unspoken, his words ask me this. Upon hearing this question and visualizing the difference between the two I know that I will try my hardest to be the latter. I understand that every once in awhile everyone seeks out that time specifically for themselves, but I think that society has been taught to always put themselves first. Few people are educated on the unfortunate lives of others, and rarely have that thought pass through their minds. When it is necessary, take care of yourself, but direct free time towards people and causes in need. When specifically directed, all the cognitive surplus could result in a world full of LOLcats, or a magnificent place, full of helpful programs like Ushahidi, where people direct their talent and free time to projects that can provide benefits to all, and positively alter our future.
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