1) In his talk "How cognitive surplus will change the world," Clay Shirky says cognitive surplus is made up of free time and a good media landscape. Do you think there are other factors that compose the idea of cognitive surplus? Also, Shirky says if we use cognitive surplus to create civic value, we can change a society. Do you agree with his idea? Why or why not?
2) Shirky poses a question at the end of his talk "How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history": how should we use new media that are global, social, ubiquitous, and cheap? How do you respond to the question? In what way do we have to beware of media change?
Cognitive surplus is described by shirky as the ability of the worlds population to contribute and volunteer and collaborate on large global projects made up of the worlds free time and talents and also the media landscape. He says that instead of us being couch potatoes just because we want to be, that now as a society it is the only opportunity given to us where we can create and share in the same sitting. I agree with this and think that this media landscape can help change the world for good, however more and more insignificant reprocussions of the abundance of this technology will grow; such as shirky mentions, the "lullcats". Elizabeth Burns post says that only the high class can have access to these new avenues of media landscape, but to be honest i dont think that is such a bad thing. Most people with that class or income level to be able to get on the internet and adhere to cognitive surplus have the ability to change the world more so than the poor people who do not have access to it. Overall Cognitive surplus has the ability to change society. It is the issue of winning over the free will of the people who have access to this media landscape to produce change instead of lullcats that will be the determining factor in whether or not change is produced.
ReplyDelete