While in principal i agree that cognitive surplus on the internet is better than watching TV or engaging in any other purely consumption oriented form of spending free time. But, in all honesty, my core opinion is that there is too much BS that doesn’t really contribute to anything important or enlightening…and that overwhelming amount of BS dilutes the real benefits of the internet and its affects on cognitive surplus. The explosion of social media produced varying results…
On one hand it does connect people and facilitates a kind of a forum where ideas and opinions are exchanged, sometimes producing truly unique results.
On the other hand it created a new realm for those people who don’t really have anything constructive to say and really use social media for their own “existential” purposes… These people try to attract attention and reinforce, in a way, the importance of their insignificant lives through all kinds of nonsense…
One of the best examples of this behavior is when completely random people you dont know start talking to you online like they actually have known you forever and always put their 5 cents in like anyone really gives a damn… Happened to me multiple times on YouTube… After that i completely isolated myself from all the morons who sit on YouTube ranting about all kinds of BS… Now, if someone messages me it goes straight to trash… That way i save myself a bunch of nerve-cells and dont have to deal with Global idiots…who often cant even spell “you.”
Facebook is another prime example… When it first started, there weren’t that many privacy options and completely random people were commenting on my pictures… WTH is that all about? Its nuts, some random people started commenting in all kinds of languages on my pictures… The best example i can think of is the following… Imagine you are sitting at a park and someone comes up to you and says, “hey is that shirt from Armani?” You reply, “no…” And they reply, “too bad…” What the hell? Seriously if that ever happened to me in real life…i would …………………….
Another amazing social trend that i noticed is that sometimes, especially on tech forums, you have complete “NOOBs” asking question and looking for quality information from the tech community… I Love that aspect of the internet and cognitive surplus, as i am, myself, a user and contributor on many tech forums…
Most of the time people who are knowledgeable in the topic will provide a very good explanation and the “NOOB” will understand everything from just one reply… When that happens you feel great because you helped someone out with a problem they were dealing with.
But sometimes it takes more than one reply to explain how to troubleshoot something or fix an error or whatever…and that’s when idiots come out of their caves and start giving all kinds of BS advice… Half baked/misunderstood info that they literally got from a general topic on Wikipedia and are trying to pass off as a technical solution…as if they are information systems engineers or have any low-level understanding of how computers and information are actually related… So what ends up happening is the following… “NOOBs” get soo confused because they are being provided with a lot of different information from completely different sources… On one hand you have knowledgeable computer people who are either professionals in the field, or just advanced users who have dealt with the same and/or similar problem before and actually know what they are talking about… and on the other hand you have some 12 year old who thinks he is “super computer guy” and starts throwing terms around from completely different areas as if they sound cool when combined, not actually explaining anything at all… And thats when the community gets pissed-off because this PUNK is feeding misinformation to other people who are confused as is… People start to argue and within a day or so that account, the PUNK, usually gets banned by Admins… “Thank GOD for database and user controls.”
So, my point is that it would be best for all those who actually do something productive on the web, if all those stupid teens, bored stalkers, or just freaking weirdos, would go back to laying on the couch and drooling like idiots watching some stupid show on MTV or whatever and not pollute the web with their BS and nonsense…
I think the commercial below will kinda demonstrate what i mean…
PS: This is a very light example of what im talking about…
If anyone experienced the kind of stuff that i was describing in relation to Forums…leave a comment… Thanks!
Also…”NOOB” is just a word used in the Tech community to describe someone who is not knowledgeable or a rookie… Not disrespect, just tech lingo…
I was doing some shopping for tech related products…
Computers, SSDs, capacitors (yea, i need capacitors…), heat-exchangers, infra-red temperature probes, etc…
And while i was reading reviews from customers, one very long and very detailed review, i realized that those people were actually spending a lot of their time writing these awesome reviews…which is a clear demonstration of cognitive surplus… Nothing like that was ever possible 15-20 years ago… Today, we EXPECT good reviews from our fellow consumers… ODD…but awesome! Freaking internet all the way…Long live the GEEK!
Cognitive surplus is precisely the reason why there is so much of what you call crap on the internet. When it comes to the web, people do things because they can regardless of broader value. Since there is so much out there, curation becomes an important activity. In fact, sites that serve curated content (Pintrest being the latest example) are becoming more and more popular.
Well my reasoning is that cognitive surplus is the reason that there are some many meaningless things being done on the internet. Sometimes people just do things because it is considered popular or whatever instead of their action actually having meaning. If you look around the web today, there is so much crap out there it’s just overly annoying. For example, people register domains that have very similar names to actual real websites and then fill that website with ads in order to make money when people click on their website by accident and all kinds of popups start to open up. And examples of this kind of behavior are all around the internet. The Internet was meant to provide a better means for the exchange of ideas, collaboration on projects, and revolutionize education. We see all those core things fulfilled, but today the internet is becoming more and more into a stage for bored people to show that they matter or whatever through nonsensical acts. This is my take on cognitive surplus among the masses…
There are many different ways to spend your free time without having to consume content and without the need to produce stuff too. You can always read a book about whatever, take a class on woodworking and learn a new skill, learn how to program machines and systems, etc. Cognitive surplus, in my point of view means that a person who utilizes their free time for meaningful things, most of the time, has cognitive surplus. Cognitive surplus is directly related to cognition. To me, there has to be a point when doing whatever. In essence, if I have free time i have many options in terms of spending that time. I can take a nap, the point being to relax and recharge my batteries. I can read a book, either for entertainment or self education purposes. I can make something, a salad, a program, a website, or anything else, physical or not. But anything I make must have a point. If I make some sort of food or dish, then that dish must be eaten by someone, me or someone else, because if noone eats it then I basically wasted my time preparing it and wasted produce in the process when there are billions of people around the world who are malnourished and hundreds of millions who are starving. If I make a program, that program has to do something meaningful, like calculating something or processing information, etc. If I go to a workshop and work with wood, whatever I am working on must have a purpose, because if it doesn’t have a purpose then I have wasted my time and precious resource, which is lumber. Basically, if I am doing something that requires multiple inputs, resources, in order to accomplish the goal, the result better make sense and have useful purpose or it will have been done in vain and I wasted time and resources in the process.
After reading your post, it seems that you are quite fed up of ‘interruptions’ during your cognitive surplus time. I don’t know what that feels like to have intruders during an online conversation as I am not a member of any particular social network. The positive aspect is that you can have in depth, technical conversations among distant informed people. The negative aspect is that the non-informed have the same access to the capabilities used. The key is to create the best balance between competence and incompetence.