Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age

Description

'Perhaps the most amazing fact about Shirky's incisive manual for building a better world is this- it's just possible that everything he promises may be true' Observer 'Fizzes with great insights . . . It's a delight to read and will change how you think about the future' Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing In the past, we filled our free time with the tools at our disposal. Television became a kind of universal part-time job, and sitcoms and soap operas sponged up our cognitive surplus- the collective surfeit of time, intellect and energy at our disposal. Today, tech has finally caught up with human potential. New tools don't just let us consume, but to create and to share. Clay Shirky's groundbreaking book reveals what is now happening with this previously untapped talent and goodwill. From lolcats to tools for tracking voter fraud and ethnic violence, he shows how we're using our cognitive surplus for the better, and what it means for the future. 'When Clay Shirky speaks . . . people listen. The author of the influential Here Comes Everybody is again driving conversation' TIME 'Shirky gives us a ruler by which to measure our contribution to the world. Watching TV will never be the same again' Guardian

Clay Shirky writes, teaches, and consults on the social and economic effects of the internet, especially on places where our social and technological networks overlap. His goal is to describe the intersection of social tools and social life, helping people to understand both what's happening around them and how tools could he designed that better support social activity. A professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, he has consulted for Nokia, Procter and Gamble, News Corp., the BBC, the US Navy and Lego. Over the years, his writings have appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, Wired, and IEEE Computer. Pivotal articles include 'Exiting Deanspace', an analysis of Howard Dean's loss of the US Democratic nomination in 2004, and how his web campaign may actually have contributed to the loss, and 'Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality', about the ways that the social dynamics of online communication tend to create great imbalances of attention. A regular keynote speaker at tech conferences, he has never believed that technology is an end in itself; rather it is our use of technology that matters.

Lucid and assured ... the most amazing fact about Shirky's incisive manual for building a better world is this: it's just possible that everything he promises may be true * Guardian * Shirky is the best chronicler we have of the unfolding cultural revolution brought on by the web * New Statesman *