Reading Reflection No. 3

Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky

1.) The general theme that was discussed throughout the entirety of this book is the idea that with 4.5 billion people in the world, we have a lot of wasted knowledge and ideas because of our choices in lifestyle. Clay Shirky argues that the free time that people have can be better utilized by connecting on the internet rather than spending hours watching television.


2.) The biggest thing that this book connected with in ENT 3003 can be seen with the dynamics of this entire class. As we all know, we have to complete a multitude of assignments that are all posted online on our individual blogs so that other students in the class can see. This structure is similar to the theme that was discussed in Cognitive Surplus because rather than submitting our work to one person, we are making it readily available for other students to view and learn from too. When students are required to peer review each others blog posts, we are able to gain knowledge from the information that is being presented such as information about a book that was part of the reading list, but was not chosen. All of this together goes with this book because we are utilizing the intelligence of all of the students in the class rather than wasting it.


3.) If I had the opportunity to design an exercise for this class that would better illustrate the argument in Cognitive Surplus, it would be constructed as a full week assignment. To further explain, I would create a timesheet for each student so that they could record the amount of hours they spend on various things. Whether a student spends time sleeping, eating, playing video games, watching television, or studying, I would have them note just how much time was spent on this during each day. In this way, after a week of recording the amount of time spent on different things, I would have them tally up each category so that they can have a better understanding of how their time is spent during the week. This activity will help students comprehend just how much time is spent as "leisure time" or even time that is completely wasted, where people could be doing things to better themselves. In the book, Shirky makes a reference to the number of hours people spend watching television and compares it to the amount of time people have spent collaborating information on Wikipedia. When compared, he illustrates how beneficial it is to spend time on the internet sharing ideas and interacting and challenges just how much more productive it could be for our society if more people spent time doing this rather than watching television.

4.) The biggest thing that surprised me in this book is when Shirky created a formula that readers could understand the severity of the issue on hand. I did not realize just how many hours are pent by people during their leisure time with watching television, but it has become something that is highly incorporated into our society. When Shirky was able to compare the time spent watching television to the number of human hours that have been put into collaborating for Wikipedia I was shocked to learn that we could have 2000 Wikipedias every year if time was differently spent.