Cognitive Surplus By Clay Shirky
CHAPTER 1
“Cognitive Surplus” by Clay Shirky, is so far a very intriguing book that capitalizes on the new forms of collaborations and activities that were replaced and generated since the boom of technology. The book ventures into the idea that since the postwar boom the American people have explored new areas of studies that were more productive and required more online productivity than before. This is all referenced in the first chapter of the book, “Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus”. This first very interesting and informative chapter emphasizes the similarities between the Gin Craze of the first half of the 18th century and the viewing habits of many television viewers. In addition, this first chapter made an exemplary argument on the various activities that people would be doing if there were no television. It established this idea that the TV is the activity; reason why, is pretty simple. According to the book, people tend to watching TV, “because TV goes in through the eyes as well as the ears, it immobilizes even moderately attentive users, freezing them on chairs and couches, as a prerequisite for consumption”. In other words watching TV makes people less active but still productive in their constant consumption of information and motion pictures. These ideas are extremely interesting, however, there is one specific set of ideas that I find most endearing. For example, in the text there is a comment on television and how it collaborates with communication. It says,”TV is unbalanced-if I own a TV station, and you own a television, I can speak to you, but you cant speak to me. Phones by contrast, are balanced, if you buy the means of consumption, you automatically own the means of production”.(Pg. 22) I can completely understand this idea , the fact is that people owning TV stations have the power to expose any kind of information to its viewers that it wants; however, a person who owns only a television is not able to display any kind of information to the extent that the television station can. This is different than the phone. For on the phone you have the same amount of limits and abilities as the person on the other line. This is relatively intriguing for what is displayed on television gives insight to many people and can have the unquestionable power to make them think in a certain way. This idea is reflected in how the media has the ability to display a certain amount of information on television so as to change the minds of it viewers but over the phone both the people have equal shares of power. I found this relatively reasonable, considering the fact that in contemporary society many aspects of political affairs can be selectively chosen by the people who own these television stations, unlike on the phone.
All in all, I find this book extremely interesting in it comparison between early 18th century norms and modern day norms, and the great part is that it is only the first chapter.
CHAPTER 2
In this chapter, Clay Shirky, discusses the protests against the United States beef imports to South Korea started by a popular boyband. In addition, she provides her opinion on the open and easy ability for people to publish what ever they please online. She discusses the influences of this open access to publishing online on the people of the social media world and the culture of contemporary society. In the beginning of the chapter, Clay Shirky discusses the protest in South Korea against U.S. beef. This took place with the desire to avoid the Mad Cow disease that America was importing over the Pacific Ocean. Although South Korea had relinquished from the U.S. Market they were drawn back by a “much larger free trade agreement”. According to the book, this protest was led by a music group who were mainly apolitical in their music endeavors; they wrote protest music and held large protests that fought against the import of American beef.
Towards the second half of the chapter, Clay Shirky discusses the intriguing accessibility to contributing thoughts and ideas online as exhibited by the people. According to the book, “Publishing used to be something we had to ask permission to do; the people whose permission we had to ask were publihers. not anymore”. I am a strong partisan of this idea. I believe that with the feesible access to any social media network, we are are to publish things extremely easily. Before the onset of social media, we were mostly able to publish things through the affirmation of publishers, however, now one can simply go onto Facebook or Twitter or Instagram and publish any idea that comes to ones mind. The book continues to be a proponent to my idea by quoting, “The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no measure of limit to this fever for writing; every one must be an authorl some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name; others for the sake of mere gain”. This extremely interesting and is definitely exhibited in the plethora of books publicized currently on the market.
Lastly, the book mentions a couple benefits to this easy access to publishing ideas and book, one of which stuck out to me: “The first advantage is an increase of experimentation in form”. I believe this is extremely interesting and affirmative, since the exposure to being able to publish easily allows more people to experiment with different ways of writing. These different forms of writing allows for a revolutionary breakthrough in the writing culture and will thus allow us to progress as a publishing and rhetorical society.
In conclusion, this is what Clay Shirky is portraying in the second chapter of her book, “Cognitive Surplus”.
