Spring. The time when thoughts turn to warmer weather, shedding layers of confining garments and nature’s decorating beautification. Spring Break. The time of the school year when thoughts turn to everything and anything but school. College students become giddy with excitement while anticipating their final class before the textbooks are thrown in the corner and their fantasy trip becomes the end-of -all-preconceived reality. Trips are taken to exotic locations where bodies are bared, strong beverages are consumed, medicinal plants are deleafed and inhaled, and time becomes oblivious except to the next desire. Cognitive Surplus? It’s everywhere!
My spring break was nothing to write home about. Why? Because I didn’t go away. I was not so fortunate enough to have fled the scene of normality for the dream scene of hot bodies and sunscreen. My fantasy was served by the fact that there was no classes for the week. The only cold ones I knocked back were cold showers. That does not mean that I didn’t go anywhere. I went somewhere: to the same place I’ve been going for the previous two and a half months prior, to Baruch. Everyday, except for two, found me halfheartedly yet fully committed to a book, computer or notes. Cognitive Surplus? It’s anywhere!
You see, whether you are having the time of your (presumably) young life roaming the unique, picturesque locale of a foreign destination, national or international, or you are locked into the everyday, mundane routine of’ ‘Work, Home, Repeat’, there is the connection to cognitive surplus. The few, the crowds, the extreme of us who found enjoyment in mass organizations of half-naked ‘citizens’, indulging in countless beach-side/poolside contests livened up with loud, thumping music were, uncaringly, contributing to a form of constructive use of creativity, collectively shared by hundreds of thousands nationally and millions internationally. In the meantime, majority of society as a whole was consumed by the bustle of workforce traffic, crowded sidewalks, crappy coffee and time ticking towards the bosses deadline. Yet, we are also, unrewardedly, contributing to the creative surplus of Fortune 500 companies, Mom-and-Pop shops and the GNP of whichever country we call home. As Clay Shirky commented “The enormous choices are collective ones, an accumulation of those tiny choices by the millions; the cumulative shift toward participation across a whole population….” (“Cognitive Surplus” 11-12).
So whether your spring break was the stuff of dreams, or the continuing saga of reality, you have contributed to shaping constructive thought hours. I guess that Spring Break did the World some good after all.