Highly recommend watching this talk by former Silicon Alley Reporter columnist Clay Shirky on the “cognitive surplus” and how we’ll put it to use.
Large-scale distributed work-force projects are impractical in theory, but doable in reality. http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fweb2expo%2Eblip%2Etv%2Frss&file=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Frss%2Fflash%2F862384%3Freferrer%3Dblip%2Etv%26source%3D1&showplayerpath=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Fscripts%2Fflash%2Fshowplayer%2Eswf
This is a great speech. However… what surplus are we talking about? People are woking longer hours, in more stress; are afraid for their jobs and their specializations are so narrow that they need to read up on their fields everyday. Great concept – Im all for it – but when your average Joe goes back home after 10 hours at the office and 2 hours spent in traffic… he might not really feel the need to engage something intellectually. Hope Im not being too negative here.
Oscar, I’m thinking that given the choice between sitting
passively having some entertainment wash over you vs. feeling a
sense of control – however trivial and minor – doing something
interactive, we’ll be seeing a lot more than 1 in 100 times where
participation wins out. But even if it’s only 1% of the time that
average Joe does something like upload his reaction commentary
to the talk or sports or entertainment radio he heard on that
drive home, that’s all it will take for our world to be massively
different.
Thanks for participating in the conversation, by the way. 😉