I came into this course with previous knowledge of Clay Shirky’s work. We watched one of his many TED talks in my ENG 2150H class, and I also had to profile him/his ideas for SOC 3085. I was really excited about our text, because I tend to agree with Shirky on the majority of his ideas about the Internet. Many will argue that he’s far too idealistic, but his positivity really resonates with me.*

As we delve further into Here Comes Everybody, I thought it would be useful for us to get a better sense of how Shirky perceives the Internet’s capacity for good.

[ted id=896]

This TED Talk is especially empowering. Shirky talks about this idea of “cognitive surplus,” which, as I understand it, basically asserts that we are more than the sum of our parts; you are my resource and I am yours. If together we devote our enough free time and enough effort towards a collaborative project, we can be productive and successful. I appreciate that Shirky addresses the broad spectrum of participation. I was thinking about it, and nobody I know is really a passive consumer, because we can just as easily share and create things too. To compare: engaging in the realm of the Internet is activity, watching TV is a passivity.

I like the idea that we are all connected through the Internet, which is why I’ve always thought of such technology as a kind of extension of humanity. And above all, I’m tired of alarmist, anti-Internet ideologies that depict us (millennials more so than any other generation) as incapable of focusing, thinking, innovating, etc. To tie that in with the concept of cognitive surplus, I would say that the Internet allows us to work and think in tandem, but still leaves enough room for individual development.

*Okay, I’m rereading this post and realizing that I may sound a bit overzealous. Therefore, I think it’s prudent for me to say that I disagree with a lot of the points that Shirky brings up in chapter 3 of our text, especially in reference to the journalism industry. But that’s a post for another time.