Cognitive Surplus: Clay Shirkey

It has been the destiny of humanity to make contact with each other and establish a permanent network by which perhaps the people of the earth could collaborate and live a peaceful and prosperous life. Without the internet, the collaboration would simply be unfeasible. Instead of focusing on political or economic partnerships, Clay Shirkey speaks of the Cognitive surplus, which seeks to increase the collective intellectual exchange between people of many nations. This way, by combining human mental ability and creativity. However, it doesn't work exactly like this; instead the cognitive surplus is the difference when a person using pen and paper attempt to complete a task versus a person with a computer for the same task. The cognitive surplus is the time difference between these two tasks, presumably using the computer simplifies the entire process. Cognitive surplus can also be thought of in a different way too - in that thanks to automated things like direct pay from your employer, Facetime, Calendars, Mail applications, you free your mind of these miscellaneous tasks so that you can focus on the more important and detailed things like your class project. Combined, these three factors form the backbone of Clay Shirkey's Cognitive surplus. With cognitive surplus, it relies on Boyd's assertion that humanity will not lose sight of what's important in the internet age; the cognitive surplus depends on human impulse control to watch the latest cat videos, for example. However, generally, speaking a person can save countless hours in their lives regardless due to the internet and computers. Together, creativity blossomed and many artists showcased their artwork at devianart or through youtube videos, creating a very vibrant international intellectual community. Overall, it is an important vocabulary as it exemplifies the changes in human behavior as their time allocated in their favorite activities increased. Without Cognitive surplus, it wasn't possible for all these bursts of creativity to take root. In this end, the cognitive surplus works tandem with Boyd to portray a very optimistic view of the internet age.