Book review: Cognitive Surplus

Authored by Clay Shirky in 2010 (ISBN 978-1-59420-253-7).

I noticed this book on the "new releases" shelf at my library. I read a few pages: he was observing the waste of time that is TV viewing. I have been urging my family to give it up and thought this would be good ammunition.

It turns out the book is about something else: our recent surplus of free time. Only in the last fifty years, one hundred at most, has a large portion of society had a surplus of free time. This time is courtesy of the many labor-saving technologies from the industrial and post-industrial revolutions. What are we doing with it?

Watching TV, mostly, in the United States and elsewhere. Shirky says that Americans alone watch 2 hundred billion hours of TV per year. Millions of hours of TV commercials on any given weekend. He cites an IBM researcher who says that Wikipedia, all the infrastructure and articles and edits and such, amounts to one hundred million hours over the ten years of its existence, or a mere ten million hours per year, or 0.005% of the time spent watching TV. So, when someone says, "I created or edited a Wikipedia page," and someone else responds, in a desultory fashion, "where do you find the time," the answer is: how could you not? We have so much free time.

We watch TV over reading or walking or bowling because the barrier to entry is so low. It is always available and there is usually something interesting to view. But today's youngest generations are watching less TV than the earlier generations; their preferred activity is still not reading nor walking nor bowling, but interacting: Facebook, Twitter, texting, web-surfing, even old-fashioned email.

And, whereas TV is a one-way medium, today's web technologies are two-way. We are using our free time to consume and produce. Given the amount of time and technology available, what has been produced could not have been predicted fifteen years ago. Encarta started in 1993 as a Microsoft purchase of an existing encyclopedia with 40-thousand-plus articles and the full backing of one of the world's largest corporations. Wikipedia started in 1999 with a volunteer staff, zero articles, and a few computers. Who would have predicted Wikipedia's triumph? Who would have expected thousands of people to contribute 3.4 million articles without being paid?

Shirky explains that by focusing on a monetary reward we are ignoring key human motivations: autonomy, competence, membership, sharing. Think about your hobbies and whether you would enjoy them more as a paid position with a boss. Probably not. I have written about this before. Wikipedia and Linux were and are successful because they provide all four motivations. Before the Internet, no one volunteered to write an encyclopedia because there was no way to do it, not because there was no interest.

Shirky says it is a mistake to treat current behaviors as natural when they could be accidental. We watch hours of TV not because it is natural, but because we have no means of producing, only consuming. With the arrival of the printing press and its (then) enormous cost, the publisher had to undertake editorial review. Printing items that would not be consumed would put the printer out of business. Thus, the editorial function of the press is something of a historical accident. With publishing costs now zero the editorial function is no longer needed, or at least it will not be compensated as highly.

He cites research that McDonald's pursued regarding its milkshakes: it wanted to know how to improve sales. Instead of focusing on taste and price, one of its researchers asked: what job is this milkshake performing? This researcher observed that most were purchased by lone travelers, in the morning, and were not consumed in the store. Sustenance? Perhaps, or more possibly, something to occupy the time of a lonely commuter. When something better comes along we should expect a decline in milkshake purchases.

The decrease in the cost of communication will cause us to re-evaluate all sorts of decisions we have made and practices we employ. For example, on college campuses study groups are encouraged while naked sharing of homework is subject to disciplinary action. With free communication it is now possible to set up a study group that includes hundreds of students, not just a small group. With membership so large, and access free and anonymous, some students will take but not give. Like Wikipedia, that may not bother the contributing students but may bother the professors.

One of my favorite examples from the book illustrates how people from my generation, and generations older than me, may not fully appreciate how different our world will become. Shirky was visiting the home of a friend with a four-year-old daughter. The daughter was watching a TV program and was really enjoying a particular character. She suddenly lifted from her seat and started rummaging behind the screen. "What are you looking for, honey?" "The mouse." She just assumed that everything electronic she observes will come with the interactivity provided by, in this case, a computer mouse.