The Power of Cognitive Surplus
According to Clay Shirky, a critical technology is something that can help hold a society together amidst the crisis-like atmosphere that comes with significant or fast change in how a mass amount of people live. On a small scale, you could think of it as a preschooler who is struggling to make friends, yet isn’t upset because she can bring her comforting doll to school. The doll works as her critical technology that she uses to cope with a new and unfamiliar environment. It is technological in its’ accomplishment of an objective, and critical because it is symptomatic of crisis. It keeps the girl happy for the time being, but ultimately is something she needs to grow out of.
Importantly, as Shirky notes, this significant change in lifestyle brings about the potential for more connection between people than previously possible. With the preschooler example, that potential connection would include the benefit of making friends and developing social skills. That potential is called cognitive surplus, and it can’t be fully utilized until you realize its’ there.
So while critical technologies work as sort of placeholders during changing times, they also hold society back, or come before, a society-wide recognition of what can be done with a crucial part of what the change brings, that cognitive surplus. In the preschoolers’ case, the cognitive surplus starts to be utilized when she recognizes it’s better to immerse herself fully in the classroom with other students, rather than rely on the doll.
Cognitive surplus on a mass scale is the potential for innovation when unprecedented numbers of people have the ability to interact. This potential is best tapped into when the masses start using each other for mutual and societal benefit, instead of allowing too much of their attention to be consumed by a critical technology.
As Shirky explains, in the years preceding the Industrial revolution, there was an unprecedented amount of people in close proximity together in certain cities, and the critical technology that kept them away from chaos was gin. Before moving to the cities, most people had never seen more than fifty other human beings in their lives. This new scale of being around others was one among dozens of other changes modern people had to deal with in adjusting from a rural life to an urban one.
Gin was a way to deal with change. According to Shirky, the constant noise and action, lack of food for many, and new densely populated environment was so much to take in, that getting drunk was an effective way to deal with it and keep moving forward.
As Shirky notes, it wasn’t until people realized that the collective labor could be utilized as an asset, that the surplus of ideas and workers to execute them allowed for the transformation and expansion of cities with unprecedented production. It was only then that the Industrial Revolution, and a new way of life, really arrived.
First, people had to realize what was possible and choose to do it. Once society cut off its reliance on gin, they made the city, and their lives, better.
Shirky uses another example from later, during the 20th century after the death and destruction of World War 2, in which related kind of change was happening with a combination of rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy, and the number of people working five-day weeks. For the first time a mass amount of people had stable lives. More people than ever were educated, wealthy, and, with better technology and science, were living longer.
The normalization of working five-day weeks was also important, because as days became so scheduled, free time itself became ritualized.
For decades, the most significant use of that time has been watching television — in particular, sitcoms. At first, the sitcoms really were crucial in showing Americans’ a way forward after the terror of World War 2 and changes in their environment. The sitcoms were about families doing exactly what millions of Americans were doing at the time, moving forward with life in the suburbs.
As Abigail Koenig explains, they acted as a mirror of family life, and a barometer of what is normal. They showed viewers that life could continue on as normal despite the tragedy of war and unfamiliar new way of life. Though they also further encouraged a further reliance on the critical technology of TV, as the sitcom families would spend their free time watching TV as well.
Today, this critical technology is still around, and it has expanded even more with social media and streaming platforms that are increasingly accessible. These outlets are both our critical technology, and enablers of todays’ cognitive abundance. Social media applications and streaming platforms are easy ways to consume and waste time, and the Internet itself is an incompressible, massive, endless amount of consumable information. Yet many of these media outlets also allow people to produce and share content to massive audiences instantly, which can ultimately allow them to impact society in new and fascinating ways.
What type of content is produced and how that content is shared, however, is what determines the magnitude and type of societal change that can be created. The best of what we produce and share can impact the world in amazing ways. For instance, Greta Thunberg started a global movement among younger generations, and in the process became one of the most influential climate change advocates in the world, all starting with the decision to share what she was doing on social media.
Thunberg was 15 at the time, and missed school for 3 weeks to protest Swedish climate polices in front of the Swedish parliament. She posted about what she was doing on both Twitter and Instagram, and it soon went viral. To not disrupt her education, she adjusted to protesting on every Friday, and the FridaysForFuture movement was born.
Thunberg recently gave an emotional speech in front of world leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit and was a major influence in inspiring many of the 4 million people that recently protested for climate change on Friday, September 20, 2019. All of this positive action began with Greta’s decision to share what she was doing online.
While critical technologies can distract us from realizing were capable of, that doesn’t mean all consumption of streaming and social media is bad. Nor should everything we produce change the world. Consumption can be informative, entertaining, and worthwhile. When there’s an endless amount to consume, however, there has to be a limit.
Thinking about how what you’re consuming benefits you is one logical way to determine the worth. Producing and sharing can also happen for better or for worse, but the content doesn’t need to inspire a movement to be impactful. The creativity that comes with producing in itself is beneficial for the individual. From funny videos that make people laugh to poems about a difficult time that someone else may relate to for comfort, there is incredible variety in what can be positive.
While not on the scale of Greta’s movement, the connectedness can also allow for coordinated projects that use data from people to create solutions, as Shirky notes. Think about what you can teach, create, and or involve others with online. How you can inspire people to take action for a certain cause. The ability to produce and share impactful projects is at everyone’s’ fingertips. This can be anything from a ukulele tutorial to figuring out how relief can be provided to a country facing a crisis.
These critical technologies’ the internet provides can both leave us standing still, or enable us to transform the world using the connectivity we now have. The only way to utilize the cognitive surplus the internet provides us, is to limit and critique what we consume, while creatively and thoughtfully producing, sharing, and interacting with each other.
