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Putting your spare brainpower to use
BOOKS & ARTS
Brainpower for hire With a trillion brain-hours up for grabs, Clay Shirky tells David Cohen how we can change the world Your new book is called Cognitive Surplus. What exactly does that mean?
That’s always difficult to predict. I’m interested in the redesign of the relationship between citizens and governments at a local municipal level. For instance, are there things cities can create to make urban life safer and more attractive? PickupPal is one example I cite in the book. It’s a
We are talking about making use of our spare brain capacity. First there is the free time and talents of people in the developed world. We have over a trillion hours a year to spend participating in activities that we “I have a hard time thinking like and are interested in. that the trade-off of more Second, there is the media engagement for more environment – the internet, distraction is a bad one” mobile devices, digital technology – that allows us to service that allows people to use our free time and talents to carpool in cities across the world. participate in large-scale Services such as PatientsLikeMe collaborative projects. We used to and Responsible Citizen have spend this time watching created exciting opportunities. television, now we are migrating But we’ll have to wait and see to the internet where our leisure what takes off next. time can be put to good use.
Some critics say the internet is destroying communities and causing people to spend less time face-to-face. Do you agree?
large-scale communities in the developed world where at least part of the communication isn’t virtual, and vice versa.
I came of age on the internet in the 90s when we thought we’d all end up as video heads in the virtual world interacting in some great big virtual-reality console, but here’s the big surprise: there are almost no long-lived onlineonly communities. When a community is online for long enough, those people start arranging to meet up in the real world. The separation between the virtual and the real is infinitely less binary then we used to think. There are almost no
What do you say to people like Nick Carr, who argue that living online is giving us all a kind of attention-deficit disorder?
I think the distraction problem is real – we are losing attention span en masse. Nick Carr, who wrote the much-discussed Atlantic article “Is Google making us stupid?” is right about that. But new tools always create new dilemmas. At some point in the 18th century it became clear that literacy was an important thing to spread, so for the last few centuries we have spent billions to get people to read. Now we need to teach kids to concentrate. It’s a matter of good parenting as much as anything else.
Shirky wants us to capitalise on our basic desire to connect and share
What impact will this cognitive surplus have?
If we are seriously interested in putting that surplus to use, we can design services and institutions that rely on that resource in ways that we couldn’t before – from charities to higher education to medical research. The central example I use in the book is Wikipedia because it’s the oldest, the largest and the one everybody knows. Wikipedia has taken 100 million hours of human thought to develop – and we have a trillion to spare. The people I’m most interested in reaching with my book are the people who are trying to design new things, to make them aware that this cognitive surplus is something they can and should take advantage of.
Exactly. However bad the current landscape is in terms of interruptions, it’s still better than an environment in which citizens are locked out of engagement in public and civic activities. I take the distraction hypothesis seriously, but I have a hard time thinking that the trade-off is a bad one. Other than distractedness, I don’t see the drawbacks n
robert caplin
So what will be the next collaborative success – the next Wikipedia, so to speak?
The 1980s, before the internet, were no paradise for intellectual engagement, though.
Profile Clay Shirky is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. His latest book Cognitive Surplus is published in the UK this month by Allen Lane
46 | NewScientist | 24 July 2010
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19/7/10 10:28:42
Brainpower for hire With a trillion brain-hours up for grabs, Clay Shirky tells David Cohen how we can change the world Your new book is called Cognitive Surplus. What exactly does that mean?
That’s always difficult to predict. I’m interested in the redesign of the relationship between citizens and governments at a local municipal level. For instance, are there things cities can create to make urban life safer and more attractive? PickupPal is one example I cite in the book. It’s a
We are talking about making use of our spare brain capacity. First there is the free time and talents of people in the developed world. We have over a trillion hours a year to spend participating in activities that we “I have a hard time thinking like and are interested in. that the trade-off of more Second, there is the media engagement for more environment – the internet, distraction is a bad one” mobile devices, digital technology – that allows us to service that allows people to use our free time and talents to carpool in cities across the world. participate in large-scale Services such as PatientsLikeMe collaborative projects. We used to and Responsible Citizen have spend this time watching created exciting opportunities. television, now we are migrating But we’ll have to wait and see to the internet where our leisure what takes off next. time can be put to good use.
Some critics say the internet is destroying communities and causing people to spend less time face-to-face. Do you agree?
large-scale communities in the developed world where at least part of the communication isn’t virtual, and vice versa.
I came of age on the internet in the 90s when we thought we’d all end up as video heads in the virtual world interacting in some great big virtual-reality console, but here’s the big surprise: there are almost no long-lived onlineonly communities. When a community is online for long enough, those people start arranging to meet up in the real world. The separation between the virtual and the real is infinitely less binary then we used to think. There are almost no
What do you say to people like Nick Carr, who argue that living online is giving us all a kind of attention-deficit disorder?
I think the distraction problem is real – we are losing attention span en masse. Nick Carr, who wrote the much-discussed Atlantic article “Is Google making us stupid?” is right about that. But new tools always create new dilemmas. At some point in the 18th century it became clear that literacy was an important thing to spread, so for the last few centuries we have spent billions to get people to read. Now we need to teach kids to concentrate. It’s a matter of good parenting as much as anything else.
Shirky wants us to capitalise on our basic desire to connect and share
What impact will this cognitive surplus have?
If we are seriously interested in putting that surplus to use, we can design services and institutions that rely on that resource in ways that we couldn’t before – from charities to higher education to medical research. The central example I use in the book is Wikipedia because it’s the oldest, the largest and the one everybody knows. Wikipedia has taken 100 million hours of human thought to develop – and we have a trillion to spare. The people I’m most interested in reaching with my book are the people who are trying to design new things, to make them aware that this cognitive surplus is something they can and should take advantage of.
Exactly. However bad the current landscape is in terms of interruptions, it’s still better than an environment in which citizens are locked out of engagement in public and civic activities. I take the distraction hypothesis seriously, but I have a hard time thinking that the trade-off is a bad one. Other than distractedness, I don’t see the drawbacks n
robert caplin
So what will be the next collaborative success – the next Wikipedia, so to speak?
The 1980s, before the internet, were no paradise for intellectual engagement, though.
Profile Clay Shirky is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. His latest book Cognitive Surplus is published in the UK this month by Allen Lane
46 | NewScientist | 24 July 2010
100724_Op_Reviews.indd 46
19/7/10 10:28:42