Clay Shirkley: Cognitive Surplus

In  Clay Shirkley's TED talk Cognitive Surplus, I took away from this video that our society is a society that has just recently began enforcing cognitive surplus due to individuals having more free time. Clay Shirkey believes that cognitive surplus has something to do with the free time individuals have. I can see what he means, because in America, our unemployment rate has increased in this last decade due to a struggling economy. Through the struggling economy, many have decided to use cognitive surplus in hopes to make a difference in this world other ways through websites like Ushahidi as mentioned, Twitter, and even Facebook in order to share information freely. 

Just from Jan 2003, you can see that the unemployment rate has gone up significantly in the past seven years. With more unemployed people with more free time on their hands, we find that they use it to contribute to the internet.

Clay Shirky's speaking techniques consist of many pictures and examples that we would know of. For example, LOLcats, one of the popular humorous websites about cats, is an example that many of us can understand. Although this is not one that can help our economy in any way, it is still one of the quickest spreading forms of cognitive surplus that many have used in their lifetime. However, outside of the LOLcats reference, I feel as though his speaking techniques like using unique vocabulary and his introduction to the speech are more for those who already have some background on cognitive surplus, as I found myself very confused at what he was trying to get across to his audience since I did not have much background on his theory of cognitive surplus prior to this TED talk. Although Clay Shirky is mainly talk, his visuals do show us what he means by a cognitive surplus. The visuals that go along with his stories about these cognitive surpluses make it obvious to his audience why his example is a cognitive surplus. I found that Clay Shirky was somebody who had a comfortable medium when it came to using pictures and talk to strengthen his point. I think what matters from this video is that cognitive surplus is a proven idea that has just recently started to form in our society. Due to recent psychology tests like the daycare study and more free time of individuals throughout the nation due to economical struggles, we have found that cognitive surplus is setting in and causing more people to get more information. I think the main reason why this matters is because of websites like Ushahidi, which give information about what is happening in the world to the world. With this, many naive people who do not really know what is going on in the world will know what is occuring. A main problem that occurs throughout many wealthy countries with self centered people and other countries that do not have access to world news is that we find ourselves finding out what happens in the world either somewhere in the middle when there is not much we can do or after the fact. I believe that through witnesses telling us their experiences on websites available to the public, we will be aware of what is happening and we might even be able to make a difference in that country like we did in Haiti. This video connects to our education, because we may even learn new information from cognitive surpluses. It may even inspire others to apply their education to make cognitive surpluses, like many who post information as to what occurs in the world. Even if you read websites like Answers  and Yahoo Answers. Although some of the questions on here are unnecessary, some of these questions actually need someone who knows what is up in a particular subject in order to answer the questions.  Through education, we can contribute to what is happening in the world of cognitive surplus. This matters to the world, because through anybody being able to post information that they know, we may dig up information that we would have never known had we only let professionals give their input.